Do you know how to tell your brand’s story on that social network?

Are you engaging your audience, even in 140 characters or less?

The limitations of Twitter are no excuse for not putting storytelling to work, especially when you consider the ways others are turning it into a powerful tool.

With that in mind, here is a look at ways to use storytelling on the real/time, 24/7 social network.

Literally—To Tell a Story

Using Twitter to tell a long, detailed story might not seem like an obvious application, but take a look at Storify or at the hashtag #afternoonTwitterTale to see it in action.

Author Clinton Yates coined the hashtag, which signals a tweet-by-tweet narrative that gets posted during one afternoon.

Yates’s social stories have included “Why I Love Baseball” and “A Junkie Named Raymond,” among others.

How You Might Use Storytelling Literally

Even if you don’t start posting afternoon Twitter stories, here’s something to take away from Yates’s example: No tweet is an island.

Instead of looking at tweets only as individual, self-contained updates, look at them as parts of a greater, larger whole.

When you can’t share a full story in one tweet, consider spreading the story across a few back-to-back tweets instead.

Creatively—To Tell a Story in a New Way

In Amanda Cosco’s article at Social Times, she argues, “If we’re the social media generation, it’s not that we’re losing the opportunity for story, it’s that we’re telling our stories differently.”

Stories today are about new things: Specific industries or businesses, or even social media itself. Stories spread in new ways and are less packaged and more constant. You’re always telling your story on social media, more and more with every tweet.

What Creative Storytelling Looks Like on Twitter

Personal branding is, at its essence, a form of storytelling. With every update and link, you are telling the social stories of you and your brand. You are showing your followers who you are and what you find interesting. For this reason, the best social media engagement involves thought. Consider what you want to communicate, and what you want to be identified with.

Consistently—As a Way to Reinforce Your Message

Whether you’re the mattress king or the mortgage lender home buyers trust, Twitter is a great place to reinforce your message.

You have advertising, you have email marketing, you have a blog — and with Twitter, you have another powerful tool for telling your followers, again, why they can count on you.

Keys to Reinforcing Your Message

On social media as in any marketing effort, consistency is key. Determine your voice and tone, and stick to them. By fulfilling the expectations you’ve set, you not only reinforce your message, but also build credibility.

Personally—To Let Your Audience Get to Know You

Here’s the most popular way to use Twitter to tell a story: Sharing personal details from your life. Even when you blog for business, you’re still writing for people, and people like to hear personal stories. If you’re the face of your brand, be a memorable face. Share what you’re doing, what intrigues you, what you’re learning, and so on.

A Warning about Personal Details

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know there’s a line when it comes to sharing personal information online.

So here’s a word of caution: Stick to information you’re comfortable with the entire world knowing, and look for ways to make it relevant to your overall message.

Do you engage in some form of storytelling online, either intentionally or unintentionally? What do you like or dislike about brands that use Twitter to share their stories? What do you wish you would see?

The post Social Stories: How to Use Storytelling on Twitter appeared first on Spin Sucks.

I first met Arthur in the same way I’ve met many of you…here on this blog.

As the vice president of public relations for our industry’s trade organization – the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) – Arthur had the unenviable job of answering to more than 20,000 professionals.

Professionals like me who are extremely vocal about what the organization is (or is not) doing for the industry. Professionals who think they know best. Professionals who have a platform and a megaphone.

In May of 2011, when some of our peers from Burson-Marsteller were found to have created a whisper campaign against Google on behalf of Facebook, I was on a rampage about kicking them out of PRSA and not allowing them to continue to work in the field.

It was Arthur who called me to explain, while my efforts were noble, PRSA is a membership organization and not a regulatory one so there wasn’t much they could do.

He was the one who talked me off the ledge and helped me soften my tone…and even engaged in many months-long discussion about whether or not we could regulate the industry so those things didn’t happen.

He led the charge to redefine what it is that we do…taking on a huge project as the previous definition was 30 years old and many of were very active in how to redefine what we do not for today, but for the future.

I remember seeing him at a reception during the middle of the project and asking him how it was going. He said, with a grin and a twinkle in his eye, “Let’s just say I could use a bottle of scotch.”

Scotch he received, which ingratiated me to him for life.

An accredited member of PRSA, of Counselors Academy, and both an agency leader and a corporate professional, Arthur spent his entire career years talking the vocal PR pros off the ledge with humor and a booming laugh that was infectious.

