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Now that every cellphone has a video camera and social media platforms have the option to go “live,” creating video is easier than ever. You can create a video in minutes, but is it going to be effective? The most effective marketing videos take a good amount of planning. At Fluent IMC, we work with clients to plan, create and launch videos. That means we invest time in plotting out the goals and strategies for the project. Read on for a few tips on how to avoid a video production failure. WHO do you want to watch your video and WHAT do you want them to do? It’s likely not specific enough to deem your audience as “our clients and future clients.” Break it down. Who are your clients? Who are your prospects? Are there segments of each audience, by industry or other demographics? An attorney practicing estate law might identify one target audience as newlyweds without a will, or an accounting firm may target self-employed professionals who are doing their own accounting. By targeting a specific audience you are able to focus the type and message of your video. Will you be making a how-to video, a why us? video, or a product/service explainer? All of these factors play into the process of identifying your audience. Be realistic about your budget. Whether you’re making your video in-house or partnering with a vendor, there will be a cost. Video is a very physical type of content production: cameras, lights, people, props and the setting of the video are typically factors. Think about what can you spend – including your time commitment – and then identify specific expenses. Your overall budget may dictate the type of video you need to convey your message. A good creative firm can work within your budget and suggest alternatives. If you’re creating a video in-house, will you need to rent equipment, hire actors, or buy editing software? Are you budgeting in the cost of promoting the video on Facebook? Always leave wiggle room for unexpected expenses. You might need to do more shoots than initially thought, or spend more time on editing, driving up your overall cost. Don’t underestimate the value of storyboarding and scripting. When your audience and budget are defined, you’ll have a good idea of your video’s focus and how elaborate (or not) you can be. You’ll also know your message. Now it’s time for storyboarding and scripting. Allow time for multiple drafts, making sure you include a call to action and that your message is clear and concise. People have short attention spans, and unless you are producing a particularly detailed how-to video, get to the point in under five minutes. Under three minutes is even better. A good script grabs people in the first few seconds. Nobody will hear your message if your video is turned off after ten seconds. When your script is strong, have your actors and actresses practice the script off-camera, and don’t be afraid to tweak the script if something doesn’t sound right during the read-throughs. Take your roll-out strategy seriously. Before your video is ever created, you should have a roll-out strategy in mind. The actual launch should be executed with your larger marketing or sales objectives in mind. Consider options like e-mailing it out to a select group of clients before making a public push, and decide which social media sites you’re going to push it on. Will you have it on YouTube and your website, or just your website? Your roll-out strategy should also include methods for measuring success. Views? Clicks? Actual sales? Do you have an earlier video marketing effort you can compare results with? Videos are an increasingly important part of digital marketing. Putting time into planning your video will not only save you headaches during production, it will increase the likelihood of your video’s success. #contentmarketing #videoproduction

WordPress’s popularity as a content management system (CMS) has advantages and disadvantages when it comes to security. Its popularity makes it a large target for individuals looking to exploit vulnerabilities. However, that same popularity means there is a global force of volunteer developers proactively patching vulnerabilities. So how does Fluent keep our client websites secure? We use three tools/platforms to protect our clients and their digital real estate. Using The Right Website Host We recommend only one hosting provider – WP Engine. Unlike a lot of providers on the market, WP Engine’s platform was specifically engineered for WordPress websites and this has a major impact on the security of your website. One of our favorite features of WP Engine is its website backup feature reminiscent of Apple’s Time Machine. Regular backups are arguably the most important tool for protecting your WordPress website. WP Engine backs up your site on a daily basis, so if your website is ever compromised an earlier version can be restored with one click. WP Engine also actively monitors for vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins, which can be susceptible to attacks such as SQL Injection. WP Engine will automatically uninstall any plugins that don’t mean their standards. Installing a Solid Security Plugin We install WordFence on every website we develop. WordFence is a free plugin which can be upgraded to unlock additional premium features. As a free plugin WordFence comes with many features including a firewall, malware scan, and a tool to stop brute force attacks. Upgrading to the premium plugin allows for two-factor authentication and country blocking. While regular backups ensure you can restore your website if it is hacked, security plugins like WordFence proactively guard against such attacks. Using a Password Manager to Create and Store Your User Password Strong passwords are a necessity for the security of any platform, including WordPress. We often see clients using the same password over and over again for different accounts. Passwords should be unique for each account and should be strong. What makes a strong password? Here is an example of a strong password created with LastPass’s password generator: MYc*9skG4kVmcxmtHva5. No matter how strong your password is, if someone else knows it they can use it. That’s why an important security measure to take is to avoid storing passwords in notebooks or on unencrypted drives. Your notebook, computer or hard drive could be stolen or lost and your passwords could fall into the wrong hands. We recommend you use a password manager instead. At Fluent, we use LastPass to store and share passwords with each other. Password managers allow you to create secure passwords and then securely store and share the passwords. