Briiliant post by Fabrizio Faraco

“You’re a small business owner. Most of your customers are the people who live within 25 miles of your storefront. Why does it even matter what the Internet has to say about your brand? That has no impact on your bottom line. Right? No. Dangerously wrong. Weber Shandwick recently released a new report called The Company Behind The Brand: In Reputation We Trust, that breaks down exactly why business owners should be concerned with the online footprint they’re leaving (or not leaving) behind. […] It doesn’t matter if you’re not trying to target a national audience. Local consumers are using the Web to find information about local businesses. It’s up to you to make sure they’re finding the right kind of information.” This is the gist of a recent post appeared on the web. In this post Lisa Barone (the author) suggest 6 things to do:

• Create a Web site
• Blog
• Get involved in social media
• Get involved in your community
• Guest blog on relevant sites
• Solicit & manage online reviews

Furthermore, as can be seen from recent statistics, the success of this marketing model, with the arrival of more and more companies, is making cost per lead increasing (see next image here) even though much less than these of the standard model (that of advertising ).

Source Tinou bao Data Hubspot

Thus, as suggested in a recent article, act now! Sure, but how? Well, you can always hire me .

Or you can do a marketing plan. When was the last time you made a plan? And when was the last time you did a marketing one? No, it is not as difficult as it sounds. There is no need to make graphs, tables or conduct expensive market analysis. What is needed is to follow a series of tips and build it gradually. It may be easier than you think.

Position your product

Ask yourself what you sell being careful to simple, but incorrect answers (if you think that Starbucks sells coffee, you are wrong, Starbucks sells a place between home and work). Once identified continue checking other 3 “P” (beyond the first “P” Product): the Price at which you sell (it is lower than competition? Do you earn enough? Etc.), the Promotion you do (your marketing plan!) to make it unique and thePlaces where is distributed (yes, your shop, but have you thought about selling online? Or in an outlet?).

Squeeze your mind!

To better define the marketing plan you should check the 5^th “P”, People! Put together your family, your advisors and all those who know best about your business and ask yourself few questions that need to be answered:

• To whom do you sell
• What are their needs
• What distinguishes your product from the competition
• What tactics could be used to make your product noticeable
• When and how often these tactics should be used
• Where do you want the company to be in a year

Record the discussion and do a summary, in order to have the best ideas to be included in the plan, but also to be used to initiate actions to reach your goals.

Listen to your customers

To find out what your customers think, ask them! A survey on your current or potential customers can be easily done today in particular if you offer discounts or freebies. But there is a better way to listen to them a way that even go beyond listening. That is to follow the content and inbound marketing model, a model where you produce relevant content to your customers (current and potential) via the internet, a model where you are active on social media to listen, react and provide value to your customers (current and potential). This will allow you to increase your leads, to listen them better, improve your reputation and better react to what is said about you, increasing the popularity of your brand.

I will explain how to do it in a next post. For now it’s sufficient  to know that the emergence of social media has added a precedent stage to the sales process. Rather than starting from the relationship between potential buyer and seller, the sales process begins when the prospect starts to search over the Internet or asking to his “friends”/”followers” the product you sell. To be found easily or having a good reputation increases the number of potential customers. Being active on social media allows you to learn more about what they think, find out where they talk about your product, which are the critical features, etc.. And finally being proficient (and how can’t you be? it’s your business!), transparent, socially active and time responsive you just increase your credibility and your reputation.

Roll out the plan and track it over time

Once you have focused your product and your customers and identified strategies and tactics you have everything you need to write down the marketing plan. How? Well you can follow this track:

1. In a page put the key elements: objectives, positioning and what do you expect to achieve in the period of time (e.g. I expect to see my sales increase of 5%, to be able to sell online discounts, etc..).
2. Write down your identified target markets and niches.
3. Describe for each target or niche the strategy you use.
4. Allocated and share costs and resources used to each one.
5. Describe the marketing channels that you are going to feed in terms of materials, content and distribution vehicles that will serve to attract potential customers (e.g. free tickets to an event sponsored for some VIPs, parents of children in the local elementary school for Christmas sponsorship, likers in the facebook page to for the raffle, e-commerce site of the outlet, contact through Yelp reviews that you have requested, etc..).
6. The competitive strategies, responding to the moves of your competitors, if they react to your plan, or if they move by themselves.

