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13
Jan

Best-of-the-Best Practices on Slideshare – My private collection

best of best practices on slideshare - private collectionThe first time I ever published something on Slideshare, I was excited. It was a presentation called “Spreading the Content Marketing Virus”, which in essence told “my story”.

It tells the story of why I dramatically shifted the marketing strategy of the company I worked for at the time. From outbound to inbound marketing.

Hybrid marketing is probably more correct, as we kept on applying paid media where useful. But also from analog marketing (does that even exist ?) to digital marketing.

I was excited because it was ‘my’ story. And obviously that’s important to me. Ever since then I have continued to post presentations on Slideshare.

Today I want to

  • share with you what I learned on Slideshare,
  • and share some of my “private web resources collection” of best practices about Slideshare publishing.

Read more »

29
Dec

(Slideshare) How to plan & design your social business CULTURE ?

social business cultureA couple of weeks ago I published a blog post with a “way-too-long-title”.

But what the heck, I still decided to call it “How have IBM, Adobe, and Dell become a Social Business? And what can a smaller company learn from them?”.

Sometimes you just need to do what you think you need to do, even when it’s not in line with digital marketing best practices. Read more »

22
Dec

7 Ass-Kicking ‘Awesome’ Digital Marketing Ebooks of 2014

book - Mary(n_n)West on FlickrCatching the attention of  buyers is done differently today. In the digital world we live in today, classic interruption marketing is less and less effective.

Applying traditional marketing tactics in the online world doesn’t work.

In your case as a marketing professional, you are constantly looking for insight, trends, best practices and how-to-do stuff. You are blind for advertising, you use Google as your best friend, follow RSS feeds of major marketing blogs, and subscribe to newsletters. Right?

What catches your attention? As digital marketers we are constantly flooded with whitepapers, ebooks, ultimate guides and webinars.

Not all of them are of the same quality.

But sometimes you encounter brilliant, well researched, and extensive ebooks.

In this blog post I want to share some of the best ebooks I have found in 2014. Each and every piece is really useful, practical, visual, and something you want to save on your PC.

With the holiday period coming up, you might have some time to read some of them ;-).

* image by Mary(n_n)West, on Flickr.

Read more »

30
Nov

How have IBM, Adobe, and Dell become a Social Business? And what can a smaller company learn from them?

social business for SMBWhat can small and medium business (SMB) learn from giants such as IBM, Adobe and Dell about becoming a social business?

At first sight learning from these giants seems a crazy idea. SMB’s are different by every means. They have less budget, less employees, and certainly have different problems.

But surprisingly, when looking at how these large companies have become social businesses, there is a lot smaller companies can learn…

 

For this blog post I have:

  • studied the social business strategies of  IBM, Adobe and Dell in detail,
  • mapped out a the best practices from these companies
  • formulated some best practices feasible for SMBs.

Read more »

15
Nov

(SlideShare) Trends, Innovations and the Future of Smart Content Marketing

follow the frogConductive Ink, Big ass content, Robot writers, kinetic text motion graphics and marketing apps.

Those sound as the future, but they are not.

Which content marketing trends are on the verge of breakthrough?

Coca Cola, Cisco, Kraft Foods and many more have shown that content marketing is not just a hype type of marketing. For them it is considered modern marketing in todays world where digital and the internet surrounds our buyers.

Facebook has made numerous changes in 2014, ranging from Facebook Zero, and halting “click-bait headlines”  and “like-gating”. Also Google has changed their algorithm with Panda and Hummingbird, and Twitter is preparing itself to start filtering for relevance.

All these social network leaders are implementing measures to make sure the content explosion is not harming their users, by making sure users get relevant and qualitative updates in their newsfeed and search results.

Because of these changes in the digital and social bazaar, content marketing is rapidly becoming the default marketing tactic for the years to come.

But content marketing is changing rapidly, and marketers must go with the flow, and keep experimenting with new tactics, content formats, tools and technology.

This is why I have created a Slideshare presentation to keep you up to date on what’s happening in the land of content marketing! Read more »

16
Oct

22 ROI Examples of Content Marketing showing Hard Business Results

content marketing hard business resultsIn the end CEO’s prefer to see clear results. Hard business results. They want to see the ROI of Content Marketing.

In this article I show you those hard business results using 22 examples of companies that used content marketing, and which had clear business results. These are not business results in terms of brand lift, social following increase,  or  whatever vanity metric you can come up with.

I will show you real cases, providing you with real numbers, where content marketing is increasing revenue for both B2C as B2B companies.

Before we jump into those 22 cases of hard cold business results of content marketing, first a little intro on the business value of content marketing. Read more »

29
Sep

Marketing by Telco’s: What Needs to Change

cold calling

Interrupted during dinner, by a phone call… should I take it or not?

Buyers are attracted to companies that provide value to them. Why is it then that these same companies keep on applying old school telco marketing tactics as if it where 1983?

Case Study from Major Telco in Belgium (spoiler alert: this is a rant)

A couple of days I received a call from a major telco in Belgium.

It couldn’t be more typical. In the middle of dinner, a phone call. Should I take it, should I not? What the heck, I’ll take it.

A split second after I answered the call I already regretted doing that.

Read more »

9
Sep

How to successfully combine inbound and outbound marketing?

when to combine inbound and outbound marketing

What to use in the marketing mix?

The debate about outbound marketing being “interruption” marketing, and inbound marketing about “deserving the attention of buyers” is actually a flawed argumentation.

The question is about how you successfully go about in combining inbound and outbound marketing.

It is true that traditional advertising is less effective.

People today like to skip TV commercials when they can. They are blind for online banners (on average 0,2% click on banners). They sign-out for telephone calls (2 out of 3 people in USA are on do-not-call list). And they opt-out of commercial email, with Google Gmail helping them with easy opt-out buttons.

But when you combine the inbound philosophy with the power of outbound, both re-enforce each other. Combining inbound and outbound marketing works when you:

  • Using advertising to create awareness, with messages they care about.
  • Paid content promotion about content they want to read.
  • Send emails that are relevant to them
  • Use outbound call center calls that are timed and relevant to them as respond to a pre-qualified need.

Read more »

26
Aug

How to become a digital marketing organization?

digitally empowered buyersBuyers today have become more digitally empowered than ever.

It’s changing their buying behavior, which provides new challenges to those aspiring a digital marketing organization.

In this blog post I’ll cover:

  • the overarching reasons why marketing must change to keep up with changing buyer behavior 
  • how certain marketers are trying to trick the system, without any chance to success
  • why marketers are loosing ground against the digital adoption speed of buyers
  • what roadblocks you need to overcome to become a digital marketing organization

And at the end of the post, I’ll cover

  • 19 specific changes you can make in terms of organization, technology and tools, so you can become a digital marketing organization.

Read more »

3
Aug

From Visual Storytelling to Visual Marketing: The Undeniable Bigger Trend

visual marketingOK, a little warning is appropriate here. This is a blog post where I slightly get out of my comfort zone because I am actually going to tell you a story.

Before you go all mellow and zap away, bare with me for a second. Just listen to me for a while, and you’ll begin to see a much bigger trend currently happening in marketing. Using a few brilliant examples I’ll explain the bigger trend behind visual storytelling, and how it should transcend to become part of everything you do in your marketing.

What follows is a true story, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you: I am not the best storyteller.

So here goes nothing… Read more »

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