By Natalie Leal
Chances are you’re well-versed in the industry you’re writing about. But there is a possibility your readers will be scratching their heads after they read your in-depth description of virtual desktop infrastructure, Software-as-a-Service, or dynamic random access memory. And if they feel like they’re reading another language, and it drags on, they may tune out. Consider learning about the importance of brevity in a press release, if keeping readers is important to you. It won’t take long, I promise! Continue reading The pithy PR pro: saying everything in a small space »
By Mark Evans
Is Google+ worth your time?
It’s a question many brands and individuals have probably been asking since the service was launched in July, 2011 after more than a year of work behind the scenes.
On the surface, it seems that Google+ has been a huge success with more than 100 million “active” investors among the 400 million people who have signed up for the service, which lets people share information and communicate with friends and business colleagues.
Even so, there seems to be ambivalence about Google+, which Google describes as a “social layer” that sits on top of its other services – as opposed to a social network. Continue reading Is Google+ worth your time? »
By Ryan LeClaire, Marketing Producer
There are a million reasons that your press release can succeed and only a few things that can hold it back. However, 90% of all press releases contain at least one of these mistakes and quickly makes the content easily forgettable and dismissible.
Here are five quick questions you can ask yourself as you write your release or while you’re reading it over. Continue reading Five Questions to ask when writing a press release »
By John Miles, Associate Editor
You’ve created the perfect press release, replete with groundbreaking information, a defined audience and a snappy headline that’s sure to grab the reader’s attention. All set for distribution, right? Sure, providing timely, relevant information to journalists and bloggers is still the single-most important aspect of a distributing a press release. Yet, without considerations for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you’re only ensuring that your release will be distributed, not discovered. Continue reading Search Engine marketing and the art of adding hyperlinks in the text of your press release »
By Lauren Barlow, Associate Editor
“You don’t get a second chance at a first impression.” This statement holds true in many regards, including when writing a press release. The first paragraph of your release will either grab the reader’s attention, or make them lose interest and move on. Pull them in to keep reading by including the most pertinent and interesting facts up front.
The following tips will help make your first paragraph memorable, informative, and most importantly, make your audience keep reading:
Continue reading First impressions: the first paragraph of your press release »
By Lisa Davis, Director of Marketing
If you were online today, chances are pretty good you came across an infographic. You might have liked it enough to tweet it, and maybe you emailed it to a friend. Heck, you might even be ‘old school’ enough to have printed it and pinned it to the wall of your office cubicle. There’s no doubt that infographics are everywhere. B2B and B2C companies are producing them by the thousands to communicate information as diverse as oral hygiene and uranium production. They are posting them to their websites and Facebook pages and building them into their product launches, marketing campaigns and survey results. But why?
Continue reading Three great examples of companies using infographics in their content marketing mix »
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! So it’s not a legitimate holiday (you can’t take days off) but it is recognized around the world by people talking like an old-time pirate.
Of course we had to see what the world is saying about International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrgh! Continue reading Ahoy, Mateys! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day »
By Alex Hoag, Account Executive
Most mornings I start off spending a couple minutes combing through my Twitter feed. I am always finding fresh content that evokes new conversation topics to use when reaching out to potential customers. Recently, I came a across a three part series, written by Don Peppers (@DonPeppers), published by Fast Company, regarding customer service. Each article took a stab at ways to embrace customer service and inspired me to write about the importance of a consistent communication system. Continue reading Message marketing in today’s social sphere »
Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge, nee Kate Middleton, is on tour of the South Pacific and the Solomon Islands with her husband Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge as part of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.
The tour is already being declared a success but it has been marred by the announcement by France’s Closer magazine of topless photos of the Duchess. Continue reading HRH the Duchess of Cambridge »
If your blog is hosted on Go Daddy, then you may have noticed it wasn’t working. Go Daddy was the victim of the hacktivist, Anonymous. Of course, the outage was noticed. Here’s what Sheldon Levine noticed in the social space:
Yesterday afternoon the popular domain registrar GoDaddy came under attack by a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous. This was actually an interesting attack because we’ve seen Anonymous take down websites before, but this time they managed to take out almost every website with any affiliation to GoDaddy. Not only were sites that were hosted by GoDaddy down, but even sites that were hosted somewhere else, but still used GoDaddy as their nameserver and DNS (meaning they registered their URL through GoDaddy, but point that URL to their hosting elsewhere) were out of commission. Even us here at Sysomos weren’t safe as GoDaddy provided our DNS (thankfully we’re back at 100% and didn’t miss a beat with our data collection as that happens somewhere else).
