Planning and writing

When I have to chose between writing and marketing my content, I feel bothered. I love to write and bring more interesting topics for my blogs, but after a couple of years of modest blogging, I realized that without a minimal plan of marketing my content I will not reach any audience at all. It could be sad, deceiving, a reason for infinite philosophical complains and meditation, but this is the reality and denying it is one's own risk. 

As I deeply hope that sooner or later my blogging career will bring me a significant income, I need to think more than ever to marketing tips. The problem is the amount of time I need to spend from a platform to another. And another amount of time to keep in touch with the latest discoveries in terms of SEO, Google Ads, content marketing. Also, I need to be at least one hour the day present on social media, to share interesting information and to engage my audience. Lucky me that I am a fast writer and reader, but at the end of the day, I realize that my writing plan was not kept and I still have a lot of delayed blog posts.

What is to be done? What can I do in order to achieve the right balance between quality writing and the best methods for reaching more and more people. At the end of the day, when I want to start a long term collaboration, my readership and ranking will matter considerably in a favourable decision. Enough with the autistic attitude that kept me away from a big readership. I need to be seen and read and I need more and more comments from my readers. But, I also need quality...

I had coped with those rhetorical questions for a while, especially in the last days, when I realized how much I want to bring more and more travel stories on my travel blog. I feel how the words in my notebook lost their patience and made me responsible for the delay of bringing them into the online life. Meanwhile, I was too busy updating pictures on Pinterest, and participating to chats on Twitter. Plus, I needed to see how my Google+ campaign is going - excellent, with a better dynamic that in the case of Facebook. 

In the morning, up early for finishing all my writing dreams till the middle of the day, I decided to keep quiet and follow my priorities. Which are offering more quality writing content that can be later on shared over and over again on social media. In order to build a strategy, I need to have the main elements of it, isn't it? This is what I promise to do in order to avoid the negative tensions of being unhappy with myself. Thus, I will spend one day writing intensively and updating my blogs and the rest of the week running around the web and find the right audience. 

At the end of the day, everyone will be happy, I hope! 

What your picture says about you

If you are an intensive user of the freelance networks - as I am - you will easily notice a lot of choices regarding the profile pictures. Some will prefer to hide their identity and post a picture with an avatar, somehow related to their work recommendations. The most used are a computer for the IT specialists and a pen for a freelance writer. 

There are also some that did not make a difference between their hobbies and their tailored profiles and thus they selected as professional recommendations images with favorite pets and various spots visited during their vacations. If the last choice could be a decent option after all, in the case of the pets pictures, I will think more than twice before hiring someone that considered that his representative picture should be a cat or a monkey. 

Last but not least, some decided to upload pictures with their children - could impress the audience when you realize that you will help the person to feed his/her family, but probably it doesn't work for all - or with their lovely spouses. Not few of them are fake and use other people's pictures randomly stolen from the social media networks or from Google. 

What I honestly prefer is a decent picture, when you can say something about yourself, with a professional look that will inspire the potential employer to work with you and not with anyone else. 

Bad ads make business going worse

As I am preparing a short writing job assignment in advertising, I was trying to improve a bit my knowledge of various ads and tips for ads analysis. And I stumbled upon this short analysis of a couple of ads that went very very bad. 

What I am always interested in when it comes to advertising, is to look at global campaigns and all the elements of the communication. A simple ad on a wall is nothing if not other tools and instruments are used. In addition, the reputation of the company as such and the way in which is able to handle various crisis is another element that will make a campaign successful. On the other hand, the volatile online environment, with its threats and opportunities, makes the management of a brand more complicated that it used to be only a couple of years ago. 

My current assignment helped me to evaluate my knowledge in the domain and to think more about how I can use it for more dedicated campaigns and online tips.

Why I do not like paid posts

As marketing assistant for various trendy companies, looking for fancy bloggers, I am very often faced with the following answer: I would be more than happy to advertise your products, but my costs are the following:$$$. In such cases, I do not like to reply back.

