Photo Courtesy of Alison Rudig

Photo Courtesy of Alison Rudig

Traditional marketing says you are the right choice, but content marketing shows your company is a dependable investment. Content marketing is critical for small businesses because it effectively builds brand awareness, allows for more customer interaction, drives in leads, brings in visitors, improves SEO results, and improves your customer retention rate. There is no doubt that a solid content marketing strategy is a vital investment for your company’s reputation and worth.

What is content?

Learning the basic foundation to content marketing is key to a successful content strategy. Content is everything on your website, which can be the main pages on the site; About, Contact, Products/Services, Blog/News, and FAQ pages. In terms of marketing, it is everything that can be shared; social media posts, news releases, blogs, etc.

What can good content do?

• It helps, educates, informs, or entertains.
• It builds brand awareness illustrating why your company meets the needs of existing and future customers.
• It acts as a form of customer service by creating value, reinforcing decisions, and creating ongoing conversations
• It builds a bond with clients and potential customers.
• It demonstrates expertise through providing your industry specific knowledge.

Why use content marketing?

Small businesses should use content marketing to not just say their business or organization is a reliable investment, but actually show they are. Anyone can talk the talk, but few can show you actually walk the walk. Provide good and useful content to your consumer network. By using content as a marketing tool effectively, your content will allow for more customer interaction, drive in leads, and increase brand awareness.

Which type of content marketing is right?

Content marketing takes the content created and molds it together with a content strategy—a plan on how you will use the content. A well-developed content marketing strategy will review the many areas content is delivered. Understanding the options and which options best suits our audience will lead to even greater success.

Social Media

One of the quickest ways to build, reach, develop, influence a community around your brand, and to get content out and shared is by using social media. Small businesses with business-to-consumer communication will benefit most because it allows for direct interaction.

eNewsletters & Articles

Concise, creative, and engaging eNewsletters and articles are a great ways to get information to clients. Small businesses that have a lot of new products, promotions, events, or news will benefit greatly from eNewsletters and Articles.

Case Studies & News Releases

Case studies and news releases establish credibility through sharing stories about your business or a product that resolved a problem. This is one of the best delivery methods for small businesses because it can also be used in conjunction with an eNewsletter.

Blogs

Small businesses can share their expertise, build an online community, and establish leadership, and build brand awareness. Blogs allow small businesses with a lot of industry knowledge and experience to produce and deliver content extending your reach.

eBooks

eBooks are great tools for companies to use because you can provide written content and visuals to help illustrate your information. Delivering content in larger volume and detail allows your company to establish expertise and a foundation for future content.

Testimonials

Gain trust and show reliability from customers whom have received help, and solved a problem with your company, product, or a person. It gives your company credibility and trustworthiness, and allows you to see what you are doing right and what to improve.

Content marketing has become a critical component for small businesses. It is easy for a small business to fall short to the rapidly expanding Internet and social media networks. Signalfire can develop a content marketing strategy that will help your company show that you are the right choice.

Gloria Goodall, staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, said the New York Times’ plan is to tempt readers to pay for its stories on their webpage. Readers can access 20 articles per month free of charge and then they have to subscribe for further reading. But, if an article is shared via social media it is free. There are also some articles that aren’t premium articles and do not count against your monthly allowance, but it is nearly impossible to determine such articles. There is no doubt that people look to the internet for the news, but will the addition of the pay wall change this?

A University of Missouri study showed that online newspaper readership is increasing and that 50% of newspapers develop only 9% of their revenue from their online editions. Mashable points out that maybe advertising in newspapers just costs too much, and that the reason they can’t make money is because they are “pricing themselves out of the market.” It is not hard to determine the demographics of a website, with all of the analytics tools readily available it is actually quite easy. So why then aren’t the newspapers using that information to entice their advertisers into running ads? It would be smarter to just raise the price of the ad than to raise the price on information. Right?

