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Tag: Lee Odden

  • B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Ultimately Conversion

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Ultimately Conversion

    “We co-create content with (B2B Influencers) in concert with brand messaging,” says TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden. “So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.”

    Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, discusses how B2B influencer marketing can be a highly effective force in driving leads and conversions for companies. Lee was interviewed by Tim Washer at the 2019 Content Marketing World Conference & Expo:

    Influencer Marketing Is Powerful Because Of Influence Itself

    Influencer marketing is powerful because of influence itself, not about the people. Influence has always been a factor in being persuasive and being effective as a communicator, as a marketer, and really being able to tap into the dynamics of that. The psychology and sociology of that is something that is everlasting, it’s evergreen. While there are trends in terms of tactics that come and go, there’s this consumerization of B2B. B2C influencers are misbehaving and have fake followers, etc. and some of that’s leaking over into B2B. But I think that’ll reconcile a little bit and kind of clean itself out. In the future brands are going to be looking at influence as a really key component of their holistic marketing strategy internally and externally.

    A lot of people when they think of influencer marketing they think of a Kardashian or some people think of something like Baddiewinkle, a 90-year-old woman who wears hip-hop clothes and now has her own makeup line on Sephora versus someone like Tamara McCleary interviewing an executive at Dell about the right IT infrastructure for doing edge computing. That’s really what it’s about in B2B.

    B2B Influencers Actually Have To Have The Main Expertise

    One of the big differences between B2B and B2C influencers is that in B2B you actually have to have the main expertise. You actually have to be knowledgeable and have a depth of that expertise in what it is that you’re influential about. It’s also important to have a network for distribution and a place to publish your content. It’s great to have a personality and that’s less common in B2B, where you have charisma. Well, lack of personality is a form of personality I suppose. 

    The good thing is that we’ve figured out ways to coach folks that have that domain expertise and an active following but they’re not necessarily used to being social. We are coaching them in how to activate themselves and to pull out the best of what they have to share in a way that’s very promotable. Many of them start to open up a little bit after we show them how to do it.

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion

    In the planning stages (with a client looking to promote something) we’ll look at the topics that are important around the announcement and how it affects customers and how customers will think of that news and how it’ll affect or change their lives. Those topics are then what we want to be influential about. We’ll use those keywords or topics to search our network using influencer marketing software to find who is influential around those topics, who’s publishing content, who self-identifies around that topic, and whose audience is actually activated around that topic. We find those people who have trusted voices with an active community and we invite them to collaborate on content and give their opinion about the announcement. 

    We co-create content with them in concert with brand messaging. So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. They intersect across channels too. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion – TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden

  • What The Industry Thinks About Google Reader’s Demise

    Google recently dropped the bombshell that it is closing down Google Reader, much to the chagrin of its loyal user base. I’ve done my share of ranting about it, and discussed why some businesses may want to be more strongly thinking about their email strategies. We’ve since reached out to a handful of prominent bloggers and industry professionals for some additional perspectives on what the closing of Google Reader means for blogs and publishers.

    What impact will Google Reader’s demise have on blogs and news sites? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    “I think it’s net positive that Google is shutting down its reader,” Automattic/WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg tells WebProNews. “It encourages people [to try] the great new experiences that have been developed over the past few years, including the WordPress.com reader.”

    According to Mullenweg, the open source WordPress software is used by 16% of the web.

    And trying new experiences we are. Feedly, for one, is getting a great deal of attention since Google’s announcement. Two days later, Feedly announced it had already seen 500,000 new users coming from Google Reader. At times they’ve had trouble keeping up with the demand.

    “I think that Google Reader is a standalone technology and not indicative of whether the world will shift away from RSS,” says Human Business Works CEO and all around popular social media guy Chris Brogan. “The notion that social networks and human sharing has replaced RSS is like saying that fireplaces have replaced central heating. Quaint, but not effective.”

    Not everyone quite agrees with that sentiment, however.

    Jeremy Schoemaker, author of the popular ShoeMoney blog, says he has about 70,000 RSS readers but that the amount of traffic from them has dropped significantly.

