Last week Seth Godin inspired the Vocus Community with a rare webinar “No Secrets, No Shortcuts”.
Seth Godin has authored fourteen best-selling books and is considered “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual and the #1 Ranked Marketing Blog by Advertising Age. So in other words when Seth speaks…marketers listen. He’s full of valuable insight some of which he shared with us last week on “No Secrets, No Shortcuts”
If you missed it, no worries, just enter your name and email address below and I’ll send you the recorded webinar.
In the webinar Seth Godin talked about his 6 tips on marketing success. He believes that in order to be successful in marketing today you’ll have to do the following:
1) Tell a Story
2) Practice permission marketing
3) Focus on the niche
4) Be extraordinary
5) Connect customers to each other
6) Give away your ideas
Inspired by Seth’s message, I reached out to my own network to ask them about their best marketing or PR tip. Below are some of the favorite replies that I received.
“Best PR Tip: It’s not who you know, it’s who knows (and remembers) you! Make sure you’re top of mind always and stay in touch with those who support your work – not just when you need something! ”
“Announce and present and award. Determine what award you could give to one or more influencers in your client’s industry. Craft a press release full of appropriate keywords and distribute via PR Web. Post links to the press release on FB, Twitter and other social media sites, with hashtags and mentions to recipients. Everyone likes to be recognized and the recipients are highly likely to share the content regarding the award to their followers. Giving an award also establishes your client as a leader in their field.” -Linda Arroz, Founder of Makeover Media
“Here’s my social media tip! It’s a privilege for fans to like or follow your social media brand pages. Be respectful of the time it takes them to read and consume content. Before posting an update ask yourself what your fans will gain from it and if it’s worth their time.”- Kristine Hartman, Director of Social Media for Bullseye Strategy
“Deliver value through your marketing, not sales pitches.” -Dan Hutson, Vice President of Communications & Marketing for be.group and MySilverAge Continue reading →
A couple of weeks ago I wrote the blog post “Why I Love Working at Vocus – My Top Ten List“. The #6 reason on the list was Products, since publishing that post, I’ve received several follow up messages about people that wanted to learn more about the different Vocus products. I’m doing this blog post because I know that I have other readers that were probably wondering the same thing but never sent a message or don’t have an idea on how to go about getting a Vocus demo.
No worries!
I would be more than happy to take you through a free demo of the Vocus software so that you can check out what all the buzz is about. Although Vocus has several different products our most in demand software is the Vocus Marketing Suite.
Below are two questions that will help you decide if the Vocus Marketing Suite might be a fit for your business:
Is your organization currently doing or considering doing any of the following?
How much is your organization spending on the following?
Email Marketing
Press Releases
SEO
Social Media Monitoring
Social Media Management
Facebook Apps
Media Lists
Influencer Lists
Content Curation Tools
Traditional Media Monitoring (TV, Broadcast, Print etc..)
Lead Generation
Lead Nurturing
Trend Spotting Tools
Inbound Publicity Alerts
If you answered yes to question 1 then the Vocus Marketing Suite could be a great tool for you…any company using or considering using one of the above tactics will benefit from the software. The huge benefit that only Vocus can provide is the integration of all these tactics into one easy to use platform that allows the different pieces to talk to each other, thereby creating efficiencies, saving marketing dollars due to economies of scale offered by a single platform, leveraging cross channel analytics and creating a synergistic effect that increases the productivity of each individual tactic. Bottom line for businesses this means:
Spend Less Time
Get More Results
If you answered question 2 and then start to add up everything that you might be spending (time+money) on the above tactics then you will quickly realize that doing all of these things can be very expensive… although worth it. Another huge advantage and selling point for the Vocus Marketing Suite is that you get to do EVERY tactic listed at the cost of what you may be spending to do only 3 or 4 of them. There are no sacrifices made in the quality of service and software that you receive since Vocus provides a best in breed tool for all of the above mentioned tactics…you might have heard of the names Help a Reporter Out (HARO), iContact, PRWEB and North Social, these are all #1 ranked companies in their respective field that Vocus strategically acquired with the vision of combining their technology to create the ultimate marketing product….the Vocus Marketing Suite.
Are you ready for a Vocus demo?
