By Brian Conlin, Vocus (published Oct 30, 2012,www.ragan.com)
You don’t want to be a marketing zombie. Use your ‘braaaaaiiiiinnnnns” and follow these savvy guidelines.
Zombies lumber mindlessly toward their target to feed an insatiable appetite for live flesh. Marketing zombies hurl mindless tweets and emails around to feed an insatiable appetite for a quick sale.
In zombie movies, survivors tend to bypass, rather than engage, hordes of zombies because contact has little upside. Likewise, a marketing zombie’s target audience will skirt those torrents of impersonal messages that provide no value.
You can’t afford to be a marketing zombie—and the good news is that you don’t have to be. You have a skill that no zombie has: the ability to be human and build relationships.
Here are 24 tips from top marketing sites for humanizing your brand and turning the tables on the zombies.
Social media:
- Respond to comments on Twitter with employee accounts as opposed to the company’s branded account. (Vocus)
- Make social media interaction more personal by calling a follower by his/her first name and avoiding jargon. (Vocus)
- Respond to commenters through an alternative Facebook page that has the picture and name of the employee responding. (AskAaronLee)
- Host Twitter chats for people in the industry to make connections and let your personality shine. (Convince&Convert)
- Strive to include a video or image to supplement text in one of every three social media posts. (Forbes)
- Ask for and give recommendations on LinkedIn. (Successful Blog)
- Admit mistakes, apologize, and offer a solution promptly and publicly. (Mashable)
Email:
- Link email and Facebook efforts to alert people of viral deals and new content that’s too big to email. (Vocus)
- Segment email lists to aim specific messages to the appropriate portion of a target audience. (Business2Community )
- Make emails sharable by including social media buttons and the brand’s handles. (CTSmithIII)
- Test email delivery times to find what best fits the recipients’ schedules by analyzing open, click, and conversion rates. (Brafton)
Pitching media:
- Build relationships with industry reporters by commenting on articles and connecting on social media. (Vocus)
- Learn the reporters’ style by reading their work and following them on social media. (Vocus)
- Pitch story ideas by sending free products and creating a compelling story. (Vocus)
- Allow reporters to connect emotionally with the story by offering ideas for art to accompany it. (Sterling Kilgore)
Search engine optimization:
- Write appealing headlines and copy without worrying forcing in keywords. (Vocus)
- Create a Google+ account to share content and increase SEO. (Vocus)
- Boost a brand’s “about us” page with video, stories, and information about awards it has won. (Technorati)
- Use personal relationships to create more backlinks to a website. (SEOpedia)
Content marketing:
- Gain consumers’ trust by having the brand’s CEO post to social media and interact with followers. (Vocus)
- Create an emotional connection by publishing case studies that tell a story. (PRWeb)
- Reach out to other bloggers and offer to host a guest post or write a guest post for them. (SEOmoz)
- Give behind-the-scenes access to show customers how the business operates or to highlight star employees. (Mashable)
- Inject humor into content to make it more enjoyable and personal. (MarketingProfs )
Brian Conlin is a copywriter at Vocus. A version of this article first appeared on the Vocus blog.