What do you want from a marketing blog – poll feedback

Thanks to everyone who took the poll on Linkedin and took the time to add a comment as well. All feedback gratefully received.

It’s fairly unanimous that marketers look for information that is going to enrich them in their roles and stimulate fresh thinking and new ideas when reading blogs and websites online.

Some really interesting comments threw up how how to and best practice focused articles could actually draw on case study experience, even drawn from an interview!

So not entirely cut and dry but one thing is clear – people don’t want theory, they want real world experience they can learn and benchmark against.

Looking forward to implementing this insight into my future blogging. Thanks again for contributing.

What do you want from a marketing blog?

 

I’m running a survey on Linkedin right now, soliciting feedback from people operating in and around the sales and marketing environment.

The poll is one question and I’d love for you to stop by and take a moment to have your say.

 

Please click this link and you should arrive on the page.

The poll runs until 15 June 2011. Thanks for your input.

6 creative ways to use Twitter for business

Twitter is like Marmite. People love it or hate it. And even within the pro-Twitter group, there is a significant number that fail to maximise the exposure the platform provides. Which does little to convince businesses and brand owners to give it a go.

To avoid the humdrum of updating people on where you are having your lunch, or indeed what you having, consider using Twitter in the following six ways.

1. Run a poll. Snapshot market research. Done. Provides great content for a blog or press release, creating something newsworthy.

2. Run a time sensitive promotion. Arguably easier for retail based or hyper local businesses , but professsional services companies shouldn’t rule out the value of providing limited time access to ‘valuable’ information and insight packaged into white papers and pdf downloads. A great lead generator too.

3. Support events. More and more seminars and conferences create a #hashtag pror to an event to link all tweets related to that event. It’s simple, searchable and incredibly effective. Maintaining the community after an event by sharing content and continuing discussions maximises this further.

4. Share relevant industry news. Raise your profile by associated yourself with the latest news and views in your industry. Using services like Twitterfeed and Google Reader you can quickly and easily keep on top of the latest news without having to visit dozens of websites every day.

5. Look for new recruits. Write a catchy tweet with a link to further content on your website or blog to encourage the best talent on the Internet to make themselves known.

6. Take advantage of location. One of the biggest advances in technology and marketing as smart mobile phones develop. It is estimated that there will be more smart phones than computers accessing the Internet by 2013. Thats two years away. Twitter synchs seamlessly with other location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.

And indeed, linking ‘location’ with any of the points above provides for a smart, engaging and potentially lead generating return from Twitter.

And hey, not an overtly self promotional ‘broadcast’ tweet in sight.  Thats the way to do it in style. It rarely pays to be the loudest guy in the room.