blogs « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

Reading Can Fuel Your Writing for Ad Agency New Business

August 2, 2010

“Okay, I believe that content marketing can create significant traffic to my agency’s blog and generate inbound new business leads. But my main concern is that I wont have enough to write about that would be of interest to my audience. What should I do?”

I’ve been writing about ad agency new business for four years. My wife will occassoinaly ask how can I possibly have anything more to write about regarding “ad agency new business”. But I still have plenty of ideas. At last count, I had over 200 post drafts that await my completion.

What fuels my writing? A solid reading program that keeps me ahead of the curve and provides the resources for writing.

My reading had to be strategic and more efficient. It also had to be focused, geared to the interest of my target audience which is small to midsize advertising agencies and specifically, ad agency new business. I learned early on to constantly manually searching online was a huge time waster.

The primary tool that simplified, strategized and focused my online reading more efficiently has been the use of an RSS Reader, specifically Google Reader. This Reader is set as my Homepage, on my Firefox browser to help me ritualistically start each day using it. I found that if I opened even on email, most of the day my reading was put on the back-burner.

Also, I’m ADD enough, that when I just Google information, I’m easily distracted and chase lots of rabbits. An hour or two goes by and I can’t even recall what I initially was searching for. Google Reader resolves this issue for me.

Using Google Reader can be awkward and first, but you will soon see its value and time-management benefits. I have hundreds of focused, daily RSS feeds coming to me instead of me searching for them. They are all one central location, organized in specific topical folders.

A couple of tools will enhance your Google Reader experience and make your reading seamless:

Bit.ly is a little tool is becoming a big deal. It is now the default shortener for Twitter and has rapidly become the most popular URL shortener available.Google Reader included it in their new “send-to” feature, which lets you share any post on Twitter, automatically shortening long URLs with bit.ly. Just sign up for bit.ly and drag and drop into your browser bar.
Press This. This tool is for WordPress.com users. You can collect and share bits of the web easier and faster than ever with Press This, the new WordPress bookmarklet. Grab an article title, URL and info quickly and add it as a draft post. When you are in your writing mode, all you need do is go to your blog post drafts and you’ll have plenty of writing resources to kick start a new post.

In addition to an RSS Reader, eNewsletters also provide a great resource. Some of these are daily briefs and others are received either weekly or monthly. Here are a few of my choice newsletters:

A couple of other online sources that are directed to my Inbox allows me to stay organized and focused.

Google Alerts (Some handy uses of Google Alerts include monitoring news stories, keeping current on a competitor or industry)
TweetBeeps (Keep track of conversations that mention you, your URL, your clients, anything, with hourly updates)

Additional articles that may be of interest:

2 Comments | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, Social Media, Time Management | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogs, content marketing, lead generation, reading online, Social Media, writing | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agency Blog of the Month: Which of these 16 agency blogs makes the cut?

August 2, 2010

Review and decide which of these 16 agency blogs really understands social media. You may also pick up some fresh ideas for your agency’ blog.

The following 16 advertising agency blogs have been submitted to Fuel Lines. Review and vote for the best agency blog of the month. The winner will be featured on Fuel Lines throughout the month and included in the voting for ad agency blog of the year.

Cast your VOTE by Clicking Here

These are the ad agency blogs submitted for the month of July:

Bill’s B2 Blog, Mintz & Hoke Communications Group, Avon, CT
Digitally Approved, Fanscape Inc., Los Angeles, CA
From Bogota With Love, Zemoga, New York, NY
L&S Unscripted, Lawrence & Schiller, Sioux Falls, SD
Smart Marketing with Larry Weintraub, Fanscape, Inc., Los Angeles, CA
MarketingOC Blog, MarketingOC, Orange, CA
My Name is Not Ralph, Toth Brand Imaging, Cambridge, MA
Oh no, not another agency blog., Brokaw Inc., Cleveland, OH
Overdrive eMarketing Blog, Overdrive Interactive, Boston, MA
Priority Integrated Marketing Blog, Priority Integrated Marketing, Minneapolis, MN
Spring Blog, Spring Advertising, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Sq1 War Room, Square One, Dallas, TX
Under the Iconic Influence, Preston Kelly, Minneapolis, MN
We make it all better., Copeland, Victoria,BC, Canada
We Think. We Can. Blog, Murdoch Marketing, Holland, MI
Welt’s Weekly Smack Down!,Welt Branding, Cincinnati, OH

Fuel Lines Agency Blog of the Month for June: We Think. We Can. Murdock Marketing, Holland, MI.

