Lesson 1: Create Liquid Content

As Jeff Bullas notes, the purpose of content excellence is to create ideas that are so contagious, they can’t be controlled. Coke calls this “liquid content”. It means creating content that begs to be shared whether that be an image, a video or an article. You probably know yourself which videos you watch and share. Have that in mind when crafting your campaigns.

Lesson 2: Ensure your Content is Linked

The next part of the equation, adds Bullas, is to ensure you create content that’s relevant to the business objectives of your company, your brand, and your customer interests. This is linked content – content that’s relevant and connected to the company’s goals and brand. Ensure the content communicates your message that is congruent with your mission and values.

Lesson 3: Create Conversations

The new distribution technologies including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook allow greater connectivity and consumer empowerment than ever before, continues Bullas. In the new landscape, don’t just publish content but interact with your audience and tribe. Your role is to provoke conversations rather than talk at them.

Lesson 4: Move Onto Dynamic Storytelling

With traditional media, storytelling is static and one-way. Television and newspapers shouted at you with no interaction. Coca Cola believes in order to grow its business on the social web, it needs to move on from “One Way Storytelling” to “Dynamic Storytelling”. This means allowing the story to evolve as you interact and converse with your customers. You need to converse with your customers in many media formats and social networks. Storytelling has moved on from static and synchronous to multifaceted, engaged and spreadable.

Lesson 5: Be Brave and Creative with Your Content Creation

Part of the new Coca Cola content strategy is applying a 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“.

• 70% of your content should be low risk. It pays the rent and is your bread and butter marketing. (It should be easy to do and only consumes 50% of your time).
• 20% of your content creation should be innovative.
• 10% of your content marketing are high risk ideas that will be tomorrow’s 70% or 20%. (Be prepared to fail).

Learning how to fuel conversations and interact has never been more important. Consumer ideas, creativity and conversations have been set free with the evolution of social networks. Learning to leverage and wrangle those conversations to increase your brand visibility is now a vital part of marketing.

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/713235

Jennifer Fleming is Specialist Content Writer at Dinkum Interactive. With a background in journalism, Jennifer is a best-selling writer, writing coach and media strategist. You can reach her at jennifer@dinkuminteractive.com.

•Set Up A Schedule. Carve out 15 minute chunks within your day to check social media and respond. These chunks can be while you’re taking a coffee break or after eating dinner. They don’t need to be during prime time hours.

•Use Your Blog for Long Form Responses: Any good social media plan starts at “home” on your site where you own and control the content. Ensure your blog is regularly updated and is relevant content for your clients.

•Set Up Brand Pages: It takes a bit of time initially, but once your pages are set up on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Linkedin, and Yelp, you can easily update them. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

•Figure out who your audience is and follow them on these networks.

•Determine relevant content for your business is and keep an eye out for articles, videos, and other multimedia that you can share with your audience. Note: If you source content from elsewhere, which is perfectly fine to do, mention your source.

•Set Up An Editorial Schedule: Work out when you will blog, post and engage on social media. Stick to this schedule. Consistency is king. If you post on a regular schedule, people will know when to look out for your insights.

•Don’t Be Afraid To Share Your Opinion. If you’re a cook and you read an article on cooking that you don’t agree with, share your opinion. Just remember, keep it clean and professional.

•Play to Your Strengths: Don’t be afraid to outsource social media if you don’t want to look after it. The key element is having a presence.

When you get into the routine of social media, it becomes an interesting way to engage with your audience. You never know what you might discover.

Seth Goldstein is an Interactive Evangelist at Dinkum Interactive and has worked in the interactive and online space for more than six years. Contact him at seth@dinkuminteractive.com.

Many people blog as part of their marketing efforts but Steve takes it a step further. He’s a voracious reader of magazines, articles and newspapers and when he runs across something that inspires him, he offers his interpretation through his blog. With attribution, of course. And once he posts the blog, he then sends a copy of his post to the writer or journalist that inspired it. It helps that Steve is a good writer and his posts are insightful.

As part of his note, Steve thanks the author and explains that they inspired his post. And in most cases, he gets a personalized response. Yup. Not canned or automated. Talk about real engagement! These notes are often the beginning of an ongoing correspondence and when he’s traveling – which he does frequently – Steve lets these folks know and often meets with them.

He’s had breakfast, lunch, and a few glasses of wine with some really interesting people because he connected through his blog. It creates a ripple effect.