Fill out the form below and I’ll be in touch with you very soon to get one scheduled. If you are so pumped that you can’t wait by all means call me now at 301.479.1480
It seems like every day I get an email or a Tweet, or someone that’s messaging me asking questions about LinkedIn. They are reaching out to me. They are saying, “Hey, Jeff, I really am focused on finding that job that I want. I want to know how to use LinkedIn for business. How can I meet prospects and get clients form LinkedIn?” So I am getting all these questions about LinkedIn, and I’ve realized, Wow! You know, there’s so much people out there and such a need for LinkedIn training for people to really understand the power of this amazing social networking professional networking tool.
So with that in mind myself and some of my colleagues have worked on putting together LinkedIn University.
This is going to be a course designed with the LinkedIn newbie in mind. So if you are that person. You’ve always wondered what the heck is LinkedIn? How can I use this? I am on LinkedIn, what do I do now? This program is designed with you in mind. It’s going to teach you the very basics and graduate you up to a LinkedIn expert or least an advanced LinkedIn user. So what we need in order to give you this LinkedIn curriculum for free, all we need is your name, your email address.
You could sign up below, and we’re going to hook you up.
We’re going to send you a notification as soon that program is live, and you’re going to be one of the first members of LinkedIn University, so again, I am so excited to be a part of this, launch this, and we’re going to be sending out those emails soon, so again, Jeff Zelaya, and I appreciate you watching this video. Take care!
Hey guys! Jeff Zelaya here. Want to do a short little video on a topic that has been very popular in the past couple of weeks with a lot of my clients. As an online marketing consultant, I bring new strategies and new ideas to companies and chief marketing officers, and one of those ideas that I am bringing and that many people are asking about is affiliate marketing. So I want to take a minute just to kind of explain what affiliate marketing is. Let’s say that there’s a great website, a blog that focuses on cars, right?
So there’s a popular blogger, and he’s doing all types of reviews and articles on different cars that are coming out, different car parts, etc. So this blog is very popular, a lot of people are going to go see the blog. It’s getting shared on Facebook and Twitter, and it’s getting a lot of good traffic, so we know the demographic of people that are on this blog or people that have an interest in cars, or that’s one of their passions and hobbies.
Now on the other side of this picture, we have an advertiser, an advertiser that is interested in reading out to this demographic, right? So, what advertiser would be interested in reaching out to cars? Obviously, you know, we have the carmakers, right? Ford, Chevy, Nissan, Honda, and then we also have the car part manufacturers and the aftermarket parts industry, so these are all advertisers that are interested in reaching out to this demographic and marketing to these people. Now an affiliate marketing agency would act as a middleman. They have relationships with the advertisers, and know people that want to reach out to this demographic, and they also have relationships with publishers, so bloggers, and people that have email lists, and access to that data.
An affiliate marketing agency will facilitate the relationship between the advertiser and the blogger, so they take different ads from the advertiser and approach the blogger with different ideas on how they can set this up on their blog to monetize, so they could make money because now they are running these different advertisements on their website. So what happens is that now you have a win/win relationship.
The blogger is now making lots of money because now a blog that you used to do for fun before, now becomes a profit-generating website where they are raking in money because they have a good match of advertising with their demographic. The advertiser also ends up winning because this is the perfect demographic that they want to reach out to. People on this site will be clicking advertising that will lead to the advertisers website where they could input their information, maybe sign up for an email list, maybe actually, you know, buy the product or produce a different type of conversion, and then of course the affiliate marketing agency ends up winning because they provide value to both the blogger or the publisher and also the advertiser.
So, a couple of the great benefits of affiliate marketing is that number one, you are paying per performance. So you’re only paying, the advertiser is only paying for the results that they are getting, so the clicks, the conversions, the sales, the leads that are being brought into them. They are paying for performance. A second advantage of affiliate marketing is that really there is not much or any up-front capital that you would have to put out. In typical marketing or online advertising you would have to pay Google up-front for the clicks or the different marketing that they are providing the display advertising, the buys, etc. So you’re not paying, you’re not paying up-front. So overall it’s a very cost-effective way for both the advertiser and the publisher to make money and to capitalize on the different audience that is out there.
Affiliate marketing is a hot way of marketing, and I will be bringing some other popular topics in the next couple of weeks, but this is something that I thought would be important to start off with because of the effectiveness that it has for both the publisher and the advertiser, so good luck with your online marketing. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Thanks for checking out this video.
