Ok, I’m in a real time crunch, but I wanted to share with you an app I discovered months ago, but haven’t had the opportunity to use as much as I’d like. The app is Voxer, and it’s a walkie talkie app. Since I never had walkie talkies as a kid, I’m enamored by this app.
I always wanted to say, “Over and out” with my buddies growing up. But, it just wasn’t in the cards for me. But Voxer lets me play out my childhood dreams with their app. It connects you to your Facebook friends so you can chat either through the traditional audio walkie talkie or via text. I’ve only used it a handful of times since my friends don’t enjoy it as much as me. They largely view it as a novel app. That could be the case for them, but I still see some value.
I see Voxer as an intermediate form of communication. Making actual phone calls to friends seems really outdated (weird!). It’s been displaced with texting. I for one, send thousands of texts a month, but may only use hundreds of minutes. Almost all of those minutes are for business. Rarely do I call a friend to talk. But sometimes texting takes too long. Your conversation is too long for text, but it’s not worth making a call. Firing up Voxer to have a quick 3 round exchange makes sense to me. But why not just call you ask? Well, with a phone call, you need to be on the line for the entire call. Awkward pauses are well, awkward. But with Voxer, you can make a quick verbal comment, pause to focus on something in front of you, and then respond 30 seconds later. I definitely see a place for Voxer in daily communication.
Even though I’m enthusiastic about Voxer, it doesn’t do me much good without my friends using it. So try out Voxer. Let me know what you think. Can you see yourself using it or do you view it as a novelty?
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Startups are always strapped for cash and always need to get the word out about themselves. Most startups have no idea that one of the most powerful tools to bring visitors to their site is one of the most despised tools in their online marketing tool kit, the blog.
Content creation is time consuming and for many people, difficult. With so many new tools at our disposal in the Web 2.0 era, it seems that blogging often gets overlooked because it’s not young and sexy. Well, it’s still a very, very effective way of lead generation. Startups need to make sure they’re blogging on a regular basis and that over time, they’ll see value from their blog. Here are five steps to successful content marketing.
1. Keywords
First conduct a keyword search to find related keywords with more than 10,000 searches a month. Then run a PPC campaign to find out the CPC of each keyword to rank the value of each keyword. Find 6-10 keywords that will rank best for your product and build your blog to rank for these terms.
2. Editorial Calendar
Create a backlog of 20 posts and make sure that each of them have smart and focused headlines. Writing the headline first with the keywords in mind is helpful (If you need help with your headlines, pick up any fashion magazine). Of your 2o posts, have a ratio of 1 pillar content for every 6-9 viral pieces. Pillar content is guides, master references, basically things people would bookmark for later dates. Viral content is stuff that people would want to share via Twitter or Facebook (and now G+).
Pro Tip: Don’t write articles about current events, too many other people will be competing with you. Keep up with the trends and write about hot topics that relate to your keywords.
3. Hiring Writers
Like I said previously, creating content is a pain and it can be a pain to get clients to write content. You can hire writers to assist in content creation. The very lowest amount to pay is $20, but the range can often go up to $120 a post. Reach out to top bloggers with followings, they often won’t be able to make $100 from ads on a single blog post. The opportunity to make some money and further expose their name is enticing. If you’re putting out an ad for writers, be sure to ask for writing samples and a question they need to answer (i.e. favorite blog post). Then ask them to write a sample post, give 5 headlines to write about and ask them to include links to reference material, links to other blogs, strong heading image, well named subheads that draws users to keep reading. This will weed out ill-suited candidates.
Pro Tip: Offer a base payment and then a bonus for every 100 views above your average post. (i.e. $60 and $20/100 above 200)
4/5 Promoting Content & Metrics
Promoting your content can consist of emailing close brand ambassaders, submitting to networks like Digg, StumbleUpon, or Reddit, as well as leveraging your social media sites to build momentum. Timing is also important and the tool Timely.is is a helpful tool for this, as is Buffer. Be sure you’re measuring the effectiveness of each channel. Use Google Analytics to measure the traffic and conversions from each traffic source. Having a better understanding of your traffic will enable you to create better content and continue to grow your blog and eventually sales.
There are a lot of things startups need to succeed. A blog that provides valuable inbound leads is one of these things. Many times, start up entrepreneurs and team members are already over subscribed and their bandwidth can’t handle content creation and monitoring. This is something that my company, Demeter Interactive can help with. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any specific questions about content marketing for startups. jesse (at) demeterinteractive (dot) com
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