Every person reaches a comfort zone. From salesmen satisfied with reaching their monthly quotas (and nothing more), to students who are content with just getting B’s, individuals in their comfort zones work at an anxiety-neutral state and operate without a sense of risk.



If you’re in social media, your comfort zone state will usually creep in the moment you’ve reached a respectable number of likers and followers. Also known as being on a plateau, this is a stage where you’ve already settled into your social media routine and your initial networking efforts have started to pay off.

Reaching your plateau isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a steady state that’s usually free from stress, and it’s a good stage to be at when you’re celebrating your accomplishments. However, staying too long on it and being too comfortable can lead to complacency and ignorance.

While it’s perfectly acceptable to bask in your success (after all, you deserve it), always be on the lookout for new social media heights that can you can achieve. Remember that there are a lot more readers, fans, and followers out there that you haven’t reached yet, and there are still a lot of things that you can do to take your social campaigns to a whole new level.

Not sure where to start? Check out the following ideas that are sure to stir up your current social media state:

1. Utilize the power of video

Need a boost in your fan engagement? Then consider getting in front of the camera. Demonstrate your expertise using a how-to video or gain insights from others by interviewing them on camera. Want to interact with your fans? Do a webinar or conduct a Google+ hangout so can you can get first hand comments and suggestions.

2. Stop playing it safe when it comes to content

Take a good look at the content that you’ve published. Are you being too safe or too much of a crowd pleaser? If so, then you may want to spice up your content strategy by producing posts that will open up discussions or debates. Take a stand on a current issue or trending topic, and voice out constructive criticisms and concerns. Invite your fans to do the same. Doing so will encourage conversation, and will guarantee that your social media strategy won’t be boring.

3. Connect with other businesses

Social media isn’t solely about reaching customers. It’s also about networking with potential partners or colleagues so that you can help each other succeed. Fellow entrepreneurs or companies can be sources for referrals and recommendations, so be sure to make friends with other businesses as well. Find other companies or entrepreneurs (preferably those that complement your products and services) and connect with them online. Tag them on Facebook, strike up a conversation on their wall, and find engagement opportunities. If you’re on Twitter, send a couple of mentions their way, and be generous when it comes to Retweets.

4. Run contests or promotions

Giveaways aren’t just for those who want to gain more likers or followers; they also work great if you want to increase engagement and interactions within your current fan base. If you have a lot of inactive fans, consider waking them up with a promotion. This will not only stir up the activity on your page, but the excitement and contests bring can effectively get your out of your safe comfort zone.

In addition to boosting interaction levels, a promotion also can also act as a funnel for users. For example, if you want your fans to check out your blog or sign up for your newsletter instead of simply hanging out on Facebook or Twitter, then conduct a promotion involving your blog or newsletter and use that as a funnel to direct users to where you want them to go.




































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Every day, thousands of stylish women upload pictures of their outfits, their hair, their nails — essentially, expressions of their style — to personal blogs. Those images are viewed, collected and spread across aggregation sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Lookbook.nu — and soon, on the website of Lucky magazine.

The Conde Nast-title is planning to launch a vertical powered by user-generated content in mid-August. The vertical, dubbed “Community,” will pull from a pool of bloggers who have applied to have their content featured on luckymag.com. Lucky‘s web editors, using an app called Tidal, will then be able to sort through contributions to find the ones that are most likely to perform well — i.e., have high-resolution images, are written in English, and already have a decent amount of pageviews and comments on their own sites.

Like Teen Vogue‘s Fashion Click, which is also powered by Tidal, certain sections will appear in a vertical, blog-like format, while others — like nail art, and verticals for popular brands — will appear in a Pinterest-like grid (see below).



Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley describes Community as the “third tier” of its content pyramid. The first is occupied by Lucky editors and the second by Style Collective, a hand-selected network of 140 style bloggers who cross-post their content to luckymag.com in exchange for a portion of ad revenue and exposure. The third will open the field to more recreational bloggers — those who post four to five times per month and perhaps write only occasionally about fashion, rather than once or twice per day — as well as those who develop more niche types of content than Lucky covers: say, for example, the woman who blogs about vintage finds in Atlanta, says Holley.

Unlike Style Collective bloggers, contributors to Community will receive no monetary compensation for their content. They will, however, enjoyed the SEO benefits of being linked (rather obscurely) from luckymag.com.

Holley says she is hoping to double luckymag.com’s traffic over the next six to nine months, and double it again after that. Traffic currently hovers between 1 million and 1.5 million uniques per month, a Lucky spokesperson said. Including Style Collective, monthly traffic is around 2.3 million.