In just a couple of weeks I will be celebrating my 1 year anniversary at Vocus. The past 12 months have been amazing! Vocus has given me a great career opportunity and I am very grateful.
It’s an amazing feeling to wake up in the morning and not feel like “oh man…I got to go to work!” instead I’m excited and look forward to getting my work day started. Monday mornings are also much different when you truly enjoy the work that you do and love the company, the clients and your co-workers.
That being said, I would like to share with you:
Top 10 List on Why I Love Working at Vocus:
10) Growth
I see growth at an organization as an opportunity for career advancement but also as a sign that as a business you must be doing something right. Combine that with the knowledge that the digital marketing industry is poised for record breaking growth, that Vocus is in the position to benefit and that our software is loved by our clients then you’ll understand why I love my job.
9) Work Culture
Shorts, sandals, sure no problem! Our culture is not focused on the clothes that we wear as much as the results that we deliver. Vocus seems to understand that for many of our employees a suit and tie has no impact whatsoever on our performance. If you could do the same job wearing your favorite pair of cargo shorts then don’t sweat it.
8) Vision and Leadership
Without Vision the people perish. Luckily, Vocus has an amazing leader at the helm by the name of Rick Rudman aka @vocuschairman. He’s navigating Vocus through an industry that has experienced a lot of change, turmoil and challenges. Public Relations is not the same industry that it was a decade ago. A lot of companies that were Vocus’ competitors in the early years have faded away into oblivion. Vocus has not only survived but it has also thrived through an industry shakeup and a down economy. Strong leadership and a clear vision for where we are heading makes working at Vocus extremely satisfing and encouraging.
7) Clients
I receive a great deal of joy in my daily conversations with business owners, CEOs, CMO’s, Communication Directors and other PR and Marketing professionals. My clients are open minded and on the hunt for ideas that will help their business or organizations become more successful. Vocus isn’t a fit for everyone and that’s ok. We aren’t looking to be a solution for everybody but for those that there is a fit, it’s amazing and extremely satisfying to have a client put their trust in you and then they get the results you promised and more.
6) Products
Vocus is tirelessly and endlessly developing and improving their products and services. Never being satisfied is a trait that I share with Vocus. Leaders are always looking for ways to optimize and improve what they currently have, even though what they already have is really good. In the social media industry, change is not an option it’s a necessity. Vocus is always on the lookout for ways to improve their offerings and this is why they’re an industry leader. Never rest on your laurels and continue to research, develop and take action in directions that will help our clients.
5) @VocusCareers
When I moved up to DC from Miami, I had a choice of where I wanted to apply and work. At the risk of sounding like an arrogant fool, I truly believe and have absolute confidence that I could get job offers from any reputable agency and business that I really wanted to work at. In fact, I started my job search not by seeing what positions were being posted or offered but rather my making a list of the companies that I wanted to work for that seemed like a fit for what I wanted. When I made the list a lot of recognizable names popped up but Vocus was #1. Already familiar with PRWEB, HARO and iContact what surprised me the most in my research of the company was their great employer branding. They did an excellent job at showcasing how much they took care of their team members, the perks and most importantly the recognition that they give employees through blog posts like this one among other things. Follow @VocusCareers and visit WhyWorkatVocus.com and you’ll see what I mean.
4) Change
In an industry like PR and Social Media you have to embrace and welcome change. Vocus knows this and isn’t afraid of changing and evolving based on the industry, trends and intelligence. Yes, Vocus is publicly traded however, they still manage to maintain a start-up “nimble” mentality that keeps us at the forefront of technology and change.
3) Support
At Vocus you are never on your own. There are so many layers of support from on-going training to special classes to conference and workshops. All designed to support Vocus employees on their professional ambitions and education endeavors. Additionally, you can count on the support of management and colleagues. One of the things that pleasantly surprised me when starting at Vocus was seeing how willingly and generously colleagues gave up their own time to spend with new hires and anyone else that was looking for support or help with anything.
2) Best Office Ever
No additional description needed for this one…just check out the pics below:
1) You can join me!
