Blog

Upworthy, the content-sharing startup whose penchant for hyperbolic headlines has generated its own parody websites, is laying out its plans for a new ad program called Upworthy Collaborations. When the company raised an $8 million Series A last fall, executives said they wanted to make money through sponsored content. However, they revealed more details about those plans (and who’s actually… Read More …read more

Continue Reading

Houston, we have a problem. The problem is one of plenty. In fact, we have too much. Too many things to choose from. We have too many channels and networks. Too many opportunities to communicate with our customer. Too many places in which to put our messages. We’ve all seen the graphic that illustrates the mind-blowing number of social media marketing channels. If you add in all of the digital platforms as well, it is enough to make you run screaming from the room.

And when we have so many options one of (at least) two things will occur. We will either become paralyzed from all the options and stand there like we do in the cereal aisle, or we will race and cut corners. Either option is ill advised.

The Paralysis of Abundance

When we have many, many choices, it is easy to become paralyzed and not know where to start. It makes me feel like the end of the book The Cat in the Hat. The social mess is so big and so deep and so tall, there is no way to fix it, no way at all! So, we do nothing but stare at the pile hoping for a solution. …read more

Continue Reading

If you’re a frequent Google Drive user, you may have noticed they recently launched add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets. You may have also noticed a familiar logo in the add-ons store.

Merge lets you send to a small list of emails directly from Google Docs and Sheets. It’s built and supported by MailChimp, but you don’t have to have a MailChimp account to use it. That’s right, we built a whole new app just for Google Docs and Sheets users.

Merge is a great option for book clubs, little leagues, neighborhood groups, PTAs—anyone who needs to send simple emails to lists of up to 1000 email addresses. In fact, this is exactly the type of Gmail user that Google was hoping to help when they approached us. They asked if we could build an add-on that would make it easy for a Google Drive user to create and send personalized email right from a Google Doc.

With Merge, you can pair your Google Doc to a Google Sheet that contains email addresses and data fields for the people you want to contact.

Then, you can merge in personalized content—first name, last name, address, etc.—from your Google Sheet.

When you hit …read more

Continue Reading

This guest post was contributed by Conor McClure (@conorjmcclure), one of our rockstar interns this spring. He hails from North Carolina, where he’s finishing up a degree in music business at Appalachian State University. When he’s not promoting Cyber PR artists 40 hours / week, he blogs at his personal website conormcclure.net, is an avid photographer, and is obsessed with all things digital.Hi everyone! Conor here. First, a bit about myself. I came to Cyber PR from Appalachian State University down in North Carolina, where I am in the final phases of completing my undergraduate B.S. in Music Industry Studies. The degree program, a sort of hybrid music business degree based in the Hayes School of Music, is a nationwide leader, producing graduates who have mastered Grammy-nominated singles and produced blockbuster films. My own passions lie in the digital realm of marketing, so applying to intern at Cyber PR was a no-brainer. I was ecstatic when I received the good news.My first day in the office was January 6, and I’m finishing up here in about two weeks. I think now’s a great time to talk about some things I’ve learned while here—mainly, what to expect out of an internship, …read more

Continue Reading

Free Space Optic lasers? Low earth orbit satellites? Solar-powered drones? Mark Zuckerberg has just penned a deep dive on how Facebook’s newly revealed methods for delivering Internet to the developing world actually work. Here’s are the highlights from his 3000 word progress report on Internet.org, including digs at Google’s Project Loon, and how it all fits into Facebook’s long-term plan. Read More …read more

Continue Reading

Will retweets soon be rebranded as “shares” on Twitter? For some, that has already happened, as the change in terminology began rolling out for some mobile users this week.

…read more

Continue Reading

Google Hangouts are an invaluably useful tool.
We’ve made mention of this before.
And if you’ve been listening to the New Rainmaker podcast, then you recently heard Brian and Robert discuss the concept of repurposing content — using the same content in multiple ways.
In this episode of The Lede, Demian and I put the usefulness and versatility of Google Hangouts on display and demonstrate how Hangouts can be used as part of a repurposing strategy.
Here’s how …
The incredible, embeddable Hangout
In less than an hour’s time, we created a piece of content that:
Could have been broadcast live to our audience
Can now be embedded anywhere, in perpetuity
Was fairly easy to convert into a podcast
Was turned into text content as a transcript
And all of that is on display right here in this post.
Oh, and the custom nameplates you see and the sound effects you hear? All built right into Hangouts.
See what I mean? Invaluably useful.
So what’s so interesting about this Hangout?
We are calling this Hangout showcase the “Hangout Hot Seat” … and the first* episode features none other than the Frank Underwood of Copyblogger.
Yes, Brian Clark.
In this episode, Brian answers the following questions:
What does “Media, not marketing” mean?
Is Google-Plus still an essential tool for …read more

Continue Reading

There’s no denying it. You cannot consider yourself a great ad person unless you know your numbers. At SME Digital (the agency arm of Social Media Explorer), we’re all about garnering results that are measurable. After all, you aren’t an effective marketer if you aren’t tracking the numbers. Even more, you aren’t a top-notch marketer if you’re not tracking the one metric that matters above all others: Cost per Acquisition (CPA).
Now don’t get me wrong, all those other metrics are important too. Metrics like:
Click-Thru-Rate
Cost per Click
Cost per Conversion
Just to name a few.
But, while these metrics are important to any well run campaign. They don’t hold a candle to the Holy Grail of marketing metrics: Cost per Acquisition. In other words, how much do I have to spend in marketing dollars to get a paying customer?
So why is Cost per Acquisition so important? Simple, it’s the quintessential metric for determining true return on investment. It doesn’t matter how many clicks or eyeballs a campaign receives, if it’s not generating revenue, it’s not successful.
Case in point, I was working for an agency charged with managing a company’s PPC account. My team’s ads were performing well above average (on paper). Through …read more