For my friends who knew him well – Greg Pitkoff, Ken Jacobs, and Keith Trivitt – I’m very sorry for your loss.

For his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Sophia, your husband and father meant a great deal to our industry. He will be sorely missed.

For information on the memorial, PRSA will update here as they learn more.

The post Rest in Peace, Arthur Yann appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there!

This is the 36th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), and me!

For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.

This week we have thoughts on how we consume media, injustice in the legal system, and how America is losing its way.

5by5 | Bionic #46: Consumption is Changing

Michael on Information. A thoughtful and interesting conversation between Myke Hurley and Matt Alexander on the ways we consume information on the web. This is particularly timely in light of the imminent demise of Google Reader and offers insights into the shift from self-curated-news to service-curated consumption.

After Innocence: Exoneration in America

Howie on When Justice Goes Wrong. We have a very unequal justice system biased against poor people and minorities. Often that just means guilty rich people go free. But there are times they convict innocent people and listening to these stories of exoneration sometimes after years in jail was very moving.

How America Lost its Way

Gini on America’s Downfall. If you travel outside of the United States, you get accustomed to hearing things such as, “Why is there so much crime in Chicago?” And “What is America’s fascination with guns?” And “How does it feel to be slipping out of your leadership position among countries in the world?” Really, people around the globe say these things to you and it becomes pretty commonplace to hear. In this article, Niall Ferguson argues we’re losing our way because it’s hard to do business here, our institutions need fixing, and we have much more red tape than some of the more scrappy countries.

Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?

The post The Three Things, Edition 36 appeared first on Spin Sucks.

I both love and hate summer. I love it because of summer hours and riding my bike outside and getting a really terrible cycling tan, which renders wearing sundresses impossible.

But I hate it because no one is around and it takes about 16,000 times longer to get any work accomplished. I guess I should be thankful for the extra time to get some more strategic business things accomplished, huh?

That said, I spent Saturday through Tuesday in Austin (where it was 1,000 degrees with a gazillion degrees humidity) at Counselors Academy. It gave me time to think, really think, about the future of Arment Dietrich, how Spin Sucks folds into the continued growth there, and the new and exciting things we can offer you.

The biggest thing I’m having to practice now is patience. It’s hard when you’re excited about your company’s vision to not want to do everything at once. Which, of course, will fail, but still.

While I ride my bike and think more about the future of these businesses, I’ll leave you Gin and Topics.

This week’s videos are brought to you by Aimee West, Karen Wilson, Mr. D., Lindsay Bell, and Dick Carlson.

5. What Kind of Asian are You? You begin watching this and think it might be a bit racist and then it is and it’s brilliantly done and you will laugh. Be sure to watch past the credits for the bloopers. The woman is hilarious!

4. Big Rooster Scares Reporter. I don’t know what is more funny about this: The reporter screaming like a little girl or his production team laughing hysterically at him. I mean, really. He’s a grown man.

3. Mean Tweets, the NBA Edition. Oh Jimmy Kimmel. How I love you so. He has NBA stars read some of the mean tweets people have sent to them. I’m pretty sure I am the one who sent the tweet Shaq reads, but tell me it’s not true!

2. Pub Loo Shocker. I don’t know why I think this is so funny, but it is! It’s an ad from Leo Burnett about how impaired just one drink may make you. It’s pretty powerful and it will make you laugh.

1. Pug Bowling. It takes a couple of minutes to get into this one, but stick with it. With hardwood floors, toy bowling pins, Pledge, a laser points, and a pug, you get to see the most amazing bowling ever played.

Have a great weekend!

The post Gin and Topics: Mean Tweets and Our Preconceived Notions appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Rob Biesenbach has been hanging out in the comments for a few months now and just wrote his first guest post about storytelling last week.

In the post, he talked about how he learned to tell a story through writing from Second City.

Improv Helps Storytelling

This is both intriguing and terrifying to me. The idea the organization that trained comedians such as Tina Fey, John Belushi, Mike Myers, and Steve Carell can help you with your storytelling is intriguing, but getting up there on stage and have to be funny? No, thank you.

Of course, to hear Rob tell it, it’s less about being funny and more about being able to improvise and use what you have. While that’s still a terrifying thought, it does make sense it would help with your storytelling.