Interested in joining the Vocus family? The best part of working at Vocus would be the opportunity to possibly welcome YOU to the team. We’re currently hiring for:
VP Product Marketing
Mid-Market Sales Director Small Business Sales Executive
SEO/SEM Manager Small Business Sales Director
VP Talent Management User Experience/Interface Designer
Mid-Market Sales Executive Government Relations Account Executive
Sales Manager in Morrisville, North Carolina
Account Executives in London, UK
Small Business Sales Executives in Herndon, VA and Manila, Philippines
Send me your resume at jzelaya@vocus.com with the position that you are interested in the subject line. I’ll get it to the right people and even put in a good word for you if applicable.
Join Vocus and I promise you that you’ll never hate Mondays again!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Spring is finally here. I have never been more excited. For the past six months it feels like I haven’t been able to step outside my door without having some kind of sweater or jacket or layers upon layers of clothes, and this just feels amazing. The cherry blossoms are popping. You’ve got baseball starting. It’s just a great time of year, and to be honest this is my first ever spring, so maybe that’s the reason I am so excited. I’ve never actually had an official spring. See, I guess growing up in South Florida you really have only two seasons; you have hot, and you have got hotter. So it’s quite a change, and a see it just in the people that I interact with every day. Everyone’s a lot happier. It’s just people are in a better mood, and in life, you know, it really reminds me about the seasons that we go through as individuals.
You know, you’re going to have seasons where it’s going to be hard, right? You’re going through that winter, and it just seems like things aren’t really blossoming for you, right? You’re working hard. You’re doing the right things, but you’re not seeing the results, the benefits of it, right? But what happens? You wait, and you continue to do what you do and eventually spring will come forth, and it’s the same in all aspects of our life. I remember one time in college, and I am sure you’ve been through this too, I had the season of work, meaning that I had nights where I pulled in the all-nighters. You’ve got internships that you’re doing. You’ve got jobs that you’re applying for, and you’re working a lot, right? But if you’ve put in the time, and you’ve put in that season of work eventually what happens, you get the season of results. You get the season where now you’ve got job offers lined up for you, and your challenge is which one do I take? You’ve got the season where you’re getting great, awesome, 4.0 grades, why? Because you’ve put in the work.
Now, there’s some of you now that are experiencing that season of drought. In life you’re going to have a season where you just don’t want to deal with anybody, right? You want to stay home. You don’t want to talk to people. You don’t want to smile. You’re going through your trials and tribulations, and it’s getting tired. It’s a burden on you, right?
Whatever you are going through that season, remember, there’s always a better season around the corner. There’s always a season to look forward to just because you’re stuck in that right now doesn’t mean that’s where you’re going to be stuck forever.
So my message today in this video is just letting you know if you’re going through that season of pain. That’s okay. That’s all right. Everyone is going to go through it at one time or the other, and if you’ve never been through it, guess what? I am the bearer of bad news today. You’re going to go through it. It’s unavoidable, but where you do have a choice is in how you’ll react to that season. Are you going to let that season just tackle you to the floor and take all the good life out of you and just make you lose that faith and that hope that you once had for life, or are you going to let that season be your encouragement and be your motivation to go out there and be successful.
If you’re going through that season right now, just hold onto it, right? You’re going to go through that pain. Use it. Embrace that pain and use it to propel you into that season of spring that we’re in right now. The season where things grow, where there’s abundance, where there’s joy, where there’s laughter. That’s the season that I want you to be in. That’s the season that I am in right now. I am loving life! I just want to make sure that whatever season you’re going through whether it’s a season of success and prosperity, enjoy it! But don’t forget about tomorrow because there’s a season around the corner as well, not just a season that you’re in right now. So, thank you so much for watching this. I wish you a wonderful day, and enjoy each season to the fullest. Learn from each season of life, and I wish you nothing but the best! Jeff. Peace!
If you liked this video you might also enjoy this post:
Hi! My name is Daniel Gomez and I’m a recent Florida International University graduate. I obtained a Bachelor of Science and studied Communications and Advertising. After completing my degree, I experienced some challenges in getting the right career opportunity and am still currently seeking.
