Stephen Darori is a Social Media Expert,Author, Publicist,Finance and Marketing Whiz , Strategist ,Journalist, Editor Prolific Blogger. Editor. You can follow Stephen Darori on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media Platforms.
Stephen Darori & Associates has led major Social Media and Digital Campaigns for wide ranging clients that have included Hilary for America, the Democratic Party ,Democratic Alliance ( South Africa), Fortune 1000 companies and Shabbat.com
Google has overtaken Apple as the world's most valuable brand, as the search giant returns to the No. 1 spot after a six-year hiatus, according to Brand Finance Global 500 report.Apple plummeted 36% to $107 billion in 2016, the report said, while Google jumped to $109.4 billion, up from $88.2 billion in 2015.
"Apple has struggled to maintain its technological advantage, with new iterations of the iPhone delivering diminishing returns, while the Chinese market is now crowded with local competitors," David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance, said in a statement. "Apple has been living on borrowed time for several years by exploiting its accumulated brand equity. This underlines one of the many benefits of a strong brand, but Apple has finally taken it too far."
The former No. 1 brand received plenty of flack for ditching the headphone jackwith the iPhone 7. More so, many creatives felt alienated after seeing the specs for the topline MacBook Pro. The backlash has clearly affected Apple's brand, Mr. Haigh said.
Meanwhile, Lego regained its status as the world's most powerful brand ahead of the "Lego Batman Movie" release. In a digital era, Lego found a way to maintain relevancy with its Lego brand video games, which helped pave the way for 2014 surprise hit "The Lego Movie," which generated more than $469 million globally, according to Box Office Mojo. Three other movies are slated for release by 2018.
"Unvalued brands can lead to undervalued companies that are more vulnerable to takeover, struggle to secure adequate financing and miss market opportunities," Mr. Haigh said. "Meanwhile a powerful brand can protect a company's value during turbulent market conditions, create new market opportunities and increase profit margins. All companies should therefore not just know the value of their brands, but also understand what drives that value and how it can be harnessed to benefit the business as a whole."
Other tidbits from the report: AT&T has overtaken Verizon to become the world's most valuable telecoms brand Emirates is no longer the most valuable airline brand, having been overtaken by American, United and Delta Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds, KFC and Subway all saw their brand values fall, undermined by healthy eating trends
Want to stay competitive in today's environment? Take a cue from some of the best.
In business today, creativity is required of people more than ever to stay competitive and profitable in a world that’s becoming more complicated by the day. From pivoting into new products, to developing new ways to grab people’s attention, more creativity is needed than ever before as it gets harder to stand out. Luckily there are firms around the world who make creativity their business, from design firms to marketing agencies. Their entire business is focused on helping companies think about things differently, but what are the tools they use internally to stay creative? Here’s 5 creativity tools from some of the top firms in the world, to stay above the fray and keep those creative juices flowing. 1. Collective Action Toolkit | Frog Design The biggest problem with creativity can sometimes be having a process to channel that creativity into an end product, and not having a method to design those solutions can result in a lot of time wasted and frustration created working through that process. Luckily, Frog Design created a toolkit to aid in helping teams walk through the design process, developed in part to help NGO’s and non profit organizations around the world walk through a design process that results in creative solutions to solving all kinds of problems. This toolkit is available in the form of a download, and covers the steps and processes recommended to help any team walk through a creative design process. 2. The 7 Rules for Brainstorming | IDEO At IDEO, the services are only as valuable as they are useful and creative. To maintain an active stream of creativity, rules need to be enforced to maintain an active and creative culture. This can be no more in danger at times, than during a Brainstorming session. To solve that problem, IDEO has seven rules of brainstorming that companies can use to make the process as open and useful as possible. You can get the full list of ideas from their website list above in the title, but the important take away that these rules help reinforce is the principle that brainstorming relies on as many ideas as possible to start with in order to extract as much useful possibility as possible. Encouraging open dialog, helping people feel respected, and giving everyone a chance to speak can all help encourage an open and creative brainstorming session. 