Ideas for Business

I recently deleted a comment that had it been submitted to the right blog would have been a great comment. Unfortunately, to me it was spam. So what made it a spam comment?

Here, I’ll let you judge it for yourself:

If you are looking for a way to change up your hairstyle very quickly and dramatically, you should consider African American hair extensions for an easy solution. You can choose to use single braids or clip on hairpieces to change the way that your hair looks Hair Extension Clips Hair extension clips.

If you don’t see the problem, let me spell it out for you. The comment is a great comment for a hairstyling blog, maybe an African-American culture blog, or something related to one of those two niches. Mine is a small business marketing blog, a completely different topic.

When you leave comments on blogs, try to find blogs that are within your niche and comment on them. If you do go outside your niche to leave a comment on a blog, at least comment on the content of the blog post you are addressing. I haven’t written any blog posts on this blog about African-American hairstyles. So the above comment was pure spam.

To top it off, the commenter sought to get an anchor text link by leaving a keyword phrase in the name field of their comment. That’s another sign of spam. Don’t do it.

If you leave these types of comments willy-nilly on blogs just to get a link back, then shame on you. Wise bloggers see through the ploy and will delete your comment. So you’re wasting your time. You’re much better off just not commenting at all.

Remember when Facebook first opened up personal domain names? You could get your own name and it was on a first-come, first-serve basis. Well, recently, HubPages has decided to give you your own subdomain and you better hurry if you want it to be your name. Otherwise, you might have to settle for your name plus a few numbers, or a variation that you’ll be forced to live with.

Let me say that I think this is a good move – for HubPages and for you. Subdomains will likely be considered a higher authority since you’ll have control over all the content in your domain name.

Another benefit to you is reputation management. If you’ve noticed that your profile pages on your most active social networks rank highly for your name, then I expect that your HubPages subdomain will rank well for your name as well. That is, if you keep your subdomain active, and that means writing articles on a regular basis.

Article marketing has long been a very good way to get new traffic to your website and build links. HubPages is one avenue for your articles to get you traffic, links, and an increase in your authority and reputation. Now you can do it with a branded subdomain.

In the Content Marketing Trilogy of Discovery, Consumption and Sharing, there are a mix of media types online marketers employ to facilitate the connection between brand information and consumers / buyers across the customer lifecycle relationship. Those media types are often characterized as Paid, Earned, Owned and Shared media.  What do those media types mean and where do they fit within an online marketing mix?  Here’s a 30,000 foot view of each media type and what they might contribute to a content marketing strategy:

Paid Media - Often thought of as “traditional” online advertising through display ads, pay per click search ads and sponsorships. The pro for paid media is it’s ability to be implemented pretty much on-demand, the ability to have some degree of control and also that it scales. The growing popularity of social advertising on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (YouTube as well) adds another option for marketers to gain presence in channels where consumers and buyers are spending their time. The appearance of brand messages and content within paid media can work together with social sharing and organic search.

Earned Media – The result of public & media relations efforts to gain coverage in publications – on and offline. Or essentially, brand presence within media without having to advertise. This definition also extends to brands that behave online in such a way that “customers empowered to publish” create content on the brand’s behalf inspiring buzz and word of mouth.

Owned Media – Media, content and assets that the brand controls, like websites, blogs, newsletters and brand social media accounts. Brands are increasingly behaving like publishers with editorial staff managing content creation steams. “Content Marketing” is the hot topic when it comes to Owned Media and can facilitate brand information discovery through search and social channels. Content engages customers and fosters relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. Brand content to serve both broad and niche audiences is not immediately scalable, but can provide long term growth benefits without corresponding growth in costs.

Shared Media – Brand social web participation and interaction with consumers on content on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that  results in content is “shared media” since it’s a result of a shared interaction. Because of the nature of social sharing and engagement on social media sites, Shared Media can propagate across an individual’s network to others, and so on and so on.  Paid and Owned Media can inspire Shared Media. Shared Media can inspire Earned Media.

As more online marketers are exposed to these terms most commonly used by Advertising and Public Relations Agencies, I think it’s useful to explore what they mean for content marketing and the options for marketers to best facilitate consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing.

Within your marketing organization, do you refer to media in these terms? Do you use different definitions? Which of these media are in your online marketing mix?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Paid, Earned, Owned & Shared Media – What’s Your Online Marketing Media Mix? | http://www.toprankblog.com

One thing that is inevitable is change. Especially online. And especially when it comes to online marketing. What’s important today may not be important tomorrow.

Case in point: Remember those old web rings? Who joins those any more? Certainly not anyone who is serious about online marketing.

At one time, you could read online debates about which method of advertising was going to win in the end – PPC or banner ads. I guess we know how that turned out.

When Flash first hit the scene everyone tried it. But the consensus was, “No, not now.” It slowed down connections and pages loaded so slow that you couldn’t enjoy them. Now, Flash is almost as commonplace as links, though people are using it differently. And online video looks to be a future force not to be reckoned with – in whatever format it takes.

What’s next?

Will Google+ take over Facebook? Will social replace search as the preferred method of marketing online? Will VOIP become as commonplace as e-mail? Will VOIP and e-mail integrate to make both more powerful tools? Will mobile marketing outpacing video marketing?

We are moving forward and there’s no stopping it. If you are just now starting to market your business online, then you have some catching up to do. It’s time to prepare for change, and that itself requires change on your part. What are you doing about that?

Facebook has announced that it will now accept fake apps tester accounts. No, it’s really not as bad as it sounds. It’s actually a good thing if you are an apps developer or you have an apps developer working for you.

Test users are actually accounts set up for the specific purpose of testing Facebook apps. When you are done testing your app, you can delete the accounts or use them to test other apps.

If you are looking for a practical application for this ability, how about this:

You develop a new Facebook app and you’re ready to give it a test run. So you hire 50 people to test your app and pay them $100 each to give you feedback on the app so that you can make improvements. Rather than ask those people to set up Facebook accounts, or to use their public Facebook accounts, you set up 50 test users so you can track their usage and maintain their anonymity while getting the feedback that you need for your app.

I’m sure that’s not the only practical application, but it makes sense. In a word, Facebook apps testing just got a whole lot easier. Isn’t that good news?