I love this infographics case study from Wordstream about how they just got into using infographics as an internet marketing tool. I’ve been recommending friends of mine to small businesses who want to get in on it. The potential for links and traffic is huge.

You can see how Wordstream tied social media into politics and the actual infographic here: http://www.vizworld.com/2010/01/infographic-coakley-brown/

I wish they would post some of their best performing infographics to illustrate their points. It’s a long post but worth the read as they give a lot of helpful tips. They tell you about the design part and how to do research.

Here are a few quick tips for creating a killer infographic:

• Make your infographic relate to your business.
• Don’t just use Wikipedia as a source of research – pick up the phone. “I’m not slamming Wikipedia. It’s great. But I don’t understand why some people in the field rely on flaky sources when it’s so easy to call a University or news source and say, “Hi, can I just verify something?”
• Create a killer headline. “A strong title, illustrative header section and recognizable theme are very important when trying to grab a user’s attention”
• Promote your infographic. Do some Google searches with your keywords and the word “blog” then send a person note to each. This related post has more detail about tweeting and promoting your content.
• They confirm what I’ve seen, the links and traffic aren’t as high from sites like Digg as they once were – finding an influencer to tweet or blog your infographic works wonders. But be realistic too. “While everyone would love a mention by a superstar (like Seth Godin), it’s probably not going to happen. I would advise talking to a few slightly less famous people whom are likely to help out if they find what you’ve done interesting.”
• Send out a press release about the news (something I always do before and sometimes after if it performs very well – they used Market Wire).

What should your infographic be about? Emotion sells.

And like really great link bait, infographics that go viral seem to evoke some sort of emotion, be it humor, fear, lust, shock, empathy, etc.

My favorite advice is this: For your link baiting to be effective, you must be willing to promote the living crap out of it. Even great content doesn’t go viral on its own. It often needs help.

This is important because some people give the bad advice that you just have to create good content & it will spread. It will — if you’re Seth Godin. The rest of us have to work for it – or if you hire someone – pay for it to be done.

It’s one thing to write a press release but you need to do the extra work to push the news or pay for the extra work to promote the content. Sometimes people get confused and think creating and promoting the content is one in the same.

I know I summarized a lot of the post – but it’s still worth reading them both – there’s a lot of details I didn’t cover.

I’ve had some strong results with Business Wire recently that highlight how capitalizing on trends is so effective. In both examples (next one coming soon) it was taking something that was already being talked about and piggybacked on it by sending out a press release while the issue is still hot.

Here is one of the press release case studies from OrangeSoda

Here’s the background story. A competitor in the local search space ReachLocal had just gone public. This is big news in the industry. OrangeSoda wrote a series of blog posts about ReachLocal’s IPO. It’s also a hot topic because Google had also shown interest in the industry. As the post states Google  reportedly offered “over $500 million for Yelp” and “a decent volume of smaller acquisitions and investments by consolidators like Deluxe, AOL, IAC, and YPG/Canpages.”

Right during all of this OrangeSoda sent out a press release on Business Wire about a new product release. It mentioned another fact that was big news – that OrangeSoda is now partnering to bring SEO services to local newspaper advertisers. That alone was a big story and got coverage in some blogs like Search Engine Strategies.

Now for the results (incredible)

Used with permission, here are the results:

• Over 200 sites and publications picked up the release so far
• Over 20,911 headline views and 1,533 full views.
• There have also been 84 links.

• 125 Tweets mentioning OrangeSoda and the press release (from both the Business Wire web site and bit.ly). This is how I found out about the story even though I work there.
• 40%  increased traffic to orangesoda.com (as of Thursday after the release).
• 166%  increased traffic to our blog (as of Thursday).

They continue to see increased traffic because of the press release.

Lessons Learned:

For maximum exposure time your news around what’s happening in your industry right now.

Write your press release in conversational or easy-to-understand terms. I didn’t write it but that’s the way I like press releases to read – like a story – not full of PR jargon.

You can get incredible results in terms of traffic, social mentions and links to your web site with a well-timed press release.

Online PR Book and Next Case Study

I spend an entire chapter talking about the importance of capitalizing on trends in my book, I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??? and show you what tools I use to find trends in my Online PR Book. I also go over promoting your news online through social networks.

OrangeSoda really demonstrated how this works. In my next post I’ll talk about one of my clients who got some great print media and TV exposure for her book with a single press release. She had never sent a press release before but when the topic of adoption hit the news, she knew she needed to.