3. Innovation Flowchart | Development Impact & You When it comes to innovation, a big part of the problem is where to start and what the end result should look like. “Innovation” sessions are notorious time sucks, resulting in a lot of sticky notes but no real concrete output or clear next steps. Development Impact & You (or DIY) has an Innovation Flowchart that guides teams through a step-by-step innovation process that can help explore and answer the fundamental questions that comprise a clear Innovation process. 4. Design Sprint | Google Ventures As Google describes it on their website, “the sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV, it’s a ‘greatest hits’ of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more–packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.” There’s even a book you can purchase to learn more about the methodology. This largely encompasses the previous creative tools mentioned here, though done in a manner that ties everything together in a five day workshop. The best part about creative processes though, is that you can hack them to fit into whatever challenges you’re needing to solve. Given the folks at Google have come out with some pretty creative things over the years, it’s certainly a process worth checking out. 5. Get Out and Walk | Every Agency Everywhere This may seem like a no brainer, but getting out and going for a walk has been shown to enhance creativity as much if not more than any other method out there. Walking has been scientifically proven to not only enhance mental function, but can help with focus and clarity when it comes to solving hard problems. Consider walking with a co-worker vs sitting at a table if you get stuck, or taking a walking break throughout the day to get the clarity of mind you need to stay creative and productive. Though there’s several more methods and tools I could list, these are a good starting point to consider how you’re staying creative in your workplace and how you might consider focusing more on a creative mindset when those challenges head your way. TAGS
Yes, this is another list of the best Google Chrome Extensions. You’ve seen it all before, right? Well, we thought we had too. But new extensions are continually emerging that can drastically change the day-to-day habits of social media marketers. Plus, a few classic extensions have undergone impressive upgrades.
Check out this list of 20 of the best Google Chrome extensions for social media marketers, and start saving some valuable time and effort at work.
Sitting down at work and firing up your computer only to be faced with an overflowing inbox isn’t the best way to start your day. This extension offers a beautiful way to get in the right headspace before getting bogged down with scheduling posts, replying to followers, monitoring hashtags, creating new content, and everything else a busy social media manager is responsible for on a daily basis.
The Momentum extension replaces your “new tab” homepage with a gorgeous new photo every day along with a personalized greeting. Momentum also allows you to set one main goal for the day and keep track of a longer to-do list, helping you stay focused throughout the day. You’ll see the local weather in the top right corner, a list of links you frequently visit to the left, and a motivational quote at the bottom of the page.
Just because social media managers get paid to be on the sites that other people use to waste time doesn’t mean they don’t suffer from bouts of intense procrastination elsewhere on the web. Thankfully, technology can be a source of discipline as much as it is a source of distraction.
StayFocusd is an extension that limits the amount of time you can spend on certain websites (a.k.a. the ones that you visit instead of doing work). Once you’ve used up your allotted time, you can’t visit the site again for the rest of the day. You can get pretty granular with what you choose to block as well, whether it’s an entire site, a specific page, or even certain types of content like videos, games, or images.
Social media managers typically have to switch between their creative and strategic hats throughout the day, often needing to wear them at the same time. Jumping back and forth between these two dynamics during a busy day can cause even the most organized person to feel a little frayed. Enter: Evernote.
The Evernote Web Clipper extension allows you to clip any article or web page and save it in one place. Alongside the notes and to-do lists that you can create in Evernote itself, this extension allows you to pull in key text from any website or article you find while doing research online. This is also a great way for you to collect content to share on social without having to keep 20 tabs open all day.
Publishing a post with a spelling mistake is a nightmare for social media managers—and rightly so. While the occasional error happens to everyone from time to time, consistent mistakes can damage your brand’s credibility. Grammarly can help catch them all, including the mistakes that manage to evade the usual red squiggly line: an incorrect verb tense, a missing article before a plural noun, or the misuse of a comma.
The Grammarly extension can catch over 250 types of errors, many of which aren’t typically caught by spellcheckers. Along with catching your mistakes, Grammarly can actually help you write better overall, by offering synonym suggestions in line with the context of what you’re writing.
The biggest challenge when working globally often has nothing to do with language barriers or cultural nuances—it’s figuring out what time it is in a different region without doing the math on your fingers under your desk.
