Chapter 1: Top 10 Marketing Tools I Use
This week I’m going to “do as I say,” “walk the talk,” and (in doing so) get back into blogosphere basics…
It seems I’ve been spending more time on Twitter than blogging lately, which I’ve heard from several people recently. I have come to feel more interest and creativity in creating 140 character blurbs and following others recently, and blogging has seemed more like serious writing as a result.
But it’s time to get serious again, for many reasons.
Last week I challenged the members of our Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) marketing committee to help enliven the OEN blog and spread the wealth of knowledge by sending me the Top 10 Marketing Tools they use - and why.
We figured that entrepreneurs (and our colleagues) would probably appreciate a glimpse into the minds and habits of a bunch of smart marketers - learning about the tools they use. The ensuing conversation and collaboration inside the room was so enlightening that I can hardly wait to share what I learn!
I’m going to start my Top 10 Marketing Tools list with some of what I believe are “blocking and tackling” basic tools. Now, I’ve got a decidedly “online” bent so you’ll want to round out your tools by reading others’ lists - for sure.
Tool #1 - A Smart RSS Reader
Any marketer interested in making their lives easier in collecting information about their own reputations, their products’ reputations, their brand reputations and their competitors’ reputations must have a smart RSS reader in their toolbox.
Why do something manually when you can have a FREE product do it for you?
I define “Smart” as a reader that will do more than deliver persistent search results into your mailbox - although if you have to start somewhere, start with Google Alerts, which will do just that.
I use Attensa’s RSS products. They’re clients, many of the employees there are colleagues, and I’ve always appreciated the work they do in terms of their consistent interface design across platforms, smart enhancements and well-programmed applications.
To me, as Smart RSS Reader will:
- Search multiple engines in addition to the major search engines and deliver content so you can have another view of where your conversations are happening. It’s nice to have a view (beyond what your SEM tools tell you) of engagement levels on del.icio.us tags vs. Technorati tags, for example.
- Allow you to ‘train’ the reader as to where you’re spending your attention - so it will filter high-attention results right to the top of your feeds, and the low-attention results will appear down your results lists. That way, your most reader will help prioritize your feed results for you.
- Let you get your work done beyond simply reading feeds within the application. For example (I’ve blogged about this before), I can comment on blog posts from within Attensa - while my attention is focused on the subject at hand. I can tag articles within Attensa, and it’ll post my tags to my del.icio.us account for me as well - maximizing my work efforts.
Any time you can find a tool that will work for you, learn from you, and enhance your productivity (AND it’s free to boot…), what’s there not to love?
