Style guide when sharing on Third Party Content

Creating content is very difficult. I'm not talking about  writing content only, but pictures, infography, guides, slides, compositions, sounds, etc.

Part of being social is sharing content from others. So it’s utterly important to follow some rules when sharing from a third party. Do it well and you will create a win-win situation.

Why these 5 rules?

1. Be sure information can be shared

This is very useful when sharing content from friends. Ask them before sharing: "Can I share your content?" Maybe it's a picture, a phrase or an opinion they only want to share with friends, not with the general public.

2. Name the author and the source

Always be clear with your audience and tell them where you got that information/post/picture... etc.

The sources matter... A good source is updated, relevant and reliable. The better sources you get, the better the information you give.

3. Use sharing buttons.

Use the share button when you copy an image (or download it to load it after), even if the image has the logo and the website. The reason is simple: SEO is based on links.

The more links an author gets to their content, the more relevant it becomes and the better position it has (SEO).

When you copy and paste into your own post, you are killing the link to the author, and stealing his positionation. So please, use share buttons. It’s what Google does care about!

You share the information; the author gets a better SEO! It's a win-win! If you don't do it, you improve the SEO of the picture but not the author. That means, people will find the picture from your website, not from the author's website.

What you have done is steal their visitors! Not good at all!

4. Link to the original publication.

If what you want to share is a part of a whole publication, or that publication does not have sharing buttons (but you have permission from the author to publish it), you can provide a link to the original publication. It's a web reference and will help the author to get a better rank.

5. Don't share if you can cause economic harm.

Sometimes, an author can have an agreement with a company to publish only on his website. If that content gets in your lap, please, don't share it; tell the author (if possible) where you found it.  Be responsible.

How to use assertiveness to persuade your client

"It's not bad, but I would like it to be more like this" 

If you work in marketing (doesn't matter traditional or modern), tell me, how many times have you heart something like that? And it's very frustrating, because you know your client is forgetting something very important: you don't conduct a marketing campaign for him, but for his clients!

The same occurs when you translate it to a personal or SME social branding strategy. You will realize that it's very difficult to make them trust in you at the beginning. And even, after gaining their trust, eventually, they can have doubts. It's a hard situation, because you know what's better for them (you are a professional in social marketing; they are professionals in other areas). If you push too hard, you will lose your client (don't forget he needs to like what he is selling!). If you agree with every change (even if it's wrong), your client will lose money and customers, and you will eventually lose him.

Look, most of the time, the person you have to deal with, it's not like his target (customers). He knows it, but it's very hard to make him change his minds. Not just him, we all have the same problem: we don't like to delegate. We don't fully trust that another person is going to put the same passion and commitment as we are going to. 

Why Spain will never win Eurovision again!

Yesterday I was driving back to home, listening music (great songs by the way) and suddenly I remembered about the past Eurovision.
It got me thinking: "why Spain never wins Eurovision? We have had some really good songs, fine singers and staging. On paper, we should win."

Please...

Yes, on paper we should. But that's the problem, we don't analyse what eurofans look for! We are so focus on our song and our artist that we do not realize if it the good one for the show.

We just believe our song is the best and people will love it, period. Does it sounds familiar? Don't? Well, It's the traditional marketing thought!

Traditional Marketing

I've been part of the weekend translating to English my last book, and trying to find new examples about Traditional Marketing. Here is what I came with:

Traditional marketing was based on the idea creating a need in the mind of the user, so you sell him your product, which will solve it. And the technique was bombing ads and promotions to the public; without segmentation.

I don’t care about what “greats gurus of Traditional Marketing” (or just let call them dinosaurs) said (or say, if there is still one alive); it all was based on a  brute-force attack:

“if we can sell to 1 person of each 100 people that watch our ad 30 times, let’s scalate and bombing millions of them, thousand of times in several medias”

(-another dinosaur trying to justified his six figures annually).

Also:

“let’s send 20 salespeople door-to-door for the same area for the next 52 weeks, Soon or later, they will sell something. Also, they must use tricks to scam old people, like say: “your neighbour already has it, is she better than you?” or “it’s an exclusive offer for you and only this week, next week will be too late” or “our Company only wants the best for you (and get your pension money)”.

(-the “door-to-door cold selling” salesman’s dilemma”)

and, of course, this classic:

“(it’s evening or weekend and a call disrupted you):

- Good evening, may I talk to the lady of the house?

- (WTF?!)

(…)

-… sir, your number has been generated randomly by our computer. You are not in any commercial list.

(well, how lucky I am! I should buy a lottery ticket! It’s the 25th time I get a call like that this month!)

(- The Curious Case of the telemarketer and the random number)

All the previous bullying techniques are doomed to fail. All you can achieve a high level of frustration and hatred on the users to you.

At the beginning of time, ok, it had sense. There were not too many communication channels, so you used these methods to  make your services or products known to the public and potential customers.

Somehow, at certain point it changed, and it became a statistical model, based on numbers:becoming the scourge of the traditional marketing. A disease, a virus, a parasite no longer useful, but still, going on in continue adaptation. Maybe you recognize it: it’s what we call now SPAM; and mostly all big companies hire spammers services. It will never end.

So, thanks to that, all people who work in marketing (including me), have to be tagged with this idiotic label:

“be careful, he works on marketing… I’m sure he only wants to sell you something”