The 10 Commandments of Social Media for Brands Scott Steinberg, a top-ranked international event speaker on the lecture circuit, is a bestselling expert on leadership and innovation, and the head of strategic consultancy TechSavvy Global. His website is AKeynoteSpeaker.com. Fleeting as social media exchanges may seem, they can have a pronounced impact on business and their influence can echoe far beyond a simple post or retweet. While the anonymous, public and often informal nature of Internet dialogue often leads corporations to relax their guard, it’s important to note: Managing a brand’s social media presence is a tricky balancing act. 1. While many campaigns seem to go viral overnight, it’s important to remember that businesses rarely experience instant breakthroughs or meteoric audience growth on social media. Over time, through constant two-way dialogue with users, this commitment will help your business build a loyal and involved following, the influence of which may far outstrip that of larger, less engaged audiences. 2. 3.
Copy tone — Mozilla Style Guide Introduction These guidelines are for website content, campaigns and other communications intended for a general audience. If you’re looking for documentation guidelines, please visit the MDN Style Guide at the Mozilla Developer Network. If you’re looking for information about writing support articles, please see “How to write Knowledge Base articles” at Mozilla Support. Mozilla is people. (It’s people!) So many people. Mozillians live all over the world. Whenever a user — or anyone else, for that matter — reads a piece of Mozilla communication, they should feel like there's a person on the other end who recognizes that they are the same. So what does that mean, practically speaking? We should not, however, talk down to people or use overly technical language. The point is, we never want our users to forget that there are real live people behind our products and our words. If you're a real stickler for detail, read all about our copy rules.
17 Copy-And-Paste Blog Post Templates I’m usually a trooper when it comes to pain…but this wisdom tooth extraction has just not been treating me very well. Thanks for understanding that I still need a couple more days to recover before getting back on the saddle and writing blog posts again. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere! Today, however, I’m happy (and very lucky) to feature a guest post from one of my favorite writers online, Kim Roach from Buzzblogger.com. She always produces fantastic material that’s quick to read. She’s already proven so with her first guest post that was published on SPI back in April of 2010. If you write at all online, this is a post to bookmark for future reference – guaranteed. Please give Kim a warm welcome, enjoy and share! Do you ever get writer’s block? I mean do you ever sit down at your computer with that blank screen mocking you in the face? As a blogger, I’ve done this on more than one occasion. Sure, I use all kinds of tricks to get the ‘ol inspiration motor running… Happy Blogging! 1. 2.
550+ Royalty-Free Stock Photos You Can Download Now Let me tell you a quick, cautionary tale about copyright law and using photos and images online. A couple years ago, a popular stock photography vendor claimed copyright infringement on an image we used in one of our ebooks. Embarrassed, I quickly investigated. As it turned out, another internet user had purchased the offending image from that same stock photography service and uploaded it to a photo-sharing website under a Creative Commons license. So while on the surface it looked safe for the taking, it was in fact falsely promoted as a royalty-free image ... and we were in the wrong. That's when it hit me: What if marketers didn't have to shell out more money for images, obsess over copyright laws, and fret about permissions? Download 80 new stock photos here to use however you want, royalty-free. But don't stop there ... 565 Royalty-Free Pictures to Download and Use We have four collections of stock photos you can download here: You can preview these collections below. Download Photos
Research reveals seven habits to grow your Twitter followers 11 Email Blast Examples That Rock | Friendbuy Standalone email blasts are one of the best ways to promote your referral program and generate more referral revenue immediately. Your email list represents a big batch of folks who are the most likely to refer their friends to your business. And because they’re all in one place, they’re the easiest to reach. Help them help you by sending tightly focused and regularly scheduled solo email blast to remind them of how, where and why they should refer. There are several best practices around the individual components of an effective standalone email campaign. Quick technology note: Email clients (Outlook, Mac Mail, etc.) don’t play well with JavaScript, which is the underlying technology in a referral widget. So here’s how to get the most out of promoting your referral program with email – and promoting anything for that matter… 1. Enticing subject lines are necessary for ensuring your email is opened and not deleted on first sight. Say you’re an ecommerce brand that sells toasters. 2. 3.
Your Content Strategy Should Not Be Real-Time Michael Brito, Senior Vice President of Social Business Strategy at Edelman, is a Guest Contributor to the HootSuite blog, and author of “Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization.” I won’t get into the Oscar’s real-time content marketing circus the other night. No need to play Monday morning quarterback and talk about what these brands should have done to be more effective and capture the attention of blah blah blah. That would be too easy. I wouldn’t even call it real-time either. The Oscars have been planned for months. What matters is that that real time content creation or what’s being described as a newsroom for brands should not be the focal point of your content strategy. A content strategy (notice I didn’t say a content marketing strategy) enables and positions a brand to tell a very consistent story across the media landscape. A content strategy requires planning – months of planning in some cases. Image: Lee J Haywood
The 7 High-Converting Places to Add Email Sign-Up Forms to Build Your List - Social Triggers If you have a website, the best way to get more email subscribers is simple: Use more email sign-up forms. Yes, you can overdo it, but the truth is, even when you think you have too many, your forms may be invisible to your visitors. Question is where do you put them? There’s 7 high-converting places, and now I’ll go through each of them. #1 The Feature Box It’s no secret. See it here: This example is from SocialTriggers.com Right now, before you continue, think about how you can add a feature box to your site, and you WON’T regret it. #2 Top of Sidebar If you’re not placing your email signup form at the top of your sidebar, you’re losing out on valuable email subscribers. And yes, even if you place it slightly down your sidebar, under some ads, you’re losing email subscribers. I know this sounds like common sense, but even some large blogs fail to gather emails at the top of their sidebar. #3 After Single Post Think about this: So, why not ask them to sign up right after the post ends? Every.