Still he’s a Second City trained actor, which is more than most of us can say. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see him on Saturday Night Live in the future and we can all say we knew him when!

We’re All in Show Biz

He’s not just a funny guy. He’s a communicator who worked for Ogilvy PR, but went out on his own nearly 15 years ago.

In his quest to end dull and boring communications, he wrote Act Like You Mean Business: Essential Communication Lessons from Stage and Screen, which provides tips, tools, and techniques to connect with emotion, express ideas visually, and tell better stories.

Like my good friend Martin Waxman, Rob believes we’re all in show biz and he’s out to teach you how to tweak your skills to use Hollywood- or Broadway-like techniques in your communications.

Where to Find Rob Biesenbach

A public speaker, a writer, a communicator, and a funny guy, I highly recommend you introduce yourself to Rob and get to know him.

You can find him on Twitter, Google+, on his blog, Amazon, LinkedIn, or on his “official” site where you can see fancy photos of him and learn he lives in Chicago with his allergies (me too).

The post #FollowFriday: Rob Biesenbach appeared first on Spin Sucks.

“Why would it be?”

“It’s a non-issue.”

“It’s smart marketing.”

“Maybe it’s slightly creepy.”

At the same time, the question does come up. A lot.

So let’s see, when is marketing automation smart, and when do we run the risk of going too far?

What is Marketing Automation?

It’s marketing execution using tools and software that automate repetitive tasks.

Marketers input hypothesis-based criteria and algorithms into the system, which executes a series of scenarios. This increases efficiency, reduces human error, and improves speed of proving/disproving marketing hypotheses (modified definition of the one on Wikipedia).

What is Cheating?

To act dishonestly or unfairly or against pre-agreed upon rules, or a contract, in order to gain an advantage.

What is Creepy?

You know it when you feel it. So will your audiences.

What is Smart Marketing?

Successful marketing has always been technology-dependent, which implies data, algorithms and engines. Even direct mail is automated.

Those highly-praised Target “custom-mailers,” are actually printed by a machine based on an algorithm. The marketers behind it don’t manually, individual-by-individual, send coupons for baby products vs. coupons for back-to-school.

Is it always smart to do so? No. But is it cheating?

Let’s look at social media and inbound marketing the same way: Automation, contracts, and audience response.

Email Marketing

The clear contract: Permission-based marketing. Did the owner of the email address give permission to you to email them?  Do you have a contract? Typically a smart email marketing contract is a commitment to not spam and only share valuable (in their eyes) content.

For example, the agreement we have with our readers is we won’t spam and we’ll send a monthly email with practical digital marketing tips.

You may wonder where CAN SPAM fits in here. It doesn’t. In fact, CAN-SPAM is dubbed “you can spam.”

Those rules state you can email people even without their permission. But that’s an article for another time.

The grey area: Indirect data collection. How about the emails collected from white paper downloads, sweepstake,s and contests?

This is a grey area because in most cases the contract is you get one piece of content for free if you give your email address. But most white paper download rules don’t clearly state how the email addresses will be used. Is that smart marketing or breaking a contract?

The don’ts: Don’t buy addresses. There was no email marketing contract there. You will get a list that’s 60 percent incorrect, and the other 40 percent won’t open the email because they don’t recognize the sender name. You’re wasting time and money, so don’t do it.

Twitter Automation

If you are looking for leads on Twitter you will need some automation. There I said it.

A high-volume content space, requires a high-volume method. Whether you’re using a mentions alerts system, or a follow/unfollow system such as Manageflitter, or a third party app, you are going the automation way. And a dose of automation with the right level of observation is healthy.

The clear contract: Twitter is meant to be an open network. Twitter encourages posting, following, unfollowing, retweeting, DMing, and mentioning anyone you please – as long as you don’t act like a spammer.

Twitter has very clear rules on what this means.

We typically hear of the “bulk follow and unfollow” rule. In fact Twitter discourages following or unfollowing too many users in too short of a period of time, but also discourages posting only updates with links and no personal updates.

Ouch, half of the Twitterverse is in breach of terms!

So, using automation tools to follow, unfollow, and post is fine, as long as it’s not using a spam pattern.

If you are looking for more efficient targeting, go the automation route. And that’s the key to this.

Spammers don’t look for fans. They look for anyone. Spammers don’t look to deliver value, and don’t have contracts. Spammers don’t target. They do everything, in bulk.