If you would like to submitted your agency’s blog for next month’s vote, send me an email and include:

In your email’s subject line – Blog of the Month
Blog title:
URL:
Agency Name:
City/State:

Leave a Comment » | Agency Blogs | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogs, Michael Gass, new business, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agency CEOs: Social Media Philosophy and Tips for New Business

May 19, 2010

These are my personal observations, opinions, philosophy and tips from my experience working with social media honed and refined through my personal use and my work with over 50 ad agencies, PR firms, interactive and design shops over the past three years.

My work with social media, from the beginning, has been from a new business perspective to grow inbound lead generation and personal networks.

I’ve tried to develop the kind of practical new businesses processes, incorporating social media, that make sense within the environments of small to mid-sized agencies to overcome a commonality of problems such as:

No primary target audience
No point of differentiation
No strong appeal
No time left to create a “consistent” new business pipeline

My philosophy and personal opinions for using social media for ad agency new business:

Social media “teaches” agencies to promote themselves the way they should have been doing new business all along; to lead with benefits instead of agency capabilities and credentials.
Agencies need a differentiated and appealing position to a particular target audience (and no, great creative, proprietary processes and big ideas are not differentiators).
By enlarging the agency’s online footprint so it can be found by their best prospective clients that match up with the core strengths of the agency. 85% of CMOs found their vendors, not the other way around according to a CMO Study that was done in 2008.
Through social media, you build relationships, trust and a position of expertise. People always prefer to work with people that they know, trust and like. Social media is like working on steroids when it comes to enhancing your personal networking capabilities.
Even though social media is very time intensive in the beginning as you get up to speed, it becomes an extremely efficient use of time. Prospects have an opportunity to check under the hood, kick the tires, examine the upholstery within their own timetable. When the need arises and they are ready to do business, they will even initiate the call and that first conversation is going to be much further down the road than if you had made a cold call. You skip the dating process and move on to the engagement, they are usually ready to do business.
The central platform for developing new business through social media is an agency blog. As important as it was for your agency to have a website it is becoming essential that your agency have a blog. Your agency’s website is becoming more like an online static brochure. A blog provides better SEO, fresh content rich content, is more personable, easier to update, provides a reason for your prospective clients to visit often. Content marketing can become the fuel for your agency’s new business program.

The following 10 tips are my suggestions for creating an ad agency new blog with the objective of building your social media capabilities, credibility as well as generating new business:

1. I recommend that you do not incorporate your blog into your agency’s website

Most agency blogs look to corporate and less personal. If it is tied into your agency’s website and branding, it is immediately constricted and has no room to breathe and grow. It’s okay for your agency’s Website to show its diversity of clients but a blog has to have a specific target audience.

The Website is your online brochure, the place where capabilities, credentials and the work reside. The blog will compel you to focus your agency more narrowly without the risk. You wont be throwing the baby out with the bath water. You will still generate a diversity of clients the way you’ve done it in the past, through personal referrals and recommendations. But the blog allows you to go fishing for the fish that is the best fit for your agency.

You can fish for a particular fish, by using an appealing bait and you fish away from the boat so that you don’t scare the fish away!

2. The agency’s blog should be reflective of its principals

You have to remember that social media is about people, not an entity. Don’t hide behind the vail of the agency, be the face for the agency. Again, people want to work with people they know, trust and like.

Your agency needs a face and for most small to mid-sized agencies, that face needs to be the agency principal(s).

From my experience working with prospective clients of, small to mid-sized agencies, they always are interested in the chemistry with and oversight of the agency owners. You are the visionary of the agency. The only way you are going to “get” social media is to participate. If it isn’t a priority for you it wont be for your agency.

Also, keep in mind that the agency principals are the least likely to leave the agency. If you lose a staff member who you’ve allowed to be the face of the agency through social media, you lose your equity and a significant portion of your audience.

