This is the week you’ve been waiting for — at least if you’re an Ohio small business owner. The 2012 Ohio Growth Summit kicks off bright and early this Thursday in the main ball room at Columbus State Community College. And what an event it will be! I think Mike Bowers and the rest of the crew at the Small Business Development Centers made a good decision this year in opening up the format to include a variety of tracks that speak to all levels of entrepreneurs and small business owners. The sessions are each positioned to provide attendees with educational sessions that will give them actionable take-aways they can put to work in their own businesses right away. I was delighted to be asked to design the content marketing for small business track at this year’s Ohio Growth Summit, and I feel fortunate to have a line up of three different panels, stocked with true subject matter experts that you won’t want to miss. That said, you will miss them if you don’t attend the #OGS12. The conference already has more than 12o attendees which is just over last year’s attendance. As appreciation for my readers, I have been given special code you can use to get a last minute 50% discount on your badge. That means you get a full access pass to #OGS12 for only $65. If you’d like to attend my track at the 2012 Ohio Growth Summit, use the code NR50 when you register and you’ll receive your badge for half the price of admission. If you’re still on the fence, here is a description of the content marketing for small business track I’ll be leading on Thursday. This is just one of four incredible tracks at the event, along with amazing keynote speakers that include author Gini Dietrich [...]
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By now, you’ve probably see the articles flying around the web that are citing the $100 Million investment into Pinterest by Japan’s top online shopping site Rakuten Inc, which has then valued America’s darling visual discovery platform at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion dollars. Personally, I think those numbers reflect our absolute infatuation with heightened traffic as the result of online buzz. Is it just me, or is this whole online craze starting to smell like it did back 1999? I take nothing away from Pinterest and the folks who had the vision and the gusto to turn it into an online discovery destination. It’s the rocket-like trajectory of attention and adoption among America’s female audience (in Europe, it’s the men) that I think has sparked a seismic shift towards endless vertical designs that tap the human behavioral power of our unbelievable propensity to keep scrolling down. But a $1.5 billion dollars?!? That’s tough one to get your head around, isn’t it? If you’re struggling with this like I am, perhaps these 5 considerations will give you something to ponder this week as go about sifting through the hype and blogger reactions to how much America’s darling discovery network is actually worth. 1. Unbelievable traffic doesn’t always lead to unbelievable profits. Holy trajectory Batman! At least by comScore’s measures as seen on TechCrunch in February, Pinterest’s traffic growth was nothing short of a online phenomena during the course of 2011 and early 2012. But now it’s May, and 2012 is nearing the halfway point of closure. Perhaps WSJ summed it up the best in this short clip from today’s article on Pinterest’s valuation: People have flocked to the site. Last month, Pinterest crossed 20 million users, up from only 1 million users in July 2011, according to comScore Inc. SCOR +0.43% ComScore has said Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing stand-alone sites it has tracked. Pinterest still has no clear business model, however. As of earlier [...]
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It’s that time of year again. Every Spring brings a stellar event to the Columbus, Ohio community. The Ohio Growth Summit is in it’s 7th year and going after lucky number 7 with some serious gusto! If you live in and around the state of Ohio and work for or own a small business, #OGS12 has evolved over the years to offer topic discussions and expert presentations that can help you to make an impact on what matters most to all businesses – growth. In the past few years, attendees have called for loads of information on using social media as part of a small business marketing plan. While that’s important and still a part of the summit this year, the folks at the SBDC have expanded the programming to include a variety of break out tracks that will cover everything from early stage growth to finance and scaleability. 10 Indisputable Reasons You Must Attend #OGS12 If at any point during this list, the urge to buy your ticket to this year’s Ohio Growth Summit strikes you, please scroll back up and use the very large and bright register button below. While it may be intimidating, I promise that the button is very friendly to small business owners and clicking it will in no way cause harm to your persons or business. Today is the last day to register at the early adopter rate of $100. Prices will go up tomorrow so take advantage. Your can use my discount code (NR20) to save some additional dollars. Reasons 1 & 2 combined basically make the Ohio Growth Summit a no brainer. Let me ask you this — how may actionable ideas, tips and resources do you need to take away from an $80 investment to show a return that’s worth it? My friend Gini Dietrich is flying in from Chicago to talk about how public relations can [...]
