Will Marlow - Filed under 'Flickr'

July 6, 2011

How To Get Attention for Your Content On Social Media

A lot of people say that content is king in social media marketing. I've been guilty of saying this myself. But the problem is, it's not true.

Content (even great content) is a commodity. Having outstanding content is merely table stakes for success in social media. What is not a commodity is engagement with key influencers.

Here's an example. I took the photo above on Monday night. It is now Wednesday, and in the last two days over 100 people have commented on this photograph, 86 people have "favorited" it, and it was featured on DCist here. There are lots of better photographs of the July 4th fireworks in DC, but this one has been seen by more people than many of them, and I am not a professional photographer. The reason that this photograph has generated more engagement than a lot of the other July 4th fireworks photographs, is that I enjoy connecting with people who care about DC, and I regularly engage with them in lots of different ways, on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

To reiterate, you will NOT succeed without high quality content. If that picture was terrible, it would have generated zero comments and favorites. Low quality content is probably the most common cause of failure in social media campaigns. But saying that you need great content for social media is like saying you need copper to make a penny. True, but not particularly insightful.

So from now on, when you see an outstanding social media campaign, don't just analyze the content. Think about the engaged network that pushed the content to the top. When you see content that gets thousands of Likes, Tweets, Comments, Shares, Faves, etc., you can bet that the buzz got started with lots of emails, InMails, phone calls, Direct Messages, gchats, and other one on one communications between influencers.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter.

Filed under // DCist Digital PR Digital Public Relations Flickr Marketing Photography Social Media Social media marketing

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July 15, 2010

The revolution in social media

A lot of people think that all the different social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.) are more complicated than they really are. Every social media platform, however, has one thing in common: they all make publishing possible. That is the key to the social media revolution.

YouTube (publishing videos), Flickr (publishing photos), Blogger (publishing words), Twitter (publishing short sentences), and Facebook (publishing details of your life) all make publishing different things easier. Each one of these platforms is a piece of a larger revolution in publishing. They will always just be satellites orbiting the sun of a larger revolution.

That's why you can be sure that social media (defined as publishing on the Internet) will not fade in relevance, even while any specific platform (Friendster, MySpace) may balloon in popularity one day, only to fade into obscurity the next.

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Will Marlow is a digital strategist/online marketing consultant. He's the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, which is a Web 2.0 fundraising platform for colleges, nonprofits and secondary schools. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. He would love to help you market your business on the Internet, boost the fundraising numbers for your school or nonprofit, or sellout your next big event. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Facebook Flickr LinkedIn Social Media Twitter

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February 9, 2010

Opportunities in Social Media (or the Bright Side of a Blizzard)

Where I live in DC, we just got the largest snowfall in 90 years, and now we're preparing for another blizzard that could drop an additional ten inches. Most news coverage talks about all the negative impacts of the blizzard, but flip that coin over and you can use it to engage your audience. If you work for a school or nonprofit and you have valuable equipment stored outside, take photographs or videos and share them online via your Facebook or Flickr profile. If you work for a nonprofit that helps low-income people or the homeless, send an emergency announcement to your supporters letting them know that the weather has increased the need of the people you serve. If the blizzard damaged the grounds of your school's campus, use Facebook to ask your students and alums to submit their own photographs of the damage by uploading them online.

If you run a consumer business, evaluate how much productivity you would have saved if your staff had been better prepared to work from home. (Maybe you can use this as an opportunity to jump-start a year-long telework program that may make your workforce happier and more productive.)

Opportunities are everywhere. If you're a photographer or videographer, go out and take pictures and gather footage. This snowfall is the largest accumulation in 90 years, and the photos you take today could be stock photography for the next 90 years.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Blizzard Facebook Flickr Social Media higher education nonprofits

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