Recently, I gave my friend and fellow FIU alum, Jeff Zelaya a call to ask him for some LinkedIn advice. Not only did Jeff give me some great advice but he also offered me the opportunity to write this guest blog post about taking the necessary steps to be successful post graduation. He believed that there are other students and recent graduates out there that can learn from my career seeking experience. But also there could be someone out there that is in a position to hire a hungry, young, talented graduate…heck that might even be you! After reading my blog post below why don’t you head right on over to my LinkedIn Profile-> Daniel Gomez – and let’s connect
Sincerely,
Daniel Gomez
Three Must Do’s If You’re A Recent Graduate Looking For Work
1) Visit Your Career Services Office
The first step that I took was going to the Career Services office. After about 6 interviews I felt that I needed some guidance and understanding and this was the place to go. I made an appointment with the Career Counselor and from the first appointment she was able to dissect everything that was wrong. She instructed me that I need to have a resume packet ready to go. A resume packet includes the following: cover letter, resume, letter of recommendations and professional references sheet. At the beginning I only had a cover letter, resume and letter of recommendation, however they were not up to standards. The following appointments she took the one hour session to critique and advise on how to stand out to a future employer.
A personal suggestion as well as I once learned from the lecture by Jeff Zelaya, “A Brand called You“, social media is not only part of our everyday culture but it is also part of the recruiting world. As Jeff stated in the lecture, ” You have to clean up and match what you are showing to potential employers. Employers do not want to see what liquor or who you were with on Saturday night.” Whichever platform you use make sure it a clean and respectable version of yourself.
Only upon completion of step one should you move on to step two.
2) Create and Complete Your LinkedIn Profile
After finishing your paper resume, it makes your LinkedIn profile easier to create. With your LinkedIn profile complete it will allow you to represent yourself through social media, recruiters and other connections in the LinkedIn universe. With your LinkedIn profile updated you can use this at networking events to leverage yourself. Nowadays a LinkedIn profile is considered a “digital business card.”
After steps two and three at 100 percent then only can step three be effective for you.
3) Network Your Butt Off
The final step is to begin the networking process. As a job seeker with your resume and Linkedin profile completed, you are now able to represent yourself better. Networking is a tool that can help any job seeker. While your ultimate goal is to make a connection to help land a job you should connect on a common grounds subject not related to the job. With this common grounds interest, it will give the individual an insight as to who you are. From this point forward a conversation with this individual will be much easier. Last point on networking is to keep in contact and to not lose touch!
These are the three steps that new college graduates must take in order to be successful and ready when the opportunity knocks. For it’s better to be ready and not to have an opportunity, than to have an opportunity and not be ready.
Are you a recent graduate or a college student looking for some help with optimizing your LinkedIn profile? Want to learn the LinkedIn tips that will help you get hired? Register for LinkedIn University! It’s a free series that will teach you all you ever wanted to know about LinkedIn. Join Daniel Gomez and others as we embark on the journey of landing the dream job.
I recently met Yuhannes Watts. Yuhannes is a LinkedIn evangelist and teaches students and business professionals how to leverage the power of LinkedIn. A couple of weeks ago, Yuhannes stumbled on my website and presentations online. When he saw that we shared the passion of teaching college students about LinkedIn and that I was in Washington D.C area he made it a priority to reach out to me so that we could connect, network and collaborate. When I got his LinkedIn invitation I accepted and Yuhannes immediately followed with a phone call…that’s when I knew he was serious about teaming up and was someone that I needed to meet and work with.
Check out our first LinkedIn video collaboration below:
3 Quick LinkedIn Tips From Yuhannes Watts
JEFF: Hey guys! Jeff Zelaya here, and I am with a LinkedIn Expert. Someone that I look up to and is an inspiration. He’s been helping a lot of young people connect and make the best use out of LinkedIn, and he’s going to give us some of his best tips, so I’d like to introduce you to my good friend Yuhannes Watts
YUHANNES: Hey, thanks a lot Jeff. Hey, three quick tips that I want to give everybody for using their LinkedIn profile. Number one, your profile is a sales tool, so you want to have the right information in there to make sure that it closes the decision maker that you’re looking to do business with. Number two, you’re engaging with strategy. A lot of people are looking on LinkedIn. They are looking at your profile.
They are looking at articles. You want to make sure that you reach out and engage your target market. The last tip is your follow up strategy. People will send you a request to connect, and they will never follow up with you. The biggest value-add to using LinkedIn is if you follow up with people who have just accepted you as a connection. That’s engagement itself, and you separate yourself from 99% of the other people on LinkedIn that are just connecting. Remember, your profile is a sales tool. Engage your target market, and look at your follow up strategy. Jeff, that’s about it.