GoDaddy is the largest domain registrar in the world, with over 45 million websites, so when something like this happens, a lot of people notice. But just how many people? Using MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software, we investigated.
Read more at the Sysomos blog.
Mm…burgers…
In all seriousness, you can download an excellent report on the state of the fast food industry when you go to our Sysomos blog:
The global fast food business is worth more than $200 billion. Our free Fast Food Industry Insider digs into social media conversations to discover who’s winning (and losing) the burger wars. Get the social intelligence you need for any industry with Heartbeat powered by Sysomos and give yourself a powerful competitive advantage.
You can download and read it here.
The Toronto International Film Festival begins in two days. Soon the stars of the latest movies and documentaries will be here to talk about their film while the businesspeople move behind the scenes looking to secure distribution rights.
Buzz is building but does buzz lead to box office? Let’s see. Continue reading The Toronto International Film Festival »
It’s been a busy summer for the Sysomos team. They’ve been upgrading the MAP and Heartbeat platforms to add the Portuguese language to the sentiment engine.
Not only that, you can now visualize Twitter account growth or loss (it’s very cool) in a simple graph. There’s more so why not read the latest blog post?
Mark Evans ponders the question of why journalists need social media. We like it because we can keep track of what’s going on and it’s always fun to chat with journalists from around the world.
Hurricane Isaac is bearing down on Louisiana and has made landfall according to the US National Hurricane Center. It’s a category one hurricane with winds of at least 75 mph (80 mph according to Google).
We took a look at what was being said on social media. The Buzz Graph breaks it down very quickly. Continue reading Hurricane Isaac »
Social media, digital analyst and public affairs expert Mark Blevis loves using Sysomos MAP and Heartbeat to discover what people are talking about in the social space. His blog looks at what’s currently going on, whether it be Quebec politics, the one-year anniversary of Jack Layton’s death or the US elections.
From his blog:
A lot has been written about the role of digital in the current US election, and how it differs from 2008. There are many media pieces and blog posts about which candidate is out-digitizing the others, and others which look at which candidate is the most talked about.
What about issues?
I’ve been using Marketwire/Sysomos Heartbeat to capture and analyze online chatter about the US election and using manually selected keywords to identify key election-related conversations. Based on my analysis, I’ve identified the top six most-discussed election issues during the first 19 days of this month… find out the top six most-discussed elections issues at Mark’s blog.
By Adam Lovinus, Associate Editor
The Marketwire SEO Analyzer measures how well you’ve incorporated your SEO strategy into your latest press release.
Journalists and investors rely on search engines for information gathering. This is why modern press releases should be written with SEO in mind, so that your news has maximum visibility and relevance for those who are looking for it. The cornerstone of producing content that indexes on internet searches is to target a specific keyword phrase, and work it in at five key points throughout the press release — the headline, first paragraph, multimedia elements, embedded URLs, and the backend of the release.
Continue reading What the Marketwire SEO Analyzer can do to improve your content »
This week on our Small Business blog we have tips on how to keep your company’s information safe if you use cloud storage. Writer Kelli Korducki asked a few experts about security best practices for cloud.
Aaron Broverman takes a look at how bartering can save money for your small business, providing you’ve got an in-demand product or service.
If you haven’t heard, pop princess and sk8ter boi fan Avirl Lavigne and Chad Kroeger of Nickelback are engaged. The musicians were collaborating and dating and Kroeger proposed after six months. This has caused some buzz on Twitter as Canadians went, “What? Seriously?” and then started the inevitable CanCon/Complicated/Nickelback jokes. Continue reading Avril Lavigne and Chad Kroeger engaged. What’s Twitter saying? »
This week on our Small Business Blog we’ve got tips from marketing and branding experts on how to develop and grow your business.
Angelica Moreno, who has managed the well-known household brands Becel, Hellmann’s and Sensodyne, takes us through the 4Ps of marketing – the first in a series looking at how to correctly market your product.
Karen Geier, the co-founder of Shyndyg.com and a digital marketing executive, walks us through the steps to establishing your brand’s identity.