The Figure it Out extension allows you to add up to 10 time zones to your “new tab” screen, which should help make scheduling posts or setting up meetings with different regions super easy. Figure it Out also displays regional national holidays, so you can avoid posting your best social content on a day when no one will be paying attention.
Social media marketers often run into the problem of wanting to share access to an account, be it a social network, SEO tool, Google analytics, WordPress or any other piece of software, without actually telling team members their passwords. Rather than change the password (and have to memorize a new one or insecurely write it down), LastPass allows you to share access with your team without actually giving them your password.
That’s only the beginning for this free password manager. LastPass operates on a ‘master password’ system, where as long as you remember one key password, the extension will store all of your other login information and autofill it for you when you arrive on a login page. It can also generate secure passwords, to help you avoid reusing the same ones over and over again, or resorting to the terrible “123ABC” level of password amateurism. And, should a team member quit or change positions, you can also remove access to a password you’ve shared with them. In these ways, LastPass offers a massive boost to your online security.
Many social media professionals and marketers spend a lot of time scouring the web for great content, and even more time slowly reading through it. On an average work day, I used to have anywhere between five and ten tabs open to blog posts, news articles, videos and other pieces of content. That’s on top of the seven or eight other tabs I had open. I would lose things in the mess of tabs and end up just closing a majority of the articles without ever reading them. It was slow and unsustainable, which is why finding the OneTab extension was such a godsend.
When you find yourself with too many tabs open, click on the OneTab icon. All of those tabs will close, but be saved into a list of URLs within a single tab. You can restore them all individually when you feel like reading or opening something, or restore them all at once. You can also export and share that list of links with colleagues or friends. And even if you close Chrome entirely, OneTab will save all of those links for the next time you open it up.
Not only does OneTab add order to the chaos, it also can save you up to 95% of memory within Google Chrome, making your browsing experience faster.
I have a Pinterest problem. The problem is that I don’t spend much time on Pinterest. At the same time, I recognize how important it is for a lot of people, and I want to be active on the social network as a poster, even if I’m not a browser. That’s where the Pinterest Pin It Button comes in.
The extension throws that little ‘p’ logo into the top of your browser—reminding you to pin things. Then it facilitates that process by automatically pulling up images from whatever page you’re visiting, and allowing you to pin the image of your choice to the board of your choice. You can also edit the description and add any context you feel is important.
If the tiny icon isn’t enough of a reminder, as you scroll through a page hovering over an image will bring up a tiny ‘Pin it’ button which you can click to the same effect as the extension.
Facebook introduced two new Chrome extensions in June 2016. With the Save extension, you can easily save articles, videos, products, and other links while browsing the web. With the Share extension, you can share any link on the web to your timeline, a friend’s timeline, Groups, Events, Messenger, and on Pages you manage.
Ever wonder which hashtag you should be using for a certain event or story? Are you unsure about whether adding a certain hashtag will add value to your messaging? Tracking and comparing hashtags or dumping them into your analytics platform can be time-consuming, especially when you’re sending out 10 or 20 Tweets in a single day. Get that time back with the RiteTag Social Media Optimizer.
Image via RiteTag
The RiteTag Extension provides analytics on the hashtags you use as your write your social media messaging. The six analytics categories appear right within your compose box, offering real-time insight into the hashtag’s usage within Tweets, the number of times it has been retweeted, its reach, and more. Your hashtags will also be color-coded based on their value (green is worth using, red not so much). RiteTag can even provide you with the handles of influencers who use your hashtag, so you can connect with the leading sources on that topic.
As social media professionals, we probably appreciate a good gif more than most people. Gifs aren’t an “all-the-time” thing, but when opportunity strikes and you can find the perfect gif for the situation, you can increase engagement and click-through on your social media messaging.
Image via Search in a Giphy
The Search in a Giphy extension focuses in on the “finding” part of that formula, making it easy to search for gifs from within your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Slack accounts. Find the right gif, and either drag and drop it into your message or right click and grab the image URL. No need to leave the tab or window.
Even though social media marketers are very active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks, many of our interactions inevitably still happen within email. Though you’d like to get a conversation going on social media, you’re often stuck doing the delayed email back-and-forth, especially with new contacts.
