Successful Blog

Four Content-Rich Blog Posts You Should Be Creating

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By Diana Gomez

These days, it’s not enough to post a picture of what your business has been up to this week.

Gone Viral

Sure, some customers may find interest in which food truck is parked at the office today, but that’s not the kind of thing that will go viral.

To move up the ranks in Google, you need as many eyes on your pages as possible. This means the content must be eye-catching! Think about creating headlines that leave the readers hanging; make them want to click to find out what’s coming next. Let their curiosity lead them further into your website.

As far as the content inside the post, here are a few ideas for you. These types of posts must be in your regular rotation if you want to keep up with the rest of the web in the second half of 2014.

Videos

Photo tutorials are superb, but audiences are really going nuts for comprehensive video tutorials.

Do you have something you can teach your customers? Whether you’re a retail clothing business with advice on sewing buttons or a hairstylist who can teach customers how to create a topknot, a how-to video is a terrific tool to draw some attention to your business.

Videos can also go viral simply from their entertainment value. As long as it’s funny or out-of-the-ordinary, it’s worth talking about. Be sure it’s high-quality and only one or two-minutes long.

It’s rare that a five or ten-minute video goes viral like a short-and-sweet video will. Also, be sure you place keywords into the title and description. Hosting it on YouTube will ensure that your video will be easy to share on social media, because going viral is all about making it easy for users to get to the content.

Top-Ten Lists

Ever hear of a little website called Buzzfeed? This site has blown up over the past year as audiences increasingly latch onto the short-and-sweet visual concept. Lists organize information in a way that makes it easier to absorb, and our brains seem to love clicking on headlines like “Five Foods that are Making You Fat.”

Our noggins naturally want to make sense of any information that’s presented to us, and so when some of the work has already been done, the decision to click is a ‘no-brainer.’ It’s such a phenomenon that the parody site The Onion has just created a new parody site having a laugh at Buzzfeed – cleverly titled Clickhole. One funny headline example is “16 Pictures of Beyoncé Where She’s Not Sinking in Quicksand.” There’s a reason why everyone (ahem, see title of this very blog post) is jumping on the list-making bandwagon, and you should, too.

Competitions

Everyone’s a sucker for free stuff, and that’s why you should be offering your readers incentives for clicking through to your site. Spend ten minutes on Facebook and you’ll likely encounter a slew of contests, all of which require some sort of interaction on social media to win. Examples: someone shares a musician’s Facebook status for a chance to win a record box set. An interior design firm blogs about an author and offers its readers a chance to win the author’s latest book if they “like” the author’s Facebook page and leave a comment below the firm’s blog post (which is a clever double-win for two parties).

By asking users to share and follow you, you’re making yourself visible to entirely new audiences/friends of people who already like you. And when there’s a free offer involved, your posts are all-the-more attractive. Asking a like-minded blog to offer its readers your product will almost always be accepted with open arms. The blog’s readers like it, therefore the blogger loves it, too. It’s a simple concept, but it works, and it’s fun.

High-Quality Images

The success of Instagram and Pinterest prove that what people want is a beautiful photo (or ten) to gaze upon. High-quality cameras can be found on most phones nowadays, which is super fortunate for us amateurs. Filters galore are available now that can turn an ‘OK’ image into something interesting that people will want to like and post elsewhere.

Do you cook? Post your creations to your blog, and make sure your posts have the Pinterest Pin option available. To make a pic extra Pinterest-friendly, post one collaged image that includes something like a four-step (and four-photo) recipe. Again, users are in search of the short-and-sweet and the quick-and-easy stuff.

Are you a mechanic? Post cool photos of vintage cars to your business’ Instagram account. Be sure a link to your blog is obvious on your profile so that users can see what other content you can offer them. Use appropriate hashtags that will help interested users find you, and while you’re at it, go ahead and tap the Twitter icon to simultaneously reach another social media medium. Every little bit helps, right?

What social-media medium works best with your business?

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she is instrumental in the implementation of marketing and social media strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase. Check out Lyoness on Facebook.

Image licensed via Shutterstock

Deeper Shade of Viral: How 1 Brand Hero Delivered an Irresistible Experience

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A True Story of How to Win a Life-Long Advocate

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Now, more than ever, growing brands search for connections that mean something to their customers and the people who help their business thrive. The good ones reach to their employees to put human values inside their value proposition.

That isn’t a new thing.

And the brands that long for their messages to “go viral” might check out this story. It happened over 25 years ago, yet it’s so powerful, memorable, and moving that I think of it and repeat it every time I see the FedEx logo. I still choose FedEx over the others, because of this one event. I still forgive their occasional mistake as an accident. That’s a lifetime customer relationship and since I’m still telling the story, in my book I’d call that hugely viral.