Finally, keep an eye on the key variables of the plan, from the ones you identified (e.g. costs, the number of potential customers to achieve the sales you expect, etc..) And adjust the plan during construction. As President Eisenhower, who was also one of the founders of the project management, used to say the plan is important, but what is crucial is the act of planning.

Are you ready to make a marketing plan? How would you do instead? Are you convinced that what is said on the internet has importance for your business?

The Japanese have a concept called Kaizen. Basically it means continual improvement. Even just a little improvement is fine. Regular improvement is best not improvement in fits and starts. Improvement rarely happens by itself or as an accident. Like nearly everything else good it takes a bit of work.

What I am recommending here is a 20-30 minute check through/ improvement session on your Twitter account that if done every week will reap you enormous reward. Of course it can be split into in 2 or 3 shorter sessions as well. And do not be afraid to do even more if you value your Twitter account enough and have the the time! The twitter chat option in number 5 will take you a bit longer but you can multi-task a little during that!

1. Bio and Background
Change your bio or your background a little. Keep re-inventing yourself or trying something new. Your bio is searchable and many people use search robots to decide who they follow. So rotating words connected to your niche may attract those followes. Study the bios of others and get ideas. Always great to be keeping things fresh and applying what the best people are doing.

2.Lists
Check who has listed you. Say thank you to the ones who have genuinely listed you in something. When I mean genuinely I mean ignore computer-generated lists sich as by Formulists. This is a fantastic way of finding if you are sticking to your niche. People will list you as THEY see you. These are also your real fans and it is a great idea to list them back. To take this a little further you might like to check who has followed lists you have made. These people really are your big fans.

3.Follows
How many have you followed? How many have followed you? Tweedadder? Not who so much who is following you although this is always interesting. Do not worry about who has unfollowed you. People have various reasons for unfollowing. There really is not point in worrying

4.How many times have you tweeted? 
Have you been consistent? We are looking for consistency. About 20 tweets a day is ideal for the average account. Just keep a note of what total you were at last week.

5. Twitter Chats 
Join a twitter chat meet other tweeters, network with highly active, engaging people. You will also help brand yourself to your followers. You will also learn how to tweet.Twebevent has a directory of over 400 regular twitter chats. If you are interested , for example, in learning about new online tools and networking with others like you join us for #toolschat at 10 pm New York Time every Wednesday. If your thing is LinkedIn try #linkedinchat. Employment issues try #jobschat etc etc.You can just checkin in and out of these things too. It is best to participate for the whole hour but just showing your face is way better than nothing!

6.New Tools
What new tools are you using? It is great to least one or two. These might be time-saving tools or might be tools that increase the reach of your account. For example for time saving you might try Tweetadder which you can get a free trial of by clicking the add to the right of this post. For reach I mean something like Twylah which will preserve you most appreciated tweets and also give your Twitter account search engine optimization. Or Visibli which will brand your tweets.

7. Retweets and mentions? 
Are they increasing? Do you know how to look at “My Tweets Retweeted”? How about your Follow Friday endorsements? These do not mean so much but it would nice to be think that these would be steadily increasing as your Twitter account grows.

8. Did you stick to your niche? 
Have a look at your last 20-30 tweets on your profile page. Would someone be able to pinpoint the 3 main things that your twitter account is about by looking at these 20-30 tweets? Were you fun, engaging and informative? I wrote another post about getting this balance correct and how there are 6 different kinds of tweets you need to be using here

Twitter is such a powerful tool for so many reasons. Connection, news, promotion and more. Do not expect to get a radically increased presence overnight. Do expect to get a gradually improving presence if you follow this weekly ritual.

Michael

I have just completed an interesting circle. I hosted my first Twitter chat some three months ago and Adriel Hampton was kind enough to guest. It was probably fairly amateurish I imagine. Luckily Adriel agreed to come back last weekend! I also had a massive wake up call about what really needs to be shared during our best ever Twitter chat yesterday.

I co-host 4 twitter chats (#EavChat twice) every week and have now done around 60. They are all about connecting, sharing and fun. They are successful because of the drafting of the questions, the energy and specialities of the guests but most of all the participants. You. A big tip from me for all aspiring chat hosts is to create your own Twitter account too. We are gradually building @EavChat , @GPlusChat and @ToolsChat. I will explain more about why in an upcoming post about how to run your own Twitter chat.

The chat guests who have been particular fun are, in no particular order…;

William Pitcher and Jake Kern. William is a highly tech savvy fundraising specialist from Toronto. He was a co-guest on #EavChat with Jake around 2 months ago on the subject of Tumblr. Jake is from La Crescent, Minnesota. William and Jake are daily users of this fast growing micro-blogging site.
William made this fun video of me and two other featured guests Adriel and Dups. Plus Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble (on my wish list as chat guests).

