So now that we had a clear vision of what we want to accomplish, the next step was to create an engaging story and experience that would achieve the desired results. When crafting a transmedia project you must conceive of the storyline in conjunction with the user experience....
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For those unfamiliar with my personal FB page or our fLO Twitter feed, the term “gut churn” was lovingly lifted from this article by Jad Abumrad of Radiolab describing the feeling you get when you’re engaged in a creative endeavor in an unfamiliar format and you have no idea what you’re doing. Frankly, I think it’s something that any entrepreneur or business owner can easily relate to.
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The lovely Rachel Olsen of Best Mom Products asked me to write an article for her newsletter and she also posted it to her blog. If you've been wondering about the fLO approach to social media/content and what we do all day - this is pretty much it. Get it here.
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“How will content marketing affect my bottom line?” Some variant of this question comes up invariably comes up whenever I meet with a prospective client. My answer to this question is often the deciding factor between who chooses to work with fLO or not. The hard truth is, it is still incredibly difficult to draw a direct line between online content marketing activities and direct sales data. This is not to say that measurement of any kind is impossible - there are a number of ways to draw conclusions based on the data that is available. However the results are just that, conclusions that can be justified by the data, not proven by the data. So what can we measure?
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I heard this story on NPR this morning and it just made me mad. How is this even still news? We were one of the many writing about the negative long term effects of Groupon offers a year ago. Frankly, if you are a small business walking in to an online coupon agreement without doing your homework in this day and age you deserve what you get.
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When I was a kid, my parents had a book about Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies. I can’t find a copy of it now, it must be out of print, but it was a book about how to use behaviors that provided positive feedback (warm fuzzies) vs. negative feedback (cold pricklies) and that generally everyone was better off and would get along with each other better if they practiced more warm fuzzies than cold pricklies. Not only that, you are more likely to get what you WANT from others if you engage in positive reinforcement. Flies with Honey.
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When you start a Twitter account, they recommend you start following others right away.That makes use for someone who is using Twitter on a personal level and is learning how it works. But if your goal is to create a community around your brand identity, you want to make sure that the individuals or organizations you follow instantly know who you are and what you are about so THEY can make an informed decision to follow you back. (Your ultimate goal)
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There is truth in the idea that the social media/online content landscape is contastantly changing. Many business owners never get started in the space because they feel their time investment won't pay off in time before the landscape changes. While it is true that there are always new tools being created (Pinterest), interfaces being changed on the regular (Facebook), and new strategies for promotion being developed there are certain things that stay consistant. The tenants of building a community, no matter what social media platform, are the same across the board.
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After much weighing of pros and cons (and haranguing from my better half) I've decided it's time to separate my personal Tweets from our business tweets. This will alleviate seeing non-essential hoo-ha on our website. (Not everyone checking out www.flocontent.com is interested in my personal conversations) And it will also help with more clarity of vision/branding/identity and all that good stuff.
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