Archive for the ‘Web sites’ Category

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Social Media and Online Marketing for Book Publicity Campaigns

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

We are  working on book publicity and marketing for  Dr. Catherine Athans, who has two motivational, inspirational books: Make Your Dreams Come True Now! and Just Imagine.

book_imagine

Some of the marketing communication tools that we are using to publicize and promote Dr. Athans include:

Websites: Dr. Athans has a website that promotes her latest books. The site serves as a home base with essential information including bio, testimonials, information about her books, appearances and more.  They help to enhance awareness of the author’s brand.

On her site, Dr. Athans’ video shows the work she does transforming the lives of the many people she works with (http://www.catherineathans.com).

Blogs: A blog is an essential way to be found and to build a network and fan base. Google feeds off new content with the use of strong key words added to a blog’s tags.

Using keywords increases the chances her blog will come up in Google searches and means more traffic will come to her site.

In fact, there are many people who have ongoing searches for key words within the blogosphere. All it takes is for a writer’s blog content to turn up in someone’s email account, and the writer may have a new fan.

Athans is committed to adding content to her blog at least once a week. She writes about events, issues and concepts that are in her book as well as causes she is committed to. Currently Dr. Athans  is soliciting donations so that every high school junior in the Oakland Unified School District (Oakland, CA) can have a copy of her book, “Just Imagine” to be used as part of a district-wide poetry curriculum. Donations can be made at: http://tinyurl.com/yhargm8

Twitter: Dr. Athans can be found on Twitter @CatherineAthans. With about 6-million new users a month on Twitter we find continual opportunities to get people to link to her web site, blog and ultimately her books by providing them with tidbits of information that they can use. Keywords are included in their tweets in order to attract followers interested in their topics.

And for our work on her publicity, Twitter offers us a way to directly contact journalists and have a conversation with them about our authors’ stories. We also use Twitter to tweet about book launches live events, speeches, and book signings and we promote her Twitter URL every time we talk about her in an email or through another source.

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Images are Key to Connecting with Your Audience

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Orinda Academy asked for help with updating their marketing materials and initiating a PR campaign. The goal was to start a conversation with potential students and their parents about the school and its special strengths. After all, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

We freshened up their Viewbook and created an email newsletter, an event ad and a flyer template using happy kids’ faces and a colorful design that immediately conveyed the school’s vibrant student population and its teachers’ individualized approach to learning. (more…)

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Tips about blogging

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Q: What tips and tricks have you learned about blogging?

Chrysta Bairre, asked this. She has a personal blog that she values. “I have kept a personal blog for many years,” she says. “I have enjoyed many benefits of blogging, including expressing my thoughts and experiences, sharing knowledge, making new friends/connections, and deepening existing friendships/connections.” Now she wants to start a blog for her business. (more…)

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The Guv’s New Media Director advises: Move the web site from IT to Communications.

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

The first thing Rob Quigley, New Media Director for Arnold Schwarzenegger, did when he moved to the Governor’s office was to move the web site from IT to Communications. That very move eliminated a firewall between Communications and IT. Web sites are not digital archives, Quigley explained. “They are very strategic communications tools, and they need to be real time.”

The job, says Quigley, is to drive people to your web site and he does that through social media like Twitter, You Tube, Facebook, and Flickr. (more…)

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Two excellent books about social media and PR.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

“Let’s say you were asked to design a graduate-level course on the implications of social media for public relations. What are the top resources you would be sure to include?”  Joe Klimavich President of Boston’s Klimavich Communication WebMechanic, asked recently.

I’ll tell you about two books that I’m going to have my Saint Mary’s College PR class read next semester… (more…)

Posted in Advertising, Issues Management, Marketing, Publicity, Social Media, Web sites | 2 Comments »

Planning your web site? Here are the 5 P’s of the web site process.

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Are you thinking about a new web site for your company? Do you think that the first thing you have to do is find a “Geek” to program your site?

That’s something I want you to reconsider. When we talk to a client about a new web site, we don’t go right to the programming ideas. Because first you have to know what your marketing goals are, who you want to view your web site and what do you want them to learn or do when they get there. Those are the important things before deciding what programming language you’re using.

I asked Barbara Irias, our web/SEO expert at Placemaking Group what is the proper order of things to consider and do when you are developing a web site. She sent me this list…  “The 5 P’s of the web site process!” (more…)

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Get Unstuck for the Upturn.

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

We are all waiting for the business upturn. The Sticking Point Solution by Jay Abraham is a book that gives you lots of ideas on how to get back into marketing for the upturn, even if you have to start your own up-turn! This starts off with a section that is inspirational. He wants us all to realize that if things are going to start happening, then we have to make them happen.

What Abraham does is go through all the strategies and very specific action items across a broad spectrum of marketing and communications ideas.  If you’re looking for a book that gives you lots of ideas and then answers the question of “what do I do next,” The Sticking Point Solution is your book.

My copy now has so many bookmarks pointing to places I want to read again. There are specific ideas of how to build a strategy for growth, how to do consultative sales and even how to improve cash flow. He clearly explains how to take care of clients. But he stresses having an overall plan. That’s something I agree with on every level. (more…)

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Publicity, Web sites | 1 Comment »

All-time high for time spent on social networking sites.

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Adotas, the online newsletter about interactive advertising reported that, “Nielsen has come out with a new report that shows 17% of all time online last month was spent on social networking and blogging sites.”

This is a significant leap. It really shows that social media is an important part of our lives. In that report in Adotas, Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights for Nielsen’s online division stated “This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used. While video and text content remain central to the Web experience — the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”

What does all this mean for you? Well, the first thing is that the elements of social media are becoming more effective tools. (more…)

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Facebook your Downtown.

Monday, September 28th, 2009

I had the fun of being at the California Downtown Association conference in Ventura this last week. Naturally, the part I got to talk about was marketing. I did a “Make your Downtown Famous” talk; and with Laura Cole-Rowe and Larry Cope I got to do a seminar in using Social Media for Downtowns.

Laura talked about Twitter, and Larry, who is a very talented techno-geek (and also the Director Of Economic Development for Tuolumne County), discussed many ways of very inexpensively setting up your Downtown’s website and Social Media offerings.

I got to talk about Downtown Facebook sites. (more…)

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Using Social Media in business for purposes other than sales.

Monday, September 7th, 2009

“How (if at all) are you using social networking in your business, aside from driving sales?” asks Ross Easton, the Public Affairs and Communications Manager at Scottish and Southern Energy plc. He points out that “Southwest Airlines in the States is using twitter primarily for brand promotion and customer retention online.”

Driving sales is usually the top priority for everybody! But there are other uses for social media on the web. In some cases, as with some of our city clients, they just want to make sure that the residents and employers in the city know what’s going on. A great version of this is the Facebook page for Suisun City in California. They are putting new status lines up on a regular basis, just telling people about events and new interesting things going on in the city. Here’s the latest one… Tom Hanks Supports Solano College Theatre with Endowment.                  (more…)

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