DigitalORDER » Marketing

I’m Giving away a Purple Cow

Jacob — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:52:58 +0000

I apologize Im not actually giving away a purple cow, thats the name of a book but trust me this book is almost better than a real purple cow. The author of this book is named Seth Godin. He’s a pretty succesful author because though he writes about subjects like marketing and business his books aren’t superfluous, they tell you exactly what you need to learn and not a word more. Seth’s written many books but my two favorites are The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) and the Purple Cow.

Not your normal blog contest
I am not a fan of the normal blog contest that requires you to post about the contest on your blog with a backlink just to enter. Other than one person winning a prize and the contest runner getting a bunch of backlinks its kinda pointless. Plus if you dont have a blog you are left out to dry. So I am going to do things a bit different here. I am going to ask a question and the person that answers this question the best gets a free book. Its that simple. Heres the question….

“How do you think the creation of the blogosphere and its later monetisation has effected the quality of journalism within both new and old media?”

All you have to do is write your reply to that question in order to be eligible. You dont have to have a blog, simply leave a comment with your answer. If you do decide to write your answer in a blog post maybe because its too long for a comment or because you’d like to share your answer with your readers, be sure to either leave a link to the post in this posts comments or email me the link at kingjacob [at] gmail.com, that way everyone can read and comment on your answer.

Contest Ends: November 9 at midnight(central time)

How To Write a Successful Press Release?

Jacob — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:09:20 +0000

As the title suggests, this post is about how to properly write and publish a succesful press release. It is important for you to know how to write a good press release because this is the first line contact between your company and the world. By writing good release’s you will not only gain more publicity directly from the release but you also gain alot of contacts within the News Media which is always a good thing.

What is your purpose?

The most important thing in writing a good press release is a clear understanding of what you would like to achieve with this press release. Albeit it introduce a positive thing linke introducing a new product or something negative like doing damage control to protect the reputation of your company. What ever it is, before you start writing you must know what you’d like to achieve with your press release. I usually write “by the end of this release my audience will……” and fill in the blank with my purpose, before not only each press release but also each post.

What should go within a press release?

News venues will do one of two things once they get your press release. They’ll print it directly as if it where a real article or they’ll use the information in your release and write their own article. You don’t want to write two different releases for the same topic, so within your press release you should have all the information anyone could want about the topic of your release and it must be written in an easily readable fashion that will convey the purpose you established in the last paragraph. Also, notice I said one release for one topic. If when you determined your purpose, you used the word and, i.e “by the end of this release my audience will [blank] and [blank].” Chances are your purpose is not specific enough and you should think about doing two seperate releases to cover each topic sufficiently.

How long should my press release be?

The actuall answer is as long as it needs to be to convey all the information. Though common practice tells us that most press release’s are between 500-700 words but sometimes when a company has quite a bit to release you do get more. But remember what I said in the last paragraph, If your release is excessively long, think again about what your purpose is.

Is there a format I should use?

There is a generally accepted format you should use and it looks something like this……

CONTACT:
Contact Person
Company Name
Phone Number
FAX Number
Email Address
Website URL

Headline That Grabs the Readers Attention Should be Bolded and bigger than body text
, , - Your first paragraph of the release should be written in a clear and concise manner. The opening sentence contains the most important information; keep it to 25 words or less. Never take for granted that the reader has read your headline. It needs to contain information that will “entice” the reader. Remember, your story must be newsworthy and factual; don’t make it a sales pitch or it will end up in the trash.

Answer the questions “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why” and “how”. Your text should include all pertinent information about your product, service or event. If writing about a product, make sure to include details on when the product is available, where it can be purchased and the cost. If you’re writing about an event, include the date, location of the event and any other pertinent information. You should include a quote from someone that is a credible source of information; include their title or position with the company, and why they are considered a credible source. Always include information on any awards they have won, articles they’ve published or interviews they have given.

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short; a paragraph should be no more than 3-4 sentences. Write your relase in a word processing program,this enables you to properly format and spell check it for errors. Don’t forget to proofread and if possible get someone else to proofread for grammatical errors. The mood of the release should be factual, not hyped; This is not a sales pitch, if it sounds like a sales pitch you’ll ruin your credibility with not only the news venue publishing your release but also the audience you hope to inform with your release.

The last paragraph should have information on how to get more information: For additional information on [Topic of Release], contact “name” or visit www.myawesomeproduct.com. If you offer a sample, copy, media package or demo, put the information in here.

ABOUT - Include a brief description of your company along with the products and services it provides.

-END- Always put the word End at the end because that lets the journalist know they got the entire release

Where should I publish my release?