If you want to learn about Tumblr follow William and Jake and read William’s great blog post about it here 
#Eavchat is co-hosted by Tom Cooley an Empire Avenue expert from North California and I with support from Larissa Katayeva from Amsterdam a leadership coach. It is on at 7pm Eastern every Tuesday and Thursday.

#EavChat is about Empire Avenue and Adriel Hampton from San Francisco is a true leader on this wonderful new Social Networking site. Adriel founded a vibrant community based around players of Empire Avenue called X Bar. He is the main energy behind a community building and organising tool called Nation Builder. Adriel symbolises community and this was the theme of our chat. Adriel is fun and we have even met in real life and partied in Tokyo. We both have a fondness for Japanese women and he has even managed to hold on to his.

Sometimes live internet does not work! My next member of the 12 rescued my only one that did not with her grace and good humour! Tweet chats revolve around their hashtag and you can imagine my absolute horror when around 20 minutes before a chat with Liz Strauss about leadership the Twitter hashtags simply stopped working. I have been on Twitter pretty much every day for 2 and a half years and have never seen this. Liz was a trooper though and so was another leader and a regular on our chats Cyndee Haydon a realtor from Clearwater, Florida. We partied on for the hour and the highlight was Cyndee producing this great picture from Flickr! Liz will be back on Tuesday.

I had no Plan B for such an occurrence but do now. Twitter chats always take on a life of their own. Sometimes lots of people stop by and sometimes not so many. I have learned that it is best to focus on the ones that are there rather than the ones that are not.

The co-founder of Empire Avenue is Dups from Toronto. What a character! Thrown in Twitter jail for over tweeting during our #EavChat he attacked it so enthusiastically.133 tweets in 2 or so hours. You rock Dups!

All of this is about connection and we were lucky enough to have Axel Schultze and his partner Marita Roebkes from San Francisco on #EavChat discussing online networking and their great profile directory Xeeme

If anyone wants to learn aboyt how Empire Avenue works my next awesome guest does it for them. Alan Jobe from Lakewood, Washington has authored an ebook called Walking Down the Avenue. Generous and fun to a fault Alan is also a huge giver. Are you seeing a theme developing here? What I am saying is that on Empire Avenue you will meet some great folks.

Empire Avenue is a multi faceted social network and part of the skill and fun is investing in the right people at the right time and managing your portfolio. Scott Wendling from Columbia, Missouri blew up one of our earliest chats with some of the best advice around about this vital aspect.

With Leo Widerich co-founder of Buffer App and Austrian now in San Francisco I host a chat about Twitter and online tools every Wednesday at 10 pm Eastern. We are having a lot of fun.
Our chat was a little mundane the first time and we were blessed to have a certain Kelly Kim of Twylah enter the fray on our second chat. Her energy and determination to connectand promote others completed transformed a geek fest to a riot! Wow. Kelly is now our defacto co-host and an integral part of our chats.

Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo started Triberr and Dan backed up Dino as a sensational guest on #Toolschat as they discussed blogging, judicial automation of tweets and dogs, “virtual” business partnerships and life in gerneral. Great guys and a brilliant tool.

Dan Newman a co-founder of a fine website called 12 most guested about Google Plus on #Gpluschat and showed his awesome social media savvy with great insights and also his online influence by the tremendous number and quality of the participants he attracted.

I do #GPlusChat with Pamela Rappaporte on Mondays 10 pm Eastern.

Cory Shanes from California was our first ever guest on #GPlusChat and is so passionate about G+ that he got distracted by a hangout during our chat! Cory is a real expert on Facebook and branding as well.

My most recent guest on what was very probably the most active and definetely the most interesting chat yet was Holden Page from Strawberry App. The level of conversation, friendliness and tools and strategies shared during our 90 minutes together was almost hard to believe. It was something of a wake up call for me as I am doing a talk atTEDxHomer on 10 September at 5.50 pm EDT and was going to talk about Social Media as a way to make “change for good”. I realised during the chat that the ideas and information that REALLY needs sharing immediately are the technology and tools that were shared in #ToolsChat yesterday. This is what will really make the change and is what people need to know about right away. So I have changed my talk almost completely!

We can now filter and share information in a way that was inconceivable even 3 months ago. A massive thank you to Holden and everyone who participated yesterday. I sincerely believe it was a groundbreaking chat. These things just keep getting better and better.

