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Conversations and resources for small business, startup, and solopreneur content marketing and social media.

How To Put Your Community At The Heart Of Your Virtual Event

February 22, 2021 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Virtual events skyrocketed in importance in 2020, and 92% of companies plan to host a digital event, meet-up, conference, or other virtual gatherings in 2021.

These virtual or hybrid event settings have a natural appeal given the potential benefits and apparent conveniences. Virtual conferences encourage a greater diversity of attendees and speakers because there is no need for travel. There are measurable environmental benefits that make virtual event experiences a sustainable option. And, not to mention, there are countless types of event technology that can replicate (or even improve) some of the most-loved aspects of in-person events.

To achieve the full potential of digital conferences, though, marketing teams and event organizers must not lose sight of any event’s most critical element—the attendee experience.

Two crucial areas can easily make or break an attendee’s virtual event experience: the quality of event sessions and the availability of networking opportunities. Let’s explore how to approach each of these areas, along with general digital event best practices and ideas, to maximize your virtual gathering’s success.

Best Practices for Virtual Conference Sessions

The quality of your digital event sessions is arguably the most important area to focus on. Sometimes conference sessions do not address the “what’s in it for me” for attendees (a.k.a. WIIFM). In that case, virtual audience members will likely become disengaged with the sessions or skip them altogether (along with any future events that you host).

Many brands seem to liken their virtual events to webinars and employ similar tactics to structure the experience. This is a fundamentally misaligned approach, given that virtual event attendees expect a very different experience than they would get at a webinar.

To build a virtual event schedule that your audience will love, consider these planning elements.

Are Live or Pre-Recorded Sessions Better For Virtual Events?

A key differentiator of virtual events is that the sessions can be live-streamed, pre-recorded, or a mix of both. Each of these options provides unique opportunities for your team and carries a potential consequence to your audience experience.

Do You Know How Much Should You Pay Your Brand Influencers?

February 11, 2021 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Consumers’ trust in brands continues to decrease year-over-year, and they actively find new ways to avoid company advertising. This presents a challenge for marketing teams, as they now must explore different ways to connect and build relationships with their audiences.

It should come as no surprise that people most commonly turn to their friends, colleagues, and family to inform their purchasing decisions. But another avenue has become increasingly influential in shaping consumer purchasing habits—brand influencers.

Although some marketers have questioned the value of influencer marketing, these engagements have proven to be a powerful and potentially cost-effective way to expand a brand’s reach:

Marketers who implemented an influencer marketing campaign saw an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 spent on paid media.
63% of consumers between 18 and 34 say that they trust what influencers say about brands much more than what brands say about themselves.
58% of consumers surveyed said they have even purchased a new product because of an influencer in the last six months.

To maximize the potential results from an influencer marketing campaign, marketers need to understand what value they can expect from influencer marketing, the different types of influencers available, and how much to pay a brand influencer.

Determining the Value of an Influencer Collaboration

Before racing to sign on a high-profile influencer to partner with your brand, your team needs first to identify your brand’s goals and objectives for the influencer relationship.

When developing your initial engagement plan, ask your team these questions to build out your program goals:

What do we hope to gain by partnering with this influencer?
What do we expect of the influencer in this partnership?
Do we want a long-term engagement or just a single campaign?
How does this influencer’s audience differ from our existing audience? Do they reach a niche audience we have yet to tap into?
What do we want this influencer’s audience to do as a result of the collaboration?
How will success be measured? Are we looking for a direct financial return or something else?

How To Improve the Success of Your Brand Awards Nominations

February 4, 2021 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

People love to win awards. No matter how simple, the validation of one’s work and accomplishments sparks a genuine feeling of unshakeable joy. And these opportunities are ample throughout one’s lifetime—from spelling bees and sports competitions to baking contests or academic and scientific pursuits that can better the whole of society—so practically anyone can find their award sweet spot.

It should be no surprise that companies, too, would seek award recognition to reinforce the value of the service or product they provide, how they operate, and what their team has accomplished.

But, it’s easier said than done to earn this recognition. Running a successful company awards program takes consistent planning, monitoring, and hyper-focused submissions to prove that your company truly is award-worthy.

Additionally, awards are just one element of a successful thought leadership program. So teams must diligently assess the value of any award opportunity instead of pursuing every potentially relevant award just for the sake of it.

Let’s explore how companies can maximize their success through awards programs, with a deep-dive on what type of awards are relevant for brands, how to find relevant award opportunities for your team, and our tips for crafting award-winning submissions.

What Type of Awards Are Relevant For Brands?

If you’re new to the business awards space, you might be wondering what awards opportunities are even relevant for brands. You may be surprised that there is a range of options, a few general categories of which we’ll explain here.

