Dec
2

How to Craft a Marketing Story that People Embrace and Share

Brian Clark's article at Copyblogger has some good advice for creating engaging content:

Everything you do to market your business is another paragraph, page, or chapter in the story people hear from you. And the story people hear is the one they act (or don’t act) on, and repeat (or don’t repeat) to others.

Read more at:

How to Craft a Marketing Story that People Embrace and Share

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Nov
10

How To Add Contributors to Your Posterous Blog

One of the great things about Posterous is that multiple people can contribute to the site, but it can be a little confusing to add a contributor.  In this article we hope to help you with the process of adding and becoming a contributor to a Posterous site.

Steps to take by the owner of the Posterous Site

Step 1 - Click the Contributor Tab from the Manage Posterous

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Step 2 - Add email address of contributor, click "Add"

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Step 3 - Click "Add Contributor" at the bottom of the form

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Steps to take by the new contributor to the Posterous Site

Step 1 - Ignore the email from Posterous

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Step 2 - Create an account on Posterous using the same email that was used to invite you as an contributor

Go to:  http://posterous.com and you will see the "Get Started" form on the right side of the page:

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The address field will be your username and address of your primary blog on Posterous.  For instance if you choose "mygreatsite" as your address then your primary blog will be at:

http://mygreatsite.posterous.com

 

Step 3 - Verify Your Posterous Account

You should get an email from Posterous with the subject "Posterous | Confirm email address"

Open the email and click the link to verify your account.

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Step 4 - Post Your First Article

a) The sites that you contribute to are on the left side of the Posterous Manage screen, click the site you were just added to and then click "Post by web" button

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b)  Write your blog article and fill out the Title and Body and upload any images that you want in your article.  Hit the "Publish" button in the lower rigth part of the page to publish your article.

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Tags Blogging

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Aug
4

Six Essential Components for Your Integrated Online Marketing Plan

You can effectively promote your business by creating an online marketing plan that seamlessly integrates all of your online components:

    * Website
    * Blogging
    * Social Media (Facebook, Twitter ...)
    * Email Marketing
    * Search Marketing
    * Online Advertising

In this article we will discuss each major component of your online marketing plan and how it interconnects with the other components.


Website

Your website is your online store front and should provide the following information:

    * Services Offered
    * Products Sold
    * About Us
    * Contact Information

In addition to providing information about your business, your website is the hub that interconnects all the components of your online marketing.  Your website should have links and widgets that connect to your:

    * Blog
    * Social Media Sites (Twitter, Facebook ... )
    * Email Newsletter Signup

Blog

Your blog should provide valuable and timely information for your customers.  Your blog can boost your search engine rank if it contains keywords commonly used to search for your business.

Your blog should also interconnect to your other online components:

    * Website
    * Social Media Sites
    * Email Newsletter Signup

Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter give you an opportunity to connect directly with your target audience.  With both Facebook and Twitter you can post timely status updates with links to your blog articles and other articles that your customers will enjoy.

If it is possible, your social media sites should be setup so that they link to your:

    * Website
    * Blog
    * Other Social Media Sites
    * Email Newsletter Signup

Email Marketing

Your email newsletters give you the opportunity to provide valuable information to your customers.  You should include the following links in your newsletters to promote your other online activities:

    * Links to your recent blog articles
    * Links to other articles your readers will enjoy
    * Links to your website
    * Links to your social media sites

 
Search Marketing

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website and blog to get a better search engine ranking for keywords commonly used to find your business.  One of the best ways to “optimize your site” is to publish great content and use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote your content.

The process of blogging and using social media to promote your blog will cause people to link to your blog and website.  These links will improve your search engine ranking and you will begin to get more traffic and customers referred to you for free from search engines like Google.
Online Advertising

Online advertising can be a cost effective way to:

    * Drive traffic to your website and blog
    * Increase the number of people that “like” your Facebook Page
    * Promote your special offers

Summary

It is essential that you integrate all aspects of your online marketing.  An integrated online marketing plan can increase the number of subscribers to your social media feeds.  These feeds can be populated with links to your blog articles.  Visitors to your blog may turn into email newsletter subscribers and even customers.  Your email newsletter keeps people coming back to your site and blog, so that your customers never forget about you.

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May
4

Florida Aquarium Dives into Social Media Waters : Inbound Marketing Strategies

Social Media Experiments

Tom convinced his boss to sponsor a Tweetup at the Florida Aquarium. Normally, free attendance events were limited to media. The Tweetup allowed anyone in the local Twitter community to attend and experience the Aquarium for free. Tom’s goal was to create buzz about the Florida Aquarium and have people talk about it on Twitter.  Over 200 people came out to the Tweetup. The top 10 attenders had a combined following of over 125,000 people. Attendance at the Florida Aquarium over the next 10 days increased by double digits over their forecast.

Early Mistakes

While the Tweetup was successful, they learned a valuable lesson. Since they didn’t create coupon codes, they couldn’t track ticket sales results directly from the Tweetup.  But, the quick increase in attendance after the Tweetup was still good evidence that it helped create buzz resulting in higher ticket sales.

It’s valuable to learn from your mistakes when experimenting with social media. Going forward all social media related activities use a coupon code. For example, they now create coupon codes for Twitter and for Facebook to track which channel drive more ticket sales. Recently, they used Facebook and Twitter exclusively to promote a show of the infamous Wiki Wachee mermaids. This event was a unique, one time event. They created unique codes for Facebook and Twitter. They didn’t use any traditional media. The local traditional media picked up on the event. They attended and took pictures which drove photo and television coverage. Many people talked about it on Twitter and Facebook.

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Apr
30

Hello World ... from our blog

This is our fist blog post from Brightlink Media.

 

More posts to come soon about local businesses using social media to connect with nearby locals.

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