I cannot finish this without mentioning some more people you definetely need to connect with. Steve Cassady has been a huge supporter and regular participant on almost all the 50 or so chats I have done. He has also introduced me to and welcomed me warmly to several other chats. Basically a twitter chat legend! We will “chat” soon Steve. Looking forward to having you as a guest.

Regular and highly supportive guests are many but these people stand out in particularDillon Rhodes, Felissa Elfenbein, Janet Callaway, especially Bonnie Sayers, Rob NielsenJure Callas and Prasant Naidu as well. We have had some fun haven’t we!

I also want to give thanks to Charlie at Hashtracking for providing valuable and interesting reports about all our chats and Robert from Twebevent for providing the platform from where it all happens.

I truly hope you will stop by our chats. To attend log in at Twebevent where you can see the questions for the chat, some information about the guest and you can tweet from the Tweetchat client embedded in the page. Please also recommend future guests and ask questions or if you want to guest yourself just let me know here.

Let’s get together and feel allright…on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Michael

Had a great conversation with Steven Hughes today and discussions with Anise Smith last weekend and we are very much positive and excited about Triberr.

Firstly and most importantly thank you so much to all of you who have read or shared my posts, stumbled them and commented on them. My blogging has been a massive success in the past few months and you have played a large part in this.

A blog brands you in your niche. It is where you give value and where you impress people with your knowledge. People then share it, which brings you and your content to the attention of their friends. People also subscibe to you which gives you the ability to find out who your biggest fans are and email them. This time 7 months ago I had no blog but I can definetely say I am a big convert to blogging. News, views and analysis.

Instead of telling you what you should do here are some things I do….

1. I go to Tribber at around 5 pm nearly every day and at least every 2 days and click share on the posts I want to share.
I decide this by whether they are in my niche and whether the author is supportive of me.This takes a maximum of 5 minutes and there are usually around 30-40 posts.

2. Sometimes for some people I will share the post in several places including Stumble Upon and via Scoopit on several social sites including Facebook, Twitter, G+, Tumblr and Linked In. This takes around 3 minutes per post.

3. I go through all my Tribes and look at the most recent conversation once or twice a week. So all in all I spend around an hour a week on Triberr.

4. I promote and support both Triberr and Dino and Dan who made and run it whenever I can. I also tend to support, promote and connect the people who regularly tweet my posts.

5. I keep up with changes to Triberr and to social media sharing and curation in general.

6. When I blog I stick to my niche. I avoid negative opinions and/or criticism and I share everything I know for free.

In return for doing that for the last few months I have had my blog posts tweeted around 10,000 times from people in my tribes. This has lead to around 100,000 direct visits and around 3 times as many as that from “secondary sharing”. In total about 100 blog posts read 3,000 times each.

I have also made and built relationships with some fantastic bloggers which has led to exciting collaborations.

What is not to like?

So right now around 10 of the 40 or so people in our Positively Social tribe are what Steven and I class as “highly active”. Another 5-10 are active. The rest are sporadic “bloggers and sharers”. Especially since Triberr removed the automatic tweeting feature. We may cut out a few in a fortnight or so to make room for new people. If the thing is not for you then please just go in and remove yourself.

I hope you do not and I hope you step up your blogging and tweeting in 2012. By ourselves we can do little.Together we can do so much!

If you are reading this and blog regularly in a positive manner about social media or technology then I am very interested in talking to you. Skype me at michaeltoddshoot72.

If you are impressed with the way I have built my blog from scratch to this 3-4,000 visitor a day level in 7 months and how I have built this tribe of bloggers then please consider sharing this post as soe of your friends may blog.

Michael

Klout just released a cool new addition to your dashboard which gives you the chance to pick between influencers. This gives more “In real life” credibility to measurement.

How many of you have tried out this new “Help Improve Klout” feature? It puts users head to head like and you get to decide who is more influential to you. It’s on the dashboard, right under your notifications. It’s only available once a day. If you can’t see it try logging out and logging back in.

This will thrill those already devotees of Klout. However more tellingly Klout also recently launched a new privacy feature. You can now block users which means neither of you will be able to see the other on Klout. Personally this not something I would ever do but for some this will answer a lot of fears.

