Keep Your Customers Coming Back in Times of Content Overload

Randy Frisch and I had the chance to connect with some of the best professionals in content marketing, and we kept you in mind every step of the way. Joining us is simple. Choose a Content Pros podcast and press play.

Don't miss out on the chance to hear Justin Levy, Mike Stiles, Allen Gannett, David B. Thomas, and Jay Baer share their content marketing expertise.

Getting the Most Out of Free Real Estate

Wikipedia is regularly a top Google result for brands and many customers will check out a company's page before visiting the brand's very own website. In spite of this, rarely is there a team assigned to overseeing and working with the content for this vital first impression.

As Director of Social Marketing at Citrix, Justin Levy has succeeded in not only working with Wikipedia on ensuring an accurate and informational page, but also in balancing the need to push out content without overwhelming the audience (both internal and external). His strategy for crafting, publishing, and overseeing content has led to an online presence that is engaging, informational, and successful.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation with Justin:

• How an open publishing system for internal content leads to a decrease in employee advocacy and engagement
• The dangers and advantages of tagging
• How incorporating Wikipedia management into marketing leads to a deep SEO strategy

Together But Separate

Multiple brands competing for attention in a crowded, noisy, online marketplace can overwhelm and exhaust even the most seasoned professional. For Mike Stiles, Global Content Strategy Manager for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), navigating the waters of multiple brands means taking a step back. Instead of being hands on and controlling each brand’s message, he takes a more consultant-like route, letting the brands carve their own path.

By trusting each brand to know their own audience, Mike empowers his team to create more relevant and impactful content, and that success reflects positively on the company as a whole.

On this podcast, Mike shares great insights about:

• How juggling multiple brands can lead to content chaos
• Why empowering your enterprise means stepping back and acting more as a consultant than a manager
• How your brands can lead your content to success

Less is More

The question on everyone’s mind is why is content marketing booming, yet falling flat and ultimately hurting businesses?

As Allen Gannett, CEO of TrackMaven, sees it, posting content on every channel all day long can be pointless and harmful without a strong strategy. If your customer finds your articles irrelevant, they aren’t likely to click. And even worse, in their mind, the association of being irrelevant will extend to your brand as well.

The strength in content lies in responding to demand, educating the audience, and focusing your efforts on the channels where your customers work and play.

It’s not too late to hear from Allen about:

• Why the explosion in content quantity does not mean a similar increase in engagement
• How relevance leads to content that is powerful and impactful
• Why focusing on essential channels means being ok with a smaller quantity of content that has bigger impact

Data Mining for Content

With 20 years of B2B marketing experience (the past 8 of those years focused on content and social) David B. Thomas, Senior Director of Inbound Marketing at Leadspace, understands how to balance creativity with data. His thorough approach to pairing compelling content with vetted data led a unified content and social media marketing team at Salesforce that generated 15% of all valid leads in North America in 2014, and more than $150MM in pipeline.

Combining Dave’s expertise in content and skill with data ensures that every piece has the best possible audience to make the largest impact on your business.

Here are 3 insights to gain by listening to Dave's episode now:

• Why effective content marketing means taking the information you already have and customizing it for your audience
• How careless and shallow personalization leads to a decrease in content efficiency
• How up-to-date customer data leads to more accurate content

Keep Customers Coming Back For More (Content)

We all know the power of content to acquire new customers. But what about keeping the ones we already have?

As customer service moves to the very public realm of social media, Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, knows there is a huge opportunity for businesses to both acquire and retain customers by showing you care for them publicly and privately. Embracing public feedback, both good and bad, allows you to create motivating content that caters to both new and existing customers.