If you’re already versed in the types of awards out there, though, feel free to skip ahead to get right to our tips for finding the right awards programs or writing award submissions.

There are four general business-relevant awards categories that you should look out for:

Brand Awards: Awards that honor a company for its business success, the work done by its team, or other elements of its makeup that is attractive to prospective employees, customers, and investors or shareholders. Brand awards can span anything from ‘Fastest-Growing Companies’ lists to awards that recognize strides in corporate social responsibility or achievements in customer satisfaction.
Culture Awards: Closely related to brand awards, culture awards recognize a company for its workplace culture elements and whether it is an ideal brand for prospective employees. These awards can be as general as ‘Best Places to Work’ or more specific like ‘Best Workplaces for Innovators’ or ‘Best Workplaces in the SF Bay Area.’
Product Awards: These awards focus specifically on a product, its capabilities, use cases, and competitive differentiators. Product awards cover a broad spectrum of specificity, including general categories of ‘B2B Technology’ or ‘Best Tools for Workplace Productivity’ to hyper-focused awards for specific industries or applications like ‘Best Tools for API Management.’
Individual Awards: Some awards primarily recognize business professionals and their achievements, and these awards can carry a brand halo effect of sorts for that person’s company. These awards include C-Suite recognition like ‘Top CEO,’ age-based criteria like ‘30 under 30’, gender-based criteria, or awards that recognize specific accomplishments or tenure.

Those are just a few of the general award types to explore, but as your company program matures, you will start to see more diverse awards opportunities. In initially assessing your team’s awards potential, ask yourselves what space(s) you want to bolster your reputation or stake your claim so that you can then research the right sort of opportunities.

How to Create A Thought Leadership Platform that Earns People’s Trust

January 18, 2021 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Of all the buzzwords and phrases surrounding marketing—unlike the desire to “go viral” or an obsession with “growth hacking”—”thought leadership” remains a concept of great potential (and confusion) for brands.

A joint Edelman and LinkedIn study reinforced the value of thought leadership and showed that thought leadership could have a significant impact on a company’s long-term viability:

Nearly half of business decision-makers spend one hour or more a week reading thought leadership content, with almost one in four spending four or more hours
Based on the quality of this content, half of the decision-makers say it is useful in influencing their purchasing decisions
42% are willing to pay a premium to work with an organization that produces thought leadership versus those that do not

However, the issue is that 74% of teams have no way to link sales or wins to their thought leadership. And simply producing thought leadership content does not guarantee success, as poorly crafted content can even decrease a company’s reputation.

So, what exactly is thought leadership, and how can brands engage in these activities in a successful way? Let’s explore the essential elements of a thought leadership platform and the activities that your team can pursue.

What is Thought Leadership?

An individual or brand reaches “thought leader” status when they become commonly associated with a specific topic or area of interest. Thought leaders are trusted voices in their space, and people look to them for their take on the latest trends, predictions, and cross-industry implications of the thought leadership topic of interest.

Many immediately recognizable thought leaders also happen to be C-suite leadership at global companies. For example, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is praised as a thought leader in cloud computing. IBM Executive Chairman and former CEO Ginni Rometty is a thought leader in quantum computing. But any person can become a thought leader regardless of their title or the size of their company.

An important thing to understand is that thought leadership is built through a series of consistent and calculated efforts that enmesh your brand and spokesperson in whichever space you target. It is not a finish line to cross or a box to check off your to-do list. Further, you should not expect to become a thought leader overnight. Thought leadership activities take several months—if not years—before they translate into ROI.

Can Brands Be Thought Leaders?

A quick point of clarification: thought leadership requires a spokesperson driving the activities. There are a few reasons for this. First, thought leadership involves an element of trust and respect that is earned, and people more readily trust other people, not brands. Second, thought leadership requires a person whose experience has given them a unique point of view. Further, contrary to the author’s byline on some company blogs, a brand doesn’t create content—people do!

Your brand needs to claim its unique position in its industry. A successful thought leadership strategy hinges on having a trusted and engaged thought leader to embody and give a face to your brand’s thought leadership position.

17 Marketing Industry Events You Need to Attend in 2021

December 30, 2020 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

Industry events and conferences can be immensely valuable for brands and individuals alike, presenting opportunities to catch up on the latest trends, network with other professionals in the space, and learn how to more efficiently drive results.

With the massive shift in favor of digital or hybrid digital/in-person event experiences in 2021 and beyond, it’s easier than ever to access a range of events tailored to any marketing need. Which presents a time management challenge: how do I find the right events for my needs, and how can I optimize my time at an industry event?