Continue Reading

One of the things we discuss a lot around here are “triggers”; Psychological buttons that motivate people to get off the fence and take action. There are many different triggers one can employ in their marketing but without a doubt the most powerful trigger there is, is scarcity. When we can’t have something we want […] …read more

Continue Reading

While social media has created a lot of new opportunities for marketers, it has also made it more difficult for brands to be heard. The Internet is flooded with content and social platforms are more crowded than ever before. As a result, marketers face a challenge in trying to capture the attention of consumers online. Hope, however, is not lost thanks to content marketing.
Today, your brand’s voice is a marketer’s most valuable weapon. Where once you relied on the media to announce new products or features, now businesses are writing blogs, uploading photos and videos, and creating all kinds of content on social networks. This has forced marketers to communicate more skillfully and strategically. But while more is being said, how much of it is actually effective?
In a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 93 percent of B2B marketers are said to use content marketing; however, only 42 percent consider themselves effective at it. LinkedIn saw this as a problem, and as a result it launched new tools aimed at helping businesses create more effective content marketing strategies that provide value for customers.
Shortly after opening its publishing platform to members, LinkedIn has made another content-inspired move with the introduction …read more

Continue Reading

You Too Can Be Productive!
Silvia Pencak
Almost on a daily basis I meet people who ask me, “How do you get so much done? What am I missing?” We all have a desire to get more done in less time so that we can enjoy more time doing what we love.
I wish I had a magic formula that you can say and things will turn around, but instead, I have three tips to help you shift your current perspective and take a step in the right direction. If this sounds right to you, this article will be a wake up call you need in order to get more done.
Tip #1: Know Yourself
Way too many times people give in to “proven” strategies that only take them away from their unique abilities. We think that if it works for somebody else, it must work for us. Let me burst your bubble. It’s a lie!
We all take action differently. Some of us are driven by beating the clock, creating amazing results on short deadlines, while others need longer deadlines. Where someone needs to have all the information before making a decision and taking a step, others jump into a project and solve problems …read more

Continue Reading

Marketers are using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other popular social platforms to attract new customers and engage them. However, marketers often overlook the blogosphere to do the same. Read the full article at MarketingProfs …read more

Continue Reading

Brooklyn arts and culture company, Kill Screen, had been operating as a magazine and a website for two years when their team decided they wanted to do more with their email marketing. Instead of simply republishing content they’d made elsewhere, they hoped to find a new way to connect with the modern gamer—a person who’s often too busy to read a longform essay but still wants fun games to play on the regular.
“From the beginning, we’ve been focused on ‘bringing games to culture and culture to games,'” Kill Screen Director of Business Development, Tom Gregorio, tells MailChimp. “We have lots of interested friends who stopped playing games somewhere along the way to adulthood, or perhaps never even started, and the most common question we get from them is, ‘What should I be playing now?’ It was clear most of them weren’t reading the deep dives we publish on our site, so we needed a quick, digestible piece of weekly content to answer that question.
What they came up with is Playlist, a simple, weekly email that highlights a handful of new games worth playing. For each title, there’s a screenshot, a quick review, a link for download/purchase, and a recommended-if-you-like style …read more

Continue Reading

When I think about the professional musician, I like to break down opportunity into day job and night job. The night job is the dream – rock and roll stardom, touring, selling records, award shows, bodyguards, fawning fans, public meltdowns, etc.
Being more pragmatic as a person – I have spent much of my career on the day job part of this industry (and that’s not just you giving guitar lessons).
Music Publishing to me is the day job part of the business – regardless of your status as a performer. Even the big folks love the mailbox money of publishing. As an independent artist, I think it’s even more important.
Publishing, with all it’s complexities, still has the opportunity to create income streams for artists at all levels – especially if you are up for creating alternate types of content. All music shown on television and the web around the world earns public performance income.
The companies who create this type of content use known music in some cases (opening theme song, key scene) and then they use other background music for the rest of the show/commercial/movie/web series.
What used to be a closed service of creating this type …read more

Continue Reading

A study of 2,000 email lists and 93,000 emails by TrackMaven finds that the approaches many brands have taken toward email marketing are stale. Here are five tips to give your campaigns a boost.

…read more

Continue Reading

In this episode of the Music Marketing Manifesto Podcast Tyler Palmer joins us to discuss Patreon; crowd funding platform with a twist. We also have a frank discussion about haters and trolls, what’s normal, and whether or not it’s worth taking any of it on board. We also share some of the more outlandish hate […] …read more

Continue Reading

Top quality CD replication at ridiculous prices! Get: 1,000 replicated CDs, full color imprint (offset or silkscreen) 5″ x 5″ full color (4/4) cardboard sleeve Includes shrink wrap All for $699 (plus shipping)! Standard turnaround time for new orders is 10 business days from artwork approval. Wallets & digipaks are 14 business days. All orders will […]

Continue Reading

In an exhaustive study done by Beevolve on profiles of 36 million global Twitter users, they found that nearly 74% of those who use Twitter are between the ages of 15 and 25. This is also happens to be one the key demographic groups of those who purchase music. 53% of Twitter users are female […]

Continue Reading