    “For me Social Media has become the new RSS,” he says. “I use a free service called Twitter Feed, that automatically posts my new posts to Twitter and my Facebook personal and fan page. I see far more traffic from that then any news reader. I haven’t thought of it until now but I haven’t logged into my Google Reader account for years. I don’t ever think RSS will die, but it will used more as an API like tool to interact with websites than a reader.”

    Long-time blogger and EVP/Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman, Steve Rubel, tells us, “The majority of large sites won’t see an impact. Most of their traffic now comes from Twitter and Facebook. In addition Google (search) is a large source of traffic. The smaller sites, however, will be impacted. Their more dedicated readers are using Google Reader. These sites will need to gravitate to other forms of distribution such email newsletters and other vehicles.”

    “It’s hard to say,” says Search Engine Land and Daggle blogger Danny Sullivan about the impact of Reader’s demise. “Technically, all those readers can easily continue to be readers by taking their feeds elsewhere. In practice, some might not make the effort. I expect that some blogs that see traffic from RSS are about to take a hit, though it might not be anywhere near as bad as they fear. We have, of course, been through this before after the decline of Bloglines.”

    TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden tells us, “It’s a disappointment and a little puzzling that Google would shut down reader. What’s next, FeedBurner? Probably. Google is a data-driven company, so clearly they have their reasons. The cost must now outweigh the goodwill created by offering a free and useful service like reader. Still, I have to wonder if there isn’t useful usage data with reader that Google could use?”

    “For content marketers, the main consideration is the impact on reach of content,” he adds. “If a substantial portion of a blog’s readers are using Google Reader, it’s a big deal. The blog would do well to point those readers to another service like Feedly.”

    Zee Kane, CEO of The Next Web, says, “I think older blogs, perhaps primarily ‘tech blogs’, might experience a degree of negative impact as many (ourselves included) have hundreds of thousands of RSS subscribers. Many of our readers our early adopters and geeks who consume (technology) news as though their life depended on it, Google Reader is/was an undoubtedly brilliant way of doing so. With Google Reader disappearing, we’ll see an even heavier focus on social as a means to distribute stories, as a way to rank stories and as a means to increase readership.”

    This is, of course, a small sampling of industry opinion, but it’s interesting to hear people’s different takes on the effects. Really, we won’t know what impact it truly has until Google Reader is finally gone. In the meantime, other services will pop up, and existing alternatives will strive to improve and outdo their peers.

    There for a while it was starting to look like Google was really pushing for an end to the RSS format, as even its RSS Subscriptions Chrome extension disappeared from the Chrome Web Store. Thankfully, that was said to be a mistake, and it came back. Meanwhile, Google is phasing out links to Google Reader from its other properties. We’re still waiting to find out if Google will keep the RSS option alive in Google Alerts, which seems to be experiencing its own negligence from the company. Interestingly, Google is giving advice on how to build news readers for Android.

    RSS.com is currently on sale with a $200 million asking price.

    Will you miss Google Reader? Let us know in the comments.

  • Lee Odden: What You Need to Know about Optimization

    What is optimization? The dictionary definition, according to Merriam-Webster, optimization is:

    “An act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible; specifically: the mathematical procedures (as finding the maximum of a function) involved in this.”

    Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and Author of Optimize In the online business world, optimization is often thought of in terms of search engine optimization and social media optimization. While these tactics are very important aspects of optimization, Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and author of new book Optimize, told us that it doesn’t stop with them.

    Odden, who is a 14-year veteran Internet marketer, came to this new understanding of optimization after a conversation with Google engineer Maile Ohye. As he explained to WebProNews, Ohye gave him a “palm forehead moment” after he voiced concerns over his speaking skills to her. She suggested that he optimize his speaking just like he would optimize a website for better performance. In that moment, he said it dawned on him that he should be looking at optimization differently.

    “I just thought… why not make that the focal point of discussion when we’re talking about how to connect customers with brands using content, using social [and] using search,” he recalled to us, “and how to approach optimization as a state of mind… as a way of viewing the world versus just keywords and links and the on page sort of thing.”

    The revelation inspired Odden to write a book and tell others why modern marketing calls for a broader customer-centric approach to optimization. He told us that understanding the customer is the element that is missing in most discussions today. When optimization efforts look at the totality of the customer experience, they have the ability to surpass individual efforts in search and social.