Click here for more on Jay’s proven approach:

• Why thinking through to customer retention means creating content that embraces feedback
• How creating content solely for customer acquisition leads to a decrease in revenue
• Why the public forum of social media griping means a huge opportunity for businesses

This monthly round-up of the weekly Content Pros podcast shares some takeaways from recent episodes. If you like what you've read (and heard), please subscribe to show on iTunes or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

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Cross-Channel Orchestration: Customer Journeys Done the Right Way

The digital marketing world is enamored idea of customer journeys -- and why not? The idea behind them is great. They help us plot out a personalized path for customers based on their interests and behaviors to deliver more relevant experiences. The problem is, most customer journeys don’t actually work. In fact, we asked CMOs to assess their traditional customer journey efforts, and 96% of them expressed dissatisfaction with how they work today.

That’s why the Oracle Marketing Cloud team was proud to announce this week the newest iteration of our Orchestration Canvas. Found inside Oracle Responsys, the Orchestration Canvas provides a centralized place for marketers to build cross-channel experiences for their customers, spanning key marketing channels such mobile, email, web and display advertising.

In this post, I’ll recap key elements of the Orchestration Canvas and the key market problem it helps consumer marketers address.

Remove Marketing Silos with Elegant Canvas to Build Cross-Channel Experiences

According to IDC, consumers that engage across channels hold a 30% customer lifetime value (CLV) than a customer that engages on one channel. But as marketers try to coordinate a more cross-channel experience, silos for people -- and the technology they work from -- can get in the way. The email team might send email from one platform, while the mobile team enables messaging from a different platform. More than 90% of marketing teams have this problem, according to eConsultancy.

Our Orchestration Canvas provides a centralized place for marketers to come together and orchestrate interactions across numerous channels. The exhaustive list includes email, mobile SMS, MMS, push notifications, in-app messages, display advertising, web campaigns, and mobile web campaigns.

With this announcement, we noted that the Orchestration Canvas was recently restyled in Alta, an initiative our product team has been using to make even the most sophisticated user actions simple and elegant to perform.

Build Personalized Experiences Based on User Behavior

Within the Orchestration Canvas, marketers can pivot customer experiences based on a variety of user behaviors. These behavior triggered event such as browse abandonment, site search, and many others allow marketers to keep pace with the rapidly shifting preferences of the modern consumer. Traditionally these complex behavior driven marketing messages were only possible for companies with large IT teams and the patience for custom solution development, however all of these functions can be performed through an easy drag and drop interface with Oracle Responsys.

There are a number of tools in the Orchestration Canvas that help marketers adaptive to customer behaviors including: Event Switches that moves a customer through a different path based on an action or Stage Gates that wait and listen for an action to occur before moving a customer forward.

Build Adaptive Experiences Based on Data

While those tools allow marketers to build adaptive experiences based on rules they define, we’re also starting to incorporate machine-learning and predictive techniques to orchestrate experiences. As Oracle announced last week, Oracle Adaptive Intelligence will allow marketers to deliver recommendations and offers based on a variety of 1st party data that sits in the Oracle Marketing Cloud and third-party audience data from the Oracle Data Cloud to model ideal customer experiences.

Test Your Mobile Experiences; Don’t Guess

Just because marketers can automate a customer journey doesn't always mean they do a good job. That’s why the Oracle Marketing Cloud announced a new editor that helps marketers test the experiences customers have in their mobile applications. While this capability always existed within Oracle Marketing Cloud, this update makes it more accessible to non-technical users.

It also follows a long heritage of making testing a vital part of the customer experience. Marketers who use the Orchestration Canvas can do everything from a simple A/B test right up to more complex multivariate tests that help a marketer make informed decisions about what customer experience makes the most sense.

We hope consumer marketers will continue to redefine how they build customer journeys and stay tuned for more modern marketing innovation from the Oracle Marketing Cloud product team!

Save

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5 Cool Ways to Make Marketing Magic with Interactive Content

On the occasion of the new trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I was thinking about the fantastical wizarding world of Harry Potter. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world with magical items like pictures that move, newspapers that automatically update themselves, portraits that speak?

Then it hit me: My smartphone can show moving pictures and auto-updated news, and it doesn’t have to be delivered by owl. AND it’s a lot more compact than the average Daily Prophet issue. Sure, we can’t play proper Quidditch yet—someone get Elon Musk on flying broomstick development—but as far as interactive content goes, Muggles have got it on lock.