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It seems that the Pinterest bubble has burst, but all is not lost for marketers looking to tap into the power of visual niche-network’s scrolling-based rabbit hole, in hopes of drive traffic and attention to their brand. Pinerly is one of the first 3rd party Pinterest analytics apps that’s already making progress towards gathering user engagement insights from content on Pinterest boards. The start up has launched a Pinterest analytics dashboard that integrates directly into any user’s account. While the service is only currently available to select users in a private Beta, with a little effort devoted to spreading the word to your friends on Twitter and Facebook, it’s fairly easy to earn access to your own Pinerly account. Momentum seems to be building too. Just this week, the folks at Pinerly released a browser extension that makes the user experience much more friendly by giving users the ability to create campagins on the fly by Pining content that can be measured directly from their browser without disrupting their normal browsing experience. Watch this short video for some of the details: Since I already use the ‘Pin It’ Chrome extension, I simply install the Pinerly browser extension in it’s place (lovingly etitled ‘Pinerly It’) and it’s off to the Pinterest campaign analytics races. If you’re interested in taking a look, you can request a sign up for the Pinerly’s private Beta and give the Pinerly It extension a try on your own. photo by: aussiegall nateriggsLike what you just read and want to get my posts delivered to your inbox? SUBSCRIBE HEREMore Posts Follow Me:
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Photo by fmgbain A few weeks ago Aleksey Kernes tweeted me to ask about what new marketing books I recommend as good reading. A good question deserves a good answer. Here’s a list of some new marketing book titles that I believe have the potential to keep your nose pointed down towards the table for long periods of time. Fair warning. New Marketing Books I’ve Read and Recommend Please note that while this is a numbered list for order’s sake, in no way is this a ranked order. The list reflects the order of how the titles randomly popped in my head. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and Dick Summer Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing by Mark W. Schaefer Killer Facebook Ads: Master Cutting-Edge Facebook Advertising Techniques by Marty Weintraub Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us by Guy Kawasaki Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand by Robert Rose & Joe Pullizzi Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing by Erik Deckers and Jason Falls The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton Why We Buy – Paco Underhill Influence by Robert B. Cialdini Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis and Deirdre K. Breakenridge Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive [...]
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Business. Business. BUSINESS! For some reason, we humans tend to get stuck in this mindset of only thinking only about how we can use social media to make money for our business. These days, we’re all but infatuated with figuring out how our business can be social. In all honestly, I feel like that paradigm is causing us to skip a mission-critical step in making all of this work. Can Businesses Really ‘Be Social’? Actually, I think not. Your business is still just an idea. It’s an idea that makes you (or who you work for) a bucket of dollars that helps keep people fed and the lights on. Your business may be housed in a building where people come to work each day or like some of the newer models, maybe it’s housed on the web. Your business is nothing more than a vehicle to deliver the product or service that your customers buy. Your business will probably never ‘be social’. Sorry to disappoint you. Nope. In the end, it will be the humans inside your business who will be social. Behind the Curtain Unless your product or service magically becomes self-aware and takes on a mind of it’s own, it will always be the man (or women) behind the curtain who drives the conversation with your customers. That conversion will happen with the help of many modes of human-to-human communication — high speed internet connections, Facebook, Google Hangouts, telephones, on hand-written post cards, and perhaps using the old tested method of facing chairs towards each other while placing cups of coffee between the humans who sit at the table. All of those modes indeed help us humans to be ‘social’ … but they will never, ever be social on our behalf. Your Customers Are Calling — Can You Talk? I one time sat in a client meeting with a big company [...]
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