Know what I’ll be doing next? You betcha. I’ll send blog this to Steve with a thank you note for telling me how he has turned his blog into an engagement tool.

Do you have other ideas to turn you blog into an engagement tool?

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

For most campaigns, we did well. Clients saw increased traffic, conversions up, business leads came in, budgets increased. Some clients even made it their primary marketing channel. This was all very well but there were some frustrations.
1. Relying on a single channel is never a good thing.
2. Search Engines were constantly changing and evolving themselves.
3. Clients wanted more
4. We wanted more

As a result, we have evolved. While all of our campaigns have an underlying SEO focus, there are so many other channels we can tap into and we love ‘em all! Our greatest campaigns incorporate all of our services: the website, email marketing, social media, paid search, usability, CRO (conversion rate optimization) and PR outreach. Personally, I’ve had trouble calling us an SEO company for a few years now. The activities we do no longer strictly influence Search, in fact I’d hazard a guess that most SEO Companies perform activities that no longer strictly influence Search. Search has evolved to embrace Social. My CRO testing actually has little to do with Search. If I set up an email marketing campaign for my client do I still really work for an SEO Firm? The writing has been on the wall for a while, we evolved the company to match this reality.

Now, Dinkum Interactive is fully integrated. We’ve recruited or partnered with talent to cover all the bases necessary to do what we aim to do; drive business online.

PaulFleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.

This guest blog is by Jack Schaller from Eastern Legal Systems.

Judging by the press from the recent 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), tablets appear to have “arrived” as a serious player in the technology market, vying for the consumer dollar along with all of the other gadgets and gizmos. Their presence is becoming more ubiquitous in the business environment as well. It is rare that I don’t attend a conference where at least a portion of the audience is taking notes on a tablet.

Jason Hiner, editor in chief at Tech Republic, recently posted an article from CES offering an interesting perspective on the state of the tablet market. He sees the glut of “android-based” devices rolling out today as analogous to the “Clone Wars” of the 1980’s when hardware manufacturers were falling over themselves to offer bigger, faster, more powerful hardware, with more connectivity options than IBM could offer at that time – and for a lower price.

Hiner thinks that the tablet manufacturers are, by and large, missing the point of the tablet as a “breakthrough” technology device. It will never succeed as a replacement for the notebook PC as it’s used today — tablets don’t do any of the “bread and butter” PC tasks nearly as well as a notebook can today. Ask anyone who has tried to draft a 5,000 word document on their tablet. Unless, that is, they also bought that Bluetooth keyboard accessory and hooked it up to an alternative video source, thus creating an ersatz notebook that doesn’t function nearly as well as a “true” notebook.

It seems that tablets do one thing really, really well: access information. You can get video, music, documents, drawings. In a word – content. And where might one find all of this content? You guessed it, in “the cloud.” The real value of the tablet, where it really shines, is in quickly and seamlessly accessing all of the content available out on the web. And the tablet manufacturers who really “get this” and who have optimized their devices to perform this function most effectively, are the ones who have made it the easiest to store and retrieve content via user-friendly “containers”. Jason Hiner believes that this is precisely what Apple and Amazon are all about and why he believes that these two, with the iPad and the Fire, will be the big winners in the competition for the hearts and minds of tablet purchasers. Ultimately, it is not the device but the system that the user is purchasing, and the system needs to provide storage, content, and ready access to information within a user-friendly interface. Both iCloud and Amazon Cloud offer this.

The technology market is no longer the realm of technology lovers – the so-called “geeks and nerds.” Many technology consumers can’t tell a gigahertz from a megapixel, and couldn’t care less about either. They just want their technology to work quickly, easily, and painlessly. And that’s not really such a bad expectation, is it? These are the purchasers that savvy manufacturers should be courting.

A few days later, with gift card in hand, my friend visited Staples to make his purchase. He was surprised to find they didn’t stock the phone he wanted in store and was told he could order it online and that they would be happy to place the order for him. It wasn’t ideal – delayed gratification isn’t as much fun – but he agreed. At the kiosk, the sales associate couldn’t figure out how to accept the gift card for the purchase. The suggestion? Try ordering it online at home and call the help desk if you have a problem.

My friend figured it was worth a try so he went home, logged on, and the site promptly crashed. He called customer service, who were aware of the problem and were working on it. A few hours later, with the site back up, he tried to purchase the phone with his gift card but couldn’t figure out how to enter the details. We’re talking about a Staples gift card on the Staples site! He called customer service and they couldn’t figure it out either.