The point is, content can do a lot more these days than sit on a screen and look pretty. Are your content marketing efforts taking advantage of that fact? Do you invite your readers to participate in an experience? Or are they left doing this?

There are dozens of ways both subtle and flashy that you can add an extra kick to your content. Here are five to get you started, complete with examples to interact with.

#1: Make Data Extra-Relevant

Say you have a big set of data that relates to 12 different verticals within your target audience. You could make a dozen different infographics. You could write a dozen different blog posts. If you were feeling really sadistic, you could mash all the data into one content source and let each vertical search for the relevant info.

Or you could start with a template, let the user pick which data sources they’d like to see, and watch the most relevant info magically fill in. That’s what LinkedIn did, with the help of the wizards at Ceros, for their Where to Find Talent in the United States infographic. Pick your industry at the top, and it fills in the template with customized data.

Numbers fly in as you scroll down, delivering exactly the information you were looking for like a Hogwarts owl on a mission. It’s a neat way to make sure each viewer finds exactly what they’re looking for.

#2: Allow for Automated Hyper-Personalization

Checklists are a go-to content type that content marketers use to add a little extra value. It gives your reader a condensed version of your content, all action items, no filler. Readers tend to enjoy checklists, too—they perform well as a gated asset or as a stand-alone.

But you can improve on the humble checklist by making it interactive. Let your audience pick the most relevant points and compile their own list automatically, as in this interactive infographic from Cross Country Home. SnapApp helped the home maintenance company create the infographic, which allows the reader to choose areas of particular concern, then generate a customized to-do list (after ponying up an email address).

The interactivity makes the checklist far more valuable for the reader, and justifies having the end report gated. It also introduces an element of discovery with clicking on each icon—which might lead to readers spending more time with the content.

#3:  Tell Readers Something about Themselves

Let’s face it—we love looking at ourselves, talking about ourselves, taking pictures of ourselves, and learning about ourselves. Don’t chalk that up to millennial narcissism either. Some of the earliest photographs we have are self-portraits (not to mention all the old-school self-portraits from painters and sculptors).

You can capitalize on the joy of self-discovery with quiz-based content. From personality quizzes to identifying your Patronus, quizzes are irresistible. Especially so when they’re about something that matters, like Influitive’s “What’s Your Marketing Personality Type?” quiz.

This quiz gets bonus cool points for not making you click to a new page for every question. SnapApp created a single, linear-scrolling experience that removes obstacles for completion.

Take note of how Influitive presents the results: There’s your marketing type, a description, and then a brief paragraph on skills your type might need to further develop. Right under that—an eBook offer! What a perfectly logical next step.

#4: Present a Ton of Info in a Visually Compelling Way

This next example takes what could have been a blog post or a slideshow, and makes it something that’s a lot more fun to play around with. Even if the information is familiar, or common knowledge, a novel presentation can make it worth a second look.

Designhill created this interactive guide to famous company logos. It presents itself as a seemingly infinite grid, with logos lined up in rows just waiting to be clicked so they can reveal their secrets.

As you scroll and explore, you’ll notice some of the tiles are calls to action: Create a Logo, Get a New Graphic Design, etc. These CTAs are inobtrusive but designed to be spotted after you’ve had fun playing with the content. And if you happen to miss them, there’s a CTA in each of the info pages that pop up when you click a tile.

#5: Bring Together Disparate Elements

No one’s product exists in a vacuum. Unless you sell vacuum bags, and even if you do, that’s not what I meant and you know it. Your target consumer has an entire life outside of their relationship with your product—and many aspects of that life also involve interaction with other products. Interactive content can help you address the larger context of your audience’s lives.

This fantastic Summer of ‘66 widget from Asos is a prime example of that kind of synergy—not the bad, buzzword-y kind, but a genuine combination of separate elements to make something groovier than the sum of its parts. Pick your 60’s style, and get music recommendations you can buy on Amazon or iTunes, clothes from Asos, and a Spotify playlist to stream immediately.