Beyond Community, the magazine is also preparing to release its first iPad edition, as well as an upgrade to its Lucky Shopper application later in the year.

“The road map is very big and there’s a lot of investment being made,” says Holley. Given what we’ve seen of Community, which is aesthetically pleasing to navigate and appears easy to manage on the back-end, those investments are being made in the right place.


































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It was a sparkling sunny day on the harbour and I was attending a cocktail party hosted by a global supplier for the end of year celebrations.

The sales manager for the company and I started having a chat about web hosting. After about three sentences I realized that every second phrase was unintelligible. I was only on my first glass of wine so my intelligence at that stage was still above water, so it wasn’t the drink.

I understood terms such as “multiple redundancy” , “mission critical” and “virtual private server” but I was drowning in acronyms and industry “speak”.

What was happening was  the often experienced but rarely mentioned ”Curse of Knowledge“. This concept was first coined in the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” which stated,

“The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse.”

What was happening to me on the harbour cruise was a conversation from someone who was both very intelligent and knowledgeable in his field, but his ability to communicate clearly had become submerged and lost in a sea of jargon and acronyms.

It was a lesson that I didn’t forget.

“Sticky” Content is Memorable

When it comes to creating content there are many ways to communicate on the web. You can tweet, you can write an article on your blog or you can use multimedia. This could be a video or an image.

Infographics are popular and allow you to communicate using the best of the worlds of text and visual media.

Communicating ideas whether it is simple text on Twitter or rich multimedia on YouTube is powerful and sticky if you achieve two things.

• Make ideas sticky (memorable)
• Make content contagious (shareable)

The book “Made to Stick” provides 6 principles that explores the strategies and tactics to  make sure that your ideas are not forgotten in a global web of froth, fluff and noise.

So how can you communicate ideas that are memorable and shareable on a social web that has 550 million competing websites?

What are the 6 Principles of Sticky Ideas?

Not many ideas can manage to tick all the six boxes, If you can manage two 0r three of these principles then you are well on your way to succeeding as a communicator.

Principle 1: Simplicity

I remember my older cousin telling me that I used words that were too complicated. He was right. I now  try to use words and phrases that are simple but memorable. That is my goal
A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

“Saying something short is not the mission—sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.”

Keeping it simple is achievable for all of us, we just need to keep reminding ourselves that not everyone knows what you do.

Principle 2: Unexpectedness

We often slip into the communicating the same way day and day out. Creating impact is often achieved through the unexpected and surprise.

A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

“How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations.

The best way to get people’s attention is to break their existing thought patterns directly.

Principle 3: Concreteness

When we communicate it is often abstract but life is not abstract. Newspaper editors know this “If it bleeds it leads“. They know they need to keep it real.

A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

“Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images—ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors—because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”

Principle 4: Credibility

We all know that an expert provides credibility. That is why they keep turning up in criminal trials, because they are believable. The other class of authorities are celebrities. This is why you see advertising with actors promoting products.

Another way to add credibility is through statistics. Credibility is often carried by some one who has experienced it for themselves and is prepared to state it publicly. Try before you but is a powerful message. This is also know as testable credentials.

A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

“Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves—a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas“.

 Principle 5: Emotions

Mother Teresa said “If I look at the mass I will never act , If I look at one I will” Charities have long since figured out the Mother Teresa effect. They know that donors respond better to individual causes than abstract causes supported by statistics. That is why a compelling story about an individual will produce a greater effect and emotional response.

A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

“How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something“.

Principle 6: Stories

The power of stories is two dimensional. Firstly it  provides simulation (knowledge how to act) and secondly it empowers people through inspiration (motivation to act). This generates action. This is the final chapter in making a difference in people’s lives and communicating an idea. A strong story will have longevity. Inspirational stories take a life on of their own, especially when you have a social web multiplying their effectiveness.

A quote from  ”Making it Stick”

 ”How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience”

 What About You?

Have you been using any of these six principles in your communication and content?
How do you communicate your ideas? Do you tell stories or tap into emotions?
Have you forgotten to keep it simple and been dragged into the morass of the “curse of knowledge”


































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Winning in sport or business is imagined by almost everyone. What child hasn’t dreamed of being a star athlete or a millionaire.

Imagination is a powerful force that can motivate us to succeed in life.

Imagination is also one of the keys to enjoying a book as our mind takes us on journeys that suspend us from reality. Children are fabulous to watch as they save damsels in distress, leap tall buildings in a single bound or fly to faraway galaxies. All done while wearing pyjamas and from the safety and comfort of  the family home.