I am blogging for a couple of years already and I am still at the beginning of the learning process of how to successfully promote myself. More specifically, how to use the weapon of my words to win more customers, money, products. Till now, with only one exception, I relied exclusively on my power of using the words and felt the freedom of being free to share my knowledge with the other as often as I had time. Probably my latest marketing experiences taught me something about how to better promote my non-for-profit blogging business.

But, what I do not like when I receive the corporate answers is the idea of accepting to trade your freedom of writing. In many places in the world, journalists will be extremely happy to be free to write without being forced to ponder each of their word for not offending corrupt politicians or businessmen. Some are paying with their lives. Blogging is an honest option to use the Internet for freely sharing your thoughts. As long as your web host allows, you are free to post as often as you want about what do you want. You can exercise your critical thinking. 

In the case of a paid post, obviously, you will praise the values of a product, even it is ugly or harmful or completely unworth the money. Some people ask $70 the post, plus the free delivery of the product. I am completely against this attitude and I wish that many people will realize they and how they are wrong. And this is also the responsibility of the companies that went used to pay the media - online including - for reading what they want to read about themselves. Call it the dangerous denial of the consuming age.

Unless further notice, the posts on this blog are free as spring birds.

The modest lessons of a marketing assistant

A new year and new professional challenges. 

For the next four weeks I will do exactly what I fully enjoy - was it ever something different? Anyway, this time I am the full master of the show and I am more than happy to learn every day some new tricks and tips.

Even though I am not a human resources coach - and will never be in the next 100 years, probably - I dare to give one simple advice: if you really need to expand your professional horizons, try at least once the year to do for a little while something completely out of the previous professional menu. Do a short internship in a new domain, if you hate doing administrative work - as I fully do - try to do it for one week for being able to better understand the secrets of a well organized office etc.

In my case, I decided to play the role of the marketing assistant. My main tasks are to find a number of bloggers interested in presenting a product. Most part of my work consist in doing web research for identifying the target group of my client. It is not well paid and it is mostly a maintenance work, as I am practically sending daily around 16-17 standard mails. 

I don't know how the previous assistants did this job, but I am more than happy with the feedback received in the last three weeks: nice and interesting bloggers, various interests and serious writers. I discovered a fascinating world of young women writing and sharing their ideas. 

Out of my cold and serious world, I am learning new things every day about how to improve your writing and pitch of subjects daily and about introducing better visuals on your blogs. As a photographer myself - I introduced this professional activity on my CV last year, when the process of professional redefinition was started - I am amazed to find every time new inspiration.

As for the lessons learned, there are a couple of insights I would like to share right now:

- Are you looking for targets: find the dedicated national and international networks. For fashion, for example, there are predominant blogging communities gathering interesting individuals writing about fashion.

- Explore the blogrolls: you will easier find people sharing the same style and preoccupations.

- Be as friendly as possible: Try to introduce a personal note in your pre-written, cold e-mails. For example, if you send the mail before the holiday season, be so kind and introduce some special wishes - better a neutral one, as "happy holiday season" as long as you don't know the religious affiliation of the person you are writing to.

- If you have a blog, do at least twice the year an overall checking of your blogroll as it is annoying to keep an updated list of people who didn't write for years.

- Also, unless you don't want to be a super secret person, introduce a address of contact for your avid readers that would like to talk to you. Honestly, I don't think that it is such a big danger as long as you keep it as neutral as possible - for example, an address of your blog, without a direct mention of your name or address or any other very personal details.

- Be very careful with what you write. Check once more before pushing the 'send' button.

- At the beginning, it may be annoying to keep the track of your payments and of your hours and to report every week your evaluation, mostly if you are used with somebody else's doing it for you. But, you know what, being fully independent is a blessing and you need to know all the small details of a work in order to understand the energy and value of any minute.

There are also other lessons, but for the moment I keep learning hard.

The tip of the day Ezine Articles

If on the list with New Years' Resolutions you included gaining more visibility for your communications products or/and improving your writing skills, I give you a tip (who was shared with me but a very reliable virtual connection): use www.ezinearticles.com

It is easy: open an account, read the publisher's guide and start writing. Your productions will be reviewed by the team and will be soon - in maximum 7 days - online. Ready to be read by the other members. You are what you write and including this site in your personal branding communcation strategy is not a bad choice.