It’s a triumph of great design, effortless cool, and actual utility, inviting readers to customize an entire experience, not just a look or a sound. I’m just sad the sweepstakes to win that turntable is over.

Expecto Engagement!

In this age of wonders, we don’t have to stick to old Muggle methods of content marketing. Text will always have its place, of course. There’s no substitute for good old-fashioned long-form content. But your audience will appreciate it if you conjure up interactive experiences that enhance your quality content.

What else can interactive content do? What has your team created that dazzled your audience? Let me know in the comments.

Disclosure: LinkedIn Marketing is a TopRank Marketing client. 

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How to Add Real-Time Communication to Your Existing Marketing Stack

Let’s think back to the early days of social media for a moment, and how it impacted our marketing.

Not only did it bring the potential of massive free exposure, it radically increased transparency as well. Every good or bad customer experience suddenly became a potentially viral story. And thus the relation between business and consumer was changed, forever.

But social media isn’t at the top of the digital food chain anymore. As of 2015, messaging apps have overtaken social networking apps in monthly active users.

In 2015, messaging apps overtook social media platforms in monthly active users. (Image Source)

This balance tip coincided with a few other developments: Facebook’s launch of Messenger for Business, WhatsApp announcing a move into B2C communication, an increasing reliance by businesses on message-based communication tools like Slack, and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) entering a critical phase. The last point was nicely illustrated by AlphaGo wiping the floor with our human champions in Go.

Chris Messina, the guy who brought us the #hashtag, noticed the interplay between these developments, and concluded in a post on Medium that we’re at the brink of another revolution in B2C relationships.

Where before you would use your messaging apps for simple interactions with friends, the above developments allow them to be used for real-time conversations with businesses as well – whether that’s with a service rep or an intelligent chatbot. He dubbed this new era of B2C relationships ‘conversational commerce’.

So, how can you take advantage of this development? How can you integrate real-time communication into your existing marketing stack?

First, let’s clarify why you’ll want to jump aboard this trend in the first place. Then we’ll share some ideas and company examples that will help you start off today.

The Promise of Real-Time Communication

For years, marketers have known the power of ‘now’. Pay attention to the banners and billboards you’ll run into throughout the rest of the day, and notice how often they’re filled with maxims like ‘instant access’, ‘same day delivery’, and ‘quick checkout’. Immediacy strongly impacts our buying behavior.

Amazon Prime, a prime example of our desire for immediacy. (Image Source)

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli shares an experiment into our weakness for ‘right now’ with two groups of participants.

Group A was asked whether they would rather receive $1,000 in 12 months, or $1,100 in 13 months. Most chose the 13-month option; because where else will you find an investment option with a 10% monthly interest rate?

Group B was offered a slightly different choice. They could choose to receive $1,000 today, or $1,100 in one month. Here, most people choose the $1,000 today option. This is remarkable. The choice is basically the same – except that the $1,000 today targets our weakness for wanting things right now. That’s hyperbolic discounting, our irrational preference for what we can get now over what we can get in the future.

Real-time customer service has a similar effect on our preference for right now. According to a Forrester Research study, 57% of online customers leave a website if they don’t receive a quick answer on their question.

This was confirmed in a case study with Intuit, the company behind the financial products QuickBooks and Mint. By placing live chat for real-time support during its checkout process, Intuit increased its average order value by 43%.

From “Interaction” to “Relation”

A major benefit of communication via messaging apps is that it results in a permanent and low-barrier connection with the customer.

Once a phone call with a customer is over, the connection is broken. That is not the case with email, but email has a high barrier to contact compared to writing a message on Facebook.

A permanent low barrier connection promises a major increase in customer interaction – keeping your business top of mind and always accessible.

Also, when a conversation picks up again, it happens within the context of a messaging thread. This makes it easier for support reps to understand the situation and provide a good answer. While emails and phone calls are mere snapshots, messaging threads represent long-term relationships.