If you take a purposeful, targeted approach, in most cases you won’t be breaking rules. In fact, that’s what true marketing automation is, using tools for better targeting and outreach.

The grey area: Auto-messaging and “group tweeting.” Auto-DMs and auto-responses may be in breach of the Twitter terms, falling under the category of posting the same message repeatedly. There may be instances where response scripting is needed (customer service and legal and compliance instances for example).

The group tweeting situation is where you truly, genuinely, want to invite 100 of your Twitter contacts to an event. In fact, the original purpose of Twitter was to facilitate group messaging.

So, should you craft separate messages for each friend, or is it ok to send them all the same message?

Don’ts: Tweet and run. If you’re going to use automation, don’t use it with Q&As. You’ll get the community to talk to you but you’re not there to participate. It’s just not smart marketing.

Publishing: Finding Content and Scheduling

Is it cheating to use an engine to find associate content (such as Zemanta), and is it cheating to pre-schedule publishing of your content?

The clear contract: Compelling content wins. People are attracted to social media accounts and communities that fulfill certain needs, mainly the need to get information, to socialize, and to be validated. Since we can’t perfectly predict when each of our followers is online, it’s best if we evenly spread the content out to provide content for all those needs.

Or you can use automation! You can use Buffer, or Hootsuite auto-scheduling to place your messages in the social stream at the “perfect” time.

The grey area: Obeying copyright. Even with a tool that finds relevant associated content, you still have to be careful about copyright and attribution. Using automation to publish curated content poses some risks.

Want to be safe? Get familiar with – and obey – copyright laws.

The don’ts: Don’t schedule and forget. During two past national tragedies many organizations had pre-scheduled promotional posts. These pre-schedules were left unattended and made said organizations look insensitive, absent and unappealing.

Don’t just schedule and forget. I talked about “feelings” earlier. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. One of our clients, a film director, said it so well, the Friday of the Sandy Hook elementary shooting: “It doesn’t feel right to be out there pimping my movie this weekend.” TV interviews and social media promos got cancelled. And he gained respect through his absence rather than his presence.

So, once a week, ask yourself: Is my pre-schedule still relevant? Do I have an escalation procedure to minimize the risks of automation?

Long story short, the number one rule is respect the contract. The number two rule is use common sense.

So, what’s cheating, what’s creepy to you? Please do share!

The post Is Marketing Automation Cheating or Just Slightly Creepy? appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Not only do I have to finish the book by August 1, now is the time the edits begin and we have to choose a subtitle.

You’d think the subtitle was the easy part. But you have to write it for search engines, which means it can’t always be catchy. I think we went through 200 or more subtitles before everyone agreed on the following five.

We’re taking a page from Tim Ferriss and doing some Google AdWords campaigns on each of the five, which leads a visitor to a landing page. There they can reserve a copy of the book when it comes out in November.

Vote for the Spin Sucks Subtitle

But what fun is it to only ask strangers what they think when we have such a great community here?

I also wanted to test list.ly so now we are killing two birds with one stone.

All you have to do is vote on your favorite one. If you have a comment (or eight), you can leave it right next to your vote.

Have a Better Idea?

If you have a subtitle idea you think is better than any of these eight, don’t be shy about leaving it in a comment.

We have been through so many, we’ll welcome any new ideas. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have such a great idea, it’ll be used.

If that’s the case, I’ll send you a signed copy of the book when it’s out late this year.

Don’t feel pressured, though, to come up with something new. There will be plenty of opportunities in the next few months to get yourself a signed copy.

Thanks for your help!

The post Vote for the Spin Sucks Subtitle appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Crickets.

Yeah, I hate when that happens too.

There’s nothing worse then thinking, “Oh this is going to be great” and then it falls flat.

Why do I care so much?

Because I care about our community and I want to make them laugh – or say “Aha! Yvette’s a genius!”

Kidding, I just want you to enjoy our page.

Facebook Faux Pas

A few weeks ago on Open Forum, Christopher Litster, senior vice present of sales and marketing at Constant Contact, shared the top ten Facebook “faux pas” – the reasons people don’t “like” your Facebook status updates.

Asking questions that are too broad or personal. 