3. Keep the design simple

The more people you involve in this process the more chance you will have a bottle neck that slows and most probably stops the process. I had one agency that took 5 months just to create the blog header. Another instance we couldn’t get a password from an IT guy because he didn’t want to email it and wasn’t available to talk by phone for 3 days!

Keep the people involved to a minimum. Remember that content is king. It is the fuel for the engine and don’t let anything inhibit generating the content.

I would suggest to start out utilizing WordPress, TypePad, Blogger blog platforms. My favorite is WordPress. You can create a blog in minutes rather than days, weeks or months. It will be a constantly evolving process and its important that you keep the process moving.

You can easily add pages, navigation, graphics without help from your IT department or much assistance from the creative staff. You should be able to have your blog up and running in a matter of minutes not hours, days, weeks or months. Keep the design clean, simple and easy to navigate. Stay focused on delivering the beneficial content.

The site needs to be more personal and less corporate. Let it reflect your personality. Keep from including your agencies logo. The agency should reside in the background. A great example of this philosophy, Edward Boches’s blog, creativity_unbound.

A side note: be sure that you own your domain. Instead of www.fuelingnewbusiness.wordpress.com I own the domain www.fuelingnewbusiness.com. That way I can change platforms without losing my traffic.

4. Make your target audience crystal clear

I write specifically to small to mid-size ad agency principals. She-conomy’s audience is male advertisers who should be marketing to women, Blue Collar Branding has a focus on marketers of manufacturers who want to reach blue collar workers. For your blog to be successful, keep you target audience in mind. You don’t want traffic for traffics sake, you want targeted traffic. This not only will help your SEO but also when you repurpose content through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

5. Before you begin to write learn to listen

Please remember this: reading fuels your writing. A great time saver for your reading is to use an RSS Reader. My suggestion would be to sign up for Google Reader. The key is to find sources for great content and have that content flow to you instead of you constantly having to search for it. Google Reader allows you to easily organize all of your online reading. It is very efficient.

Learn about social media etiquette, understand the importance of transparency and motive when using this emerging media but remember this one rule, there are no rules when it comes to social media. It is still evolving and we are pioneers within the space when it comes to marketing and advertising within this channel.

Chris Brogan was a huge help to me when I first started blogging. Here are a few of his articles that will be of help to you too: 10 Best Resource Articles for Ad Agency Blogs.

Watch your blogs analytics, it will help to fine tune the appeal for your writing. Always look to your readers, what they care about and respond to.

I’m 53 and if I can do this so can you. It’s my experience that is much easier taking a baby boomer through this process who has advertising and marketing experience rather than someone much younger who understands the new communications tools better. You can get up to speed overall much quicker.

Just don’t forget to bring your marketing mind and personal networking skills into this space. It’s just another communication channel.

6. Write Concisely

People read online differently than they do print. They usually don’t read word-for-word, they scan.

Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

This makes it a tough transition for copywriters who tend to be clever and fluff up the copy. Make your posts scannable by:

Being brief, give your readers the Readers Digest version, the executive summary. Do the work on their behalf
Dividing up copy into shorter paragraphs
Using bullet points or numbered lists
Using compelling subheads, quotations, bold, italics, etc, so readers can scan for the information they need

Follow Hemingway’s example:

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

These are a couple of additional articles to help with your online writing:

7. Jump start traffic to your blog to accelerate lead generation

“Build it and they will come,” is not the answer to generate traffic to your agency’s blog. You must employ proactive tactics to create awareness and interest among prospective clients. The more traffic that you can generate, from among your target audience, the more inbound new business leads that will follow.

The strategic use of Twitter and eNewsletters can significantly bump up targeted traffic to your blog in a short period of time. I have consistently repurposed my blog’s content through Twitter and my eNewsletter.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking, if I’ve written it everyone must have read it.

Twitter has been the leading traffic generator to my blog for over 2 years. I have a schedule for repurposing my blog 500 + posts into two different Twitter accounts that regenerate this content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to 35,000 + followers.

My eNewsletter is sent out every other week to a data base of over 10,000 email addresses. The copy for the eNewsletter comes from my blog posts. It takes literally 10 to 15 minutes to create and send. That allows it to be maintainable even when I’m at my busiest.

Through these two tactics alone I can get 100% return on my time investment from writing my posts.