Lower Costs per Interaction

As mentioned above, the existing messaging thread will prevent duplication. Things become more efficient when customers don’t have to repeat their issue with every service handover – not to mention more pleasant.

At the same time, advancements in natural language processing fuel expectations of chatbots soon solving many support questions that humans are tackling at the moment. Not all, of course. But a modest 20% would already represent a huge gain in efficiency.

We’re still some years away from scenes like in the movie Her, in which we’re having natural conversations with smooth sounding chatbots that are indistinguishable from those with humans. What is closer and easier to picture, however, is a sort of ‘chat cyborg’ – a human service rep that uses AI to deliver a superior service.

When a question comes in, AI runs it through the database of customer interactions and offers answer suggestions to its human colleague. The human serves as the last check, and can choose to override the suggestions or adjust them. The AI learns from the answer that is given, as well as the response from the customer (was it the right response?). That way, the chat cyborg is continuously growing in smarts and efficiency.

Now let’s look at how you can start with reaping the fruits of these developments today.

How to Get Started With Real-Time Communication

Live Chat on your Site

Web chat has been around for some years, but is developing fast together with the abovementioned trends. You implement a live chat window on your website, through which visitors can reach out and receive support.

Live chat offers many of the benefits described above, such as the power of instant support and minimizing duplication. What makes it especially powerful is that the chat is available at a critical moment in the buyer’s journey – on the website.

A customer might be ready to buy, but has some small concerns or questions before doing so. With live chat there’s no need to delay the purchase, since questions can be resolved on the spot.

A great example of how to do chat right is Apple’s live chat service.

Live chat is an important ingredient in Apple’s service setup.

If you’re an Apple user, I recommend you try it out next time you have a service question. You receive full and detailed answers in no-time, which suggest they make use of an intelligent knowledge base in the backend.

Facebook’s Messenger for Business allows live chat providers to connect to their platform, and tools like Telegram and WeChat are open for this as well. We can expect tighter integrations between website chat and messaging support in the future.

Rogers connected its support team with Facebook to help customers via their favorite channel.

Messaging support

Messaging support is very promising, simply because it’s so darn convenient for consumers. They send a question through their favorite messaging app, and receive an answer in their back pockets.

For this to work, you need to hook up your support team to your messaging channels – be it Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, or a combination – and let your customers reach out to you.

One example of a business deploying large scale messaging support is Livecrowd, a Dutch company offering next-level customer service and experience for mass crowd events. Think festivals, football matches, or concerts (see Beyoncé’s concert page below). Such events are major logistical challenges. A quick and easy way to advise visitors about transport or safety is invaluable.

Messaging support is perfect for customers on the go, such as music event visitors.

Another messaging example from the Netherlands is KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines. Since a few weeks, they’ve added Facebook Messenger support to their booking process.

This makes it easy for flyers to check the status on their flights and ask support agents any questions:

Managing your booking with an app you’re already familiar with.

When you’re booking a flight and are logged into your Facebook account, you can select to stay updated about your flight through messenger. When you have a delay, for example, you receive an update on the app. You can also receive your boarding pass through Messenger, or ask questions to the KLM service team directly.

As you can see, part of KLM’s messaging support is automated. Which brings us to the next application.

Chatbots

Chatbots are a hot and exciting area of the tech industry, mainly because they’re fueled by advancements in machine learning.

Slack allows you to connect an existing chatbot to your team or build one with its own logic, while Facebook’s Chatbot API allows you to build a bot for Messenger. There are also plenty of third party apps that allow you to set up a chatbot fairly easily, such as Motion AI.

One example of the extensive use of chatbots is Call of Duty. Players can connect with Lieutenant Reyes chatbot, and solve a not-so-easy-to-solve puzzle. This chatbot sent over six million messages to its gamers in total.

Chatbots will only become more interesting with the continuous advancements in machine learning. The more intelligent the chatbots become, the more customer interactions can be left to them.