As a child I constantly imagined my self as having super powers that bent and warped my world the way I wanted. Cartoon books helped maintain that illusion which provided constant entertainment for me without the iPad or Xbox to be seen. Flying was one of my favourites.

Magical and marvellous powers are something the comic series “Fantastic Four” had in abundance and were a dysfunctional yet loving family who possessed super powers that saved the world day in and day out.

The Fantastic Four received their powers after being exposed to cosmic rays during a scientific mission to outer space.

“Mister Fantastic” who is the leader of the “Fantastic Four”, is a scientific genius who can stretch his body to incredible lengths and shapes. The “Invisible Woman” can render herself invisible and project force fields. The “Human Torch” can generate flames and can fly. Monstrous “Thing” possesses superhuman strength and endurance.

Now as a marketer, who wouldn’t want magical powers that make your brand and ideas spread magically and strongly at lightning speed?

Maybe being invisible though, is not something that business owner would want to invoke.

Building the Online Assets

Before we summon the super powers of the “Fantastic Four” of  digital marketing you need to have established the businesses online assets.

It is not hard to place value on our bricks and mortar assets whether it is your shop or office and all that is contained within those walls. A business has real physical objects and value that accountants love to count and stack. Things that you can see and touch are easier to place a value against. What is not often valued properly are the intangible online assets that are now vital to  every business.

• How do you value a website that receives 300,000 page views a month and 170,000 unique visitors?
• What is the financial value of  a Facebook page with 100,000 fans that provides customer feedback and crowd sourced  research worth to a business?
• What is a Twitter tribe of 100,000 worth that allows you to spread an idea or a promotion in an instant?

These are assets that are hard to value but their importance is usually and “vastly underrated” because your accountant doesn’t know how to.

1. The Website Assets

Websites fall into three broad categories. The corporate content website, the online store and a blog.  A well designed website that makes it easy for customers to navigate and use is worth gold.

2. Social Network Assets

Building a tribe and network of loyal customers on multiple social that you can engage and communicate with is now mandatory. These assets give your brand reach and leverage and should continually be built and invested in. How to do that efficiently and well is the challenge.

3. The Mobile Assets

Mobile “Apps”. Building mobile apps that make your content and products easy to view are starting to become an essential part of  a businesses online presence. Also “optimizing for mobile viewing” requires building websites that are easy to read on  a Tablet or smart phone and can now make a big difference to obtaining that lead or inquiry or sale for your online store. Last year nearly half a billion smart phones were purchased and their users are buying and sharing information in their billions every day with these little devices that are adictive and portable. There is now nothing to stop people buying on the bus or on the beach..and they do!

There are two addictive trends in digital. One is social media the other is smart mobile devices. Don’t ignore them. Build mobile assets.

The myth of “build it and they will come”

There is a myth about building your online brand circulating which spreads the fable that if you design and build a great website then traffic will just “turn up”. The reality is much starker. Once the online assets are built then the hard work begins. Marketing and promoting with email and social media marketing, writing contagious content and optimizing your online assets for search engines are all essential activities that need to be resourced.

This activity needs to be relentless and persistent. It is not “set and forget”

How to Win in a Digital Economy?

The Fantastic Four of Digital Marketing

The digital marketing landscape can seem like a morass of noise and confusion. Essentially though there are 4 core types of digital marketing that will provide your business with digital marketing super powers if you are prepared to focus and apply the right resources.

1. Paid digital marketing

If you want to fast track being found online then paying for Google ads that appear when potential prospects perform a Google search is a great catalyst to accelerate your brand awareness when first establishing or launching an online store or website. If budget allows it can produce a ROI that pays for itself as part of the continual marketing of your business.

Also a Facebook ad that targets a city and audience demographic that suits your business can also work well.

These tactics can help you from achieving a super power that no business wants which is “invisibility”

2. Optimising your websites for search engines

Two things are important here. Firstly designing and building websites that make it easy for Google’s spiders to crawl and find, especially for the key words and phrases that customers will use to search for you online.  These key words and phrases need to embedded in your website. This is called “Onsite SEO” (Search Engine Optimisation). There are also other important elements that a good web designer developer will implement to achieve this.

Secondly, the other important strategy to invest in that requires active SEO investment and resources usually by an SEO consultant and expert is “Offsite SEO” this includes researching and building inbound links and other tactics that makes your  website appear on page one of a Google search.

3. Email marketing

Despite the shiny new toy of social media blinding everyone, email marketing is an absolutely vital part of a digital marketing strategy that should be invested in from day one by every savvy business. This includes B2B and B2C companies.