Here are some quick tips to help generate traffic to your blog:

Publish posts frequently. I would encourage you to post at least 3 times and preferably 5 times per week.
Write evergreen for your posts to have a long shelf life and a good return for your time investment.
Syndicate your new posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Add your blog link to your email signature.
Use a program like Social Oomph to repurpose your blogs older content through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Add a Share Button at the bottom of your posts to allow them to be easily promoted by others to through their personal networks.
Provide subscription options for your blog such as through email or an RSS Feed such a Feedburner.
Identify key words you want to dominate in Google search and consistently use them in your posts titles.
One thing to not do that will impact traffic. Don’t sell! The moment you start to sell on your blog is when you will most likely LOSE your audience.
Don’t forget SEO. Identify the key words you want to dominate and consistently use them in your posts titles to accelerate your rankings in search engines such as Google.

8. Create resources for blog post ideas

Because I know who my target audience is, I have identified the categories that I’m going to write to, coming up with blog posts ideas is not difficult. From my experience, the narrower your focus the easier it is to find things to write about.

As I mentioned earlier, reading fuels writing. When I’m reading in the mornings, using Google Reader and scanning through hundreds of posts and articles I have filtered directly to me, I find a few that catch my eye. So that I don’t become distracted while reading, I use a tool called Press This, that will place the interesting posts/article title, URL link and synopsis into a draft posts in WordPress. When I write, I can go to my draft posts and work from there. The last time I checked I had over 240 draft posts that will eventually be published.

I also keep a Word document on my laptop’s desktop with a running list of ideas. Checking through the list I have over 100 possible topics, subjects, examples, tools, tips, current trends, resources, etc.

9. Be focused and consistent

It is as simple as planning the work and following the plan. I start out each day knowing who is my target audience. I write consistently to the stated purpose of my blog which is, “fueling ad agency new business through social media.” I make irrelevant material relevant to my readers. I do the work on their behalf. I’m consistent with my timing and religiously follow a regular posting schedule of 5 posts per week.

I follow a daily ritual to keep me on track and consistent. I start every day with my strategic reading. My homepage in FireFox is my Google Reader. I open it before I will dare to open my first email because if I open the first email, my day is done.

I also enjoy getting a leg-up for the week by having 2 to 3 posts finished by Sunday afternoon of most weekends. These are preset to publish on different days of the week and I’ll write the other two posts before the week is up. My readers can be assured of finding fresh content.

That doesn’t mean that you are providing all original content for each post that you write. I usually recommend that one post per week be original content, other blog post are highlighting other information, resources, research that will be of help to your target audience.

10. To keep up you must have the right mindset

We will experience more change in our industry in the next five years than we have in the previous 50.

“How do you keep up?” That is one of the most common questions I’m asked from agency CEOs and executives when I conduct “New Business Through Social Media” workshops around the country.

One of the main reasons agency principals haven’t been as inclined to participate in social media is that they are already over extended with little time for anything additional in their professional or personal lives.

When they make time to participate and understand social, is when they’ve finally relented, it isn’t going to go away. What will make the social media pill easier to swallow is the understanding the multiplicity of benefits it provides.

Social media only becomes a priority when you understand the multiplicity of benefits generated from it to you and your agency.

Before you brush off participation, understand the multiplicity of benefits for your efforts through writing an agency blog:

I’ve helped to create over 50 agency blogs and have found it to be a great agency branding tool. A lot of agencies are in a perpetual state of branding their agency. A blog helps them to answer the tough questions and provides a way to be more narrowly focused without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
A blog is worth doing if only for this one big benefit, professional enrichment. It provides a system for you to stay ahead of the learning curve in communications technologies and in front of where your clients and prospective clients. A position of leadership. Thought leadership.
The interaction with your prospects is priceless. If you really want to know what your prospective clients obstacles are and become a thought leader, then write a blog.
The old saying is true, “you don’t know what you know until you write it down.” Writing a blog will help you become a much better communicator.
For every prospective client you reach you will have 10 brand advocates who will promote you and your agency through their own personal networks.
Learn to create a strong appeal for your agency. A blog will help you to stop using agency speak and speak in a language that resonance with your target audience. It will teach you how to generate an appealing message.

These are some examples of relatively new ad agency blogs that are following this philosophy:

I have to agree with business guru, Tom Peters, “nothing in the last decade of my professional life has positively impacted me more than blogging.” I can confidently say that it can do the same for you and your agency.