How to Get Started

Make a comprehensive communication plan.
To get started with real-time communication, you’ll need to integrate it in a comprehensive communication plan. Ask yourself: What channels make sense for me and my customers?

Set up a dedicated service team.
The fact that conversational commerce is based on text means that compared to phone, more interactions can be done per service agent. But you’ll also have a lower barrier for contact, so you can expect the number of customer interaction to rise. You’ll need a dedicated real-time communication team to support this.

Empower frontline employees.
In real-time communication, speed is king. Zendesk stated that customer satisfaction in live chat dropped after 30 seconds of waiting. Since you’ll be having so many customer inquiries requiring fast responses, it’s essential to empower your frontline employees to resolve issues themselves. The number of cases that require involvement from higher up should be minimized.

Set up communication guidelines.
That doesn’t mean your real-time communication should be a free-for-all. On the contrary, it takes directed effort to maintain a consistent voice across all channels. Like The Economist maintains a style guide for its articles, you should require a style guide for your real-time communication as well. On what level of familiarity will you communicate? If you’ll speak in English, will it be British or American?

Play together with your other channels.
In the world of conversational commerce, one-on-one conversations will cover a much wider area of topics than before. That’s why your frontend employees need to be well aware of all external communications. Whether it’s social media, content, email, or performance marketing – your real-time communication channel needs to be in sync.

Track key metrics.
One key benefit of written communication is that it can easily be tracked. Most live chat solutions, for example, have standard integrations with analytics solutions like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. With them, it’s easy to measure key indicators of quality communication: first response time, handovers per issue, service ratings, etc.

Conclusion

We really do seem to be at the brink of another revolution in the relationship between businesses and customers.

You can start reaping the benefits of real-time communication today, by taking the first steps with website chat, messaging support, and chatbots. Happy chatting!

About the Author: Pascal van Opzeeland is CMO of Userlike, software for website and messaging support. He and his team share tips about customer communication on the Userlike Blog.

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Going Global in Marketing Involves More Than Just Translating The Words

Globalization is key to Modern Marketing. Global companies stand out from competitors, can work with remote teams in other countries, reach new and different kinds of customers and engage more deeply with segments in alpha cities.

But as the Harvard Business Review points out, going global is “much easier to admire than to imitate.” After analyzing 20,000 companies in 30 countries, HBR “found that companies selling abroad had an average Return on Assets (ROA) of minus 1% as long as five years after their move.” As the magazine notes, this may be because companies aren’t learning enough about the culture of their new markets.

Getting tone right is critical to success in marketing abroad.

Formal or Informal

Translate everything! This is the first thought most companies have when they want to go global. But translation is more than word-for-word substitution. It’s also about using the words people prefer and expect. This is a matter of tone. What good is a message that cuts through all the noise and clutter, just to be ignored by customers because it’s boring or offensive? As our mothers taught us, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

One measure of tone is formality or informality. Do these customers expect you to be buttoned-up and business-like? Or do they expect you to be conversational and familiar, using idioms and slang that bridge the gap between business and customer? Marketers must research customer groups in these new markets to understand which tone is more appropriate.

Marketers must also remember to ignore their own preferences. When being sold to, most people enjoy formality or informality based on the country they grew up in and the kind of advertising they’ve internalized. But around the world, different segments respond best to different approaches.

For example, Native English speakers from North America often like informal tone in B2C communication and prefer to be treated like an old friend by businesses. This is evident in the success of US campaigns, like Budweiser’s “Whassup?” ads, McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” motto, and “PC vs. Mac,” which ridiculed formal PC next to informal Mac.

However, not all customers will appreciate it if a company speaks to them this casually.

The French Connection

Recently, I became the B2C liaison between North America and EMEA at Oracle Marketing Cloud. As a result, I spoke with my colleagues — who manage the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal offices—to learn more about their customers.

