Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

On Moving On and Jugnoo

So, if you ever read my bio (whether here on the blog’s sidebar, or on any of my social networks), you may have noticed that I recently updated my professional description.

Whereas before it was for Bonsai Interactive, as of last week it became Jugnoo, Inc. So, what was the change?

Simple – I’ve stepped down from my role at Bonsai to become Director of Retention and Social Media at Jugnoo, Inc.

While my time at Bonsai was fun, and we were lucky enough to work with some great clients, the direction began to change in the last few months and I felt it was time to move on.

Enter Jugnoo.

I’ve known the VP of Marketing at Jugnoo for a while – Hessie Jones – and we just got chatting about a few things. She told me about Jugnoo and my interest was piqued. Cue some more conversations, and I was delighted to join the team.

So what the heck is Jugnoo? Well, here’s the official blurb:

Making Your Business Social is Our Business!
As an internet media technology company, Jugnoo gives both consumers and businesses the tools and services they need to stand out on the social web. Up to now, it’s generally been larger corporations that have had the time, resources and knowledge to truly benefit from the social web. Jugnoo intends to level the playing field for the benefit of all.

In the bigger picture, Jugnoo is a technology and media company that has an umbrella of products for both consumers and businesses. The first product is JugnooMe, which is currently in beta phase for launch early 2012. Its primary goal is to make social media easier to add to the marketing mix for small-to-medium businesses.

There’ll be a lot more information coming from both this way and the Jugnoo team soon, and I’ll be reaching out to folks in our target audience with some more details shortly.

For now, my sincere best wishes to Troy and Bonsai on their success ahead, and my gratitude to the clients that I’ve gotten to know over the last two years – it’s been a blast, and I wish you well.

In the meantime, feel free to connect with Jugnoo on Facebook and Twitter, and look forward to sharing more details soon.

Cheers!

Social Media Marketing Success Doesn?t Have To Be A Hunt For A Four-Leaf Clover

This is a guest post by Stacey Acevero.

The rise of social media has created all sorts of new opportunities for small business marketers to get the word out, but it has presented challenges too.

The days of sending press releases to media outlets with the hopes of being lucky enough to get some coverage are long gone, morphing into constant opportunities to catch the next social media sharing phenomenon.

Today, it?s not enough to hit just those traditional media outlets.

You need to create a social media survival kit to help your business? content fly on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and countless niche sites across the digital horizon.

Take heart, shareable content is not as rare (or hard to create) as you might think. With just a few tweaks, your content could be the talk of the sharing community.

Try these four tips to help make your press releases more social media friendly:

Understand your audiences.?You?ve heard it before: make sure you are writing content geared toward your audience. Before you can write for them, you must understand who makes up that group. It?s more than just the specific prospects you are trying to appeal to; search engines are your readers too.?This is where search engine optimization comes in. Make your content highly rank-able with optimized keywords and phrases. The computerized audiences will love them ? but don?t forget that your primary readers are still human.

Provide opportunities for sharing. Incorporate buttons that will allow readers to share on a number of networks. You may have thought of Facebook, Twitter and good-old-fashioned email, but you should also include sites such as:

Tumblr
StumbleUpon
Digg
Delicious
Reddit

Making your content easy and compelling to share is just one more way to motivate readers to spread your word.

Tap into viral trends. All those videos, photographs and jingles floating across the web are making the rounds for a reason.?? Take a look at the top memes (virally spread ideas) and ask yourself, what can I do to make my content more playful, provocative or just plain different?

You may find that a simple video aimed at a niche site is the crux to a viral campaign that spreads to networks everywhere.

Use your press release as a palette. Don?t think of your press release solely as a way to get out information. Put creativity into every element of your template by adding videos and photos to make the complete piece better positioned for social media marketing success.

Experiment with quirky or bold headlines
Use subtitles that ask questions or identify different takes on your topic
Use links, multimedia and photos to tell your story

Stay away from PR speaks; nobody has the time or interest to read it. Write like a storyteller and remember, there are millions of speed-readers on the net who skim content to determine readability.

Find a way to appeal to these scanners in an instant so they won?t just finish your press release, they?ll want to share it as well.

Think about the content you?ve been motivated to share. What about it drives you to let others in on the treasure you?ve found?

Translate that to your press release. If it?s important,? interesting and valuable, then with a few touch-ups you can make it eminently shareable too.