You want to get your release read so try and get it published as many relevant places as you possibly can. Here are a few examples of places to place your release.

In the news section of your companies site.
Send it to Newspapers both local ones and national ones.
Send to news agencies(reuters,AP)
Send it to all relevant bloggers(like me;)
Submit to social news sites(Digg, Reddit,etc)

There are press release services, though I dont really trust any of the ones I found by googling plus if you use a press release service you aren’t getting the valuable direct contact between news media and your company.

Go out and Join a Forum Community

Jacob — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:38:43 +0000

The truth is to be succesful online you can not be in a bubble, you need to “network”. If you get to know other people working online it makes things alot easier. As I posted before collaborating with people in your area of expertise is not treason and will in fact benefit both parties involved. The easiest way to start meeting people if you are a webmaster is forum, I also posted a good forum for graphic artists and

Digitalpoint-this was the first forum I was an active member of and starting out doing anything online I suggest starting at DP, they have a free Buy/Sell/Trade section and threads about anything you can think of.

SitePoint-this forum is similiar to DP but taken to another level, the B/S/T section is pay only so that weeds out alot of the spam offers, they also have a really good contest section where you can compete for “jobs”. They have a book and kit section where you can buy some pretty good resources, a few are free. Also they have a large collection of videos that cover a variety of webmaster related topics. The content on SP is about one level above DP experience wise so when you start to get tired of the noobs on DP upgrade to SP.

TheBlogginExperiment-this is a pretty new forum started by sara(ses5909) and I am really liking it so far, its entirely blog related and a very good community. If you write a blog definently check it out.

DeviantArt-This is an art “forum” I use forum lightly because the forum is a very small part of it. The main focus is the Galleries where you can showcase all your art. You can also purchas and sell prints of art. Ive been a member of DeviantArt for almost 4years(betcha cant find my profile) and I am really impressed at the quality of most of the art. Also for those not as artistically inclined you can use deviant art to search for premade photoshop icons or for an artist to hire.

Also I just registered for WickedFire after a strong referral so we’ll see about them.

These are just the main forum communities I actively partcipate in, Im a member of a few more but not actively and I really believe their isnt really great benefit to being a member if your not going to be active. If you are an active member of a community that I didnt mention and fell people should know about please leave a comment.

The Best Free Tools of the Trade

Jacob — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:10:48 +0000

These are the main tools I use and prefer when doing any SEO related work,They are all very much free so enjoy and I hope you find them useful.

1. Iwebtools.com/tools- iWebtools has just about every tool you could think of or need for working with search engines, domains, or any thing else webmaster related.

2. Dnscoop.com- I go here for just a basic site checkout before I purchase links, they got pr, age, alexa, yahoo backlinks and one of the most accurate site worth estimators online.

3. Googles keyword tool- even if you dont use adwords its a good tool to check out general stats on which keywords your site has, related keywords, the popularity of that keyword and how competitive it is.

4. Shoemoney Serps-iwebtools has a serps tool but its not as fast as shoemoneys so I prefer to use it when it comes to serps.

5.Digitalpoints Keyword tool-Last butcertainly not least the DP keyword tool does more than tell you if you rank well for a keyword but it also can track your rankings for multiple keywords for as long as you wish.

Ninjas dont need word of mouth but YOU do.

Jacob — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:17:25 +0000

Today I’m going to talk about the most important aspect of marketing that is so often overlooked, Word-of-Mouth. Its so often overlooked because its hard to measure and not as easy to buy. Even though its difficult to control Word-of-mouth should be were most advertising money and planning should go. Why? you ask, because are you more likely to buy a t-shirt from a shop you never heard of or one from the shop your friend just got finished telling you they got an awesome shirt from.

I’ve always known about the power of W.O.M but it wasnt until I bough a new motorcycle(2007 Ninja 250) that I truly realized its influence. Within one week of driving, I have been asked somany times about my bike from complete strangers. Its not normal things you say like “awesome bike”, no, people have been asking questions you’d expect them to ask a saleman like “how much does it cost?”, “does it accelerate well?”, “how does it handle?” and even “how many mpg’s does it get?”.

I dont know how they did it maybe they just made an awesome product but not only did kawasaki get how ever much profit from selling me the bike but they also got a walking salesman for however long I own the bike. So before you start your next ad campaign think what can I do to make a person who sees your ad or product tell his friend about it?

I’ll have some more specific examples of successful word of mouth campaigns and how you can run a successful campaign as well. Also if you have any related ideas you’d like to share feel free to leave a comment.