His next step was to use the gift card to purchase Visa gift cards to complete the purchase. It turns out you can’t use a gift card to purchase a gift card. Hmmm.

Armed with information from email and Twitter help desks, my friend went back to the Staples store. The sales associate followed the advice but it didn’t work. Another tried and failed. Even the manager gave it a shot. No luck. They finally figured out that the phone was being sold through a Staples partner site which is why the gift card wasn’t being accepted. Bottom line? There’s nothing they could do to complete the sale on the Staples site, with a Staples gift card.

The manager gave the phone number for Corporate Customer Relations. Guess what? They are only available from 9 to 5. That’s right, working hours. So you can only call them if you don’t work.

In a fit of frustration, my friend walked across the street to a big box store and bought the phone for half the price offered at Staples. They cheerfully ported his data to the new phone and activated his new two year agreement. Now, all he has to do is sell the gift cards since the experience turned him right off Staples.

Every Staples sales associate and manager did their best to resolve the issue. But the brand is damaged – it has a black eye. At no point did Staples indicate a partner arrangement on its website. Each page of the checkout process featured the Staples tag line “that was easy.” No, it wasn’t. It was impossible.

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1185407

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

I can tell you now, SEO is not dead. When explaining it today, I say search engines desperately want to give you the best results each time you search. The reason? If you find what you’re looking for, you’re more likely to use that search engine again and possibly click on a paid advertisement that generates money for the search engine.

SEO helps search engines determine the value of your website by laying out clearly and neatly what your company provides. If you employ SEO, each page of your website is like a separate brochure. You send searchers deep into your site to the page that contains the information they are looking for. For example, if I search for hotels in Bermuda, I don’t want to be sent to the homepage for the Bermuda Tourism Bureau. I want to go to a page about hotels. SEO helps search engines do this.

The biggest change in SEO is the criteria search engines use to determine the rank of a site. Now, there’s greater emphasis on social media and other new tools.

Three elements always in flux with SEO include:-

1. Search engines will always look at how to become better in determining relevancy – for you. This means the algorithm used to allocate rank will change.
2. Your competitors will probably look at what you’re doing and may decide to become more aggressive in their approach to the Internet which will affect your ranking.
3. Users change how they source information. Six years ago, folks mainly used short phrases in their searches. Now, people are more likely to use sentences.

My take home message is this. The Internet continues to evolve and so should your approach to it. Those who embrace change and keep up with its evolution will see results with their bottom line. SEO is still an important part of Internet marketing, but it’s only one tool in an ever growing box.

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

1. Have a Clearly Defined Point of Difference

You are unique. Your take on your product or service is unique. But have you clearly identified this point of difference? As Onibalusi suggests: “Take a look at your blog and ask yourself one simple question: what is the first thing I want my readers to think about after landing on my blog? Take a look at your blog and ask yourself the same question. Can you come up with an answer for this right away, or is it taking you so long to determine what really makes your blog different from the others?”

Once you identify your point of difference, it will help with communication.

2. Develop a Strategy to Help Fuel Your Blog Growth

It’s one thing to write a blog and post it. It’s quite another to attract new readers to your blog. At Dinkum, we spend time cultivating guest blogging opportunities, article distribution, email marketing, and SEO. But we do it within a strategic framework. “My approach is to create a landing page focused on getting people to subscribe, publish around 5-10 guest posts on big blogs in my niche every month, and nourish the relationship with my subscribers to make them consistently engage with my brand,” says Bamidele Onibalusi. At Dinkum, blogging only forms part of an overall strategy so 5-10 guest blogs is too high for most of our clients. But clearly identifying your blog strategy will help to make it more successful.

3. Create a System to Help Bring Visitors Back to Your Blog Again

In most cases, you want visitors to come to your site again and again. And you want them to take action such as buying a product or service. Ornibalusi says, “The system designed to bring visitors back to your blog could be an email list, it could be an active RSS subscriber base, and it could be a huge following on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.” Check that you are employing these systems to encourage repeat visitors with clear calls to action.

4. Focus on Building Connections with People that Matter in Your Field

There’s nothing quite like an endorsement or referral from a trusted commentator in your field. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your blog. But like friendships, they take time to build and cultivate. The first criteria is to offer something of value to your influential blogger’s audience. There needs to be a win-win. “Focus on contributing value to them and gaining their trust, and they will be there for you when you need them,” suggests Ornibalusi.