Dale Carr, CEO of LeadBolt, a firm helping online companies max their ad revenues, said the NYT pay wall is one of the largest experiments in journalism. Goodall explained that the NYT’s pricing model is priced by platform. A basic four-week subscription includes an app for your smartphone is $15, and $20 for an iPad app, both combined is  $35. This is a bit whack in my opinion. I would not pay $8.75 per week for the news to be available on all of my devices. Being a college student and asking me to pay that is pointless. I will find my information elsewhere. As I am sure many are doing.

There are loopholes however. As Thomas Ksiasek, assistant professor of communication at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, pointed out that the model is a “leaky fence,” which will either bring in more subscriptions or users will find other access routes to the articles. Mashable agrees, users will just searching elsewhere on the web where there are other free alternatives.

Apps for smartphones and iPads have helped the NYT build their micro billing and pay-per-use model, and their concept for paying for accessible premium content. Matt Shanahan, an executive at Scout Analytics said, “Apps woke the public up to the fact that there are other revenue streams they can create.” And he was correct.

The most successful pay walls, according to Goodale, are those with flat premium rates and those offering specialized content, like ESPN and the Wall Street Journal. But, NYT is a general interest newspaper, and the content can most often than not be found elsewhere. Richard Levick, president of Levick Strategic Communications in Washington said, “The Times is important to a free society. It is important to a marketplace of ideas that the New York Times share in that pantheon of great leadership.” So it will be interesting to see how it will work. But, for small-town, local papers, this may pose a threat.

Huntley Collins, an assistant professor of communication at La Salle University in Philadelphia, said, “My key worry is the impact of pay walls at metropolitan papers that don’t have the national and international reach of papers like the Times.” Collins worries that they will lose readership by charging content.

Mashable brings us a good question in relation to adopting the pay wall system, why do newspapers have to put pay walls up in the first place? The news is a commodity, but newspapers continue to charge these premiums, and unless they change something, the pay walls will either put them out of business or decline their readership.

I personally would not consider a pay wall if I were heading a news organization. I understand the concept behind it, but the beauty of the Internet is that there are insurmountable amounts of free information, and I want it to stay that way. Looking at it from a competitive view point, for example, if there were two newspapers both with the same view point, both well written, both reporting on the exact same information, and all of the information is exactly the same in both papers, but one paper puts up a pay wall and the other doesn’t, what paper are you going to read? Which is my point exactly, you will choose the free one.

Photo Courtesy of Animal New York

The DHS initiative began in February 2011 aimed to use social media to alert officials with threats to national security as they are tweeted or posted. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) released DHS internal documents about the surveillance and information collected via social media on a daily basis, which they obtained through a lawsuit pushing the Freedom of Information Act.

DHS monitors your updates on social networks to find Items Of Interest (IOI), according to the internal documents.DHS paid more than $11 million to General Dynamics to help monitor the Internet and provide the government with periodic reports.The DHS uses the Media Monitoring Capability team (MMC) to look at social media to generate real time IOI reports.

“Social Media outlets provide instant feedback and alert capabilities to rapidly changing or newly occurring situations,” the U.S. Homeland Security internal documents state. “The [Media Monitoring Capability team] works to summarize the extensive information from these resources to provide a well rounded operational picture for the Department of Homeland Security.”

The DHS has an internal privacy policy attempting to remove your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from IOI tweets, status updates, and posts, with some vague exceptions:

1) U.S. and foreign individuals in extremis situations involving potential life or death circumstances; (this is no change)
2) Senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates;
3) U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
4) U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
5) Names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed;
6) Current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security; and
7) Terrorists, drug cartel leaders or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest, (e.g., mass shooters such as those at Virginia Tech or Ft. Hood) who are killed or found dead.

The MMC can also transmit PII to DHS over the phone “as deemed necessary.” They can share your information, but it is not stored in a database searchable by your PII.