To help, we’ve collected more than 15 marketing industry events to attend in 2021, covering everything from content marketing and demand generation to social media strategy and sales enablement.

Once you find events that pique your interest, check out this post to explore what type of event engagement you should pursue. Keep in mind that the majority of these events have a fee to attend (great content takes resources). And those registration fees typically increase as the event draws closer, so you should act fast to lock in a low rate.

Or, if your team is planning its own event, read through these tips on how to make the digital event experience engaging for your audience.

If we’re missing your favorite marketing industry conference, let us know in the comments! We’ll update this post throughout the year to keep you updated as new events are announced, so keep this bookmarked so you can check back as more are added.

15 Free Chrome Browser Extensions Every Digital Marketer Should Add

December 28, 2020 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

A marketer’s day often involves a dizzying mix of tasks, bouncing from writing blog posts and crafting social media content to recording a podcast or designing a digital event experience.

Efficiency is the name of the game when balancing such a diverse to-do list, and savvy marketers know the value of digital tools to help them complete whatever content needs they face.

Luckily, some of the best tools are free to use and available through any marketer’s best friend—an internet browser. These digital marketing browser extensions provide a seamless experience and fast track almost any content needs. The hardest part is finding the right browser extensions for marketing, so we’ve asked the #ContentChat community and other marketing pros about their picks.

The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: Browser Extensions to Download

We recommend these browser extensions (in alphabetical order) to help with the range of tasks that content marketers face in their day-to-day.

Of note, this list focuses on those extensions available through the Google Chrome browser, but many are also available on other top browsers like Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

Spelling & Grammar Browser Extensions

Writing is the bread-and-butter of any marketing role, so a spelling and grammar check browser extension is a must-have.

There are several options to fit this need, and Grammarly is highest-recommended by our community. That said, each free option has varying capabilities, and some writers will naturally appreciate the interface of specific tools over others. We recommend you explore each of these to find the option that works best for your needs:

Digital Marketing Browser Extensions

Content creation is just one part of a marketer’s role, with search engine optimization, graphic design, and other tasks taking increasing priority. These are some of the top browser extensions to meet a range of digital marketing needs:

Alexa Traffic Rank: Need a quick look at a website’s traffic? The Alexa Traffic Rank extension is perfect for a general gauge of how popular a website is. The tool shows global traffic rank, plus the rank in whichever country the site best performs. This is useful when researching high-authority domains or trying to prioritize different opportunities based on traffic. As with most free tools, the details are limited, though, and we recommend you explore paid options if this tool is short of what you need.
Bitly: Quickly create and share shortened, trackable URLs. This extension gives you all of Bitly’s website features within your browser.
Calendly: This extension expands the value of your free Calendly account and enables you to view and schedule meetings right from your browser.
ColorPick Eyedropper: The design-minded content marketer will love ColorPick, as it gives the hexadecimal, RGB, or HSL color code of anything on your screen. The extension can also help you create a color palette based on the color you select.
ColorZilla: Unsure if ColorPick is right for you? Give ColorZilla a try! The two provide similar features with a different user experience, so your pick will depend on how design-focused your role is.
Dictanote: This note-taking and organizing tool is notable for enabling speech-to-text so that you can take notes by talking.
Evernote Web Clipper: “Better than a bookmark,” this tool lets you save web pages, articles, and PDFs that you can then annotate and organize in just a few clicks.
GIPHY: Why say it with text when you can say it with GIF? Send GIFs and stickers easier than ever using this tool.
Headline Studio: Expanding on the immensely valuable CoSchedule headline analyzer, the Headline Studio extension allows you to draft and analyze headlines on any website. The tool even has a built-in thesaurus and word bank so you can add unique power, emotional, and uncommon words that make your headlines pop.
LastPass: If you struggle with remembering your passwords or need help creating unique passwords to strengthen your online security, LastPass is a great tool that securely stores and auto-fills your passwords.
SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant: Although this is technically an add-on for Google Docs or WordPress, we couldn’t skip recommending this incredible SEO tool. It checks your content for SEO-friendliness in real time based on your target keywords, with everything from a plagiarism checker and tone of voice analysis to a link checker and recommended keywords.
Serpstat: This SEO tool gives a page and domain analysis in just a few clicks, including top keywords, optimization information, and more.
WhatFont: Ever wonder what font a web page uses? WhatFont has you covered.

Extensions That Meet Any Digital Marketing Need

The above tools are just a few of our favorites, but there are plenty more that you can try. Google Chrome has a writing essentials page with 40+ extensions that could help supercharge your writing, for starters.

Did we miss your favorite browser extension? Let us know in the comments! Tell us the extension name and how it makes your day-to-day more manageable, and we will update this list as relevant.