I attended the PRSA/IABC half day conference in Salt Lake City. It’s a first for me because I’m not a PR pro. But I find a natural home in PR because I believe the industry needs online marketing. It’s no longer something that specialists do – it’s part of the domain of PR. The lines are blurring so each is a blend of the other.

As David Henderson pointed out in his presentation with a dramatic image of ships falling off the ocean, the industry is at the edge and are hurling towards a huge drop. There is urgency to learning how to work faster and to use tools to help publish and share information in real time. The world is moving quickly on.

Journalists and those in the media are now expected not only to create but to publish and promote content. Just like online marketers. We’re being judged by the same sort of criteria – time on site, links, search engine rankings. When I go to my industry conferences we’ve beat that drum almost too much but in PR it’s still relevant.

So I’m very curious to listen to the comments and get a gauge of where people are in all of this. How engaged they are with social media, if they are partnering with online marketing agencies or bringing new talent into their agency.

As an example, Blendtec’s Kels Goodman was there talking about their wildly successful viral marketing campaign. At least 8 people had never seen (and maybe never heard of) a “Will it Blend?” video. This is surprising because this is one of the most important and successful online marketing campaigns in history. It’s a text book example and regularly cited in books and articles. It was made when YouTube was new (2006). And it’s in our own back yard – a privately owned Utah company. I lived a mile or so from them and had a good friend who worked there. This story is a triumph and it did have a financial impact eventually – but not in predictable ways.

The problem is despite our client’s wishes we can’t make something go viral. Most ideas won’t be. We lose a bit of control (being authentic demands it) and most of all we take risks. We connect dots and hope for success. This is not business as usual and we’re all on the roller coaster ride together. We can choose – either have fun or scream our heads off.

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• Top 3 Ideas from PRSA/IABC Utah Conference (newspapergrl.com)
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• The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Second ed. David Meerman Scott. (regnordman.com)

I’m reading Referral Engine by John Jantsch (coming out next month) and the part that asks a lot of questions has me soul searching.

He asks if:

• you’re easy to communicate with
• your value/marketing messaging is easy to understand
• you’re easy to network with, trust, buy from, work with, etc.

It triggered a lot of self-evaluation for me. It talks about making it easy to do business with you. Businesses that get referrals do this well. The problem is making it easy is actually hard. At least it is for me.

Some people I know do not have a voicemail message or they don’t have a professional voicemail message. Sometimes the message is – I don’t answer voicemails so try another way to reach me. In other words, more work for the caller. I think it’s sort of a hoop to weed out people who aren’t determined to reach them.

There are many different ways to communicate and for people to reach you – it can be overwhelming. Messages can come from different phone lines (home work, cell), Facebook, LinkedIn, IM, Skype, text message, Twitter, various email addresses (personal, business, etc). It gets confusing to remember where they are coming from.

The biggest thing I see in internet marketing that makes me not buy after a recommendation or a search engine refers me to you is your web site makes it hard to do business with you. It’s tough to see what you’re selling. I want to buy something from you but I can’t figure out if it’s worth the price you’re asking. There’s not much of a description or I cannot see sample content. When you write articles or press releases I think, that’s nice and move on. You don’t tell me what you want me to do next. You don’t offer to take me further into your sales process. So I never go.

On my own sites I struggle with this too. So I guess I’m saying that I realize the problem, but the solution? not so much. This book has made me realize that if making a referable business is important to me I have a lot of work to do.

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• Start Your Voicemail Messages Without a Gasp [Voicemail] (lifehacker.com)
• Twit2Tel – now receive voicemails on Twitter (twi5.com)

I’m a regular reader of Steve Pavlina’s famous and long-running personal development blog. His personal life, not so much, but he has some classic posts about business and life that I just love. His is the only blog I have ever printed out pages (1 post can be 5 pages easy) and read and underlined. I’m not sure why I haven’t read his book!

Today’s post is excellent and resonated with me. It’s about contributing to your field and how much it adds to your life and business. He started in a solitary kind of field, which is tough on an extrovert. So after watching what the most visible and connected people in his field did he decided to get more involved:

“I noticed that the people I respected most in the software and computer gaming fields — and the people who seemed to be the most well-networked — were frequent and generous contributors. These were the people who spoke at conferences, wrote articles for magazines and journals, and published books. They didn’t just work for themselves. They passed on their knowledge and helped to elevate everyone in the field…by and large, these people weren’t pounding the pavement to make new friends and contacts. Quite the contrary — people were constantly coming to them. They acted like magnets, attracting others to them with ease.”

