Signalfire | Brand Matters

Content marketing is one of the hottest trends in marketing for very good reasons!

• Demonstrates your brand’s expertise by sharing knowledge and insight
• Provides helpful, useful data or information to your interest community
• Establishes both trust and value in your brand
• Search engine boosts don’t hurt, either

Where do over-tasked business owners or time-indebted managers find the time to generate this small mountain of content? Some try to hammer it out themselves (and typically fail), some smartly hire writers who embrace their brand voice, and fewer turn to a the wider blogging community to offer guest interest community leaders to post. Are any of those, by themselves, the single best option? No, they all are.

While no business owner or manager really has time to personally pound out daily, weekly, or sometimes monthly content, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t write at all. All three options working in concert can be a great approach to the process.

A great illustration to this is Atomic Research’s new infographic outlining the difference between content development and content curation. Essentially, content curation mean a brand turns to the experts within the interest community to share articles or insights on their own platform. While this gives the critical hat-tips to the interest community at large by recognizing the leading voices, it also still shares the critical value from the provided content.

By being in tune with your interest community, you will be able to spot the leaders. Embrace them. Contribute to the community by posting your own content. Between the two, you’ll build trust and value for your brand as well as your website.

Like this infographic? Read more about Content Marketing @ Atomic Reach.

Hootsuite has just announced the social media dashboard will now support Google+ Pages updates for all users.

For many small businesses, using a social media dashboard like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, or others is the best and only way to stay on top of social media. With Hootsuite’s addition of Google+ Pages (not individual accounts, yet), many of these burgeoning brands can now more actively interact in Google’s struggling social media platform.

While some say Google+ is languishing, I agree with Chris Brogan’s sentiments that it is a significantly underutilized platform that can significantly improve a brand’s performance on the search side of Google. For a system of engagement and audience participation, Google+ has a world of features and functions that succeeds over Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you’ve been looking for a reason to finally jump into Google+, this might be it. Will this impact your use of Google+ for business? If you’d like to discuss putting a strategy together that includes Google+, give Signalfire a shout!

From Associated Press and Fox News

Internet minders voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system’s biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.

Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to “.com” and “.net” with suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.

“This is the start of a whole new phase for the Internet,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s board of directors. “Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free.”

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Eagle Technology, Inc., a leading developer of computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), has hired Signalfire, LLC, as their exclusive brand & marketing agency. Servicing clients throughout the Midwest, Signalfire specializes in integrated brand strategy, web design, and social media platforms. Eagle President Harshad Shah stated, “Signalfire was already managing our social media program. We knew they had the experience, expertise, and scope of services to develop and execute a complete brand strategy and marketing plan to take our company to the next level.”

Matthew Olson, owner and founder of Signalfire, was happy to take up the challenge. “Eagle Technology wanted a fresh look and feel for their brand to coincide with the launch of Proteus MMX, their new web-based facility management software. We went through a rigorous brand audit to understand their industry, market, customers and competition, as well as their short and long-term goals. From there we created a complete brand overhaul and integrated marketing/social media program.”

“We were looking for fresh, powerful, and unique marketing tools for our expanding international market,” said Harry Kohal, Eagle’s Vice President of Business Development. “Signalfire’s full complement of services gives us the marketing resources we need to be successful in the global CMMS arena.”

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