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Google has been slowly rolling out changes to its search algorithm as well as the Google Chrome Browser that favor encrypted websites. This month, they’ll roll out a major change with Chrome 56: a “Not Secure” label to any non encrypted website. This label will be to the left of the website’s URL. This most recent change will eventually lead to non-encrypted websites having a red triangle warning symbol along with the label “Not Secure” to the left of the URL. How to tell if your website is encrypted? Websites with encryption have https:// instead of http:// in the beginning of their URL. Generally speaking, if users browse your website with http:// then your website is not using an SSL Certificate, which encrypts the website. How do you encrypt your website? Encrypting your website is not a major undertaking but should be done by an experienced website developer. The SSL has to be installed onto the server where your website is hosted. Redirects then need to be put in place to redirect the old http:// urls to the new https:// ones. The last step in the process is letting the major search engines know that your website has been moved. Need help encrypting your company’s website? We work exclusively with the WordPress content management system and can help you encrypt your company’s website. Drop us a line.

Here at Fluent IMC, we’re fairly preachy about the importance of strategy and planning before jumping into tactics. We recognize that some clients don’t require an exhaustive research and strategy phase, while others come to us with more complex issues that make a deeper dive necessary. Each strategy is unique to the industry, goals and target audience of the company but some key components and themes remain constant. Don’t wander aimlessly. Before we dive into the key components, let’s take a minute to discuss why strategy and planning is important. The exercise alone forces your leadership team to take a detailed look at your target audience, organizational goals as well as the effectiveness of your current marketing efforts. Taking this time to come together, reflect, plan and brainstorm is critical before jumping to tactics. It might be fun to jump in the car and just drive, with no plan or map, but realistically — who has time or resources to waste? The act of putting a plan on paper works to keep your team focused by solidifying ideas and establishing timelines. This ensures that everyone on your team and any outside consultants are aligned on marketing objectives and efforts. It will also give you clarity and a framework for answering advertising, sponsorship or marketing requests throughout the year. 1. Goals: Big-Picture and Short-Term Different organizations have different goals and it’s important for every strategy to clearly define what these goals are. Ultimately, your audience and tactics are tied to reaching these goals. Working with a number of professional service clients, we can safely say that these goals vary broadly. All goals should have a solid connection to the firm’s bottom line but vary of the maturity, industry and culture of the organization. For example, we find more mature professional service firms are focused on staying relevant and want to target younger demographics. Smaller, fast growing firms often have very specific financial and business development goals, such as reaching a specific level of revenue, or obtaining a specific amount of leads per quarter. Others want to break into new geographic markets. Some simply want to clear up confusion about their brand in the marketplace. Some goals are “big-picture” and may take years to achieve. Others are shorter term and can be met quickly with the right tactics. 2. Target Audience/Market Do you know your buyer? Are there segments? How many decision makers? A useful strategy includes a clear and concise description of your target audience. Some clients truly believe that because they are willing to sell their services to anyone, they shouldn’t limit themselves. We believe that being specific is most effective. Tailoring your efforts to the interests of your buyers is a much more powerful way to engage, educate, add value and ultimately sell your services based upon credibility and trust. One way to stay focused on your audience is to use Personas — fictional characters that represent your ideal target market, their interests, their pain points and why they need your services. They help you quickly remember and relate to your audience. Once you have your audience, it’s time to understand their needs and how your service is going to meet those needs. 3. Positioning Statement This step may seem insignificant, because it’s inward facing. However, a positioning statement brings it all together into one powerful statement to serve as an ongoing guide. The formula for a positioning statement is made up of four distinct parts: the target market, the point differentiation, the frame of reference and the reason. Embrace the effort and reflection it takes to deliver a high-quality positioning statement. The target market is so important we included it as our second component (see above). The point of differentiation is what sets your product/service offering apart from the competition. This is what makes your product or service unique. The frame of reference is the specific market the company is competing in. And, finally, the reason (or reason to believe) is the reason people should believe the other parts of you positioning statement. 