Content marketing is something most marketers have done for years without ever knowing that it had a name.  I don’t remember learning about it in journalism school, yet I’ve provided content marketing to my clients since my first day at my first marketing job.  The only difference is that now, I’m sharing it online.

Content marketing is defined as “using informative or entertaining content to attract and retain customers and position your business as a trusted resource in your industry.”

Instead of aggressive and persistent outgoing messages designed to attract attention, content marketing provides useful information that can be quietly appreciated and uniquely valued by clients and prospects alike. The sales message from you is subtle—almost to the point of subliminal.

If you’ve ever read your alma mater’s alumni magazine, you’ve read content marketing. If you have spoken at a Chamber of Commerce or other networking event, you’ve provided content marketing. Recipes on the back of cans from food companies, realtor articles in the local paper, customer newsletters – these are all considered content marketing.

The bottom line is that content marketing is never a direct sales pitch. “Content marketing is engaging with your community around an idea instead of a product. What it is is to try to serve the community first, and sharing information, ideas and experiences that benefit others without directly asking for anything in return. What it isn’t is just a veil in front of a sales pitch,” says Dan Blank of We Grow Media.

Here are some examples of content marketing you may already be doing:

• Free workshops, seminars or webinars
• A regular newsletter that educates (not sells)
• A well-written, regularly updated blog
• A customer newsletter or magazine that educates – not sells
• Articles you write for trade magazines or journals
• Video tutorials
• Detailed case studies
• White papers

Share valuable info on your website, social sites and blog, and you will be employing a great age-old marketing tool that also helps to educate consumers on the products and services you sell (and they need).  As long as your content gives them something they need or want for free, they will likely seek out and share your future content marketing because you have demonstrated trust, authority, and influence.

Facebook contests offer many benefits. They can increase Likes and fan engagement on your page; secure relevant and targeted fans; add to your e-mail list; increase traffic on your website; and more. Is it time you held a Facebook contest? Here are some tips:

1. Plan ahead
Running an online contest takes planning. What are your social media goals? Do you want more fans or more engagement? Are you running a contest or a sweepstakes? Who will fulfill the prizes? Be sure to have a detailed plan before beginning any promotion.

2. Consider your target demographics
Do you want to microtarget your fans or not? If you’re strictly B2B, how can you ensure that you get businesspeople rather than stay-at-home moms to enter? (Offering an iPad is great, but everyone wants one.) Think ahead and target only the entrants you want.

3. Follow Facebook’s rules
We see promotions daily that are being run in violation of Facebook’s terms. Be sure to read and understand the rules here before beginning any type of promotion. Note that votes and entries can’t be made on the wall without a third-party app like the one we made for our client Hotel Amarano.

4. Promote, promote, promote
Just holding a contest doesn’t mean that droves of people will enter. You need to promote your contest via advertising and online posting as your budget permits. Unless you plan to give away loads of cash, you need to continue to spread the word throughout the contest.

5. Make it easy to enter
Scavenger hunts, point-accruing games, essay contests and other multistep contests are too hard and turn people away. Make it easy to enter and even easier to win, and you’ll get more participants. Of course, collecting emails must be part of the process.

6. Reward participation
Keep in mind that people are taking the time from their busy lives to help promote your company. Respond to all questions and comments and continue to engage with your community. Thank each entrant and perhaps even give a token gift for every entry. We saw bumper stickers (cost: under a buck) fly out the door for a contest we ran recently; for another, we gave every entrant a surprise discount code.

7. Follow up
Make sure prizes are awarded and sent in a timely manner. Ask the winner to send photos with the prize to share with your Page, and send out press or social media posts. Participants want to see that a real person won. Be sure to use the emails you collect from participants to send follow-up messaging.

If you want to get more qualified leads easily, and want to run a contest on Facebook to help, call us at 818-848-1700. We’ll help you do it right.

Counterintuity's Google+ page

We wanted to be sure you knew that Google+ launched Business Pages yesterday. Here are some questions we thought you might have:

What does this mean?

Google now allows business and brands to join Google+, Google’s social network. Facebook has had business pages for a while and we were all waiting for Google to join the party.

Why should I care?

• This is Google, the king of search. Google+ will impact your search rankings. If not today, then probably tomorrow.
• Now you can tie in all of Google’s features – Google Places, Google Search, AdWords, YouTube… you get the picture.
• This is Google, the king of search.

How do I create mine?

Go here:  https://plus.google.com/pages/create or call us at 818-848-1700.

There were several startling takeaways, this one being the oddest: People who use the term “guru” to describe themselves in their Twitter bios have more followers than people who don’t.  100 more followers on average, to be exact.

So instead of “Social Media Director,” I am now a “Social Media Guru” on Twitter.  I feel like a complete tool, because despite the fact I do know a lot about social media, calling myself a guru is such, um, douchebaggery. However, my enquiring mind needs to know: will it work?

Of course, Dan reminded us that content is still king.  Overlord, actually.  People need to share social content and links if they want to be seen as an authority on a topic and build reputation.

So off I go to tweet interesting social media and mommy content with links, which I learned today is statistically more important than engaging in conversation if the goal is to increase reach.  Please find me at @counterintuity and @lisapbs on Twitter.  I’ll let you know in a few weeks if I’m the guru I actually say I am.

There’s not much worse than making a spelling mistake in pubic.

“Most social media seems so… trivial.”

Me:  “What’s the question?”

“What’s your response?”

Me:  “I agree. So is most human speech. So is most of everything. It’s Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. BUT — the other 10% has real value. And that 10% represents a lot of people wanting a lot of things.”

It’s true that most social media consists of funny pet videos and meaningless surveys about long-ago TV shows. But there are billions of tweets and postings every day; if only 10% of them are content-rich, that’s still millions of opportunities to get your message out there.

