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Health & Fitness

Shake It Up Online Marketing; Go Ahead, Throw that Spaghetti

I recently created one of the- well okay, lets just call a spade a spade-possibly the most ridiculous post of my blogging career. Witness madness here. I don’t know why I did it, really. Maybe I just wanted to double dare myself, and I enjoy thinking out of the box for both my own content as well as for my clients. Lets just say I was so inspired by the content marketing book I’d just read (Epic Content Marketing; How to How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter & Win More Customers by Marketing Less) that I wanted test some stuff out……and hey, it was the holidays.

So, that’s what I did and no regrets; it was actually a lot of fun to make.

Although I’d never created an actual book review before, I do have my blog post system down to a science. I can do it in my sleep. So I figure no big deal, I’ll just stick to the formula.

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But then my system and I had a small meltdown when for whatever reason I couldn’t make the YouTube video embed in my blog post. Hours I spent in forums, in Wordpress support, in Facebook groups and although there were many great fixes offered, none of them would work.

What the heck?

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So as not to blow my deadline, I finally, late in the afternoon, decided to just post the thing with my sad little YouTube URL instead of my newly created blog post.  After all it was a video, even though I wasn’t driving traffic back to my website in as direct a line as I would have liked.

·      Then I emailed it out to my list.

·      Then I posted it on Onlywire and out to all my Social Media accounts and other usual suspects

·      Then I decided, hmmmm, it is a book review after all, albe-it an unconventional one….maybe some actual book review sites would take it

·      So I created an account and uploaded it to Goodreads

·      Then I thought, hell, it is a book review, I bet Amazon doesn’t have anything like this in their reviews, maybe it will stand out, and so I uploaded it there and it got accepted. Ha!

·      Then when my teenager emerged from under the blanket of mortification  (she really has a blanket named Mortification blankie that she wraps herself in 75% of the time she’s with me) she finally admitted that it was, besides being totally embarrassing, fairly amusing and tweet worthy and so she tweeted it and was approached by 4 10th graders and 3 teachers the following day extolling the virtues of said “book review” and claiming that they shared it with their followers as well. So tweet that.

The Net- Net of Throwing Stuff Out There to See Where It Sticks

In just the past 3 weeks since it’s been published:

 

·      I’ve gained 12 YouTube followers (up from 2)

·      All things being relative, although hardly viral, the video now has over 190 views last time I checked (hey, it’s viral to me)

·      It’s been shared all over my Facebook community and then some. 36 new “likes”

·      I have a bunch of comments on my YouTube channel instead of my blog, which Google likes, and only a couple of them were creepy

·      I have now been asked by 5 different authors, none of whom I know personally (well, 2 are authors to be) to please make a video for them.

·      My Alexa ranking increased by over 200, 000 points, and there are now 3 additional sites linking to me

And the best part? I got a tweet from Joe Pulizzi thanking me for the review, calling it an honor and wishing me a happy belated Hanukah (watch the video for the reference), all before I even had a chance to stalk him with it.

2 Morals of the Story

a)    It pays to think outside of the box and create something that will jolt and delight people. To shake it up! In all seriousness, it’s content intended to build brand awareness, and as long as it can be tied back to your brand, even 1 off (i.e. singing the praises-literally- of a marketing book that comes highly recommended from a marketing “expert”) it can be worth the effort.  And who knows, I might have a future in musical product creation on the side. (I’m not losing my day job)

b)   In the early stages of creating a marketing strategy it often pays to throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. I don’t normally market trough YouTube even though I create videos every now and then. By being forced to this time, I not only opened myself up to another market, increased my SEO and grew followers, but I can now add YouTube as a serious landing page –with link backs of course to my site. It always pays to reach out of your zone. Social Media platforms come and go.  It’s good to diversify

As for Joe Pulizzi, He has not, as of yet, invited me to his home, sent me a signed copy, or offered me a free pass to Content Marketing World in September.

But I’m sure that’s all coming.

 

 

 

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