    “If you’re focused on customer behaviors – what their goals and pinpoints are, what is it that they care about, and how we can solve those problems with brand information, brand solutions, or products or services – then we’re going to be on top of what it means to grow revenue, to retain customers, to increase orders, to increase referrals, and that sort of thing,” he said.

    What’s your optimization strategy? Does it focus on SEO and social media, or does it go beyond these tactics? Let us know.

    Traditional SEO tactics involve identifying the most popular keyword phrases relative to the products and services a business offers. Then, traditional SEO would have you make sure all your content, including the existing, new, and social media content, includes them as well. While checklist-type SEO tactics are effective, Odden told us that many more opportunities are present beyond them.

    “I think you’ll find more opportunities when we take the effort to understand how is it that customers think about the problems that they’re having,” he said.

    “It’s not just the checklist,” Odden continued, ”it’s having the wherewithal to understand customers, to understand the market, to understand the kinds of content that are meaningful, and also paying attention to the marketplace so you can actually on-demand come up with stuff that’s a marketing asset right here [and] right now – not just following a fixed editorial calendar or fixed marketing plan.”

    In his book, Odden further details the opportunities in optimization and explains how they lead to attracting customers, engaging with them, and inspiring them to share, purchase, or refer others to the product or service. According to him, the book is geared toward anyone that publishes content on the Web. He believes it will equip them with the information they need to not only reach customers, but also to grow their business.

    “It will empower them with a knowledge that will allow them to get more productivity out of the content that they’re publishing, [a] more meaningful versus mechanical experience for the audiences that actually consume that content, and a framework for how to create a process in an organization that will help you scale,” said Odden.

    Optimize is currently available in all major bookstores and online.

  • Google+ Makes Splash in Social Sector, But Will It Last?

    Google+ has been on quite a ride in its first 6 weeks of existence. It obtained 10 million users in just two weeks and is now said to have over 20 million users. The overall reaction has been positive, but since the platform is currently invitation-only, the early adopters have mostly been the tech savvy crowd.

    First Impressions of Google+

    Everyone knows that first impressions are vital, so how did Google+ do? WebProNews posed this question to numerous search and social media leaders and received a variety of responses. Loren Baker, the Vice President of Services at BlueGlass, told us that Google+ felt like a “private version of Facebook” but with a better user interface. He also pointed out that it had given people the ability to “reset” as far as selecting who to include in circles and who not to include.

    When Facebook opened to the general public, most users tried to get as many friends as possible regardless of whether a relationship existed or not. Baker believes that people have gotten smarter now and are using Google+ more selectively.

    Social media speaker and author Mari Smith added that there seemed to be a “different vibe inside Google+” since users were sharing more and having “more thoughtful conversation.”

    One interesting aspect that Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, noticed was that it appeared to be a big traffic driver. What’s even more interesting is that the amount of time that users spent on his site to read the post he had shared was 4 times the amount that people were staying when they came from Facebook or Twitter. He said that this data was especially noteworthy since Facebook and Twitter were usually strong sources of quality traffic.

    Google Makes Progress in Social

    Although Google has struggled to get into the social space, Google+ appears to be its golden ticket. As many people have pointed out, the platform looks very similar to Facebook and has similar sharing aspects as well. However, it seems to flow more like Twitter.

    At this point, it looks like Google+ is trying to re-produce the features that users favor on the other networks, expand on them somewhat, and also capitalize on their shortcomings. Steve Rubel, the EVP of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman, told us that these developments have created a different type of social experience that is peaking the interest of users.

    “This is their first entry that they’ve had that is really serious [and] that people are really using a lot,” he said. “It’s a very open approach that I wish others would take.”

    On the other hand, Li Evans, the CEO and Co-founder of LiBeck Integrated Marketing, told us that, while Google+ is a better attempt at social than its previous efforts, its value proposition is still lacking.

    “What is the value proposition? What do I get from Google+?” she asked.

    She went on to say that, at this point, she did not see the same value on Google+ that she sees in Facebook and LinkedIn.

    Google+ Vs. Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

    Because of the positive feedback that the platform has gotten, it is only natural that people are questioning how Google+ will faceoff against the other social networks. Tech analyst Rob Enderle recently told us that Facebook had an advantage over Google+ since it had the majority of users.