A French manager revealed something new to me: French customers prefer a certain distance between themselves and companies, which is unlike other European countries that embrace the US’s more relaxed B2C culture (like Germany, for instance). French customers want companies to speak to them in a way that US marketers would probably think is ornate and long-winded. What US customers might think is fluffy or maybe uptight, French customers tend to embrace as a sign of elegance and respect.

McDonald’s slogan in French isn’t Je l’aime, the literal translation of “I’m lovin’ it.” It’s C’est tout ce que j’aime, which means “It’s all that I love.” The takeaway? French customers, generally speaking, expect formality!

Here are the three things that I learned from these experiences: 

1. Qualitative Research

Personally talking to a native speaker to learn about their region’s culture is critical when entering new markets.

2. Translation Takes Time

Translation is so time-consuming because, if done right, it reflects not only fluency of language but also fluency of mindset.

3. Emotion Plays a Role

Translation, intonation, and globalization all involve what sociologists call emotional labor, or work that has “deliberate attempts to shape [other peoples’] feelings.” Emotional labor is exhausting, but often it’s not seen as the challenge it really is—both in the workplace and in life.

Before you communicate with new customers in a new part of the world — discover the nuances of their linguistic culture. Translate with the right tone to craft an authentic message, even in a new language that may be Greek to you.

What are some other concerns your business should consider before going global? There are a lot of details to address when it comes to building an organization, especially abroad. Download the The CMO Solution Guide For Building A Modern Marketing Organization today to get off to the right start!

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How to Think About Hustle

How to Think About Hustle written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Neil Patel

The word Hustle sometimes gets a bad wrap.

In days of old, it conjured up thoughts of Getting Hustled as in a scam. Even today its meaning can get lost in a work all day and night Gary V kind of hustle.

But I think there’s a middle ground – more like Charley Hustle – the player that prepares, works hard, and wins and loses with grace.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Neil Patel, author of Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum. He is also the founder of Quick Sprout, Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. Neil and I talk about how to find your passion and turn that momentum into a successful business that is both professionally and personally rewarding.

Neil knows all about hustle. Coming from a hard-working family, he has entrepreneurship in his blood and has helped companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

Questions I ask Neil Patel:

• You break the book up into three sections – Heart, Head & Habits. Can you explain how this ties into finding your passion?
• “Hustle” can imply negative preconceptions; why did you choose this for your book’s title?
• What is the “10-Minute Rule” and how has it changed your life?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• How exploring several paths, and failing at some, can reveal your true calling
• Why stress is actually good for leveraging your career
• How combining your “natural talent” with your other abilities can lead to a successful business

Learn more about Neil Patel and the amazing progress he’s made in marketing here. Buy Neil’s book, Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum, here.

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10 Tools to Help Marketers Get More Out of Twitter

Most marketers understand that their Twitter efforts need to go beyond consistent tweeting if they want to grow their following and boost engagement. It takes commitment, strategy and constant management.

But as social networks and audiences continue to evolve—and marketers find themselves juggling more social networks and content responsibilities each day—staying on top of it all can be daunting and even frustrating. In fact, B2B marketers use an average of 6 social media platforms to distribute content, according to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketProfs 2016 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America report.

Sound like you?

Well, the good news is that there are a number of tools that can help you manage your Twitter account, as well as make it easy for you to share, interact and grow your following—and even mine for new content ideas and gain a better understand the impact of your content—so you can make all your effort count.

Whether you want to boost visual content, host a Twitter chat or find relevant followers, below we dive into some of the tools that are worth your consideration if you want to get the most out of your Twitter efforts.

#1 – Bit.ly

Bit.ly has long been known as a tool for shortening links, but that’s certainly not its only capability. By signing up for a free account, you can also use the tool to share links to multiple Twitter (and Facebook) accounts and individually track performance of those links—allowing you to quickly share content and get insight into how your audience interacts with that content. In addition, with an enterprise account you can create a branded short domain and get deeper audience analytics.