According to a recent article on Inc., messages on Twitter with a question mark drew 52 percent fewer clicks for B2C companies and 39 percent fewer for B2B companies. So if you’re going to ask questions Facebook is the place to do it, but stay away from open-ended ones. Give your community a choice or create a poll. Have fun, but don’t get too personal.

The tone is uninspiring.

Yes, you’re creating posts for an organization, but that doesn’t mean you should sound like a corporate robot. See previous comment about having fun.

Every post is pure text.

It’s fine to have an all text post. However, you don’t want all of your posts to be just text. Litster suggests using “any image that’s visually appealing and relates to your post or company.” It’s easy, so take the extra five minutes and do it.

There’s too much focus on selling or your only talking about your business.

Your page is for your business AND your fans. Of course you should share company news, but keep in mind, “People go to Facebook to catch up and connect. When they want to buy, they’ll go to your website,” says Litster.

The message isn’t in sync with your audience or business.

Make sure each post serves the interests of your community and your business. Whether it’s funny, a tip or trick, or something interesting – it should align with your company and audience.

You’re not responding.

You should always respond. Enough said.

Your page has an identity crisis.

Use an editorial calendar. They help provide structure, but are also flexible so you can change a post at a moment’s notice.

You’re not offering anything.

“One of the reasons people become fans is for the perks,” says Litster, so offer deals or insider offers.

One of my favorites is Sprinkles Cupcakes. They have a word of the day and if you’re one of the first 50 people to say it in their retail store, you get a free cupcake. Not everyone can offer a free cupcake, but simple things, such as highlighting a fan as the Facebook Fan of the Week (ahem) show you care about your community.

You give up too easily.

Still don’t know what your community wants? According to Inside Facebook, Facebook has started highlighting the most engaging posts in the page admin panel. AND they also notify you when a post performs better than average so start there.

Growing a social media presence takes patience. And it won’t happen overnight. Take time to find valuable content, engage with your fans, and soon you’ll be successful in social media.

What do you love to see on a company Facebook page? And what do you loathe?

The post Nine Reasons Fans Don’t “Like” Your Status Updates appeared first on Spin Sucks.

She rolled her eyes at me as I was finishing my statement. “Only 29 percent,” she said.

OK, OK. I see her point, but we grew more than 1,000 percent in 2009, 292 percent in 2010, and 194 percent in 2011.

So you can see why I am a little stressed about it…and why Lindsay Bell spends time in every staff meeting brainstorming with us new ideas to increase blog traffic, sponsorship dollars, Google+ authority, and overall revenue.

Because we have it very top-of-mind, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to take the content side of our business to the next level.

When What You Use No Longer Works

The thing we struggle with, of course, is what we did to get us here no longer works. So now we have to be creative and innovative and a bunch of other “ive” words that work here.

Sure, there are some things that still work: Comment on other blogs, write for humans and optimize for robots, build community, write guest blog posts, speak at conferences, answer questions, go to networking events, leverage YouTube, and use traditional media.

But it turns out that’s no longer enough.

So what do you do if the things you’ve always done no longer work, but the industry isn’t talking about anything new?

Increase Blog Traffic

Following is a list of 12 things we’re going to try to increase blog traffic so we can exceed our other less ego-driven goals..

As we do, I’ll report back on the pros and cons of each, how we tested, and what was the most successful.