JEFF: Excellent, excellent. Great tips. Start implementing this in your LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn use, and you’ll get tremendous results. Yuhannes has been around to different colleges, to students, about LinkedIn. Tell me some of the successes that you’ve seen from students using it having come back to you and say, “Hey, I got a job,” or, “I got this big deal because of this tool.” What have you seen?
YUHANNES: Yes, that’s a great question. When I go to speak at colleges just like Jeff, the students are really hungry to learn how to use LinkedIn. They are familiar with Facebook and they know Twitter, but because they haven’t developed their professional life just yet, they are really hungry to learn about LinkedIn.
When I do my seminars and workshops, some of the things that I see the college students doing are completing their profiles. That’s the most important thing. They are connecting to their professors because that gives them access to their professor’s connections, and some of the other things are adding the proper skills, adding volunteer experience, all these things are important because employers are looking at your LinkedIn profile to see how professional you are. They are looking at your Facebook profile to see if you might be a liability to the company, but they are looking at your LinkedIn profile to see if you’d be an asset to their company.
JEFF: Oh, wow! I mean, you’re bringing it to me. I love it!
YUHANNES: [laughs]
JEFF: This is the first of many more little videos that we’re going to shoot because both of us have that passion that we share. We want to teach students, business professionals, sales professionals, HR executives, how they could use LinkedIn to build your business, to get that dream job, to get that big client. It’s possible. We’ve seen it.
YUHANNES: We’ve heard. We’ve lived it.
JEFF: We’ve lived it! We’ve heard our students come back and tell us how they love it, how they are using it, and the results that they’ve gotten because of what we’ve been able to teach, and I want to teach you, and you want to teach you. We want to give you the tools. We want to empower you to get results by using this awesome, my favorite, social, business. . . .
YUHANNES: Oh, yeah.
JEFF: Networking, super-duper, awesome platform. So, stay tuned. We’ll be bringing it again.
Want More LinkedIn Tips? Sign up Below to Enroll for FREE in our LinkedIn University Program.
The online marketing world is changing daily. Everywhere I look there is a new search engine algorithm update, or new insanely popular way to drive traffic to your website. One new change that Google recently implemented at the end of 2011 is Google Authorship. Google Authorship finally puts the power back in the writers hands and gives you the ability to tag every piece of content that you’ve written, and have it be associated with your Google+ account.
Can you imagine waking up one morning thinking that you’re established writer because you’ve posted over 300 times on your blog to find out that Google doesn’t even know its you! It is a living horror story that is continuing to emerge from the depths to those that are still not aware of Google Authorship. Thankfully I am here to continue to spread the word and teach others how to properly tag their content.
How to Add Google Authorship
1. Create a Google + account
2. Upload a snazzy profile picture (one that will look good in the SERPs)
3. Make sure your name appears next your content
4. Confirm used in your content matches what’s on your Google+ account
5. Verify your @domain email address with Google here – https://plus.google.com/authorship
6. Confirm the email that is sent
7. Congrats you’ve just associated your Google+ account with your site!
This is only part of the battle. There is one more essential step to complete authorship verification and to start having your snazzy profile picture appearing the SERPs next to your domain. You must add the rel=author tag. What?!?! In every one of your posts you must include a link that looks like this
What I normally recommend is that in the bio section that most blogs contain after the content to just include one sentence. You can find me on Google+. Make sure that Google+ contains your rel=author tag and you’re good to go. You can literally see results in at least 1 hour from implementing this feature. Also you can test to see if everything is working properly with Google’s rich snippet testing tool – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
What are the Benefits of Google Authorship
First and foremost having a picture appear in the search engine results will dramatically increase your click through rate. See the image below.
Second the SEO benefits. Google has gone on to say that they will give improved rankings to verfied authors, and now there is a cost to remain anonymous on the web. The additional benefit to Google Authorship is Author Rank. Now that google can tell what you’re writing about it can begin to use this data to formulate author rank.
At this time the only method to check Author Rank is by logging into Google Webmaster Tools, click “Labs”, then “Author Rank”. The page will list all of posts that have been tagged properly, and the current SERP rankings for the articles. Tagging your content now is something that can last for ever in this ever so drastically changing world.
To sum things up visit https://plus.google.com/authorship verify your account, tag your posts, and be ahead of the curve and potentially give your site the traffic boost it needs.