4. What’s Worked (and What Hasn’t) Another tip is to research what works for other companies. Depending on the industry, one thing to potentially include within What Works is a powerful tool called a Benchmark. Benchmarking includes the data of successful companies within the same industry as yours. One common place to grab that data is from the Annual Report of publically traded companies. This document provides a wealth of information for entrepreneurs and businesses to utilize such as gross and net income, financial margins and operating budget expenditures. While no two companies are financially the same, this can give you a starting place to help you calculate how best to invest your revenue. It might seem strange to include what hasn’t worked. To us, it’s common sense to be honest about past efforts and potential pitfalls to avoid. So now you have a solid strategy in place, you’re ready to get tactical. For every tactic, you should be able to justify how it fits into the strategy you’ve worked hard to create. Want to schedule a free 30 minute brainstorming session with us? What is your name and organization? What is your email address? Tell us briefly about your business. Who is your audience? Are you looking for long term support or a short term campaign? What are your top objectives in working with a marketing agency? For example: brand awareness, media coverage, lead generation Do you have experience working with a marketing agency? What is your estimated annual marketing budget for hiring an outside agency? Anything else you want to share with us? Would you be interested in a free 30 minute integrated marketing brainstorm session over the phone? CAPTCHA Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ

Our Online Marketing Director Peter Anania shares tips for keeping your online presence clean and healthy… You’ve probably heard of ‘brand hygiene’ — the basic efforts your company should make to preserve and enhance your brand. Don’t forget your ‘online hygiene.’ Considering the value of your website to your overall brand, the health and vitality of your online presence is crucial. Here are 3 key areas of online brand maintenance: 1. CLEAN UP GOOGLE+, BING PLACES & YAHOO LOCAL Here’s a key take-away: whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, ensure your company’s Google+ page is properly filled out. You have a right to be confused because Google+ is largely seen as a failed social media platform that little to no one uses. So why care about Google+? Don’t forget that Google accounts for roughly ~70% of all U.S. online searches. Google holds this market share by always improving the user experience (UX) of their platform and a big part of UX is getting users highly relevant information fast. In the future Google will increasingly leverage Google+ to give users information without ever having to visit your site. At a bare minimum this means your phone number, photos of your company and your logo will be listed. Beyond Google+ your company should consider properly filling your Bing Local and Yahoo Places listing. These two platforms have a significant share of that remaining ~30% of search traffic. 2. PRIORITIZE YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN & USER EXPERIENCE Think mobile. You’ve heard the usual buzzwords, “mobile first,” “mobile ready” and “responsive” when referring to website design. These aren’t new. Truly thinking mobile goes beyond simply having a responsive design and transcends into functionality and site performance. As far as functionality is concerned, leave no stone unturned by adhering to HTML best practices like making phone numbers tap-to-call. Optimize for speed. It’s crucial to thinking mobile. Websites need to load fast no matter the users connection. This means streamlining the website’s code as well as the structure of that code. Properly compressing images also have a major impact on increasing site speed. Stay away from pre-made templates. Have you noticed that a lot of websites are starting to look the same? Stand out by staying away from designers and developers that use premade templates to build websites. In recent years there has been a proliferation of template-based websites. This is where the designer, developer or even web agency simply buys a premade template and customizes it with the clients’ logos and colors. These template based websites are a great fit for very small budgets, but they tend to look just that: low-budget. That’s not going to enhance your brand. If you can afford it, seek a talented team that codes and design each website from ground up. Your brand identity will thank you and your website will be truly unique. Beyond design, template based websites have major user experience and performance issues. This is mainly due to the fact that the same template design will be used for thousands to hundreds of thousands of sites. So developers building these themes use a massive amount of code in a ‘one size fits all approach’. This means for bloated code and a slower loading website. 3. MAKE THE MOST OF ON-PAGE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION On-page search engine optimization (SEO) refers to crafting the elements of a web page in a way that will have the highest impact when indexed by a search engine. As this is a post on ‘online hygiene’ and not solely SEO, let’s stick with a few basics. One thing to remember is to never compromise the quality of your content, brand and message for sake of SEO. It is important that each page of your website has properly filled out and tags. These tags not only tell Google what your page is about but they also are very commonly what Google uses to display your page in search engine results. There are alsotags for images and links as well as “alternative attributes of an image tags”, the latter having more of an impact on SEO then the former. Regardless of their SEO impact it is important to fill these tags out properly as they also improve accessibility of the website. HTML is meant to be structured much like an outline with headers, sub headers and lists. Making the most of these structure will not only help optimize the page but it will also make it more readable for the user. It is important to remember to only use my main header of per page. Use subheaders and so on to divide your content into sections. Make use of ordered and unordered lists when logical. NEXT STEPS If you’re not sure where to focus your online hygiene efforts, an annual online audit is a useful way to reveal areas of improvement, and prioritize the weak spots. Better yet, revisit these three areas quarterly to give your online hygiene the care and attention to keep it healthy. Learn more about marketing and online audits.