Do this well and you will build up a valuable “Optin” database of subscribers that are an asset that you own and control. This is a list you can email whenever you like and are usually looking forward to receiving your educational and inspiring content.

4. Social media marketing

Social Media marketing done well can provide your marketing with leverage and marketing velocity. Nothing like the many to many multiplying effect of social media where your brand receives exponential sharing as people share your businesses ideas and content with friends,family and colleagues on social networks. I like to call it “World of Mouth”

The real power of social media is that people can create more stories and share them online than you can ever hope to achieve on your own whether paid or not. Allow the crowd  and tribes online to share your storys. This is crowd sourced marketing and it is free. To do that you have to have a presence on social media and do it well.

What About You?

How many of these four are you implementing in your business? Have you tried paid digital advertising. Is SEO in your marketing mix. Could you do email better?
What has been your experience with social media for your business?































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Content is the foundation for blogs and websites. It is what makes your readers and viewers come back for more
.
The range and type of content that is available on a social web is extensive and includes multimedia such as videos, images and infographics and of course plain old simple text.

Content can achieve different objectives including
1. Educating (How To’s)
2. Informing (News)
3. Entertaining (eg. Funny Videos)
4. Inspiring (Provide motivation)

The challenge is to come up with the ideas and the content that people find valuable and want to share. This is something that all writers and bloggers struggle with. I have tried all sorts of content on this blog and sometimes I am surprised with what works and what doesn’t.

25 Content Creation Tips

Here are some ideas to help you create content that I have often applied myself. Don’t be afraid to try different ideas. The learning is in the action of “doing”.

1. Curation

Compile a list of 10 favourite blog posts from other blogs.

2. Brainstorming

Ask your friends and colleagues for ideas.

3. Ask your Readers

Don’t be afraid to ask your readers for ideas. You could even run a survey on Facebook.

4. Interview someone

I have often taken my video camera and interviewed someone that I believe my readers will find inspiring. One of those interviews was Greg Savage from Firebrand Talent.

5.  Ask for Guest Authors

I have been doing this over the last 12 months and it allows other experts and passionate bloggers to share their ideas which keeps your blog content fresh. eg Top 5 Mobile Apps for Online Marketers

6. Create Best Case Studies

One very successful article I did using this idea was an article I did on Coca Cola  5 Lessons from Coca Cola’s New Content Marketing Strategy

7. Worst Case Study Articles

I have often found that providing a great example of how not to do something drives more traffic than a positive story.

8. Review a Product or App

People love to hear about the latest products or apps. One of the most successful articles on this blog used this  approach. “10 Must Have WordPress Plugins Of 2012 Every Blogger Should Know About”

9. Share Success Stories

People like to hear what has worked for you. Example “How To Get 53,000 Twitter Followers: My Story”. It doesn’t have to be complex but a simple success that worked for you.

10. Share Failures

These can be stories about what hasn’t worked for you or someone else.

11. Revitalise Old Articles

This could be a compilation of  your 5 best articles on a particular topic.

12. Use Name Recognition from Movies

This involves mashing together two unrelated subjects into one post eg “What Batman can Teach you about Blogging”
Find more ideas in this Infographic from a favourite blog of mine that I read regularly – Copyblogger.
I have also included some other ideas below this infographic.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

23. Compile the latest Statistics about your Industry

People like to hear about the latest facts and figures. This can be done in a variety of ways including Infographics. Example: 48 Significant Social Media Facts, Figures and Statistics Plus 7 Infographics

24. Create a Blog post from a Powerpoint Presentation

This something that I do regularly and it achieves two objectives. Drives traffic to the presentation on slideshare and creates more blog content. eg “Winning with the Fantastic Four of Digital Marketing”

25. Turn your Article into a YouTube Video

Take a blog post that provides tips and make it into a short YouTube Video.

How About You?

How do you come up with ideas for creating content? Do you prefer video or text asa a blogger? What has worked for you?
Look forward to hearing your stories.



































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Appearing on the first page of a Google search can be the difference between the success or the failure of your business
.
The smart business owners and the savvy operators of eCommerce stores know that the free traffic delivered by search engines is worth gold to a business.
Research shows that ranking first on Google produces over 40 percent of all clicks to websites. Listing on the first page of a search, results in over 90 percent of all clicks. Now that is important in a digital economy!
Also a Google search can produce a negative or positive impression about a brand depending on what content and links appear in the search results. So online reputation management is also an important activity.
For a long time, Search Engine Optimization and Online Reputation Management have been looked upon as two parallel services. Google recently has changed how it performs its search. These updates to the search engine algorithms were titled “Panda” and the most recent changes were called “Penguin“.
So with these changes where does the future of both these services lie?
Let’s breakdown each of the services.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When SEO started, it was easy to do. There were guaranteed success methods and approaches such as the following produced great results.

