That’s a two-part process, said Arnie Kuenn, keynote speaker at AZIMA on April 18. The first step is creating a process for regular, quality content. The second step is optimizing that content so people can find it more easily.

“Please optimize your darn content,” was his stark and only statement on optimization.

Arnie Kuenn, AZIMA founding member and President of Vertical Measures, provided meeting attendees with insight into, “How to Win at Search, Social and Content Marketing” based on his award-winning content marketing book, Accelerate.

That two-step process is fundamental to success. “Think like a publisher!” was the key message Kuenn wanted the audience to embrace during his presentation. The focus was on creating compelling content for customer engagement, understanding the latest research and trends and learning best practices for content planning.

Content Marketing Results

Eighteen months ago, audiences he spoke to mostly gave blank looks when he mentioned “content marketing.” Kuenn led off with a look at how content has come into play as a powerful internet marketing tool and why it is important from a search perspective. Some of the favorite stats tweeted by attendees included:

• Companies that blog 15X per month, get 5X more traffic
• Content Marketing is the top priority for businesses in 2013
• Companies with 100-200 content pages generated 2.5X more leads than those with under 50

Compelling content is vital to turning visitors into buyers. 93% use search engines before deciding on a purchase.

Another topic that hit home with the audience of internet marketers, was Kuenn’s suggestions on how to conduct research for generating content ideas:

• Start by finding out what your audience is searching for by using Google keyword tools

• Businesses can get ideas for 60-100+ more content pages on their site, just by answering questions from customers. (This received a few nods of recognition from the crowd.)

• Focus on quality – the best performing posts were over 2,000 words! (This received a few groans from the crowd)
• It takes time – about 180 days rather than 30 days. Once you get to about 200 posts on your blog, traffic starts to take off

Other than the obvious benefits of coming up with useful, rather than gimmicky content ideas, Kuenn said costs can be reduced by as much as 2/3rds with this way of generation. This figure needs further research, he said. When it starts with a group of people talking and coming up with ideas quickly, though, it stands to reason the expense is less.

Following this often overlooked process for gathering ideas, Kuenn impressed the importance of mapping generated topics on a content strategy calendar – like a publisher – and provided this free editorial template.

The State of Relationships

When you’re dealing with an internet presence, Kuenn suggested, a two-way personal relationship is not needed for success. Especially for people getting first impressions of your company as they search for what they need.

“Now relationships are being formed with information, not people,” Keunn said.

Webinars and Google Hangouts are obvious examples of a hybrid of the two. They both bring people into direct interaction. Keep them, post later and transcribe what’s being said and you will also have searchable, evergreen content to put on your blog. The extra multimedia content is also looked upon favorably. That’s SEO.

“Do you view content generation as primarily getting your brand out there,” someone asked.

That’s exactly what it’s not. Being trusted as a place to get good information in your company’s field of interest, is what it’s about, Kuenn said.

“A lot of people think that, but people are tired of being targeted and being ‘sold’ to,” he added.

With a focus on both quality and quantity in his talk, someone in the audience asked which was more important. “Quality,” Kuenn said, adding that in-depth pieces of about 2,000 words are now shown to be more and more popular. The ability to read longer pieces on larger-screened tablets is one factor toward this. Quality also means variety of content, he said, which is another reason people stay on a site.

For businesses seeking growth and performance over competitors, Kuenn’s advice is simple – harness the power of search and social marketing, and consistently create content your target audience will enjoy. Ultimately, you will be rewarded with their business and loyalty.

Kim Carlson, Strategic Sales for http://www.InMobi.com, a global mobile ad network. This slide deck from the February 28th AZIMA event provides some industry insights and commentary on the state of mobile advertising. Including InMobi’s recent Mobile Consumption research, learn why use mobile in your strategy, how is mobile different, mobile marketing insights on a couple of key verticals, best practices for successful mobile marketing and finally some creative examples of recent award winning campaigns. Kim has worked in digital media for the last 10+ years addressing many aspects of mobile marketing. In Mobile, most people believe this is an opportunity to find the holy grail of marketing- touching the consumer across the marketing funnel from awareness to purchase, to loyalty. Every year that we take a look at this we seem to make progress- and that’s exciting for marketers, users, and enablers alike.

Next AZIMA event is on March 28th will feature digital marketing pioneer, Jay Baer, as host and MC and he promises to share some of his top ideas on the digital marketing world as we know it. This is the first Annual TIM Awards is your chance to mingle with some of the best and brightest marketers in Phoenix. If you are in digital marketing field, this is an event you don’t want to miss!