I was in a chat today and I was impressed with this quote from Megan Berry the marketingmanager “Privacy, accuracy and transparency are our big themes/missions for this quarter”. Klout is a business that listens to criticism/ feedback/ praise and acts on it. Megan is a regular attender ofTwitter chats as is Joe Fernandez the CEO. Megan is also quickly responsive on Facebookand Twitter and has her ear to the ground. This is essential for any startup but even more vital for one which tells people if they are influential or not and gives public access to this information. This is new new stuff and some have blockages coming to terms with it. Now they can be the blockers.

Like I have said before Klout will keep rolling out more and more such tools as they remain the leader for influence analysis.

Another tool you may not be using so much is the comparison feature. This has been fascinating for me to see which networks I am getting most bang for my buck (or my time) from.  And when they go up and down. Although my time is possibly 60% Twitter/ 10% Facebook/ 5% Google+ and 35% other places Facebook is delivering around 85% of my online influence. Maybe I should be spending more time on the Big Blue! It is all about finding how to best use your time right?

I have watched some friends’ scores rise quite quickly recently and inevitably it is because of their increased influence on Google+. Mine has actually dropped in the past week from 6% to 3% though I am happy to say that since I took the screenshot my score has risen to 74. I spent more time on Google+ in the last 24 hours. After getting this wake up call.

You can see your comparison here.

The biggest success story I know is Amanda Blain whose graph I have featured here. Amanda and I both joined Google+ on the first morning after forming a relationship on Empire Avenue and were in several early hangouts together. I went back to where I was safe and comfortable but Amanda said. Wow this works! This is a story for all of you who thinks Google+ is not worth it. Amanda now has around 250,000 in her circles. Her Klout score is I believe the highest of any social media person in the world and she gets 98% yes 98% of it from Google+.

Amanda is fun , friendly and informative. She has recognised the power of maintaing inner and outer circles and by influencing influencers and early adaptors.

So do you think I am spending more time on Google+ from today onwards? Absolutely!

Quite apart from the improved recognition for Google+ pages and posts in the new Google Social Search this is where you will meet and influence influencers. Thanks to Klout and to Amanda for showing me the way.

You can circle me here and I will study harder from Amanda so that you can learn too.

Michael

There is a famous story of a hare who ridiculed a slow-moving tortoise and challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, decides to take a nap midway through the course. When he awakes, however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.

We have all seen sharemarket crashes and people hyping stock that do not deserve it and the pain that causes so many. How often do you see a company aggressively promoting their own stock?

Never I repeat never recommend that others buy your shares. It will only create an unrealistic surge you will never maintain. Earn your buys by giving value and being active and skillfull. So many people I have seen jump 2-3 eaves in a day and then crash and get heavily sold. Once a slide starts in you it can be hard to arrest, just as happens on the real life stock market.

If you recommend that others buy shares in others it will create an artificial surge in them too. Sure it is fine to introduce your friend who has just come in and tip off your friends. After that however it does more harm than good. I have been in the orange say 3 days out of 250. And that was by like 0.1 or under. So was quickly sorted within an hour of the evening rollover. I only get sold by idiotic speculators that cannot play the game and are not interested in building relationships. That means no stress for me or shareholders or my relationships with them. Slow and steady growth. Spend the same time on the game every day. Hare and tortoise stuff will win the day I promise.

I love having a straight graph like the smiling guy in this picture!

Or like my mate Des Walsh a Linked In specialist from the Gold Coast here..

Like many others I look for slowly but gradually rising graphs when investing too as I know that those people will not cause me stress. As people are involved, feelings and egos, selling is time consuming, has bad energy attached to it and is somewhat stressful.

My friend Elza van Swieten (e)confluencemedia just made a great point in a thread about Empire Avenue in our Empire Avenue and Social Media Tips for Business group. She said “It feels too overwhelming to when you grow too fast. I don’t like it because I cannot interact with my shareholders when there are too many in a short time”. On Empire Avenue when new people reach out and buy your shares that is like a Facebook friend request or Linked In add. That is the time to make a first impression and begin the relationship. Better to do say 10 well a day rather than 30 badly?

I decided when I started Empire Avenue in late April 2011 I could give my account 30 mins a day and saw quickly after 10 days when I had reached 100 eaves that half an eave a day was a good way to rise and that 30 mins a day would bring that. If I spend say 2 hours a day I will rise fast yes but suffer the following day if I do not maintain that 2 hour involvement. I have not taken a day off and have barely ever been sold. My target was 225 by Christmas and I made it with 3 days to spare. I am now 240 after 3 more weeks. I will hit 300 in exactly 4 months time and will have 200 million eaves by then. Some people do not have half an hour and have say 10 minutes. It is better off for everyone that they stick to that. Or get someone to help them if they are away for a weekend or a holiday.

