This post is not affiliated with my employers
Except it is of course, as is everything I say and do online in a public space.
The same goes for you: whether you like it or not you represent your employer online every time you hit ‘update’.
Mike Essex
HMV and Republic: are administrators ruining the value of websites?
With fashion chain Republic entering administration it came as no surprise that their website was taken down hours after the announcement.
Ecommerce sales stopped, pages dropped out of the Google index and their branding looked awful on the holding page.
Meanwhile its high street stores continued to trade whilst the Administrators decided what to do next, which begs the question: why?
How to crowdsource your next marketing project
Today, I’m conducting an experiment to see if I can make an unknown book by a new author reach the Amazon Kindle Top 100.
I’ve asked all friends, colleagues, family and the digital marketing community to help me promote the digital version of my book, Free Stuff Everyday.
If it works, it’ll be further evidence that crowd sourced marketing can be a highly effective way to spread awareness of a product as well as gaining feedback and support from your community.
You can read more on my challenge and take part via the Koozai blog. But this got me thinking about some other great examples of crowdsourced marketing that you can use in your own campaigns, and that’s what I present for you today.
Why Google loves responsive design (and you should too)
In early June the official Google blog came out with a definitive stance on recommendations for smartphone optimized websites.
This blog post explains how you can abide by these recommendations to keep Google and your visitors happy.
Do sponsored messages ever work online?
Visibility is everything online, so reaching thousands of people in an instant is something a lot of businesses crave.
This leads many brands to try sponsored messages, but do they actually work, and when they don’t work what’s the PR risk?
“I will share your messages twice over 150,000 Twitter followers and 10,000 Facebook friends to help boost your traffic views for $5” reads just one advert on Fiverr.com.
How can you lose? The seller has 299 positive reviews and 220 people have starred (liked) the service. Surely this is proof that sponsored messages work, right?
Wrong.
20 ways to get reviews (and links) from the media
When it comes to getting reviews from the media, I like to take the
approach of ‘you make your own luck’.
It’s very easy to send press
releases to a selection of media publications, sit back and forget about
it, but like any form of outreach, without a targeted approach the
results will be poor.
The quality and quantity of your media reviews is tied directly to the
amount of effort that is put in, and the amount of research that is done
before you hit send on an email.
Working as both a blogger who reviews
products, and as a marketer who is trying to get reviews, I’ve compiled
20 solutions based on my own experience.
20 ways to get reviews from customers
The first step in getting a product or service reviewed is to realise that people don’t actually want to review it.
Instead you need to give them a reason to write about you. Once you look at reviews in this way it’ll become easier to identify opportunities.
This post highlights how to do this with customers.