It’s a bit of a Monday night ritual for me – a glass of wine, Twitter and the ABC show Q&A hosted by Tony Jones.

The show is “live and interactive” and that means Twitter is alive with comments and questions, with viewers using the hashtag #qanda while the show is on.

The Queensland Premier’s marketing team has recognised that those monitoring and contributing to the #qanda hashtag are generally likely to be interested in politics and have given them a chance to ask Anna Bligh a question. They released the following tweet during the show on Monday night.

The link takes you to Anna Bligh’s Facebook page where you can submit your question. If people then choose to “like” the Facebook page, Bligh’s team can use this connection in the future to send more news or information their way. It’s a sort of social database of interested people if you will.

From a marketing perspective, I think the Premier’s team have leveraged a fabulous opportunity to get a message to a targeted audience who are likely to want to take up the offer. The videos will then be available on the web for all to see and the Premier doesn’t even have to answer in real time – unlike Q and A’s panelists.

Take away

In a broader sense, this reinforces the need to target your message to a specific audience who will find it relevant. It’s also a lesson in creating content you know will matter to your audience.

More specifically though, is there a popular hashtag being used within your target audience? Could you leverage that?

Tip

Monitor what’s trending on Twitter and leverage areas of relevance in a timely way.

Copywriting Sydney and Brisbane: Need help crafting content that your taregt audience will love? Call 1300 258 394.

Share your take on things.

But, how?

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Write down the answers to these questions:

• What does your reader do for work?
• What does your reader do when they’re not at work?
• What issues, policies, news topics or legislation affects them?

Of course, your slant on things can be really important – but the topic needs to be those which are relevant to your readers. Figure out exactly what it is they’re into and from there follow with what value you can add to that discussion. It all comes down to being a trusted advisor. If you know that someone else has a great point on said topic – ask them to share it, then add context for your audience.

THEN, MONITOR

• Put Google Alerts on every pertinent industry site and every blog you can find,
• Read all industry news,
• Search related topics on Twitter regularly; and
• Ask your readers what they want to know via a survey in your e-mail newsletter.

It really comes down to that old chestnut – to write well, you’ve got to read well. Your opinion is important sure, but to be frank, it’s only going to be important to more than just your Mum if you actually know what you’re on about. Research, research, research – it’s the key to every successful story.

PROVIDE COMMENT

• A news article related to your audience is published. Respond to it on your blog.
• A blogger discusses an issue. Expand on it on your blog.
• A piece of legislation is passed that will affect your audience. Comment on it on your blog.
• A Twitter conversation flares up on an issue. Reproduce it on your blog and add your perspective.

I’ve quoted it before and I’ll quote it again…

“THERE IS INFORMATION ALL OVER THE NET, BUT THERE’S ONLY ONE YOU” – Liz Strauss

The fact is, the news is always changing. Your readers will always be affected by issues. Your knowledge is always growing.

If you’re informed, your opinion will be valuable to your audience. Why not share it?

What responsibility do social media users have during a crisis? – Mashable

Like we saw in the floods – albeit on a much smaller scale – social media is being used in Japan as a vital communication tool in a time of disaster. How can we best use it to participate in the dissemination of information, to help each other and to provide relief?

Teamwork

Debate or GO? – Patty Azzarello

This guest post on Liz Strauss’ ‘Successful Blog’ discusses the loss of productivity at work through poor communication. It encourages dialogue and speaking up when you have a valid point. It’s teamwork after all, right?

New rules needed

Marketing ROI and what you should measure – David Meerman Scott

This is a stellar article about what it is we should be looking for as a mark of success for all our online efforts. There are new rules in marketing and PR – as David Meerman Scott has told us in his book – and so it follows that there should be new ways of measuring our ROI.

Kraft Singles - Seth Godin

Unless you’re already the stock-standard go-to brand for your field, it might be time to stop trying to be. This is a tale of a cheese that is successful for being…well…ordinary…If you’re not ordinary don’t try to be. Be exceptional instead.

Lighter note

35 Entertaining 404 Error Messages – Mashable

This week consider widening your audience and potentially your customer base with these big ideas from David Meerman Scott at Web Ink Now, Eric Vreeland at Hubspot and Jani Penttinen at Mashable.

• “One speech, plus a dozen video cameras and a hundred people tweeting live” shows how getting your crowd involved in your presentation can help create a real-time experience for your virtual audience,

• “Ten ways to turn your local business into a global success” provides tips on appealing to potential customers across the globe; and
• “How to record a webinar” means your real-time message can last longer and reach more people.

Use Facebook in new ways:

• “Facebook ‘like’ button overtakes share button functionality“  – Mashable explains that this means that if you can get your Facebook friends to “like” something, it will become prominent in their feed and it’s much more likely to drive traffic to the original source than ever before. That’s great news for companies who publish remarkable content!

• “Facebook releases robust updates to its comments plug-in” – Ask your friends and followers to leave a comment in a Facebook plug-in on your blog or web page and it’ll sync up with your Facebook page too.

