Category Archives: Business

What’s the most inspiring web marketing advice you’ve had?

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I was recently asked on Twitter: “What’s the most inspiring web marketing advice you’ve had?”. I hadn’t got a ready reply, but back in the considered context of my blog I have a two-part answer to that question –  the first part in the shape of these useful set of archived webinars from Hubspot:

Fortunately as the second part of the answer I’m going to be contributing some of these in-depth insights in a series of internet marketing training days in London, assisting digital strategist and chartered accountant James Eckhardt, starting on 5 May with two half-day courses. I hope to see you there and get to ask you “What’s the most inspiring piece of web marketing advice you’ve heard today?”.

Course Summary:

  • Identify the words and phrases (keywords) being used by your market in Google.
  • Discover the popularity, competitiveness and trends of your industry’s keywords.
  • Find relevant blogs, groups and forums to communicate with your market.
  • Setup e-mail alerts to monitor your online PR and content relevant to your business.
  • Interpret the key reports provided by Google Analytics.
  • Receive automated e-mail reports from Google Analytics.
  • Submit your website to mainstream business directories and listings.

You will also receive a copy of the course’s guidance notes for your personal use.

Update: the 5 May training day is now closed for bookings, but if you want to take part in future training please email me.

Helping your community manager to make money through influencers

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As I understand it what Dr Michael Wu saying in his most recent blog is that using social network analysis (SNA) to find the right influencers to influence target users’ purchasing decisions (bearing in mind the value of the targets’ first online activity around a product as the indicator when to start the persuasion process) relies on the finding the right type of influencer – which is not the one with the most friends as the connection, or with the most discussions around a product, but the one with the most recent discussions about the product: relationship + product discussion + timely = best chance of success.

The Right Content at the Right Time: Influence Analytics 3 by Dr Michael Wu

What this strongly reminds me of is my own blog post (‘Greg is one way to make money out of social media’) about how communities managers can potentially play a role as influencers if done properly:

What I want to say for the benefit of companies trying to see how to make money from using social media in the marketplace is to see your own community manager if you have one, and other partner’s community managers, as influencers in their own right.

I pretty sure I’m not breaking any ethical code by saying that, after all your community manager isn’t just going to start spamming the community with product messages – that wouldn’t work. Quiet the contrary, what I’m talking about is the subtle, patient task of persuading members of a community of the value of a particular offering – which requires both intelligence & integrity.

Now after reading the latest piece from Dr Wu, this suggests to me is two things. Firstly that your community manager using SNA tools for large communities, or their inside knowledge coupled with community anayltics for smaller ones, can ‘lead the charge’ to find these right influencers.

Secondly it suggests that they themselves take on this role indirectly by nurturing debates around certain products, nurturing influencers who command attention, and then helping them reach the right users at the right time.

This avoids them directly playing the role of influencer as such, but does give them the power of delivering this tool as a means of creating revenue which has long been the holy grail of community management.

Practically realizing that tool is a combination of the SNA/analytics, plus consultancy work with the community manager to help deliver this.