This post is dedicated to Jim Breitinger, Salt Lake City Utah, for his encouragement and insight. Very much appreciated Jim.

17 Comments | Agency Blogs, Agency Branding, Agency Leadership, Best Practices, New Business Trends, Social Media, Twitter | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogging, blogs, business development, CEO, Jim Breitinger, Michael Gass, Social Media, Tom Peters | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

38 Advertising Agency Blogs. Vote for your favorite for the month of April

May 6, 2010

Examples of ad agency blogs. Review and decide which of them really “gets it” when it comes to social media. Pick-up ideas for your own blog.

The following 38 advertising agency blogs have been submitted to Fuel Lines. Vote for the best agency blog for the month of April. The winner will be featured on Fuel Lines throughout the month and included in the voting for ad agency blog of the year.

Cast your VOTE by Clicking Here

These are the ad agency blogs submitted for the month of March

Blog-a-Rhythm, Rhythm Interactive, Irvine, CA
brainwoo, Thompson & Company, Memphis, TN
Content to Commerce, Big Fuel, Manhattan, NY
Energy Efficiency Marketing, Kelliher Samets Volk, New York, NY
brandSTOKE, CONRAD | PHILLIPS | VUTECH, Columbus, OH
Engaging Trends, Pixel Farm Interactive, Minneapolis, MN
Fifth Gear Analytics, Sigma Marketing Group, Rochester, NY
Going Social Now, Razorfish, New York, NY
Healthy Conversations, Trajectory, Morristown, NJ
Jane Nation, St John & Partners, Jacksonville, FL
Marketing Home Products, Kleber Kleber & Associates, Atlanta, GA
Marketing Thoughts by Domus, Inc., Domus, Inc., Philadelphia, PA
Never Be Forgotten, Palio, Saratoga Springs, NY
New FoundNation, The Communications Group, Little Rock, AR
Off the Shelf, BARKLEY US, Kansas City, MO
onmessage Blog, OnMessage, Dallas, TX
Park Howell, Sustainable Storyteller, Park&Co, Phoenix, AZ
Patients Please, CJRW, Little Rock, AR
Peak Seven blog, Peak Seven Advertising, Deerfield Beach, FL
Relate with Us, GS&F, Nashville, TN
RIESTER BLOG, RIESTER Advertising, Phoenix, AZ, Salt Lake City, UT, El Segundo, CA
Root & Madison Blog, Root & Madison, LLC, Dallas, TX and Denver, CO
Share, bcad Group, Toronto, Canada
Sheconomy, Holland + Holland, Birmingham, AL
Spyder Trap Blog, Spyder Trap Online Marketing, Minneapolis, MN
Tangent, Sharpe Partners, NY
The Ad Contrarian, Hoffman/Lewis, San Francisco
The Assurance Blog, Assurance Advertising, Orange County, CA and Las Vegas, NV
The Idea Drawer, ABC Creative Group, Syracuse, NY
The Main Artery, Kuhn Whittenborn, Kansas City, MO
The Nebo Blog, NeboWeb, Atlanta, GA
The Point, Spear Marketing Group, Walnut Creek, CA
Through the Ears of an Entrepreneur, Small Army, Boston, MA
TV is Not Dead, Ad Partners, Tampa, FL
Up Your Ups, Wheeler Advertising, Arlington, TX
Why Moms Rule, BOHAN, Nashville, TN
Wired to the Real World, Smiley Hanchulak, Akron, OH
Wright -to -Know, Dimension X, Jeannette, PA

Fuel Lines Agency Blog of the Month for March: CS2 Live, CS2 Advertising, Memphis, TN

Walker Sands: Voted Top Ad Agency Blog of the Year for 2009

Submit an agency blog for May’s blog of the month.

1 Comment | Agency Blogs | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogs, Michael Gass, Twitter | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Blogs Can Convert Visitors into Leads for Ad Agency New Business

May 3, 2010

The chief benefit to your agency from using social networking is “getting new business leads.” Creating a community of followers through Twitter and a regularly updated stream of content on a blog builds engagement, can boost your agency’s presence on Google and ultimately bring in more prospective clients.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Inbound online marketing platform HubSpot’s The State of Inbound Marketing report that inbound marketing can double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses. It can also generate leads for less money inbound marketing bring leads for less money.