In the last century, when Federal Express was at its peak performance. I was working at home right after my son was born. The work in my hands was on a drop-dead deadline that day. I called FedEx for a pickup because I was not going to be able to deliver the package myself.

We were in a suburban disaster – a fast-rising flood. Hours after the rain, we watched from our second-floor balcony as the water from the Des Plaines River in the parking rose above the door handles of our only car. My husband, my infant son, and I were waiting to hear when we’d be evacuated and for how long?
Then the phone rang. It was the FedEx man. He was on a high spot across the street. “Ma’am, I have a delivery. Do you need this package today?”
“I’m sorry. Yes, I do and I have one going I out too,” I explained the uncertainty, the deadline, and the evacuation.
“No problem,” he said. Then he confirmed the entrance he should use. The door was on a slope above the water line still.
I hustled to ready what I had to send. Then I went on the balcony, just in time to see a young man holding package over his head, walking through water that was up to his chest. Amazing! The neighbors on their decks were as transfixed with the image as I was.
We met at the door. We did the business of trading packages. Then he went back out. As he stood on the stoop, he thrust the new package up over his head and before he set off through the flood again. He surveyed my neighbors with a huge grin and shouted,

“We not only deliver. We pick up!”

He Delivered More Than a Package

That day that FedEx man delivered more than a package to the people who saw him. He delivered hope and trust to folks silently wondering when they would be evacuated, how long it would last, and what would be waiting when we got back.

He was a hero to people who were in distress. He saw what he saw – opportunity not a problem. He knew what he knew – he could use his power to refuse or do something outstanding, heroic, and incredibly cool. And with a huge and generous grin, he walked through four feet of water to make things work better than they were supposed to work.

He was living the values of company. Their tagline at the time was “Relax, it’s FedEx.”

If that same experience happened today, all of us watching the FedEx man in the water would have taken pictures and video with our smart phones. In seconds, we would have uploaded the pictures and video with the caption “We not only deliver. We pick up!” to YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic, and Twitter. Within seconds, thousands of people would be sharing his quote with the picture or the video.

What the FedEx man did was irresistible and shareable by definition. He made everything easy. He made me feel good about being part of it. And he left me with a story that I’m proud to pass on. It’s an unforgettable feeling when a guy is willing to trek through half a block of river water for you. You can bet I became a fiercely loyal FedEx customer.

FedEx built their brand on a company community of employees who were the value in their value proposition. It’s hard to compete with a community like that. The true stories about FedEx hero employees made them the company we trusted, relied on, and got to know as our friends. We didn’t think about other options until the heroes started to look the same as “the guys” who delivered packages from the lower priced brand.

And because my experience with the FedEx man actually happened, I’m still sharing it 25 years later.
Will you even remember the Old Spice Man in 5 years? Human relationships are a deeper, more lasting shade of viral.

Whether you’re a brand of 1 or 1,000,000, the deeply loyal relationship you make with your customers can outlast any single offer, product, or incident.

What is your brand doing to build a winning community?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Need help building that winning community? Work with Liz!!

The Effect of the Internet as a Watercooler

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Bob Krumm wrote this week: The water cooler is spreading a virus

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, two events have leapt into America’s consciousness this week. The first was the Tea Party protests involving hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans in hundreds of cities all around the country.

Susan Boyle
Susan Boyle

The second was the sudden and stunning success of previously unknown church choir singer, Susan Boyle, who wowed judges and the audience in an audition for Britain’s Got Talent, the Anglican version of American Idol. Since Saturday night when her first song was broadcast to a British audience, Ms. Boyle’s televised appearance has been viewed by no less than 40 million people, a population eight times that of her native Scotland.

In just the last 24 hours she has been mentioned, complete with a color picture, on the front page of the Washington Post, was interviewed live on the CBS Early Show, and has been booked for an appearance on Oprah.

What these two seemingly unrelated events have in common is the internet.

To riff off of one of the comments, the revolution will not be televised – it will be on YouTube!

In a more serious vein, however, the example of Susan Boyle reveals two important things:

  1. Regular people can now become as famous as any celebrity. The video of Boyle’s performance contained the perfect combination of a stereotypical set-up, a surprising twist, and a heart-warming response. I have a feeling that we are going to be hearing from Ms. Boyle again.
  2. Succumbing to cynicism and “judging a book by its cover” just might put one into a very uncomfortable position. If Simon Cowell were not known for his disdain for most performers on these talent shows he would have looked like a real jerk.