About the Author
Alex de Brantes is the Online Marketing Manager and Writer for the Dash Radio. He enjoys writing about Marketing, Home Business, and Entrepreneurs. You can find him on Google+
The approval rating for Congress is near an all-time low hovering around 13 percent. Just to put that in perspective that means that cockroaches and traffic jams are more popular than our elected officials. There are many reasons why their approval rating is that low, but transparency and their ability to be relatable are definitely two primary reasons why people do not approve of Congress.
In the digital age where all news can become viral in a matter of minutes, politicians are still reaching out to voters in the same ways.
During the 2012 elections, all politicians including the revered Obama campaign stayed with mostly traditional methods. They had a large amount of volunteers call and knock on the doors of potential voters and spent massive amounts of money on advertisements. What they didn’t do though was direct engagement over social media. Yes, advertisements and sponsored posts were placed on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, but they didn’t take advantage of the power of big data.
There’s so much information on people now that you can realistically link social media sites to voter files. Start-ups like Votizen enabled someone to login and see the political affiliation of their friends and try to sway them to vote for certain politicians. Votizen is a non-profit that encourages voter participation, but why couldn’t this technology be used for more tactical means? Unlike addresses or phone numbers, social media addresses rarely change. You can also see who has read your responses and can micro-target voters much more accurately. Combining technologies like Votizen with a technology like Klout would allow for an unbelievable precision when discussing the roll out of public relations maneuvers like endorsements.
I would argue that a Facebook address is more valuable than an address or phone number. According to Pew, even 32% of people over the age of 65 use social media. That number jumps up to 83% for people between the ages of 18-29. The highly coveted Hispanic demographic uses social media even more than non-Hispanics. Even with this evidence, the political professionals continue to use social media similar to how they use television advertisements, which are not as effective as people are increasingly inundated with information.
Moving towards how politicians and advocacy groups currently use social media, it’s increasingly obvious that only a select few effectively use the technology. The best example of an effective use of social media is Michigan Congressman Justin Amash (R). Amash has accrued over 47,000 likes on his Facebook page even though he doesn’t hold the chairmanship of almost any committee. He has attracted a cult like following similar to former Congressman Ron Paul. With his Libertarian tinge, he announces and explains every vote he makes in Congress. He has hundreds of likes on every post and even though he continues to anger the establishment, his popularity grows due to his openness. This amusing post on Buzzfeed helps illustrate Republicans problems on social media, but Democrats aren’t perfect either as many still use it as a place to post about meetings and propaganda that most people don’t understand nor care about.
Bottom line when it comes to politics and social media:
Stop being afraid. Social media is the best place to sway public opinion and directly engage your audience. Stop trying to use social media as the new replacement for television advertisements and instead use it as a solution to compliment town halls or canvassing. There’s a lot of potential in politics for change, but very few seem to be taking the first step.
Today’s Guest Blog Post Author is:
Patrick O’Keefe
Patrick (@Pokeefe363) is a Public Relations and Marketing professional with a specialization in online communications, organizing, and politics. He previously worked as a Field Representative for the College Republican National Committee in Orlando, Florida. Currently, he works as a Large Market Sales Associate at Vocus where we consults corporate executives at Fortune 1000 companies on PR and Social Media. Patrick is also an active blogger, posting about various topics ranging from public relations to politics to technology: http://patrickokeefe.org/blog/
Last week Seth Godin inspired the Vocus Community with a rare webinar “No Secrets, No Shortcuts”.
“Best PR Tip: It’s not who you know, it’s who knows (and remembers) you! Make sure you’re top of mind always and stay in touch with those who support your work – not just when you need something! 
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“Announce and present and award. Determine what award you could give to one or more influencers in your client’s industry. Craft a press release full of appropriate keywords and distribute via PR Web. Post links to the press release on FB, Twitter and other social media sites, with hashtags and mentions to recipients. Everyone likes to be recognized and the recipients are highly likely to share the content regarding the award to their followers. Giving an award also establishes your client as a leader in their field.”
“Here’s my social media tip! It’s a privilege for fans to like or follow your social media brand pages. Be respectful of the time it takes them to read and consume content. Before posting an update ask yourself what your fans will gain from it and if it’s worth their time.”- Kristine Hartman, Director of Social Media for Bullseye Strategy
A couple of weeks ago I wrote the blog post “