Don’t worry about the chaff. Focus on the wheat.

Courtesy of blog.madarco.net

We have been diligently researching the Facebook switch on Friday from FBML to iframes.  Our advice?  Don’t panic. Static FBML will be around for awhile.

All this move changes is that developers and designers now need to know HTML and have access to a hosted site in order to make custom applications and graphics for your Facebook page. Most page owners don’t realize that this is simply a change in how the coding of a Facebook app (i.e. a custom page) works.  It’s a slow phasing out of Static FBML, Facebook’s proprietary application that allows users with little coding experience create custom tabs Facebook Pages.

With an iframe application, the main difference is that content must now be located within an HTML document that is hosted outside of Facebook’s servers—usually, your own website (although they can and should be hidden). An iframe is simply HTML code or “inline frame.”  Basically, customs apps will now be a hosted “web page” layered on top of your Facebook Page.  And your designer will need to know HTML.

There is already a lot of hype surrounding this change, and a lot of companies are trying to make money off of it, such as Wildfire and Involver, to name a few.  Don’t buy into the propaganda.  Remember that “Free for 3 months” is not ultimately free.

In fact, there’s even a possible SEO downside to switching to iframes. At present, search engines do not crawl content within iframes, so anchor text links on your existing FBML tabs will not be crawlable.  Unless something changes, iframes have absolutely no search engine value, and FBML does.

Your existing Static FBML tabs (like welcome pages and contests) will be fully supported by Facebook for a while. They can still be edited or replaced with new FBML code. No page owner with FBML-based apps needs to panic.  When your current FBML apps no longer serve your audience, that’s the time to look into iframes.  Right now, the cost of recoding into HTML and adding monthly hosting fees are too high to justify a switch.

For the near future, there is no reason we can see to upgrade existing static FBML tabs to iframes. Rest easy for now, Facebook  friends.

With the advent of services such as Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, customers no longer have to wait to get out the door to write a letter of complaint or praise via snail mail.  They can–and will– do it right there under your nose.  Anyone at any time can generate a social media post that describes you inaccurately or criticizes your performance, service or product. Social media sites make it easy to to trash everything from bad food to slow service, and that is not what you want potential clients to find online. If you’ve spent any time making a good name for yourself, keeping it so online is a priority.

We recommend you track what people are saying about you online at least once a week.  Here are our favorite free tools (there are many good paid services, as well):

Social Mention This real-time Internet tracking aggregates mentions about your brand from across the web (and the universe, they proclaim) to give you a snapshot of who is talking about you and what they are saying.  While it’s not 100% accurate (we find it sometimes pulls in other accounts if you have a common Twitter or Facebook name), it does a great job of finding blog forum and Twitter mentions.  While it dishes out some questionable metrics (Passion? Sentiment?), the lists of top keywords, top hastags and top users it returns is invaluable information for your social media monitoring.

MonitorThis is another easy search tool that  feeds mentions from 26 various search engines like Google Blogsearch, delicious, MSN, Yahoo News, Flickr and many others.  What’s particularly nice here is that it features a ‘Get as RSS’ button that lets you directly subscribe to a list of feeds it pulls up.

Board Tracker watches conversation in discussion forums and keeps you up to speed on mentions. Just set alerts based on your specific keywords and you’ll be notified any time your brand’s name is mentioned in a forum.

TweetBeep is a Twitter tracker that keeps track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, your brand–and gives you frequent e-mailed updates.

Google Alerts are regular email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of keyword or topic.

The real answer to online reputation lies in constantly building, updating  and maintaining your online brand. This way, any negative commentary is automatically countered by positive news and information you’ve already put out.

I personally think that people have a love affair with marketing.  Though, I’m aware my opinion might be slightly biased.  After reading this article, I realized that these messages reach far deeper than simply getting people to buy.  Even if you don’t notice it outright, you probably let media influence you in more ways than one.  Marketing can inform and entertain, break up your commute or just provide an endless amount of conversation.  Now it seems that commercialism may even help you like your favorite show better.

Some of it is good, a lot of it is mediocre, and (let’s face it) there are some downright ugly messages out there in the world of marketing.  When was the last time you laughed or cried at an ad? How about the last time you bought a product after seeing their media? Do you think those commercial breaks help you enjoy your favorite show more? Let us know what you think.

We’ve encountered many firms that boast about their “genius” nineteen year-old social media hires. “They get this Facebook stuff,” we’ve heard. “They understand how to network through the Internet.” True. My older teen has hundreds of friends on social networks. He can easily find out the questions on the history test and where the best Saturday night party will be. He can connect girls to boys, not unlike traditional networking.

But what he can’t do—because he doesn’t have business training—is strategize, monitor and analyze a social media campaign. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other social media platform use is a skill most teens and college grads have. But putting a tech-savvy teen in charge of your $30,000 website redesign and social media campaign is like asking my husband to do the laundry. He’ll gladly wash clothes, but they won’t be sorted, he’ll forget the fabric softener, and assuming they get folded, they’ll end up in the wrong person’s drawer.

A social media expert is much more than someone who knows how to use Facebook. We are like custom builders, creating a blueprint for your entire campaign. From audience analysis and content goals to editorial calendars and professional monitoring with ROI tracking, firms that specialize in social media have both the knowledge and expertise to make your online campaign successful.

Anyone can get your business pages followers and likes. The question is: Do they know how to attract the right people, and do they know what to do with them? Can they track real-time and trending results—and do they even know what that is?

Nothing against teens. I have a few myself.  And they are experts at socializing. But please, for the sake of your online reputation and your hard-earned dollars, leave your all-important social media marketing to the experts.