“This report is designed to help businesses and marketers understand the current usage and results of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and its products.

Inbound marketing is becoming widely accepted because it complements the way buyers make purchasing decisions today — using the Internet and related media to learn about the products and services that best meet their needs.” – Hubspot

Three key takeaways from this report:

Businesses are generating real customers with social media and blogs. The use of social media and company blogs as marketing tools gets your company better brand exposure, but it also generates leads that result in real customer acquisition. 41% of companies who use Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer from a Twitter generated lead. 41% of companies using LinkedIn for marketing have acquired a customer from that lead generation source. 43% of companies using Facebook have acquired a customer and 46% of those using company blogs have acquired a customer from a blog generated lead.
Inbound Marketing channels continue to deliver dramatically lower cost per lead than Outbound Channels do. Respondents who spend more than 50% of their lead generation budget on inbound marketing channels report a significantly lower cost per sales lead than those who spend 50% or more their budgets on outbound marketing channels.
Inbound marketing budgets are increasing while outbound marketing budgets are decreasing. As a percentage of the overall lead generation budget, inbound marketing expanded slightly from 2009 to 2010 and outbound marketing contracted. The net effect is that the gap widened from inbound marketing having a 9% greater share of the overall marketing budget in 2009 to a 15% greater share in 2010.

An additional report highlight that I thought was interesting: Customer acquisition through blogs is directly related to frequency of posts.

The report concludes that, “Traditional outbound marketing techniques – including direct mail, print advertising and telemarketing – are becoming less effective. Buyers are not only finding ways to tune these messages out, but more importantly they now have the capability to evaluate the products and services they need on their own.

Click here for a downloadable copy of this report. There’s also a free Webinar On Demand: The 2010 State Of Inbound Marketing

Here are five things that you need to incorporate into your blog to have success:

A genuine passion for the topic
Expertise, credibility, authority
Honest recommendations that really work
Welcoming, helpful, rewarding information, given freely
Demonstrate value

These are the things we should incorporate into any agency new business program. A blog is a great tool that almost forces you to do these things.

A blog is a new tool for agency new business. It is possible to stop chasing business and have business chasing you.

In celebration of Fuel Lines’s 500th post, here 10 agency blogging resources:

2 Comments | Agency Blogs, Facebook, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: blogs, Blogs I Recommend, Hubspot, inbound lead generation, Michael Gass, Social Media, Twitter | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

6 Tips to Blog Successfully for Ad Agency New Business

April 29, 2010

If you agency has a blog but very little traffic and no new business leads, here’s some help.

A blog should be central to your agency’s social media strategy for new business. What fuels the engine to this strategy is good content.

You must consistently feed your inbound marketing machine with rich content or you will see a slow-down in traffic, search engine results and prospective client leads.

Here’s my 6 tips to be more effective with your blogging:

To be successful you need to write a lot. The more posts you add to your blog, the more traffic you’ll get. The more content can also fuel repurposing content through other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. No content = no fuel =no traffic=no new business leads.
Be consistent. To keep writing I visualize someone walking to the end of their driveway to pick up the morning paper, only to discover there’s nothing there. That helps me to stay motivated to write 4 to 5 posts per week. My readers know what to expect. I want to give them a reason to consistently come back.
Write concisely. People are busy. They need your content to be easy to digest. Provide them with the readers digest version. Make your content easy to scan, provide bullet points and numbered lists. People will be much more interested in what you have to say if you don’t try and fluff it up.
Use your analytics. Know what your readers care about and what they respond to. It will help you to connect with you audience. They’re the judge and jury of whether your content is relevant or not. I know daily where my readers are coming from, what post titles and content generates the most traffic, what search terms they are using,
Use your writing to learn. When I first started blogging I was reminded of the old saying, “you don’t know what you know until you write it down.” It’s true. Writing strategizes and invigorates my learning. It can get me ahead of the learning curve and provide me with a system to stay there.
Keep focused. If your blog is broad you will not generate any significant traffic. Narrow your focus. Think narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow. Know who you are writing to, what you are writing about, know the categories you will be writing to, the key words that you want to dominate for search.