You have a strategy for reaching prospective clients. What about for reaching your referral sources? For many B2B professionals, referral sources (or “centers of influence”) are often just as important as your clients. They help fuel your business’ economic engine and bring you some of your most desirable clients. Even if you have a loyal referral network in place, don’t underestimate the power of a little planning. Think of your referral relationships as a segment of your larger target audience. Here’s how to develop a sound strategy for not only staying top-of-mind with your referral sources, but for showing them some love in return. TARGET AUDIENCE, PART 1: IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS If you can’t describe your ideal client, how can you expect others to refer them to you? Ask yourself what kind of challenges your clients face. Make a list of some of the best client engagements to use as examples. Create a list of “trigger phrases” that you have heard clients and prospects actually say. Understanding these stories and pain points is information that will help your referral sources help you. TARGET AUDIENCE, PART 2: IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL REFERRAL SOURCES Like any marketing plan, the first step to building a referral marketing program is to identify your ideal referral sources. Think about who it is that your client is communicating with before coming to you. Their Attorney? Banker? Realtor? General Contractor? These are the businesses within your industry who serve the same clients—meet your most powerful referral sources. Don’t forget about trade associations. Quality membership associations that welcome your involvement present another avenue for meeting new referral sources. Satisfied clients may also be potential referral sources. If they are raving about your work, then they’re in a position to promote your services within their network. COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY: EDUCATE YOUR REFERRAL SOURCES Never assume that your potential referral sources intuitively know who to refer to you or how to refer them. New referral sources might be willing to help you, but you need to take the laboring oar and educate them on your goals. This is partly a business development effort, where relationship building is key. Request a meeting, coffee or lunch and simply describe what you’re trying accomplish and who you want to reach. This could be as simple as letting them know you have capacity for new clients, or that you’re trying to break into a new industry. Provide them with helpful (and easy to share) materials that demonstrate your expertise and/or services. NURTURING STRATEGY: PROVIDE VALUE Strong long-term relationships are a two-way street. Referral marketing isn’t just about getting new leads for you—it is equally important for you to find ways to help them, too. Just like you asked them to listen to your objectives, take the time to ask them how you can help support theirs. They may benefit from introductions within your industry group. Or perhaps you can provide training to their employees or clients at a discounted rate (or gratis). You could also team up to host a co-branded seminar with your referral partner, helping them promote their expertise to your audience. This can provide a powerful boost to their reputation in the industry. TACTICS FOR STAYING IN TOUCH Part of building long-term relationships is simply keeping in contact. Follow up with a handwritten “thank you” note after they send you a new referral (whether the lead converts or not). Schedule consistent contact with your referral sources, either through an email nurturing program, e-newsletters, traditional newsletters or personal emails or notes. If possible, meet your referral source in-person from time to time. One easy way to stay in contact is to give them a “shout out” on social media by recognizing something they accomplished or promoting the quality of their services. Strong referral relationships can have a huge ROI. They’re helping your business succeed and deserve your care and attention. If a referral source is particularly important to you, you might invite them to a special event every year—just to celebrate the relationship. Take a long-term approach that focuses on creating real referral relationships with genuine give and take. Don’t forget to treat this segment of your audience like any other: with the focus and dedication to not only earn their support, but the commitment to nurture your prized referral relationships for the long-term. Learn more about building an integrated strategy to reach your audience. Sources http://www.cba.org/Publications-Resources/CBA-Practice-Link/2015-(1)/2014/Five-Keys-to-Building-a-Referral-Marketing-Program http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/educating-referral-sources/ http://www.bourncreative.com/5-marketing-tips-to-build-a-referral-based-business/