1. Create a video series. I don’t know if this will be the he said/she said series Sean McGinnis and I have been talking about doing for years, if it will be a series of video instruction, or both. But we’re going to expand the Facebook question of the week (which we still do so stop by and ask a question!) and better use YouTube to help expand our networks.
2. Write case studies. Sherrilynne Starkie asked me for some case studies the other day and I was embarrassed to tell her we’ve never formally written any down. If they’re not used as examples in a blog post, we don’t have them official. Yes, I know. It’s a priority.
3. Write more guest posts. I was in a groove where I was writing one a week for a couple of years and got burned out with the Marketing in the Round promotion last year. I want to get back in that groove, but also involve my team more in becoming brand ambassadors. So if anyone would like a guest post from us, let us know!
4. Write longer form content. I’m talking about the how-to guides, the beginner’s guides, and maybe taking my own advice and write the gospel according to us (though Lindsay reminds me I am writing Spin Sucks, the book, which serves that purpose).
5. Start an affiliate program. I’m not sure how I feel about this one, but I think it’s worth exploring options for continuing to provide free content to you, but earn money on all our hard work. We’re testing sponsorships so this may be a natural next step.
6. Network with new groups. There are some crowds where the blog is already very well known…but there are also some groups who have never heard of us (as if!). We’ll target one new group for the second half of 2013 to network with in order to continue growing this side of the business.
7. Use owned images for content. Like we talked about yesterday, we’ll begin creating our own images to help our content stand out among all the visuals already present on the interwebz.
8. Participate in Q&A sites. This is one we completely ignore … and there is some great opportunity. Not just on LinkedIn, but on Quora, Yahoo, and others. We’ll find the sites where people ask questions about marketing communications and begin to build our influence and authority there.
9. Test pop-ups. Not pop-ups for more subscriptions (though that would be nice and maybe we’ll test it eventually), but to encourage people to share our content as they read. The social share buttons are already on the content, of course, but this may encourage additional sharing, which Google loves.
10. Survey our readers. We do this on the client side by continuously asking how we’re doing and what else we can be doing for them, but we’ve never asked you what else you’d like. Expect to be asked soon.
11. Create a podcast series. Of course, we have Inside PR and that won’t change, but we want a Spin Sucks branded podcast. Well, Lindsay wants us to have one so I just smile and nod.
12. Host an event. So many of you have asked when we’re going to have a Spin Sucks event…mostly so you can all meet one another in person. We’re not yet convinced it’s the right thing to do or that it will be profitable, but we are considering it.
    

Of course, we can’t do all of this in the next six months, so we’ll tackle one thing at a time and blog about the experience.

What else would you add?

I drew/wrote the image on an Admiral’s Club napkin in the Austin airport. 

The post Increase Blog Traffic with These 12 Ideas appeared first on Spin Sucks.

But it’s not just about setting yourself up to be the early bird. You have to be ready to catch the worm and ride the wave of popularity at its peak.

This will enable your blog, service, or product to enjoy rapid growth, and hopefully a higher level of repeat business in the long term.

Catching the Worm

I used to play a lot of tabletop wargames a few years back, and set up a number of BlogSpots with the intention of making money through affiliate schemes and Google AdSense.

One of these was a Partial Match Domain targeting the search term “Space Wolves,” historically one of the most popular product ranges for a well-known game.

When creating this website, (which was going to be a complete resource with loads of how to guides and other evergreen content) I knew the product range was going to be re-released in six months’ time from various rumours. That gave me time to get it to the top of Google for my target search term.

The Red line indicates the spike in search for the product range when pictures were first leaked in September. The following six months, I was busy writing all sorts of evergreen content, creating a resource for this product range.

Because so many people had found the website while the topic was trending, they knew where to come back to in the future for all the support they needed once they’d invested in the new product range.

As you can see, the more content I wrote (all search engine optimized of course), the more traffic I got. And thankfully the affiliate and AdSense earnings were roughly proportional.

You can read a more in depth case study about this blog here.

The Worm that Got Away

Of course, this wasn’t the only BlogSpot I’d created. I had a few ready and waiting, because it takes approximately five years for each product range to be relaunched.

However, this next one ‘exchanged hands,’ for lack of a better word, to tie in with the BlogSpot terms and conditions. This guy was eager to take over a blog with quite a bit of content, in anticipation for the product range to trend.

Unfortunately, he let the worm get away.

You can see how the traffic fluctuates as the new product range photos are leaked and then the range becomes available to purchase.

Unfortunately, it was only at the start of this month the new webmaster started writing fresh content, and set about getting a team together to meet the needs of his readers – who seem to have gone elsewhere.

Ride the Wave

This is just one example of how you can use your insider knowledge about an industry to become an early bird and succeed in catching the worm. But you’ve got to have a plan in place to ‘ride the wave’ immediately following the massed exposure of your website.

And you don’t necessarily need a blog with loads of supporting content. You may just need a nice product page and product review blog post on an ecommerce site for example.

Obviously, you’ll use your blogger connections, online communities and other forms of link gathering to share your exclusive content or helpful resources.

Why spend loads of time and effort fighting for something you could have snatched from under your competitor’s noses six months before they were even aware of it? Devise an online marketing strategy that allows you to be the early bird, and catch the worm. Just don’t let it get away once it’s caught.

The post Online Marketing Strategy: The Early Bird Catches the Worm appeared first on Spin Sucks.