5. Be Everywhere

As I’ve said before, the days of using single tools in Internet marketing are long gone. Ornibalusi agrees. “Don’t just stick with one approach. Use a combination of 2, 3, 4 or more. If people start to see you on every blog, on every forum, on every portal, and on various social media sites in your field they can’t help but pay attention.”

You’re probably saying ‘But I don’t have time for all of this.’ It’s true that effective blogging is time-intensive. My suggestion is to allocate time specifically for this task. Depending on the importance of blogging for your business, you might spend half-an-hour a day, or one hour a week. It’s up to you. The important part is strategy and execution. Get those force fields working.

Jennifer Fleming is Specialist Content Writer at Dinkum Interactive. With a background in journalism, Jennifer is a best-selling writer, writing coach and media strategist. You can reach her at jennifer@dinkuminteractive.com.

1.  Walmart has a digital technology research division based in Silicon Valley called @WalmartLabs
Yes, that’s the name of the department, not their Twitter handle. And yeah, I didn’t know they had an uber cool tech outpost either! Since acquiring social eCommerce startup, Kosmix, last April for $300 million, Walmart has gone on a bit of a buying spree. They gobbled up Grabble (a mobile payments company) in November and now they’ve added Small Society.

2.  Personal is the future for Walmart – what about you?
It looks like Walmart, best known for its cookie-cutter superstores, understands that personalizing the shopping experience is the future. Judging by the prices they’re paying and the people they’re acquiring in these deals, they know that connecting with customers in the same way as cool brands such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon is necessary for a profitable future.

3.  Acquisition of People
The @WalmartLabs blog post announcing this deal focused on the “acquisition of people” rather than technology. Apparently this is what motivated the Kosmix deal with its two founders seen as more valuable to Walmart than the actual product or company. I guess Facebook isn’t the only company spending big to get core talent particularly when small companies with the right skills can create highly influential and profitable products.

4.  What about Bentonville, AK?
Walmart is somewhat famous for its 17,000-employee corporate headquarters. Located nearby are many suppliers wanting to reach customers through the infamous big box stores. It’s like bees to the hive! It looks like @WalmartLabs includes offices in Silicon Valley, Portland, and Seattle. It’s going to the people rather than bringing the people to the “big box.” This brings new meaning to Walmart’s slogan “Our People are the Difference.” It looks like Walmart is returning to the idea of small, independent shopping in the center of communities.

It’s interesting that Walmart, whose brand symbolized the opposite of the Internet revolution, is embracing new technology more aggressively than others. These recent acquisitions are a serious investment in forward-looking people, technology, concepts, and working styles. It suggests Internet innovation is no longer in the hands of digital natives or tech entrepreneurs. Walmart has sniffed where the future money will be and is acting.

Jacob Smith is a Senior Project Manager and Web Strategist with Dinkum Interactive and has led over 150 high-level consulting and website development projects over the last 10 years. He is active in both the internet and cultural communities, and served on the board of Philly Car Share, a nonprofit and one of the largest car sharing organization in the United States until helping engineer its sale to Enterprise Holdings in the summer of 2011. Originally from Southern California, Jacob and his wife, Meghan, now live in Center City Philadelphia with their young sons Rory and Duncan.

The latest update was announced through my search results.

After you click ‘learn more’, you’re taken to a page that explains this new service. In typical Google fashion, it includes a video that claims “search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends.” Maybe. What is most significant here is that for general searches you do on Google, if you are signed in with a Google account, you’ll see items on the search result pages from those in your circles. If you’re not logged in, from what I can see, it looks like it shows Google+ updates and profiles (both seem to have been given a boost) that it deems relevant.

If you want to be part of this latest Search iteration, you’ll need a Google+ profile. For business, create a page (pimp your profile). Then set up your circles, start following, engaging, and sharing. I think it’s worth getting comfortable with Google+ because I see it becoming a more important Internet marketing tool and will continue to evolve.

I’ll be watching to see how this new feature impacts us all. Right now it’s fairly limited but a sign of things to come. A killer feature would include pulling in other profiles like it does with Quora and of course if they can resolve their relationships with Twitter and Facebook, the personalized landscape might just get interesting. Keep you posted!

PaulFleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.