Terms can also be added to the list as needed, or circumstantially.EPIC says the surveillance of social media networks, public forums and websites violates the First Amendment and the Privacy Act of 1974. “The agency has demonstrated no legal basis for its social network and media monitoring program, which threatens important free speech and expression rights,” EPIC said in a Feb. 22 letter submitted to U.S. Congress.

Photo Courtesy of Brand Protect

So what keywords should you not hashtag or inclue in your posts?

2.13 Key Words & Search Terms“This is a current list of terms that will be used by the NOC when monitoring social media sites to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture. As natural or manmade disasters occur, new search terms may be added.

The new search terms will not use PII in searching for relevant
mission-related information.”

Here is a shortened list:

DHS & Other Agencies

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Coast Guard (USCG)
• Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• Border Patrol
• Secret Service (USSS)
• Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
• National Guard
• Red Cross
• United Nations (UN)

Domestic Security

• Assassination
• Attack
• Exercise
• Cops
• Homeland security
• Militia
• Shooting
• Shots fired
• Evacuation
• Deaths
• Hostage
• Explosion (explosive)
• Police

HAZMAT & Nuclear

• Hazmat
• Nuclear
• Toxic
• Chemical
• Hazardous
• Gas
• Spillover
• Anthrax
• Exposure
• Burn
• North Korea

Health Concern + H1N1

• Outbreak
• Contamination
• Exposure
• Virus
• Evacuation
• Bacteria

Infrastructure Security

• Infrastructure security
• Airport
• CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources)
• AMTRAK
• Collapse
• Computer infrastructure
• Communications infrastructure
• Metro
• Electric
• Failure or outage
• Black out
• Brown out
• Port
• Dock
• Bridge
• Canceled
• Delays

Southwest Border Violence

• Drug cartel
• Violence
• Gang
• Drug
• Narcotics
• Cocaine
• Marijuana
• Heroin
• Meth Lab
• Drug trade

Terrorism

• Terrorism
• Al Queda (all spellings)
• Terror
• Attack
• Environmental terrorist
• Eco terrorism
• Nuclear
• Chemical weapon
• Biological weapon
• Ammonium nitrate
• Improvised explosive device
• Suicide bomber
• Suicide attack
• Suspicious substance
• Pirates
• Plot
• Nationalist

Weather/Disaster/Emergency

• Emergency
• Hurricane
• Tornado
• Twister
• Tsunami
• Earthquake
• Flood
• Storm
• Ice
• Help
• Hail
• Wildfire
• Blizzard
• Aid
• Relief

Cyber Security

• Cyber security
• Virus
• Spammer
• Phishing
• Cyber terror
• Hacker
• Worm
• Scammers
• Social media

Yes… they are searching for Social Media posts… So before you post, keep in mind the National Defense Authorization Act provision “Counter-Terrorism.” If the government suspects involvement in terrorism you can face indefinite detention. Don’t you just love the abuse of Presidential and governmental authority? Do you feel safer knowing the government is monitoring you?

Photo Courtesy of Alison Rudig

I have noticed lately that a couple of my apps have been “cleaning…” This raised a few questions with me. Why are they cleaning themselves? What are they cleaning? And why hasn’t Apple addressed this in depth?

Apparently, with iOS 5 it is not uncommon for your apps to clean themselves. As in the screenshot of my iPhone above, the label under the app, In my case Pinterest, will change to “Cleaning…” Apple has not exactly explained this cleaning function in detail, hence why there are so many queries about it.

So, when your apps are cleaning themselves, they are basically deleting cache and temporary files so when iCloud or iTunes backs everything up the backup is faster and has less data to backup.

Since Apple added iCloud and Wi-Fi syncing, it has been important to keep app data as clean and compact as possible for back up efficiency. Otherwise us Apple users would be sitting in front of our MacBooks frustrated waiting around for minutes or hours for everything to backup.