Interactive luminary Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution, will offer a keynote and MC the awards ceremony.

Categories:Enter in any of our 12 categories—a first place and runner up will be awarded in each. This competition is open to any Arizona-based agency or firm doing work on behalf of local, national or international companies. Please note that qualifying work must have been produced in the calendar year 2012; speculative work or personal projects are not eligible.

• Best Website
• Best Social Media Campaign
• Best Integrated Interactive Campaign
• Best Email Marketing Campaign
• Best Display Ad (Single or Campaign)
• Best Rich Media Execution
• Best Mobile Marketing Campaign
• Best App
• Best Blog
• Best Online Video
• Brand of the Year
• Interactive Person of the Year

Mark your calendars. The deadline for entries is March 7TH, 2013, with the awards presented during a ceremony on March 28TH.

Entry Fee
Each entry costs $50; you can enter one campaign multiple times (for example, you can enter your brilliant blog as part of the “Best Social Media Campaign” and under “Best Blog.” Please note that each entry requires a separate $50 fee.

Register Now! (Deadline is March 7)

The latest AZIMA meeting featured a presentation titled “Lights, Camera, YouTube: Converting Video to Sales.”  Presenter Rami Kalla, the owner of Tempe-based Point in Time Studios, offered an overview of the opportunities of using online video, shared a number of success stories from businesses who have chosen to capitalize on them, and spoke on the basics of the popular site YouTube.

To start, Rami shared a number of statistics regarding online video. One of the most impressive: Customers are 64 to 85% more likely to purchase a product or service after watching a video. Previous speaker, Jon Wolske of Zappos, indicated the same affect in March 2012 when he discussed the positive impact of adding videos of products on Zappos.com.

Video also appears in 70% of top online search returns. This means that creating video content for your product or service, and making it easy for prospects to find, could dramatically boost your online visibility and conversion if done well. Rami continued with a brief history of online video, emphasizing top video site YouTube. In addition to being the top video site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, YouTube is a critical piece of the Google suite, and – ultimately – a big piece of the SEO puzzle.

Those planning to jump into online video were urged to do the following:

• Focus less on the elusive viral video and more on your audience. Where are they searching? What do they want to know?
• Focus on quality over quantity.
• Realize that quality does not always mean exorbitant cost, and vice versa.
• Start small and build from there.

The presentation also included a demonstration of the Will It Blend? and Swagger Wagon videos. They make for fun research, if you have a few minutes to spare. Finally, he dove more deeply into YouTube specifics, including earned versus paid media, keyword and SEO basics, Adwords for Video, and conversion analytics. Like other forms of online content, there is no magic, single step to creating success in online video. Once you build a baseline, and take the first step, you can continuously improve with evaluation and persistence. You just have to take the first step.

Tickets are available to see “Google Plus for Business with CrushIQ CEO Tim Moore”. Register now!

Guest Post By: Dave Murrow, Content Marketer, Mint Social

Last week, AZIMA members learned about ways to rapidly grow their companies’ blog and brand presence from speaker Marcus Sheridan aka @TheSalesLion in his presentation “7 Ways to Explode Your Company’s Brand through Content Marketing.”

From the start, Sheridan was a ball of energy, moving about the room with effortless charm and sass, engaging AZIMA members by name and seeking insights into how they use blogging, content and social media to make a difference in their business.

Sheridan spoke on his experience as a business owner on how to use content marketing and blogging to catapult a business to greater sales heights. One of Sheridan’s main tips that he shared with the AZIMA audience is to create blog posts based on every question a sales person might get from prospects and customers. As an example, he told of how he started blogging as owner of River Pools & Spas, writing about such subjects like the benefits of fiberglass pools over concrete pools, simply because prospects were asking him this in real life.

When his blog posts on these common question topics started to help his pool company soar to the top of Google rankings for these topics, he knew he was onto something. It’s this kind of content that works, Sheridan told AZIMA members.  Be honest, be transparent, compare products and services in your industry, write about your product’s prices, and most importantly, be a teacher and share your knowledge with people. Good content will just come from that.

Knowing the ‘why’ for companies to create social content for the web is the beginning, Sheridan offered. When your company knows ‘why’ content marketing works, then it’s easy to convince your employees to blog on the company’s behalf. Having them share their own individual knowledge for company blogs adds loads of great content to the company mix.