People who contribute see themselves as working for everyone – what they do and who they are is to contribute. There’s a sense of altruism which elevates what they do and ultimately benefits them too. When you speak, rather than wondering how many books you can sell or what you’ll get from it, think of it as a contribution. When you teach think of it that way too. It will be more fulfilling to you and to your audience. Really social networking works as inbound marketing when approached from this angle.

Other classics on Steve’s blog:

• A 12-post series on networking with busy people. It gives you insight into the mind of successful people.
• If you’ve followed “The Secret” it can get a little “woo woo” read his articles on manifesting (particularly money). Here’s another one.

I really think it’s about thought training for positive results and as Landmark Education calls it “living in possibility.” I need to practice both more regularly.

Thanks you Steve for contributing and for reminding me to. One thing I’ve gotten from reading your blog is that it gives me permission to be myself (which in itself is a contribution).

Please comment. What ways have you or what ideas do you have to contribute to your field? Or, alternatively, who do you admire who does this well?

Related articles

• How Your Ears Affect Your Bottom Line (eon.businesswire.com)
• Do You Need To Develop Personally To Market on The Net? (self-improvement-tips.org)

I got a mention in an article about getting paid to tweet on ReadWriteWeb (thanks HARO!). I occasionally tweet ads for pay on SponsoredTweets. I’m also trying it out more as an advertiser. I’m totally sold on having @Shoemoney tweet something – awesome results! I try to get the cost per click down to less than $3 and most average half or less. I also look for people with high engagement scores.

I’ve made all of $60 total on SponsoredTweets but the great thing is it’s easy. I’ve turned down some offers because they don’t fit my audience but several have worked out. The best is from an outsourcing company. They hired me to tweet. Then they became my client. Now I hire them back.

After reading the article I wanted to try Twittads but I gave up after not really getting how it worked and not having the time to look into all the details.

Here are 5 tips for using Sponsored Tweets:

1. Post something conversational or like a question – not an advertisement.
2. You can and should rewrite tweets so they are in your own voice.
3. Use related hashtags in your tweet.
4. You can use the term “brought to you by” instead of ad.
5. Don’t be greedy. It’s crazy what some people charge for a tweet. Keep it reasonable and you’ll get to choose from more offers. I’ve found little correlation between cost and results. As an advertiser I skip the people who are priced much higher than their peers with similar numbers of followers and engagement.

As John Chow said in the article: Since they allow you to use “brought to you by” as one of the disclosure mechanisms, you could write: “Hey guys! I found this great $1.99 web hosting deal bought to you by bluehost. Go check it out. URL” and get away with it.

He was also mentioned in a New York Times article about being paid to tweet.

Who should use SponsoredTweets? Authors (like me). People planning events. People who are launching campaigns and want to attract more participation and visibility. The results are quicker than some other methods like SEO, press releases and articles that build over time. Plus it tends to cost less than Google AdWords which has gotten quite crowded (read: expensive).

Sponsored Tweets made me a hero today – so I’m extra motivated to write about them. Plus I’m so fascinated by the instant feedback you get on the results. It’s like candy to a marketer.

Note: I’m partial to Sponsored Tweets (so far in the past several months I’ve experimented with others & it’s my fav so far). I’m also an affiliate. As mentioned I also manage advertising campaigns on Sponsored Tweets. You can use my links above to give me credit for referring you or go there directly (or not at all).

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You have to read this story about LoveJingles.com and how a musician made over $18k in 5 days with social media. It was fun to interview Love (say it like this: Louve). It seems like a great story just before Valentine’s Day. I signed up for a jingle and will post it when it’s live at the middle of this month. In the meantime, check out the full interview and story on Small Business Trends.

I didn’t get to go to the session with Markus Frind, owner of the wildly popular and successful free dating web site PlentyOfFish. First, what a great, optimistic name. Having been single and used online dating web sites (including his) I have to say it’s encouraging to remind yourself that you do have hope (sometimes you need a reminder of this). Dating often feels like the slot machines at Vegas – you don’t win but you keep paying in.