#2 – Hootsuite

Hootsuite has been my go-to social media management tool since my journalism days for a few different reasons:

• You can post directly to Twitter and other social media pages within the platform.
• You can schedule out posts, making it easy to post consistently.
• You can monitor all your feeds, allowing you to instantly interact with those you follow and your own followers.
• You can track the conversations around specific hashtags or keywords by setting up an individual stream.

With a free account, you can also get access to some basic analytics, content suggestions and the ability to integrate two RSS feeds so you can easily share relevant content from your own blog or other trusted sources. Hootsuite also offers Professional, Team, Business and Enterprise plans that allow you to customize the tool for your own unique needs.

#3 – BuzzSumo

If you’re looking to create better content, discover relevant influencers or both, BuzzSumo could be the tool for you. This little excerpt from their website sums the tool up up nicely:

“BuzzSumo gives you insight into what content is working, and the influencers amplifying it.”

When it comes to hot content, BuzzSumo allows you to instantly search and discover the most shared content within the last day, week, month, six months or year. In addition, you’ll see data for the engagement and shares that content has received across social networks, and the number of linking domains.

To find relevant influencers, the tool allows you to search by username or topic. Some of the insights you’ll find are page authority, domain authority, number of followers, retweet ratio, reply ratio and the average number of retweets.

#4 – Keyhole

With Keyhole you can track hashtags, mentions, keywords, URLs and Twitter accounts in real-time, which can be especially useful for keeping track of the conversation and engagement happening around your company or brand—or even your top competitors.

Below is a sample of the tracking information you’d see for #digitalmarketing. You can see that the data includes the top posts, related topics, recent users, the most influential users, and some analytics.

While Keyhole isn’t free, it offers several different size plans from professional to enterprise—and there’s a free trial option.

# 5 – Periscope

These days, it’s pretty safe to say that all marketers understand that video is an increasingly important marketing tool for capturing audience attention, showing value and encouraging engagement across the digital universe. Using Twitter’s Periscope app, you can natively share live video that is a little more raw and authentic, giving your audience something more visual and compelling to interact with.

#6 – Buffer

Buffer is another fantastic social media management tool that allows you to consistently schedule tweets and other social posts. But one of the big advantages of this tool is that it shares your content at the best possible times throughout the day to maximize exposure.

In addition, Buffer recently added video sharing capabilities, as well as Pablo, which allows you to create beautiful and perfectly sized images.

#7 – Crowdfire

Crowdfire was originally built to be the answer to the frequently asked question: “Who unfollowed me on Twitter?” But now the tool has “matured into a holistic friend management platform,” according to its website.

The “Copy Followers” is one of the most interesting Crowdfire features, allowing you to search similar users’ followings and “copy them” to the list of people you’re following. The idea here is that they’ll want to follow you, too, since they’re already following someone similar to you or your brand.

Crowdfire also gives you the ability to see who you’re following that is inactive and makes it easy for your to unfollow them. You can also keep track of how the content and updates you share actually affects your follow and unfollow stats. This information can give you a good idea of what types of updates are turning people off and enticing them to follow.

#8 – Twubs

Over the past couple years, Twitter chats have emerged as a marketing tactic that allows brands and marketers to connect with their audience, build awareness and showcase what they have to offer. Twubs is a tool that allows you to find and follow relevant Twitter chats, or even host your own.

Other tools that can help you manage a Twitter chat include: TweetChat.com, Tchat.io, Twitterfall and TwChat.

#9 – SocialRank

SocialRank is a tool that can help you better understand and analyze who your most engaged or most influential followers, helping you identify and track important people who you should be engaging with.

The basic account is totally free and gives you the ability to filter and sort your followers, view their full profiles and connect multiple social accounts. There are also Premium and Market Intel versions that offer a host of other features and benefits such as the ability to send a direct message to multiple recipients.

#10 – Twitter Analytics

The native analytics dashboard within Twitter is a must-use. It’s free, simple and already built into the platform—you just have to turn it on. The dashboard features detailed overview of all your activity for the past 28 days, including your top tweets, top mentions and top followers.

What is your favorite Twitter tool and why? Share it with us in the comments section below.

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