Here is a collection of agency blogging resources:

Leave a Comment » | Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, New Business Tips, Social Media | Tagged: ad agency, blogs, content marketing, lead generation, Michael Gass | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

The Top 50 Ad Agency New Business Articles

April 8, 2010

With almost 500 post on this blog, I thought it would be good to publish this top 50 post list. I’ve assembled the “best of” FUEL LINES agency new business articles based upon analytics of site visitors and their comments.

This is an example of how you can optimize popular blog posts on your agency’s blog. Here are also 10 Ways to Optimize a Popular Post on Your Blog, from ProBlogger.

FUEL LINES Top 50:

Additional ad agency new business articles can be found on these blog sites:

3 Comments | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, New Business Tactics, New Business Tips, New Business Tools, New Business Trends | Tagged: 4 A's, Ad-ology, blog post, blogs, Blogs I Recommend, business development, catapult new business, Clive Maclean, Michael Gass, midsize ad agencies, RSW, small ad agencies, The List | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Comment on Other Blogs to Generate Ad Agency Traffic

December 7, 2009

For inbound new business leads, you must have traffic to your site. Commenting on other blogs is a way to generate traffic to your agency’s blog.

To be part of the conversation, increase awareness that will in turn generate traffic to your agency’s blog, it is to your advantage to read and comment on other blogs. Below is just one example of how one of my blog comments has led to significant blog traffic and awareness to my site from comments I’ve made on other blogs.

I weighed in on a discussion regarding college football’s Bowl Champion Series (BCS) recent venture into social media. An Ad Age Blog, Adages, a post titled, “BCS Enters Twitter: Beat Down Like Notre Dame in a Bowl Game.” Here’s a few excerpts from that post:

“Today’s social-media lesson comes courtesy of college football’s Bowl Championship Series: If you know your product is universally loathed, Twitter is not the place for you.

The BCS — better known as the cartel that prevents college football from choosing its champion in a rational way — opened a Twitter account this morning. Shortly after taking to the field, it had three tweets, a couple hundred followers and, well, let’s just say the end result was reminiscent of what’s happened when media- and BCS-darling Notre Dame (another gripe against the system) actually made it to a bowl game the last few years.” Posted by Jeremy Mullman and Ken Wheaton.

“If the balloon boy dad set up a Twitter account, even he would not draw the level of venom @InsidetheBCS is right now.” Sports Illustrated columnist Stewart Mandel

After following @InsidetheBCS and checking out the conversation for myself, I followed up with my comments to Jeremy and Ken’s post. Mine was a different point of view from theirs …

“I’m not a proponent of the current BCS system by any means. But after reading your article I decided to start following @InsidetheBCS on Twitter. They may have had a rough start out of the blocks but today it seems to be some genuine dialogue going on. It is much more civil than I expected and whoever is Twittering for the BCS is doing a good job by not being defensive. I think you’ve got to credit them for taking their lumps and participating in the conversation. It to early to say this was a fiasco or a win but if they continue to engage and grow their audience as they’ve done today I think they will be the better for it.

One of their responses … “@davidburn Didn’t expect to be welcomed with open arms, but we felt it was important to join the conversation.”

Soon after my comments were posted, they were read by Ad Age columnist, Rich Thomaselli who sent me this note:

Michael,

Saw your comment on the BCS stuff online at adage.com and wanted to reach out to you. I am doing a more expanded story for Monday’s print magazine and was hoping you could tackle a couple of questions more in depth and drop a reply to me at some point by this afternoon.

1) If your product is universally hated, should you even be in social media?

2) Ari Fleischer’s PR firm …. good or bad move?

3) Is the real issue here about the amount of money on the line, both the guarantee from the BCS bowls to the schools and the $500 million from ESPN (and more from other sponsors) ? It would seem to me a playoff would generate even more sponsor money.

Any thoughts and insights are greatly appreciate.

Best,

Rich

Richard P. Thomaselli

Advertising Age

I replied my response to Rich’s questions. His article was soon published in Advertising Age: Wondering What Not to Do When It Comes to Social Media? Learn From BCS. It included this brief quote from me:

“According to social media/new business consultant Michael Gass, president of Michael Gass Consulting, Birmingham, Ala., “If they are genuinely searching for ways the BCS can improve through dialogue, that will be evident. If they try to use social media as a propaganda platform, you will know it soon enough.”