The Rapportive extension helps to bridge that gap by providing you with valuable information about email contacts—including their social media profiles. If someone sends you an email, Rapportive will gather their information in the sidebar of your Gmail account. You can then easily add them as a contact on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a huge part of successful content marketing. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most misunderstood parts. People new to SEO often find the tools to be complicated or too advanced, and their content suffers as a result.
MozBar results for a search on social media advertising
The MozBar extension offers a simple alternative for people just starting out with SEO. Within Google search, this extension allows you to see the Page Authority and Domain Authority of any links. You can also click “Page Analysis” to get a list of inbound links to any piece of content. This is valuable for marketers looking to track links back to their blog posts or webpages.
You’ve just built your brand new blog post. You publish it and immediately push it out over Facebook and Twitter. Then you get your first comment: “The link in the second paragraph is broken.” Damnit.
We’ve all dealt with broken links at one time or another. They’re frustrating for you as a content creator, and for your followers who, rightly, expect better. We’re all human, we all make mistakes, which is why we sometimes need a robot that doesn’t.
Screenshot via Check My Links
The Check My Links extension for Chrome does exactly what the name says: it checks all the links on your webpage. Any broken links are highlighted in red, so you can go in and fix them before you send your content out into the world.
Every business with an online presence can benefit from knowing how customers interact with their website. Not everyone has the technical knowledge to find this information out however. If you want to know what your page visitors click and what they ignore, install Page Analytics by Google.
Similar to the MozBar for SEO, Page Analytics by Google is great for people who are just starting to track the performance of their blogs or websites. The insights it provides offer a valuable analytics snapshot that can help guide your website layout and user experience. Plus, information on active page visitors, pageviews, bounce rate and more can help you shape your editorial strategy and social media promotion. This extension brings some of the best features of Google Analytics right onto the page for you.
Social media marketers tend to be chatty. We’re constantly talking with colleagues, clients and friends, often within Google Hangouts. With that in mind, Google created a Hangouts extension, so you can keep on chatting without needing to actually be in your Gmail inbox.
Reviews of the extension are mixed, with many people saying it’s buggy, so you may not want to depend on it for important business calls, for example. But as a tool to run in the background while you work, and notify you when a colleague sends you a message, the Hangouts extension is a great asset.
If social media marketers were Greek warriors, tech and internet problems would be our Achilles Heel. When IT problems arise, it can ruin your webinar, throw off your posting schedule, or frustrate customers who expect a timely social media response. In these moments, being able to quickly solve your tech issues is essential. Chrome’s Remote Desktop extension can be a life-saver during that process.
Image via Google
Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to hand over the reigns to your computer remotely, through Google Chrome. You can reach out to a trusted individual or company that you think can resolve your IT issues, and then give them control of your computer—even from across the country. Chrome ensures that this access is secured, and only the person you specifically identify can access your computer on that one occasion. No more rushing from your home office to the computer store. No annoying time delays. A huge asset for social media marketers.
If you work in social media, you are exposed to the word millennials an average of 26 times per day. That is, of course, a completely fabricated statistic, but you get the idea. With so much social media discussion and content focused on this highly overused generational moniker, sometimes we all just need a break. And now, there’s an app for that.
Image via Millennials to Snake People
The ingenious Millennials to Snake People Chrome extension replaces any text using “millennials” with “Snake People.” The results are hilarious, and result in such headlines as “Dear Snake People, We’re Sorry” and “Why Snake People Don’t Want You to Talk Like Them.” This app might not exactly help you in your job, but it will give you a much needed laugh once in a while. And, I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a lot less imposing than the Cloud to Butt Plus extension.
A time-saving social media tool like no other. We may be biased when it comes to Hootlet but that’s because we use it day in and day out for our own work. The Hootlet, at its basic level, is a social media publishing extension. It allows you to share the webpage (yes, that’s any webpage) you’re on across your social networks.
It saves you time, not only by removing the need to switch between tabs or windows and copy and paste information, but also by pre-populating your social media message with the page title and URL. From the extension you can edit social media messages, attach images, and schedule them or send them right away.