Sheridan notes at his blog that he’s being asked by people he’s never met for his suggestions on which pool brand they should buy, or which contractor they should work with. That’s content marketing success. Because his pool company blog “talks about subjects that no one else talks about”, like comparing pool brands, comparing companies and talking about pool builder’s best and worst practices, the blog gains traction, link sharing and more.  Once your company is on the track with content marketing, it becomes second nature to become the voice of your industry, and that can only lead to greater success.

Download Marcus Sheridan’s free e-book “Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy” at this link.

Marty Weintraub, author of “Killer Facebook Ads” and CEO of aimClear online marketing, has a lot to say about how Facebook has a lot to say about you. Weintraub’s insights constitute a departure from conventional application of paid-organic advertising on the social media behemoth—instead of targeting key demographics, constructing personas (or a ) and driving ads to their Facebook pages, use user data from their Facebook interests to set retargeting cookies which drive ads to many other sites.

Industry thinkers who claim to have uncovered a way of thinking about digital media that “revolutionizes” or “redefines” the way the media landscape will be navigated for the next five or so years are dime-a-dozen. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to sort out stale reiterations of old concepts from the truly new strategic developments. In the digital space, a field in which the ground is daily shifting beneath the feet of the media experts who dare to attain some mastery over it, Marty Weintraub has made his expeditions through the wilderness and it just happens that he is an excellent cartographer who keeps his ear to the proverbial railroad tracks.

For Mr. Weintraub, key consumer insights come from utilizing user-provided data. That data can be used to model what he calls “personas”. A persona is an amalgam of interests, often particular to a member of one or another niche market, likely to be published on a social media platform.  It is the advertiser’s responsibility to take advantage of the targeting tools at their disposal. If you master persona modeling—that is, if you come to learn the resonance frequency of high volume targeting terms—Weintruab claims, the precision of your messages will increase drastically. The goal at the end the targeting process is to consistently send out advertisements tuned to the needs of a very small, well-understood, audience. In a sense, his technique turns your online marketing strategy into something akin to a more-or-less benign CIA operation that predator drone strikes offers into the web browsers of consumers.

It is also worth Marty’s unconventional style; never once did a dull moment of technically sophisticated discourse escape vindication via his playfulness and wit. A whirling tornado of activity and apparent ecstasy at having been so lucky as to find a job he truly loves, Weintraub is an absolute joy to watch. If you missed it, take a look at the Marty’s AZIMA presentation shared on aimclear’s Facebook page.

Jackson provided an insider’s look to 100-plus AZIMA members how The 54^th Grammys became “the most social event in the history of television.” Her relatively small, in-house group of social media workers, teamed up with assistance from agency Chiat Day and a social analytics firm, helped bring The 54^th Grammys to a massive audience across multiple online platforms.

Jackson outlined a concept of ‘transmedia’ and hashtag usage that helped her team plot out a strategy to hit all forms of online content. Instead of letting the Twitterverse dictate which hashtags to use, Jackson and her team decided early on to manage the hashtag terms and help bring the flow of messaging to those terms.

Jackson’s team used an innovative social media approach to announce to media about which hashtags to use for all the events surrounding the 54^th Grammys. One slide she shared (see below) noted a different hashtags for the 6 Twitter accounts and 14 Facebook pages her team set up for different Grammy activities and the audiences around those specific events.

Some of the highlights noted during Jackson’s presentation included:

-       A record high number of 160,341 tweets per min were recorded during the live Grammys telecast

-       13 million social comments is the new record for TV (most social)

-       Use of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Turntable.FM, YouTube and many other social media channels to drive awareness, audience reach and hits back to the

Grammys website.

Ms. Jackson brought a wealth of experience to the presentation stage. In addition to her current role as Director of Marketing, Strategic Alliances and Social Media for The Recording Academy and the GRAMMY Awards, she has previously worked in digital and business development roles at Octagon/IPG in the Music and Entertainment group and WPP’s JWT.  Beverly also served as the VP of Product Development during the start of phase of BlackVoices, now a part of the Huffington Post.

Ms. Jackson clearly struck a chord with the AZIMA members, who raved online about her presentation, and discussed on Twitter how to translate her massive event expertise in social media to individual campaigns in the AZ and SW US region.

Guest Post By: Dave Murrow is a Valley-based digital pro working in SEO, PR/Content and Digital Marketing. Read his blog posts atDaveMurrow.com and at Mint Social.