• Keyword density
• Meta tags
• Content

There were sites which went up overnight by acquiring links from questionable sources. Spamming an important keyword on the page was a very likely affair. People posted articles on blog networks, with each topic as unrelated as chalk and cheese!
The creation of low-quality, thin content was an easy option for a lot of people who were trying to gain success overnight! This list can go on and on!
Anything that is abused over time is likely to burn out. And so did these practices!

Google Wants Quality Content

Google’s Panda update was aimed at providing more relevant and quality content to users. This update was rolled out in the USA in February 2011, with various refreshes and updates over the course of the next 16 months. Panda 3.8 was released in the end of June 2012. While webmasters were still trying to come to terms with the Panda update (about 11.8% of all searches were affected with the first update.)
Google recently rolled out the Penguin update (about 3.1% of all search queries were affected). This update was aimed at keeping a check on

• Link schemes
• Exact anchor text linking
• Blog networks
• Duplicate content etc

Here is a great infographic comparing Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they affect your Brand’s visibility to the Google search engine.

Infographic  by Reload Media – Difference between Google Penguin & Panda

Content Marketing is Vital to SEO

Post these two updates, the SEO world has started viewing the terms ‘content’ and ‘links’ differently. For an SEO guy, content started focusing more on pieces that were not only unique and engaging but also something that a user could associate with!
Content Marketing became a term that every SEO expert started relating with more closely!
SEO agencies have started rolling out extensive content marketing plans for their clients, focusing on the creation of detailed content plans including the following

• Blogs
• PDF documents
• Whitepapers,
• eBooks,
• Presentations,
• Image syndication

You name a medium, and they have targeted it! SEO started focusing strongly on content marketing, wherein content marketing has become the crux of any SEO campaign.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

ORM is one of the most dynamic activities online and one of the most difficult too. It is the only activity where you have little or no control over different situations and/or circumstances which can completely turn around all the hard work invested into a campaign!
An outsider speaking about your brand, the brand’s offline activities, and the actions of an important entity associated with the brand, all these can completely change the statistics of your campaign overnight! Positive mentions, neutral mentions and negative mentions! These more or less rule the life of that person who is trying to protect your online reputation.
Let’s run through the aim of any ORM campaign:

• Ensure that the client get as much positive exposure as possible. Try and get as many positive mentions up in the top 10/20/30 results!
• If it isn’t positive, ensure that you have neutral content about your brand!
• Neutralize the NEGATIVE content pieces!!!!

The easiest way to go about doing this is to ensure that you have positive/neutral content online talking about your brand. (Not that it is easy to do that!)
Also, since you work closely with the brand, you become the official channel of sorts, responsible for creating content and syndication across mediums and platforms! The content creation involves having an exhaustive content plan in place and using various mediums including videos, blogs, articles, etc.

Does this Sound Similar to SEO?

The lines distinguishing both these services are becoming less distinct by each passing day. The objective of both SEO and ORM now align towards the creation of good, unique and engaging content. Content marketing remains the focus of both services. Reaching out to new people, gaining greater visibility and creating a stronger brand presence are extremely important. The principle of SEO is now to ensure that not only is your brand reaching out to more people but also focus on creating a strong brand presence online.

SEO is Now Part of Brand Building

Brand building is becoming a more integral part of SEO activity! ORM has by principle always concentrated on promoting the brand!
It seems that a new service package offering Branding + SEO + ORM is the call of the hour. Anyone who has an online store, not only wants to increase their presence and standing, but also wants to ensure that their brand is being recognized by their target audience. It is essentially the first step to become a major player and stand out in a many player market! I can guarantee that this will not only be used by the big fish who are well established and will rely more on the monitoring and the reputation side of things but also by the small startups looking for a strong branding campaign to promote themselves and garner greater visibility!
Is Branding + Search Engine Optimization + Online Brand Monitoring & Online Reputation Management the next big thing? Thoughts?
Author: This post is written by Anindita Debnath, who works with Convonix as a Project Manager – SEO. She manages a big team of SEO professionals handling a substantial number of campaigns collectively. Apart from this, she takes up the responsibility of training fresh recruits and ushering them into the ever-evolving world of SEO.



































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