The cleaning function for the iOS 5.0 is also responsible for apps losing locally cached articles. But that has been fixed with the third storage option between documents and cache, it the storage that does not get cleaned but also does not get backed up.

So next time your iPhone, iPad, or iTouch apps start cleaning themselves, have no fear. It is just the iOS 5 keeping your device working as Apple products should!

For more information visit Apple‘s webpage.

Photo Courtesy of Social Times

Journalists are continually needing to adapt to the digital age. Storify helps with that. I think it is a necessity for journalists. It is a free tool that allows users to search tweets, posts, blogs, search engines, videos, and photos and simply drag them into their story. I think it is a must. The only thing I found a little frustrating was that I could not post the story directly to WordPress, I could only post the link… Maybe it was just because I couldn’t figure it out. But still, it is a very valuable tool for journalists.

Read my “Journalism and Social Media” Storify post here: http://sfy.co/ZrX

Photo Courtesy of Central Michigan University

Mary Lichtman, journalism instructor at CMU and program developer, said social media has become important in every field and the program will help students reach their goals and objectives through social media. Students will use different social media networks actively in the program.

“After completion of the certificate, students should be able to assess the current use of social media and other communications in an organization, determine the goals of the organization and its risks and governance processes, select best practices for the organization, train employees, create content that engages audiences and drives traffic where the business wants it to go,” Lichtman said.

CMU is not the first to offer a social media program. Cleveland State University, Ball State University, State University of New York at Purchase, and University of California, Irvine also offer social media programs.

For more information check out Central Michigan Life, CMU’s student newspaper.

Photo Courtesy of Davis Cos

I will be graduating in May and the thought of having to search for jobs, fill out applications, send resumes, write cover letters, interview, and then pray all the efforts were worth it it a daunting reality. I am looking forward to graduate, but at the same time I am scared.

Recently college graduates have been using their social media experiences as personal. Social media as a tool for developing a career isn’t the first thought for many, but it is necessary and can be beneficial for our futures.

How to use social media to our advantage:

1. Refine your language, highlight things that are more career oriented, and connect and converse with people outside of your network.

2. Build networks to create relationships, which you will be able to gain professional opportunities through.

3. Search the job opportunities posted on social networking sites. Network with people with a company you would like to work for and establish a relationship.

4. Networking with professionals will help you gain more knowledge in that field.

5. Maintain a respectful level of interactions. Keep it professional.

6. Post conversations, third-party content, comments and questions, and content with the most value to your audience.

7. Show off your knowledge of your field. Tweet relevant articles and comment on trends.

8. Start networking now while you are still in school.

For more information check out Kate Brodock on Mashable.

As of right now, Apple only faces accusations of inhumane work environments. Foxconn has been accused of forcing workers to work long hours without breaks, usage of hazardous chemicals, and exposing workers to dangerous conditions. I personally feel that there are worse factories out there that Change.org should focus on, like the companies in Mexico destroying the actual environment around the cities causing hazardous living conditions, contaminated water, radiation poisoning, and exposure to known carcinogens, all of which actually kill people. Foxconn is being blamed for suicides because of the repetitive work and “spartan living conditions.” Foxconn and Apple did not force anyone to kill themselves, I think it is outrageous that the companies are being blamed for someone’s personal choice.

Photo Courtesy of Revolutionary Frontlines

Even factories outside of third world countries that are considered to have good working conditions have their workers doing repetitive work and working long hours. Being a factory worker is not easy. But there aren’t suicides over it. Mentally unstable people commit suicide, you can’t blame it on hard work.

Apple is taking the right steps in damage control in this situation. I really don’t think they have anything to hide. Apple released their list of suppliers to be more transparent last month and they agreed to a labor audit by the Fair Labor Association. Apple is the first technology company to agree to this. Does Apple really have something to hide? I think not. I think it is people looking to stir the pot and cause drama.

What would Steve Jobs have to say…

“We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.” -Steve Jobs