But beware….

If you don’t want third parties getting a hold of your personal details, it might be time to consider what you publish on your Facebook page. Mashable explains here: “Facebook will continue to share user addresses & numbers.”

Do you get work done at work?

This thought provoking speech by Jason Fried of 37Signals will challenge your ideas about the value of work and the traditional work space.

From TED: “Jason Fried is the co-founder and president of 37signals , a Chicago-based company that builds web-based productivity tools that, in their words, “do less than the competition — intentionally.” 37signals’ simple but powerful collaboration tools include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. 37signals also developed and open-sourced the Ruby on Rails programming framework.”

9 Dynamic Digital Resumes That Stand Out From the Crowd – Mashable
Potential employers are going to check out your online presence – why not make it fun and illuminating for them? It may just win you the job.

HOW TO: Jump-Start Your Career by Becoming an Online Influencer – Mashable
We’ve talked about attracting the attention of influencers, but what about actually becoming one?

HOW TO: Deal With Negative Online Sentiment About Your Brand – Mashable
It’s the badvocate idea and it never gets old. Find out how to get even the least likely to support you.

The Secret To Getting 50,000 followers on Twitter - David Meerman Scott
There is no secret. BUT there are a lot of ways of getting there…one, two, or ten followers at a time.

NIFTY IDEAS

If This Then That
Puts the internet to work for you.
For example:

IF you get a new Twitter follower THEN it can send them a thank you.

or…

IF you schedule a blog post THEN it can upload it to Facebook.

The best bit? You create the action you want it to take choosing from loads of different sites.

Meshin
Straight out of Palo Alto Research Centre (the home of the first ethernet) comes this clever little sidebar for Outlook users. It allows you to find what you need, even when you’re not quite sure what that is!

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

Why You Should Consider Eliminating Press Releases - Consumer Evangelists
We all hate junk mail. A dodgy press release is even worse.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Johanna Blakley: Social Media and The End Of Gender – TED Talks

“Shared interests and values are a far more powerful aggregator of humans beings than demographic categories.”

How to Keep Up with News & Emerging Trends [Marketing Cast] – Hubspot
Information overload is a challenge for many marketers. How do you keep up with the constant flow of information to take advantage of emerging trends and new media technologies? In this week’s episode of the Marketing Cast, David Meerman Scott addresses this question and suggests some quick solutions…

25 Ways to Get More Social Media Followers – Hubspot
Social media can seem overwhelming, especially when you’re starting from scratch without any followers on your profiles. Building a following does take time, but there are many simple ways you can attract new followers.

Here are 25 easy ways you can get more social media followers…

9 Ways To Sell Social Media To The Boss – Social Media Examiner
Conversations are happening online with or without you. This is one of the most frequently used social media sayings. If you’re engaging with social media for your company, it’s almost second nature.

However, there are still many who are struggling to ‘sell’ social media to their executives.  And as Doug Frisbie, Toyota National Marketing Manager says, “The price of inactivity is greater than the risks of anything we’d be doing in social media.” Here are 9 ways you can make a good case for social media programs…

10 Tips for Corporate Blogging – OPEN Forum
These are some pretty sound tips to get the most out of your forrays into corporate blogging.

The art of slow reading – The Guardian.co.uk
Can you read this whole article without getting bored? If not, maybe you should consider the art of slow reading: forsaking modern trends of skimming, summaries, reading the first two paragraphs. This article discusses the merits of reading in full to maintain our abilities to process and understand lengthy textual information.

HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business – Mashable
A great article about using engaging, rewarding game mechanics to get people using and continuing to use your product or marketing campaign. Work backwards from your business vision, to user behaviours/actions, to the mechanics like points or levels that can be layered over those behaviours to create the game.

Have you ever wondered why all Apple product mockups show the time at just after 9.40? Neither had I (nor had I even picked up on this peculiarity). But indeed, the iPhone’s clock displayed 9.42am. The iPad displayed 9.41.

I’ll let Fast Company explain:

Turns out Apple’s keynote organizers think about this stuff right down to the tiniest detail–and this is certainly one of the tinier details. They rehearse the presentation with Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, and whoever else will be speaking, and time it so the big announcement comes 40 minutes in. They add a couple minutes to be on the safe side.

That means that when Apple puts that most important slide up, the one introducing the new hardware, the time on the static image of the device will be damned close to the time the packed room of journalists sees it for the first time. It’s just one more example of how carefully Apple prepares everything–that’s a detail we didn’t know about until a couple days ago, and they’ve been doing it for years, with no fanfare. Very cool, right?

Their level of perfectionism is at once impressive and intimidating, isn’t it!

See for yourself at Apple.com »

 
Notes on improvisation and design

Liz Danzico-Frames: Notes on Improvisation and Design from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

via Swiss-Miss

Sneak Peak at a new Photoshop feature?

Thanks to @susannahgeorge for most of the social media links above! The YouTube clip came via the ISO50: The Blog of Scott Hansen