I hope Markus is doing some good with all the cash he makes living the 10-Hour Work Week (The New York Times reports Markus Frind makes $10 million a year). I somehow have this view of him as someone who capitalizes and leaves. In other words, doesn’t seem concerned with anything deeper than living a good life.

I’m all about having fun but I also feel that if you’ve created something that’s made you ultra rich, perhaps you should do something for the world. Like pay people or organizations to work on solutions to some of the biggest problems we have on this planet. I’d pick one or a few causes from a list like this: starvation, health care, diseases, environmental problems, restoring pieces of history. Maybe he does. But he’s not using his fame as a platform for these causes, that’s not how he seems to work ( and that’s ok even though I don’t like it).

Sometimes someone in real life surprises you. What you think about them may be very off from who they actually are. I found that true all the time in dating. The guys who seemed like losers at times ended up being amazing people who, even without a romantic connection were people I’m glad I met. Others make a great first impression but were disappointing in real life.

But back to advertising.

2 words: marketers dream.

This is the first time I’ve written a post based on a flyer I got at a conference. But it’s worth looking at. Amazing enough they get over 100 MILLION visits per month (Facebook gets 200 million). The average click through rate on the ads is .15% and it has over 2.5 BILLION page views.

What makes it appealing though is the targeting. You can target by so many things – by profession, by smoking habits and even body type! So if you target your ad to singles, this could be really big. Say you’re a jewer who wants to target people who say they are “looking to marry soon.” You could target the ad copy to men to let them know when they are ready to get engaged, think of us.

I’m very curious what performs best on the network and want to try it out. Like Facebook, PlentyofFish has a lot of data on people, which means you can target ads. Google targets them on location and search term. You can do a lot with Plenty of Fish.

Check it out at ads.pof.com

After reading the 4-Hour Work Week & talking to my friend Paul about the results from article marketing, I decided to try outsourcing.

What I’ve learned so far

1. It takes skill to clearly define & explain tasks. It’s a skill I’m developing. So I found a company in India
2. It’s so funny to read the results of writers who are not native speakers! I laugh when I read it & find it interesting to note what the writers think of Americans.

Here are a few quotes from 1 article I had written recently:
Climbing the Ladder of Progress
“In today’s world of fast moving and ever increasing competition, publicity is one of the vital tools of business development that emerging corporates need to pay attention to in order to climb the ladder of progress.”

Perplexing!!!! Question
“Is Online PR really different regular PR?
The answer would be a yes as well a no. Perplexing!!!! Let me explain. Both online and regular public relations are similar as far as their targets are concerned- working as an effective marketing tool to step up business.”

Magical ability to reach hordes of people
“The strength of online PR lies in its magical ability of reaching hordes of people throughout the globe in very less time spans that has that magical effect on a business venture.”

Yes, like press release, you get what you pay for! In this case it would be $12 an article but thanks to a special price deal it was just $6 an article. Magical!

Just because it’s not as in vogue to blog as it once was, doesn’t mean that blogging is dead or dying. In fact, it’s as important as ever. Here are some recent studies that clearly show that blogging is still an important marketing tool.

If you don’t blog, pitch stories good and relevant stories to bloggers (who often need content).

3 studies about blogging to consider:

1. Companies who blog get more traffic, links and pages indexed by search engines

Out of 1,531 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses) 795 of the businesses blog, 736 don’t.

Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:
• 55% more visitors
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more indexed pages

To extend the benefit add these elements – a recipe for an effective small business blog.

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5014/Study-Shows-Small-Businesses-That-Blog-Get-55-More-Website-Visitors.aspx

2. Bloggers get more followers on Twitter

A new study of 2,100 HubSpot customers reveals that companies that blog have 79% more Twitter followers than those that don’t.

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5459/Small-Businesses-That-Blog-Have-102-More-Twitter-Followers.aspx

3. Blogs trusted and consulted more often than traditional media. Shift away from traditional media to blogs/social networks continues

This survey is from tech savvy women (who blog) but is useful. Women use social networks and blogs to interact, be entertained and find information about brands. Study finds they are twice as likely to use blogs over social networking sites as a trusted source of information.

45% of survey respondents stated that they decided to purchase an item after reading about it on a blog.

Source: http://www.blogher.com/blogher-finds-women-online-twice-likely-use-blogs-over-social-networking-sites-trusted-source-inform

Blogging should be a part of your pr/online marketing plans.