Preparing for a Media Interview

At some point in your career the phone will ring or you will get an email from a reporter requesting an interview for an upcoming article. Don't panic! This is a wonderful opportunity for you and your company.  Just remember to gather some information and this should be a positive experience.

Be sure to ask some questions of your own first. Find out who the reporter is and the topic and objective of the article. This will help you determine if this is a good fit for you.

Next, find out the type of story. Is this a product piece, an industry wrap-up or trend article. Try to think about how you can add value.  Does your company have the best product in the market to showcase in this article? Be objective here and use this time to help promote it and show how it relates to the market and trends.

This can be accomplished by developing some message points. In order to successfully deliver your message in the interview you need to determine what the message is. Think about what your product brings to the market and what you want people to know or remember of it. Condense this into two or three concise one to two sentence statements. These are your message points.

During the interview, weave these message points into your interview answers. You can use a technique called bridging. This is where you answer the given question and segue into your message point. An example is "yes that is true, but you should know..." This will help you to take control of the interview and make it worthwhile for you and the reporter. Be sure to support your message points with an interesting story or fact and you will have a terrific interview experience.

Last but not least, find out when the interview will air or appear. You will want to watch or see a copy of the article.

How to Measure Social Media Impact

You are posting on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter and pinning on Pinterest but how is this affecting your sales conversions? Let's take a look at how to measure social media impact.

Before you do anything else you need to establish social media goals. Determine how social media will align with your overall brand, marketing, public relations and sales goals. This will grow a positive online community and following that engages with your company/brand. It will provide an active flow of information between you and your customers and will increase the brand recognition in the online space. Objectives need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Raising brand awareness to increase brand recognition and online influence, creating loyal website visitors and boosting community awareness and engagement are important. An example of this would be a need to drive website traffic to increase website conversions using engaging content.

Next you need to create metrics to measure the goals. You can track URL shares, clicks and conversions that move through the various social media sites listed on your website, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and You Tube using Google Analytics.  It will also be important to track what visitors do once they end up on the website. You need to measure what pages and products are viewed and whether a sales conversion takes place.  A suggested way to accomplish this is to apply specific coupon codes to each social media site. From there you can measure where the engagement is and how it is affecting sales.

Now you need to continually monitor  the metrics on a daily basis in order to see how the social media engagement is progressing.  Through daily reports you will be able to determine what is working and what isn’t.  You can use these reports to determine what needs to changed, adjusted or improved.

With careful planning, relevant content and constant monitoring social media can play an integral role in the sales effort.

Webinars: A Staple of Content Marketing

Webinars are a valuable piece in a content marketing strategy. Time-consuming; yes but the rewards can be amazing. Webinars with targeted, relevant content can generate qualified leads for your business development efforts and it can lead to other types of content like blog posts, white papers, etc.

The key to success is to create content that interests your target market. For example an e-commerce company would find a webinar on the best ways to target users in the customer lifecycle interesting and usable in their day-to-day operations; whereas other industries might not. This type of webinar could lead to blog posts on how email has gained a place in the modern digital and direct marketers' plans. It could also lead to a white paper on how the collection of new email addresses is vital to the growth of an email database. The opportunities are endless.

Topic is very important. If it doesn't interest your target marketing no one is going to waste time listening to it. Be sure to outline the deliverables and the value that will be obtained by attending. In the case of my customer lifecycle webinar example your deliverables could look something like this:

·         Discover how to send successful email campaigns by prioritizing quality not quantity when building your email list

·         Identify useful sources for capturing email addresses

·         Learn how to effectively encourage users to register for mailings

·         Understand how to collect the right data with the right permission

When promoting your webinar, steer clear of the sales pitch. This should be an educational approach that establishes your company as an industry leader. But it is a good idea to have your sales team on board. The webinars I have created were delivered by the sales staff with them engaging in conversations with participants during the Q & A portion.

In closing, webinars are an important part of a content marketing strategy. Remember to select a topic that resonates with your target market, make sure the content is valuable and steer away from the sales pitch. If you do all of this you will gain valuable qualified leads.