Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Social Media

Content And More Content… Getting Tired Yet?

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I am getting tired of the outrageous amount of social content that we are all producing every day. OK, I am not tired of MY content!

But, I do like content in the form of cartoons and think that they are one of the most underutilized forms of communication. That’s why I am using TheCartoonAgency to build me some cool cartoons for my book. Why don’t you use cartoons to get your messages out and into the deepest recesses of minds?

In the meantime, here is one of their latest cartoons. Its kinda a what if… Like, what if we stopped making more content.

networking_tca

How Advertising Agencies Publish On LinkedIn

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I’ve begun to test LinkedIn’s new content publishing platform. It allows all of us (the platform is currently rolling out) to publish long posts on LinkedIn — just like Mark Cuban. Importantly, your posts will be seen outside your own network. This is the big benefit. Here is LinkedIn’s announcement.

“Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare”

I posted two very short posts last week to see how the system works. The posts were simply repurposed content from this blog — easy! I can’t say that I am overwhelmed at the numbers but I like that I could track my stats immediately and that I amassed, well here are the stats as of yesterday (they are up another 12 as of this morning):

abc

My goal is to continue to test the publishing platform and to see how longer posts about broader subjects perform. I am sure that the art of headline writing will make a big difference.

Take away: even small agencies can now broadcast their brilliance to the entire Linkedin network.

Why Are Aren’t Advertising Agencies Using Pinterest?

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Pinterest just added Guided Search. It makes it easier to find pins and boards on the desktop and in the mobile world.

Pinterest is huge and they wanted to make it easier to find what their users are looking for (I’ll come back to why this matters to agencies in a second.) According to Mashable:

Part of what made the expanded search necessary is the total number of pins on the platform. Silbermann (Ben, the CEO) says that Pinterest users have created 750 million boards, and pinned more than 30 billion items. Those numbers have grown 50% in the last six months alone, he says.

OK, zillions of people search Pinterest. Some are your future clients. If so, why are two of the leading results for the term “advertising agencies” advertising agency new business consultants – Michael Gass and me? Shouldn’t it be advertising agencies or the huge networks like WPP or Publicis leading the way? What if a client thinks of using Pinterest to do an agency search? Hint: some are.

Take a look below. And, while you are at it, here is a link to my set of Pinterest posts.

Pinterest Works

Kill It On Twitter And Linkedin

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Twitter and LinkedIn form, along with this blog, the backbone of my inbound marketing program. Easily, 90% of my qualified leads (2-3 per week on average) come from my social media marketing. The other 10% come from speaking engagements and networking / referrals.

Kill It On LinkedIn

I just found the LinkedIn marketing expert Stephanie Sammons via her podcast interview on Social Media Examiner. In the podcast she discusses the marketing benefits of the fairly new LinkedIn publishing platform with the host Michael Stelzner. You can now publish on this platform to reach LinkedIn’s zillions of members. Cool right? Listen to the podcast and then check out Stephanie’s blog Build Online Influence. I could say more but, like me, you are probably ADHD so just do these two things.

Note: I am going to be publishing an in-depth overview of how advertising agencies should be using LinkedIn soon. Stay tuned or sign up for my weekly newsletter below to make sure you see it.

Kill It On Twitter

There are lots of tools to help you get the most out of Twitter. Just Google “Twitter tools” and you’ll see bushels.

StephSammons s profile Twitonomy

One of my favorites is Twitonomy. When you listen to the Social Media Examiner podcast, Michael will start with a quick overview of this great tool. To give you a very clear, visual look at its value, I did an analysis of Stephanie’s Twitter feed and include the full page to the left. Wow, this tool goes deep. Learn about it, play with it and then start to use it to help manage your Twitter expertise. I do and I recommend it to all of my advertising agency clients.

Now, go a bit south on this page and sign up for my newsletter…. thanks.

1 Reason To Pitch French Advertising Clients

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One of the better weekly newsletters I get is from the long-time-insight-rich-website Six Pixels of Separation. As the website says:

TWIST IMAGE PRESIDENT, MITCH JOEL, BRINGS YOU DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA HACKING INSIGHTS AND PROVOCATIONS FROM HIS ALWAYS ON/ALWAYS CONNECTED WORLD.

Twist Image is a digital agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto that kicks most digital agency’s marketing butt and, as you can see, has a blog that adds value and drives agency awareness. Interesting fact… the agency website does a location lookup to personalize the home page. In my case, it knows that I am in Mexico right now. Nice touch.

Twist Image

OK, Back To Pitching French Clients

The blog has a guest feature called: Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention. This week it points to the news that the French government has dictated that management can’t email employees after work hours. In France that means after 6PM. Here is the post along with a link to the CNET News article.

French say ‘non’ to work email after 6 p.m. – cNet. “Ahh, who doesn’t want to spend their entire childhood and teenage years studying in an old school education institution that is making young people miserable, feeling inadequate and, ultimately, forcing them into a regiment of memorization of things they should never need to remember? I see this often when you look at more traditional European countries and their non-progressive school curriculums The good news? You get to graduate and become a ‘fonctionnaires,’ (if you live in France). A place that makes insane rules like this. I have a better idea: why stop at email? Just shut down the electricity for all fonctionnaires so nobody has to do anything? Alternately, you could just say, ‘hey, what if we let these adults make their own rules and attempt to find their own balance? Wow, what decade are we living in? How stupid do we think that people are?” (Mitch for Hugh).

My take…

  1. France is fucked up. I am not a small government guy but please… can’t people run their own lives? Are the French babies that need coddling?
  2. Recent press has discussed France’s issue of losing talented digital / programming / entrepreneur / creative class types to countries where they can do their thing in a pro-business environment.
  3. It must be a sign of the times when management (this means some of you) has to be told to let people live their lives. I never emailed my staff after 6PM. I am a really good, understanding, caring pro family guy. I didn’t need laws to be act like a decent person.  🙂

If French agencies are going to work at say 80% of capacity then go and get business from the French clients that need 100% agencies. Hello Peugeot. That said, you will need to have a French language website like Twist Image (it helps that they are in Quebec where the government dictates that they need a bilingual website.) Hmm… is there something about French speakers?

Bon chance!

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