by Trevor Jones, VP of Business Development at GWI In small companies, we often have to get our message out with relatively small marketing budgets. The good news is that the age of content marketing has given us more tools than ever to accomplish our goals without breaking the bank. By effectively combining your blog and social channels with some well thought our public relations efforts, you can effectively get your message out and raise your brand awareness without spending lots of money on media. Sounds good, right? There are a few things you need before you get started. The first is something to announce that your audience will care about enough to read and share, an important element of what HubSpot calls remarkable content. This could be a new product or service that will help people in their business or daily life, or it could be something that you provide for free, like a white paper, report, or E-Book. If it’s not remarkable, don’t waste your time announcing it. In addition to something remarkable, you’ll need the basic tools of PR, a media contact list, a well-written press release, and talking points if you’re lucky enough to get a call for an interview about your story. Once you have these elements ready to go, the next step is to create a campaign in which your PR and content marketing work together and complement each other to enhance your message. Use these tips to help you do that. Take your news story direct with your blog: One of the most beautiful aspects of content marketing is the opportunity it gives you to tell the story your way. Also, your blog probably has many followers that don’t read your press releases or the newspapers that may or may not write a story. Take a few minutes to re-write a post in your voice that shares the news story directly with your audience. Make sure you dispense with all of the arcane formatting, language and “about sections” that are typical of press releases. Go deep on your news story in the blog. Your blog is your opportunity to give your story depth, whereas the press release is an executive summary. I usually spread this effort over multiple posts, adding more color with each post. When we announce a new network, we’ll generally issue a press release and 4 or more blog posts about it: one post might provide historical context, one a behind-the-scenes look, one a customer’s personal story, and so on. Then, we spread these stories out over weeks or a couple of months. This builds frequency, gives your story dimension, and gives you more content for your marketing. Occasionally your blog, not a press release, is the best vehicle for your story. Sometimes I read a release from our PR consultant and it’s obvious to me that I’m going to modify it and take it directly to the blog, without posting in on the press releases section of our website at all. This happens a lot with follow-up press releases that are really designed to get a second bump in press coverage from one of our bigger stories, like this post. Sometimes the blog is just a better place for direct consumption of content by the public, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t release it directly to the media. Don’t forget to use press releases to promote “big rock” content. You’ve worked hard to create the e-books, white papers, and other long-form content you use to drive conversions. No doubt you do a lot to promote them on your blog and in your social networks, but they’re worth more than that! The effort you put into creating that remarkable content is newsworthy and should be promoted with a press release. With a little luck and some relationship building, you could find that your anchor content has a much bigger audience. The best example of this that I’ve been involved in at GWI is the paper our CEO wrote providing 10 recommendations for improving broadband in Maine. The release of that paper was covered in both news stories and a favorable editorial in major Maine newspapers and business publications. Make sure to cross-link relevant blog posts from your press releases. Link building may be dead, but there is still an opportunity to breathe new life into blog posts that are relevant to a news story by linking them from your press release, even if the only place those links appear online is the news releases section of your site. This provides news reporters covering your story additional background, gives visitors to your web site another way to discover important content, and lets search engines know that you feel the linked posts are important. Definitely do this if your posts contain original research or hard data that supports your news story. So there you have it. Give a few of these strategies a try next time you have a product or content to launch.  I think you’ll find that your launches are more successful and satisfying and leads and sales start to climb.  The final step, by the way, is the most important one: go back and do it over and over again. Trevor Jones is Vice President of Business Development at GWI and has been a major author and editor of the GWI Blog, with over 200 posts on technology issues in four years. He also writes personal blogs on marketing and outdoor activities.