The eave (virtual money) side of Empire Avenue can be set aside and you can get on with relationship building and promoting and connecting others. Which is what the whole “game” was designed for.

I am writing this in response to the many people who ask me how to get a better Klout score. These tips will do that and a whole lot more.I do not know exactly how Klout makes their measurements. I think your score improves the more attention you get.

The score is a rough indication of how successful you have been in getting people to respond to and share your content online in the past 90 days and especially the last 30. In the past 9 months my score has increased from 57 to fluctuating between 81 and 82. I hope these tips give you similar “success”.

1. Decide very precisely why you are online. Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for disaster. Produce content and comment mainly in your niche or niches.

2. Reply in some way to everyone who engages you publicly. Hopefully within 24 hours but at least within the week. Promote the people who reach out to you. You will make friends for life.

3. Share liberally and give credit to the creator and curator of the content that you share. Part of sharing is following, friending and circling back. Put yourself in the mind and position of the other person. You like being shared, credited, and followed back right? This is known as being open and supportive.

4. Create at least some kind of content in your niche and publish it every day.This will brand you as an expert in your niche. The sharing that you do will result in even more sharing of your stuff. This is called shareism.

5. Start believing in yourself. And start saying this. People believe in people who believe in themselves (this is my most important point by the way). This is not “arrogance” or “conceit”. This is simply being. If someone compliments you or endorses you then allow and accept it. Promote it!

6. Be 100% positive. Always. If possible be fun too. People go online to be inspired and entertained. Not depressed and bored.

7. Thank. Publicly and often. Not only will this attitude of gratitude empower you but people will engage with and share your stuff again and again because of a simple thank you. People are also drawn to those they see thanking liberally.

8. Be around at least a bit everyday. People will engage and share the content of those who they know will see that being done and people who they think will respond. 30 minutes a day is better than 10 hours on just one day a week.

9. Hang out mainly with people who “get” and are doing the first 8 things I recommend.

Enough said. Does any of this look “hard” ?

This was given to you for free. If you got value please give me +K in social media and share this post by liking it on Stumble Upon. Thanks.

Any questions?

To your success

Michael

I read recently that Coca Cola are focusing on content marketing right now.

This made me think...why? 

Surely Coke makes drinks not content?

Binh Tran, CTO and co-founder of the San Francisco-based Klout – a company that provides social media analytics and measurement of influence on users – says when it comes to comparing two job applicants on paper and making a decision, the job usually goes to the person who serves up creative, engaging content that has strong connections in the professional community.

Wow so we are all expected to be content producers?

Yes. You control the information age.

In 2012 we all have the ability to quickly make social networking profiles, websites, pages and more for free. So everyone is on an even footing in the new marketing and media paradigm. If you are not skilled at creating then curate other people's. They will love you for it. Some of you will share this and change my title slightly or add a different picture. This is curation and there are many great free tools available to do this with now. I would start with Scoopit. First visit here.

How do you brand yourself most effectively? How do you get your name shared around everywhere in a positive way. How do you give value for free? 

By creating or curating a constant flow of insanely great content.

Content is indeed king. How are you using this kind of marketing? Content that was previously highly guarded and sold is now free everywhere. Marketers realise that they should give away their best stuff and keep the second tier content to sell. Or give up trying to sell content altogether.

This is the age of sharing and the term "shareism" may well be the word of 2012. In 2012 there will be twice as much sharing as in 2011 which will be for times as much as in 2010.So it is not enough just to create and curate content. You need to get it shared. Do you have a strategy for this?

Tumblr is now facilitating more sharing than Twitter. Pinterest is adding a million users a week.

Let's look however at Reddit.

In December 2011, Reddit served 2.07 billion pageviews. Crazy. Here are some details:

2,065,237,338 pageviews

34,879,881 unique visitors

12.97 pages / visit

16 minutes average time on site

Over 100 million monthly pageviews per employee

And, more importantly, the community stats:

100,000+ subreddits

8,400+ subreddits with over 100 subscribers

In less than a year, Reddit traffic has more than doubled. 

I recommend a weekly content marketing strategy with a regular analytical review of how much each piece was shared and where from. You may be able to build a brand much more quickly than you think.

Kind of a yest to see how responsive Spaces is.

Michael

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Hi my first ever post. Be prepared for many! 

I declare world peace

Michael