    But, as we all know, Myspace was the biggest social network when Facebook began. Enderle indicated that, if Facebook wasn’t careful, it could fall to Google+, just as Myspace did to it.

    While Barry Schwartz, the CEO of RustyBrick, speaks very highly of Google+, he doesn’t think that Facebook has anything to worry about.

    “I don’t think Google+ will kill Facebook going forward, I think, Facebook will still be very strong… probably the strongest player in that market,” he said.

    Rubel doesn’t see Facebook dying to Google+ either. He thinks it has promise but said he had some doubts too.

    “There’s no doubt that it’s going to be a strong #3 or #4,” said Rubel. “Whether it goes mainstream… the jury’s out. I don’t see that happening so fast.”

    Smith also agreed that Facebook should not be worried about Google+. She did, however, say that, while it would always be an important player, she could see Facebook losing its #1 spot in the social space.

    “If Facebook could just launch a powerful search engine, it would be fierce competition right back at ya for Google,” she said.

    She went to say that Twitter, even though it needed improvements, was also a valuable product that would not likely fall to Google+.

    Odden believes that Twitter is very effective as well for both business and personal usage. He explained to us that the propagation that happens on Twitter is very different that the closed environment of Google+

    “Google+ is all about Google,” he said. “It’s not about propagating externally so much, whereas Twitter, is completely wide open.”

    He did add that, if Twitter and Facebook were smart, they would find ways to work with Google+.

    Incidentally, Facebook has seemingly responded to Google+ with its group chat release and video chat feature. It also announced a new page called Facebook for Business, which some believe was to counter Google’s shut down of business accounts.

    When Google+ does roll out its business option, Baker told us that he could see it having a “competitive advantage” over Facebook if it incorporates Google products such as Deals, Latitude, and Places. He also said that if Google+ is fully integrated into mobile devices and Android, it could have the same penetration that Gmail has. Since Android dominates the mobile market, he thinks that Google+ has the potential to grow exponentially.

    Wishlist of Further Development

    Despite its extensive growth rate, Google+ has had its problems in its short existence. There have been privacy concerns in regards to user names, and there was also disappointment that the service launched without support for many Google Apps. The lack of business product was, of course, another basis for complaint.

    So, what else would people like to see from Google+? Baker told us that he has had issues with Google+ since he has both a personal Gmail account and an apps Gmail account. For this reason, he would like for Google to converge the two accounts together.

    On the topic of search, he said he would like more integration of Google+ into the search results. He suggested that Google cater search results based on each users’ Circles.

    Evans and Odden both told us they would like to see more sharing capabilities. Rubel also said that the mobile experience has to improve. He would  like to have Hangouts move beyond 10 people as well.

    Smith believes that Sparks needs a lot of work. Additionally, she wants Google to allow developers to have access to its API in order to create tools and other features on top of the platform.

    Odden said he understood that Google was trying to produce a product especially for businesses, but he thinks that, in the mean time, businesses should be allowed to have a profile. As he explained, Google could then give them a migration tool to transfer information, once a business option is available.

    Google definitely has a ways to go, but it’s clear that the company is dedicated to Google+ and succeeding in the social space.

    “Google has not said this is a fully baked product,” said Rubel. “They’ve said it’s a field trial patience is a virtue.”

  • Stop Doing Social and Start Being Social

    Stop Doing Social and Start Being Social

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  • SEO and Social Media Matter for Press Coverage

    When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

    Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

    Do you take press coverage into consideration? Comment here.

    Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

    Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness.

    Odden makes a great point online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who’s talking about the subject they’re writing about, at nearly the moment they’re looking for it.

    For that matter, Google’s real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they’re looking for. If what they’re looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google’s real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you’re talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook Pages here now, by the way.

    The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people.

    If attracting media attention is what you’re after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:

    1. Do something that’s different – Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow.

    2. Look for niche publications – the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you.

    3. Personalize your message – When you’re writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you’re contacting, so they know it’s not just a manufactured piece that you’re sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity.

    4. Find multiple contacts – If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication’s staff.

    5. Provide plenty of details – When sending such a pitch, it’s a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.

    Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I’ve seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won’t even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog – wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info.

    Share your tips for increasing press coverage.