On top of all that, Hootlet integrates itself seamlessly into the rest of your web surfing experience. On Google search, the extension allows you to bring up social conversations about your specific search topic. On Google maps, Hootlet can bring up Tweets from people within a short distance of any location you choose. On content networks like Google image search, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and more, a Hootlet button will appear so you can easily share that content to your own social channels.
Google Maps search for Sochi, Russia, with Hootlet results
We use the hell out of the Hootlet every single day. You don’t have to trust us though. Try it out free.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Google, Facebook, Social Media: Words That Convert: Write Copy That Gets Your Customer’s Attention Every Time
“Sign up!”
These phrases litter the huge variety of email newsletter boxes you’ll come across online, and they generally serve the same purpose: Click here to give us your email address. They serve the same purpose, but do they say the same thing?
Can one word change the way you feel about a button?
In my experience, yes. I subscribe to the copywriting school of thought where every single word is absolutely worth stewing over and A/B testing because one single word can change everything. The difference between “joining” and “signing up” is the difference between fellowship and enlisting. A word changes the meaning, the mood, and the motivation.
To connect the dots then, you’re probably wondering: If a single word makes that much difference, then what words should I be using? Which words and phrases convert?
The science of copywriting, the psychology of headlines, and the art of CTAs has revealed quite a number of go-to moves for marketers looking to gain a linguistic edge in their words and pitches. I’ve enjoyed saving several lists of these so-called power words and pulling them out to use in a pinch. I’m happy to share my lists with you of the phrases and words that convert . Do you have any power words that work magic for you? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Research reveals how a single word makes all the difference
You likely know inherently that specific words matter. You click on a headline because a single word strikes you. You click a signup button because a word creates an emotion.
The research behind this power of words is incredibly deep. Researchers have found that the word you use to describe a car accident (“contacted” vs. “smashed”) paints the way eyewitnesses view the event. Another study found that simple stock names that are easier to pronounce lead toquicker gains post-IPO.
Perhaps my favorite study is one shared by Brian Clark of Copyblogger. Social psychologist Ellen Langer tested the power of a single word in an experiment where she asked to cut in line at a copy machine. She tried three different ways of asking:
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” – 60% said OK
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” – 94% said OK
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” – 93% said OK
I don’t know about you, but I thought Langer’s third request was rather elementary. Yet it didn’t matter. The trigger word “because” was all she needed. The takeaway: When you want people to take action, always give a reason.
Neurologically, we have an instinctual reaction to words and language. Researchers have found that we are hardwired to associate sounds with images, even in words we do not comprehend. Here’s a test for you, pulled from a study by Wolfgang Köhler. Which of the two shapes below is a maluma and which is a takete?
The vast majority of respondents label the smooth, rounded image a maluma and the hard, jagged image a takete.
To go one step further into the power of words, you can look at Patrick Renvoise and Christopher Morin’s book about neuromarketing (see Peep Laja’s article at ConversionXL for a great analysis of the book). Renvoise and Morin highlight the three different brains we have: the new brain, the middle brain, and the old brain.
The old brain is the part that controls decisions, and it also happens to be the most primitive. In this way, the words you use to market to the old brain will often be the most direct, simple, arresting, visual words you have.
You’ll likely see a lot of these “old brain” words in the lists below.
The ultimate list of words and phrases that convert
A quick Google search can reveal pages of results for persuasive and powerful words. There’s no trouble finding them; there’s sometimes trouble applying them. The words you see below are split into a number of categories, along with some ideas on how I’ve used them in the past (and how you can use them, too).
The 5 most persuasive words in the English language
You
Free
Because
Instantly
New
You’ve seen these words countless times before—and for good reason. The research behind these words has shown over and over that they work. Gregory Ciotti wrote about these five in a post for Copyblogger, showing exactly how each is vital for persuasive speech and copy. For instance, immediate words like “instantly” trigger mid-brain activity and feed our zest for quick gratification.