Many thanks to a Fluent client, Trevor Jones, Director of Marketing and Product Development at GWI, for authoring this guest post on business blogging. Whether your goals are brand awareness, improved search engine rankings or lead generation, or a combination of all three, blogging is arguably one of the most effective tools for accomplishing those goals. The biggest challenge is keeping up with generating fresh, relevant and useful content, particularly for professionals focused on billable hours. Take Trevor’s advice: ask for help, invite guest bloggers and share the workload with your team. If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you’re already involved in business blogging and understand why your organization should do it. Now that you’ve started, how do you sustain the effort over the long term? How do you keep it fresh and interesting? One of the very first things I would do is get help creating content, starting from within your organization. When building your blog, get other people from other areas of your company writing early and often. Include the company owner, technical people, service people, and financial people if you can. With the GWI Blog, I try to keep my own contributions to the blog below 50% of the total and honestly, I wish it was less. Be forewarned, most of the time it’s not an easy process.  Everyone in your company is busy, and not everyone places the same priority on publishing consistently and on time as you do.  There are some things you can do the help motivate people, but since that may not be fun for you, I’d like to cover WHY you should get others engaged before explaining HOW to motivate them. Why You Should Involve Coworkers in Business Blogging Spreading the workload. You were thinking this, so let’s get it out of the way because it’s not the most important. Yes, having others write articles means you won’t have to write them. What you will have to do is edit them. In my company, I also end up copying content from a Word Doc into WordPress as well, testing links, and choosing and inserting images. Gain a Fresh Set Of New Ideas. If the rest of your team is involved in writing articles, they’ll also be engaged in the process of coming up with new ideas. Keeping things interesting. No matter how interesting a person you are, having a variety of different voices and perspectives contribute to your company blog can make it more interesting for your readers. Envision yourself as a publisher making an interesting magazine. You want a variety of articles written by a variety of people. Targeting key personas. It’s very important that you have a developed idea of who you are writing your content for. Smart marketers develop buyer personas, imaginary people that have the traits of decision makers, gatekeepers, and key influencers in an organization. Once you have them, try getting the closest equivalent in your company to blog, including IT, finance, or administrative roles – if they’re effective writers this could lead to very well targeted content. How To Get Coworkers Blogging Get management on board. Before you ask employees to start writing content for you, make sure you win the support of management. Your campaign to get more contributions will never get off the ground without their blessing, and they can help you motivate the team. Ask for help. People are naturally motivated to help friends and co-workers. Many people will pitch in if you just ask. Make sure they understand the business value. Often coworkers say that blogging is always on their to-do list, but never rises to the top. Make sure they know how blogging impacts web traffic and sales, as well as how important it is for you to be on a regular publishing schedule. They’ll be more apt to prioritize the work if they accept that it’s necessary and have a deadline. Give them credit for their work. People like to be recognized for their contributions. At a minimum, make sure their name is on the page as the author of the post. Even better, mention them in social media posts promoting the article, list their bio on an authors page, or set them up for Google Verified Authorship so their name and face shows up in SERPS as the author. Show them the value of their unique perspective. People may be concerned about the quality of their writing, or think they can’t do as good a job as you can. Make sure they know that their perspective is unique and different and will make the blog more effective for your business. Start with their ideas, but have a topic for them too. The more ownership an employee has in an idea the more motivated they’ll be to write the article. That said, you don’t want the lack of an idea stop them from writing, especially early on. So get out there and get some help with that content! There are a few other strategies for getting the help if this isn’t enough, including next time’s topic: hiring outside writers.