This month’s presentation focused on the relationship between marketing and culture and was led by Jon Wolske of Zappos Insights. Zappos Insights, an arm of Zappos, is dedicated to educating other businesses about the importance and impact of company culture.

The presentation included an overview of Zappos’ impressive growth and company values. Early in the presentation, Jon asked a critical question: “Do you have culture at your workplace?” Some, but not all, hands raised in the crowd. “The answer is yes,” he continued, asserting that culture is present in every organization, whether it is formalized or not.

Zappos culture guide Jon Wolske and fellow Zappos employees welcome a tour group with a choreographed weight-lifting routine featured on LasVegasSun.com

Zappos believes a company-wide focus on delivering great service is critical to its own success and that this focus relies on a strong, positive company culture. The result of this focus is evidenced in customer stories, employee advocates, and positive press.

Jon reviewed Zappos’10 core values. Customer experience is a key part of the Zappos marketing strategy, and they believe it starts at the website where their phone number prominently displayed. This leads back to value number 1, “Deliver WOW service,” and hinges on developing a “PEC” or a “Personal Emotional Connection.”

PEC-building also includes, but is not limited to, delivering bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes to customers. For Leap Year, it meant giving all customers who made purchases on Leap Year Day a four-year refund policy, instead of the usual duration. It also means going to the competitor on the customer’s behalf when Zappos can’t deliver, which can lead to powerful word-of-mouth marketing.

Culture is most evident in the Zappos’ call center. Unlike most modern call centers, front lines call takers have no script and no requirement to sell. The call center is not considered a cost center. Because of a shared sense of ownership and pride among employees, “there is no need to micromanage.” Employees are their strongest advocates and if you asked an employee what the company values are, he or she would not need to check the employee manual. “We just know what they are,” Jon said.

Their emphasis on culture has spurred more than just positive press and catchy theme songs and viral videos but ongoing success and growth. Zappos’ revenue reflects steady growth and, according to their reports, 75% of the average daily shoppers are returning customers and 45% were told about Zappos by friend.

Engaging online content, as well as interaction on social media sites and all other business operations, is designed to tie back to their commitment to the Four Cs: Culture, Customer Service, Clothing and Community. Zappos wants to be known for community. This includes their online community at zapposinsights.com. They are in the process of building a new home office in downtown Las Vegas to become a true part of their community. They are also working to grow education in Nevada, which is currently ranked worst in the country for education.

The presentation was followed with a Q&A session. Highlights are below:

What other social media sites does Zappos used, besides the big sites (Facebook, Twitter, et al)?

Zappos has “product managers” who are front lines to test out interaction on different social media sites. This includes the newest social media darling, Pinterest. There is also an application dev team which has previously launched their Couture Catalogue and Mappos, a visual map of what people are buying at any given moment.

Have you gotten feedback from the companies who tour the Zappos offices with the intent to change their own company culture?

Jon shared a story of one businessperson who had a one-hour tour which resulted in dramatic changes at his own company. “We’re not trying to get people to do what we do,” Jon explained. “A lot of it has to do with relaxing things a bit. We aren’t marketing Insights but we will be looking through our histories at some point soon.”

At a certain point during initial, required call center training, trainees are offered $3,000 to quit. What happens if someone gets through the $3,000 offer and is still not a good fit?

“Just like a performance issue, we coach,” said Jon. “If we can’t coach up, we coach out.”

What does Zappos use to monitor brand mentions on social sites?

“We run lean.” The team relies heavily on Google news and the Twitter conversation page. They monitor on a big picture scale.

Your value is “Do more with less,” and you say that you “run lean,” but great ideas cost money. How do you find balance?

If it’s free, they try it. If it costs money, employees are required to do a standard proposal process. “They’ve been good at taking risk and letting ideas fail.”

What provides a higher margin, the culture book or shoes?

“Well, the culture book is free, so the shoes.”

What is your philosophy on legal concerns?

The Zappos lawyers are also hired as a culture fit. Employees are expected to rely on common sense when making decisions; the onus is on the employee. “When you trust people to be adults, they will be. It works for us.”

He then added, “You can’t do the tour on roller blades, though.”

Many thanks to Jon for an excellent presentation! Be sure to check out the next AZIMA event “The Interactive Future of Hospitality & Tourism” on April 19^th at 6:00 PM at the Scottsdale Hilton.