Where to try these words: Calls-to-action, headlines, email subject lines, headings, opening sentences and paragraphs
The 20 most influential words, via David Ogilvy
Suddenly
Now
Announcing
Introducing
Improvement
Amazing
Sensational
Remarkable
Revolutionary
Startling
Miracle
Magic
Offer
Quick
Easy
Wanted
Challenge
Compare
Bargain
Hurry
David Ogilvy is to advertising as Jimi Hendrix is to the electric guitar. His list of influential words you see above was first published in 1963, and many remain in vogue today.
Where to try these: Headlines, bullet points, subject lines
(Sidenote: For a fun blast from the past, courtesy of Ben Locker, here are a couple advertisements for power words that date back to 1961. A New York Times ad is on the left, a Washington Post ad is on the right. Ogilvy’s 20 influential words came out two years after these.)
3 words to encourage community
Join
Become a member
Come along
These community phrases provide a sense of togetherness to the user; they feel like they’re taking part in something larger than themselves. (You’ll notice that we use the word “join” in our email newsletter form.)
Where to try these words: Email signups, trial offers, in-app messaging
10 cause-and-effect words and phrases
Accordingly
As a result
Because
Caused by
Consequently
Due to
For this reason
Since
Therefore
Thus
Author Darlene Price, the originator of this cause-and-effect list, has great insight into what makes these cause-and-effect phrases so useful: “Cause-and-effect words make your claims sound objective and rational rather than biased and subjective.”
Where to try these: Closing paragraphs, transitions
12 phrases that imply exclusivity
Members only
Login required
Class full
Membership now closed
Ask for an invitation
Apply to be one of our beta testers
Exclusive offers
Become an insider
Be one of the few
Get it before everybody else
Be the first to hear about it
Only available to subscribers
Garrett Moon of CoSchedule explains exclusivity as being like a club with membership restrictions. You want in because others are in. There’s a bit of social pressure with exclusivity wording, and it helps drive decisions and actions for the user.
Where to try these: Signup forms, links, calls-to-action, subheads
9 phrases that imply scarcity
Limited offer
Supplies running out
Get them while they last
Sale ends soon
Today only
Only 10 available
Only 3 left
Only available here
Double the offer in the next hour only
The fear of missing out (often abbreviated as FOMO) is a common driver of action for marketers and advertisers. FOMO is essentially scarcity. By showing that an item or product is in limited supply, you hope to ratchet up demand.
Where to try these: Headings, promo copy
28 words and phrases that make you feel safe
Anonymous
Authentic
Backed
Best-selling
Cancel Anytime
Certified
Endorsed
Guaranteed
Ironclad
Lifetime
Moneyback
No Obligation
No Questions Asked
No Risk
No Strings Attached
Official
Privacy
Protected
Proven
Recession-proof
Refund
Research
Results
Secure
Tested
Try before You Buy
Verify
Unconditional
Boost Blog Traffic’s Jon Morrow collected a huge list of power words (his full list of 317 is well worth the read) and sorted the list by category. The above section is Morrow’s grouping of words that engender feelings of safety. It’s my favorite group from Morrow’s list because these safety words have an amazing effect on the person reading: They create trust.
Where to try these: Payment forms, signup forms, testimonials
48 ubiquitous power words
Improve
Trust
Immediately
Discover
Profit
Learn
Know
Understand
Powerful
Best
Win
Hot Special
More
Bonus
Exclusive
Extra
You
Free
Health
Guarantee
New
Proven
Safety
Money
Now
Today
Results
Protect
Help
Easy
Amazing
Latest
Extraordinary
How to
Worst
Ultimate
Hot
First
Big
Anniversary
Premiere
Basic
Complete
Save
Plus!
Create
Each employee on the circulation and email marketing teams at Interweave Press has these words printed and posted on their wall. The list, which was originally compiled Linda Ruth and Curtis Circulation Company, came from studying best-selling magazine covers, and Interweave’s Bob Kaslik found that the words work equally well on magazines as they do in promo copy and in email subject lines.
Where to try these: Email subject lines, headlines, calls-to-action
9 word for shareable content
Secret
Tell us
Inspires
Take
Help
Promote
Increase
Create
Discover
Neil Patel put together the infographic you see below, based on research on each of the four major social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. His list represents the words that can get your content shared on social media. I’ve found success grouping some of these words with other power words as well.