Partnering with another professional expert can be a powerful way to not only demonstrate your expertise, but to vastly expand your reach – either to new geographic markets in which the partner has a presence, or to new types of prospects. It’s all well and good to ask your best referral source to partner on producing a valuable piece of content, but make sure the idea is backed by a sound strategy and the tactics to pay it off. When is it Beneficial for You to Co-author Content? Co-branded content ideally brings together two professionals with different audiences and similar goals. It brings your expertise to a new audience and brings a new expert voice to your existing audience. This adds value to both audiences as long as the collaboration creates content that relates to them all. It’s important to have similar goals when co-branding content. Take a look at your mission statement and compare it with your potential brand partner. If you share related goals the co-branded content will have a powerful impact on clients or prospects and will be beneficial to you and your co-branding partner. What are the Benefits of Co-authoring Content? Reach new audiences. You have an audience that trusts you. But how can you quickly add to their numbers and gain the trust of a larger audience within your industry? Producing content with another trusted expert will offer you the trust of their audience and the opportunity to spread your message further in short order. Reach influencers. Co-branding content with others in your industry should not be viewed as “working with the competition.” Instead, think of it as a way to build authority to what you are saying. Influencers within your industry will be more likely to distribute your content when it has the added credibility of another expert in the industry. Cross promotions. The brilliance of working with another company on co-branded content and cross-promotions is that you get more results for less effort. In a cross-promotion, you are both trying to reach the same market, and you can combine your marketing budgets to reach them. Market positioning. Co-branding strategies can be used to enhance your position in the industry. Mastercard is using co-branded content to position itself as a thought leader in the smart cities space. It has partnered with Skift X to produce a series of videos and microsites that explore the future of urban mobility. Skift X is a travel news publisher and marketing platform that runs the Skift Global Forum—a conference known as the “Ted of travel.” It can help Mastercard position itself as a thought leader while at the same time bolstering its own position in the creative business and travel market. How to Drive Traffic to Each Other’s Platforms Social media. Tag your co-branding partner in your Tweet or mention them in your LinkedIn or Facebook post to promote a webinar or shared landing page or some other piece of co-branded content. Webinars. Live video presentations with both partners help to promote the partnership of the brands and give them an opportunity to tell customers about their shared goals and ideas. Linked-In groups. The leading B2B marketing platform is LinkedIn. According to the Kissmetrics Blog, LinkedIn is responsible for over 80% of the social media leads for businesses. Microsoft is leading the way with using LinkedIn Groups to establish conversations relating to their products, such as Skype for Business and Microsoft Office. Shared landing page. If you are co-branding content you don’t necessarily have to make the choice between hosting the content on your platform or your partner’s platform. Create a shared landing page for your co-branded content by featuring both company logos on the page and being sure to name the companies within the content itself. Then offer a download or signup of some kind to drive traffic to both partner platforms. Be mindful that any type of partnership or sharing of your brand may expose you to risks. Vet your partners carefully and be mindful that their own brand reputation could impact your own. With so many benefits to co-branded content, it’s time for you to find a partner and start implementing some of these traffic strategies for your business. Sources: https://contently.com/strategist/2015/11/19/how-skift-is-transforming-b2b-travel-content/ 7 Advanced LinkedIn Strategies for B2B Marketing by Neil Patel 5 B2B Brands That Rock LinkedIn — The Content Strategist About | Skift Global Forum Want to schedule a free 30 minute brainstorming session with us? What is your name and organization? What is your email address? Tell us briefly about your business. Who is your audience? Are you looking for long term support or a short term campaign? What are your top objectives in working with a marketing agency? For example: brand awareness, media coverage, lead generation Do you have experience working with a marketing agency? What is your estimated annual marketing budget for hiring an outside agency? Anything else you want to share with us? Would you be interested in a free 30 minute integrated marketing brainstorm session over the phone? CAPTCHA Δ

There’s no better way to get candid feedback than to ask. Thanks to the Maine Public Relations Council’s professional development program “Meet the Media,” held Friday, June 14th at UNE in Portland, southern Maine PR pros were able to ask questions of four local reporters who represented daily and weekly newspapers, broadcast TV news and a national trade publication: Bernie Monegain, Editor, Healthcare IT News Amy Beveridge, News Director, News 8 WMTW William Hall, Staff Reporter, The Forecaster Seth Koenig, Portland Bureau Chief, Bangor Daily News Each shared their insights and practical tips for building effective relationships with reporters. Their responses to a few of our questions were full of great reminders: What’s the difference between a good PR person and a bad one? The panel described a good PR person as someone who remembers to stick to the 5 W’s, understands that deadlines are now practically imminent or in many cases, non-existent, and someone who knows the publication and refines their media contact list accordingly. My takeaway: always think about what I can do to be flexible and work within the reporter’s timeframe. In the age of online platforms, asking “What’s your deadline?” is a thing of the past. Is the press release dead? Fortunately, no. But it needs to be news, not promotional and it shouldn’t be overly complex and full of jargon. As Seth Koenig said, “We’re in journalism because we couldn’t handle science.” If a reporter is forced to Google half of the words in your press release because it’s full of scientific, legal or industry jargon, it’s likely headed for the trash. Any savvy marketer or PR pro should remember to know the audience. Help reporters understand the story first. It’s not going to be published if it’s impossible to read. What’s a good pitch vs. a bad pitch? Pitches can be perceived as good or bad depending upon the publication. A pitch to a weekly newspaper must align with their publishing schedule. To a trade publication, it needs to fit within the context of their subject matter and be of interest to their readership, which is often very specialized. In some cases, a second-day pitch can be very effective. Do you have a different angle on a story the publication just ran? Do you have a subject matter expert available to provide a fresh perspective? Bad pitches fall into the “not helpful” category. Don’t pitch coverage of an event if you haven’t cleared the venue for media access. Don’t issue press releases without a spokesperson available to comment. And a few final pieces of advice from the media panel: use social media (i.e. Twitter) to build and maintain your relationships with reporters. Keep in touch with them by sending updated lists of subject matter experts and make sure that you’re available, helpful and flexible when a reporter needs your help developing their story. Learn more about taking your story to the media through public relations and communications strategies.