Shareable = Social Media Marketing Success!

So, your turn – how are you finding success in social media? Let’s hear your best practices below!

About the author:?Stacey Acevero is the social media community manager of PRWeb, where she engages the online community through PRWeb social channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn daily with articles and conversation about PR, small businesses, SEO, social media and more. She is all about creative social media marketing ideas as well as building the PRWeb brand. Stacey also pens of some of PRWeb?s case studies. Connect with Stacey on Twitter at @SaceVero.?

Be Brilliant at the Basics

A lot of the time, we look at ways we can be outrageously creative.

We think of ways to outshine that viral video our competitor lucked out with. Or we look at the craziest competition we can offer that ties social media, mobile, print and online marketing all into one kickass promo.

Or we think of how many cool features our new product has, and then think how it’d be even cooler to multiply that number by ten and use that as just the starting point.

Even on our blogs, we look at how we can make our design the one that stands out from the rest and look like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

But do we need to?

Does outrageously creative lead to more sales? Is that viral video one our audience will react to? Is our multi-platform marketing based on audience demographic or internal silo thinking? Does our blog’s content live up to the look and feel surrounding it?

There’s no question there’s a time and a place for the outrageous – but there’s also a time and place for the basics, too. Usually even more so.

Be brilliant at the basics – the rest will follow.

Looking After Business and the Real Profit Makers

If I asked you the most important part of your business, what would you say? Marketing? PR? Perhaps advertising or sales?

Now what if I said they?re all irrelevant? What if I said you don?t need sales to be successful? You?d probably say (fairly sarcastically),??Why not just hand my business over to my competitors while I?m at it??.

And you?d be right ? if I were serious.

Of course PR, marketing, advertising and sales are relevant, and hugely important parts of your business. But they?re not the most important part.

?But they?re the ones that bring the customers and make money, and money equals profits!?you might say. And again, you?d be right. But take a look at that sentence again.

?Customers? make money and money equals profits.?

That?s?both?sets of customers, new?and?existing. So why are so many businesses concentrating on the new and forgetting about the existing? Is the mindset, ?Well, they?ve stuck with us so far, they must be happy?? If it is, be prepared for a wake-up call.

Just because a customer has stuck with you doesn?t mean they?re satisfied. They may be tied into a contract or they may feel it?s too much effort at the minute to find a new vendor. But satisfied? Not necessarily.

Be Vocal

Have you asked them lately how they?re feeling? Have you asked how you can improve your service (don?t fall into the trap that your service has reached its plateau ? nobody?s?thatgood)? You?do?have ways of asking these questions, don?t you? If you?re not sure, ask yourself the following:

Do you have a?customer feedback form?on your website?
Do you have a?proactive approach?at asking your customers what they?re thinking?
Do you collect your customer details and use that information to?personalize your relationship?
Do you have some form of?customer service performance?in place?

If you can?t answer ?Yes? to at least one of these questions, you might want to check and see how many of your customers have dropped off the radar in the last 3-6 months.

As important as your sales team is, or your marketing team, or your PR team or your advertising team ? as important as all these elements are to your business?s success, they all cost money.

Your customers, on the other hand? A happy customer is your sales, PR, marketing and advertising teams rolled into one. Your most loyal employee. Your most vocal supporter ? and they don?t take wages from you. So look after them.

Be Pro-Active

If you collect contact information, use it. Call your customer up and ask how they?re finding their time with you. Ask how you can improve and what you can do to make their lives easier when shopping with you.

Don?t collect information initially? Fine ? have a feedback form on your site and have that (or a customer feedback phone number) printed on your receipt. Encourage interaction and communication.

Or, if you have a Twitter account, for example, have ?Don?t forget to tweet about us on Twitter? printed on your receipt and then monitor your mentions. And this works both ways ? you can salvage a negative impression immediately or emphasize a positive one.

Start a forum on your website where customers can chat with each other about how you?re doing, and how you can improve. Involve your employees throughout the company on the forum, and talk to your customers like human beings instead of just sales figures. Sure, you can advise on what employee can say what, but at least offer the voice to open up to and converse with.

The key thing is, sales and marketing and the rest of the new business team is exactly that ? new business. And you absolutely need that. But you also need existing business to build on and let you have the means to go after the new. Your customers ? and by association, your customer service ? are the?real?profit makers.

Isn?t it about time you treated them accordingly?

image:?Nemo?s great uncle