Good luck with the writing!

The relationship with the client

Image via Wikipedia

Preparing for the evaluation of my last three intensive years in various kinds of PR, I reached a couple of conclusions regarding the importance of the relation between the agency, respectively the consultant, and the client. In many cases, for not clearly and rational reasons (the empathy being very important), it may happen that the client is not only very demanding, but also unpredictable and not very clear in formulating the requests.

I do not think it is a universal receipe to win the hearts and minds of the client - meaning the whole mechanism governing a company, from the CEO, PR manager, marketing manager, other consultants. But, a conflictual relation is at a great extent detrimental to the well being of the project as such. A pro-active attitude, tolerance and the capacity to impose self-respect could be some tips for solving such conflicts - personality or education based.

Here are some of the musts a consultant or a PR agency have to do in relation with the client:

- To know the project working to in the smallest details, by heart in every moment of the day. Only in this way you will be able to size possible opportunities of intervention on behalf of your client or to find media or communications windows. When you talk with a journalist, for example, you can identify the possibilities of better promoting your client or to create sympathy lor awareness for your projects.

- Before starting the effective work to a project, take a couple of days to document. Ask the friends and the enemies, the former clients and agencies. Ask internal documents and read media reports step-by-step.

- Be able to identify what do you need from your client. Maybe he or she is not having the knowledge of working with the media and don't know what questions the journalist could address or the pressure faced for meeting the deadlines.

- The client is busy and don't waste his time with hundreds of e-mails asking thousand of questions. Be concise and organized enough to address all of them once and in the simplest possible way.

- Deliver finite products to your client. Avoid misspellings, omissions, bad grammar. Check the documents over and over again. Document your presentations and make them reader-friendly. Power Point management is very important.

- Deliver the documents in time. Respect your deadlines, the deadlines of the media and the deadlines of the client. If not possible, explain in due time the reasons and the next time schedule you can meet.

This is my wisdom pill for today. Happy working.

Related articles

• New Survey: Clients Value Flexibility, Senior Counsel of Boutique PR Firms (eon.businesswire.com)
• Brands Should Focus On More Than Just The Size Of Their Fanbase (customerthink.com)
• Five Things I Learned On The Client Side (crenshawcomm.com)
• When Clients Want "The Truth" (pr-squared.com)

E-Medical

Using social media for improving and promoting the medical practice: http://www.meditrafix.com/

Online and recession

Online is still an emerging and not fully explored market, covering a wide area of opportunities. Easy to use and less expensive, it offered an important niche in times of economic crisis. And a good platform for creating standards and content for the professional-targeted dialogue.

On the publishing market

The publishing marketing is becoming more and more creative and imaginative. Very well connected and fully using the tools of 2.0. While continuing to rely on the gifts of good wording and the creativity.

In fact, it is a hard task for the writers used with the classical rhythm of life. You write your piece of story, after documentation and a little meditation about what do you want to say and how and then submit your contribution to a review, according to the deadline set.

The last day I went through a different experience, as I found, thanks to a friend, the call for submissions posted by 48 Hour Magazine. First, I impatiently waited the announcement of the subject. Checking the Twitter account, trying to figure out what the main topic will be while watching some videos posted on the website. The whole process of submission, editing and sending to print is taking 48 hour. From time to time, the editors aired live webcams with the atmosphere from the editing desk, suggestive videos about what the work is going on, announcement about what to do - and not, messages about the level of interests. All you have to do is to be creative, a very organised mind and perseverent in sharing your ideas.

Even I do not have any idea about the chances to succeed in getting published, this latest writing experience was extremely interesting and challenging for me. And made me think about what I want to write and how. And, not less important, the feeling of being happy to be part of this new world of creative publishers.

US Marines, not allowed to network

Because we haven't achieved yet the universal peace and socialization interest should stop when meeting the national interest.

Anyway, the idea to launch the own social networking tools is, in my opinion, a good idea, as it could compensate, including psychologically, the interdiction in itself. In the same time, the military sector could develop its PR and marketing aims through the social networks.