From the comment I left on the Ad Age blog that led to the quote above has generated excellent traffic and attention to my site. Commenting on other blogs also:

Develops networks and relationships
Builds your credibility
Creates links to your site
Expands your online footprint

Additional articles that may be of interest. The top 10 social media articles of 2009:

10 Comments | Agency Blogs, Social Media | Tagged: Ad Age, Ad Agencies, Adages blog, Advertising Age, BCS, blog traffic, blogs, Bowl Champion Series, Jeremy Mullman, Ken Wheaton, Michael Gass, new business, Rich Thomaselli, Social Media, Stewart Mandel | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Tsunami Warning: Google Wave, will it replace email?

September 24, 2009

There are a number of questions that have been raised about Google Wave. Will it replace email? Twitter? How will it impact businesses? Advertising agencies?

E-mail is the most popular way people communicate online, yet it was invented 40 years ago! Google says it developed Wave to answer the question, “What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”

Everyone uses email, instant messaging and live chatrooms online now, but Google Wave will be able to tie those forms of communications together plus utilize established social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Google Wave has the potential to be another revolutionary communications tool that greatly impacts the advertising industry, content marketing and ad agency new business.

On September 30th, Google will start sending out about 100,000 invites for the next version of Google Wave. Ad agencies will need to be prepared to get up to speed with it quickly. This will be one of those products that you have to experience first hand to understand it and use your marketing mind to explore its potential for your agency and clients. .

Here are some additional features of Google Wave:

Wave participants can share and edit documents at the same time and use waves to track and complete projects without ever having to set foot in the same office
Participants can also have faster conversations than they can by waiting for e-mailed replies
Waves will come with a handy robot called Rosy, which can translate your typing, into 40 different languages, allowing you to communicate in real time with almost anyone around the world
It includes a smarter spell checker as well as a link checker
The ability to drag and drop files, photos, videos, etc. even from your desk-top
There isn’t much of a question that the Wave will be a great project management tool and create greater efficiencies in internal and external communications
Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process
A playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when
It is embeddable, and can push wave content to a blog or website
You can turn a Wave into your own eBay
Allows for collaboration on a Google map to plan events
Wave participants can rate and review items – then it will show you a tally of the results
Google Wave will be left an open source project to encourage the development of improved extensions from third parties which will greatly accelerate its usefulness for a wide variety of applications

Will Google Wave have an impact on ad agencies? It’s too soon to say, but it certainly has the potential to be the next big wave to further transform communications and user generated content.

I am very interested in Google Wave’s potential as a tool for ad agency new business and managing an agency’s new business program. I look forward to sharing my evaluations from a new business prospective soon.

To sign-up for the early version fill out this form at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/

Additional, helpful information is found at the Google Wave Blog: http://www.googlewaveblogger.com

Mashable’s Ben Parr: Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Latest update and insights from Kate Loveys’ article: With a Wave, Google aims to conquer the network:

Google last night invited 100,000 people to become the first users of its latest internet tool which aims to rival email, Twitter and Facebook.

Google Wave allows a limitless number of internet users anywhere in the world to have instant conversations and share files.

The service combines aspects of email, instant messaging, social networking and web chat and is aimed at friends catching up with one another and business partners sharing documents.

Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organising trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism. Users can join a wave – a group of web users – to have a discussion or share photos or documents.

Everyone in the wave can see what other users are typing and any document placed into the wave can be accessed by all the users at the same time.

In what sounds like a recipe for chaos, colleagues can work on the same document at the same time, seeing every change being made to the document as it is made.

Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organising trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism.

9 Comments | Agency Leadership, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: Ad Agencies, Advertising, Ben Parr, blogs, email, Google Wave, Mashable, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Study: Fortune 100 companies using Twitter more than any other social media platform

August 5, 2009

It’s important for advertising agencies to stay on top of social media marketing trends as we continue to watch the evolution of components of this new media channel. Both agencies and their clients should press the viability of marketing with such social media platforms as Twitter.

I thought this new study by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Digital Media would be of interest. The analysis found that 54 percent of Fortune 100 companies were using Twitter to engage with their stakeholders, while 32 percent were using a blog and 29 percent were actively using a Facebook fan page.