We sort of hate buzz words, but there’s one we’re willing to use liberally: integrated. And we love having the chance to see an integrated strategy in action. Our client, Quantive Business Valuations, allowed us to chat about their integrated strategy for aligning traditional PR with their existing digital marketing program. We’re seeing exciting results, but first here’s the back story… The Situation: Our client is Quantive, a business consulting company that provides independent valuation services to a national client base. With a solid brand, a multi-channel marketing strategy that includes online advertising, and an active blog, they had an impressive marketing program in place. However, a closer look at their goals and target audience segments revealed a key area of opportunity: reaching referral sources. While online advertising was effectively driving leads from one key segment, business owners, it wasn’t an effective strategy for reaching attorneys, bankers, financial advisors and accountants – the Centers of Influence (COIs) that drive recurring leads for valuation services. While Quantive had already established a local referral network, they lacked the bandwidth to fully nurture those relationships and needed help growing the network, while they continued developing the network via face-to-face meetings. They asked Fluent IMC to develop a plan for enhancing their credibility in front of these important COIs. The Integrated Strategy: The nature of Quantive’s work is complex and analytical. With a brand voice that’s conversational, yet authoritative, and a robust inventory of blog content that ranged from thought leadership to how-to pieces, the client had a sound online strategy in place. Keeping in mind our goal of increasing awareness amongst B2B referral sources, who respond favorably to credible third party influencers, Fluent IMC brought the power of traditional public relations into the mix. We knew they had the expertise necessary to resonate with business and trade media, and the writing chops to produce quality content. We started by revamping their blog content into larger story ideas, customized it by audience and industry and queried the client for their insights on current trends. Matching that knowledge with a prioritized list of geographic markets and industry trades, we set forth building new editorial relationships. The IMC Result: When we launched our PR effort, Quantive had no editorial relationships. In the first phase of our engagement, which is ongoing, we successfully pitched feature articles in several national trade magazines, numerous authored pieces in leading statewide business publications in the client’s core markets and a feature interview with the founder in a leading online news publication. Not only are we gaining exposure across all of those third party influencers’ social channels, we’re fully integrating the PR wins with Quantive’s already active blog. Along with gaining traction online, the client is also receiving direct contact from business owners and COIs, proving that the exposure is expanding their name recognition. Finally, in addition to these earned impressions, we’ve developed new relationships with journalists and are setting the stage for even more activity as the PR program continues to grow. Thanks again to Dan and his team at Quantive for allowing us to support such a great brand. We’re not only helping to expand awareness of their expertise, we’re growing their online engagement amongst targeted audiences and increasing their organic SEO with every PR win. Learn more about integrating PR with digital marketing.

This blog post by Russ Henneberry on copyblogger.com made me wonder: are Apple’s copywriters the real geniuses behind society’s lust for iPads and Macbooks? There’s no question that Apple hires the brightest technical minds to further their goal of giving us what we want BEFORE we know we want it.  But as a writer, I have to stop and admire the genius of Apple’s branding efforts. Writing like Apple: Less is more It could be easy to get bogged down in the technological features of Apple’s products. Battery time, display screens, HD video, web cams…the list goes on. A quick visit to Apple’s website reminds me of what great ad copy is all about: selling benefits by appealing to your customer’s emotions in as few words as possible. Apple’s iPad webpage isn’t cluttered with copy. A headline and two subheads says a lot: “IPad 2. Thinner. Lighter. Faster. FaceTime. Smart Covers. 10-hour battery. Starting at $499.” 15 words communicated the best features and the amazing benefits you’ll receive by buying your IPad 2. Just like Apple’s brand, the copy is concise, clean, clever and most importantly: effective. Learn more about effective copywriting techniques here.