Mark Evans

An excellent series of tips + Eric Doty's sample freelancer onboarding deck is a shining example all those who hire freelancers should aspire to!

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🚀 Elevate Your B2B Game with Powerful Brand Storytelling! 📈 In today's competitive landscape, it's not just about what you sell, but the story you tell. 🎤✨ 🔑 Key Strategies for Impact: 1️⃣ Authenticity: Be genuine. Prospects connect with real stories. Example: Shopify shares success stories of entrepreneurs using their platform to build and grow their businesses, highlighting the journey and challenges faced by real users. 2️⃣ Emotional Connection: Touch hearts, not just minds. Example: Apple's "Shot on iPhone" campaign showcases stunning photos taken by everyday users, creating an emotional bond with the audience by celebrating their creativity. 3️⃣ Value-Driven: Showcase the real-world impact of your solutions. Example: Cisco Networking showcases how their networking solutions are enabling remote learning and telehealth, providing real-world benefits and improving lives during the pandemic. 4️⃣ Consistency: Ensure your message is cohesive across all channels. Example: HubSpot consistently shares content that aligns with their mission to help businesses grow better, maintaining a unified message across their blog, social media, and customer communications. 5️⃣ Engagement: Foster two-way conversations with your audience. Example: Zendesk uses community forums and social media to engage with users, offering support, sharing user stories, and building a community-driven brand experience. ⭐️Transform your brand narrative to resonate deeply with your prospects and watch your relationships flourish.🤝 cc PIABO #B2BMarketing #BrandStorytelling #CustomerEngagement #MarketingStrategy #BusinessGrowth

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When Gary Vaynerchuk launches a new book, Canadians go for it! 👏🏻 #1, #2 and #3 in Business Dev. Amazon Canada 🇨🇦 If you’re building a brand or a personal brand, this is a must read. It's practical and easy to understand 🚀 Big thanks to Gary for this gem, understanding that Attention is the ultimate currency will help you drive business results in today’s social-first consumer landscape💪🏼 VaynerMedia VaynerX #daytradingattention #brandsarebuiltinsocial #garyvaynerchuk #businessdevelopment

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What does "fractional" mean? Just like a salaried Chief Branding Officer (a rarity, so let's say CSO/CCO) employee, except I work for you part-time. The benefit of a fractional chief lies in flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and access to specialized expertise. A fractional CSO/CCO works part-time, allowing businesses to leverage high-level strategic leadership without the full financial commitment of a salaried executive. This approach is particularly advantageous for smaller or growing companies that may not require a full-time Marketing Chief but still need experienced guidance. It provides access to the expertise of seasoned professionals like myself on a more affordable and adaptable basis, ensuring strategic marketing and branding efforts are aligned with business goals. "Working with Callosum is not like that crash course diet that produces quick results but doesn’t last. Instead we collectively did the hard work to change habits and grow healthier. They gave us insights, tools and the support for us to uncover the answers ourselves and now we have the clarity and confidence to continue our evolution." ~ Rebecca Rusch Callosum envisions your brand's destination and understands your readiness for more. Partner directly with me to liberate your leadership from tactical work, enabling them to be inspired and shape the future as we lead your marketing department. Link for more info is in the first comment. #brandstrategy #leadership #fractional

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1) I like booked meetings. My primarily goal for all B2B marketing campaigns is qualified booked meetings. 2) I recognize that solely focusing on booked meetings, completely ignores 98% of the contributing activities that result in that meeting. 3) Knowing how and who engages with my website shows me what's working and who it's working on. 4) RB2B.com helps with this. It shows me exactly who, where, and when someone hits my site - so I can engage or reach out while it's on their mind. Oh, and it's free to use with a Slack integration. Not sure what to do with the leads? Here's RB2B's tips. The 15-Minute RB2B Lead Gen Routine Schedule Your Daily Check-In: Dedicate 15 minutes, ideally at the start of your workday, to focus on RB2B. This ensures fresh leads haven't gone unnoticed. Prioritize the Hot Leads: RB2B shows website activity of each visitor in the Profiles page of the RB2B dashboard in the Details section of a profile. Start by focusing on those who visited multiple pages, indicating high interest. Dive Deeper with Company Insights: For each high-priority lead, use RB2B to gather additional details like company size, industry, and recent news. This empowers you to personalize your outreach. Craft Targeted Connections: Leverage LinkedIn! With company names in hand, connect with the relevant decision-makers on LinkedIn. Queue Up Your Outreach: Don't overwhelm your connections. Send your personalized LinkedIn messages and follow-up emails within 24 hours of connecting on LinkedIn. No affiliation, I just really dig the tool. Enjoy!

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Annette Simmons we couldn't agree more! Story FINDING is an extraction process. Real and authentic stories are not created, they're found and culled from what we see as an extraction process. Telling the best stories does not begin with the creative process. The story finding/extraction process has to happen for purposeful storytelling to be effective. For us as professional storytellers, helping clients through this first stage is the greatest value we bring! #storytelling #brandstorytelling #storyfinding #storyteller #authenticity

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Are press releases still worth it? I think it depends. This question came up with a client today, and two key things came to my mind: 1. What are you hoping to achieve with the press release? 2. What credibility does the outlet have? She heard it was a good idea to get backlinks to her site for SEO, especially since it was a niche outlet in her industry. She has multiple schools in the LA area. I walked her through my process to see if this could be a good investment. First, we looked at the overall traffic to the site using Similarweb (a free website traffic checker Chrome extension). 15k monthly traffic. Not a ton of volume, but also not terrible. Next, we checked the site more in-depth with SEMrush and discovered that the backlinks to the site were all over the map and not really relevant to her business and area. Overall, I think press releases can still be a valuable tool. It just depends on the outlet and what you are trying to achieve. Is there anything else you would check to see if this could be a good idea? #seo #pressrelease #digitalmarketing

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Two weeks ago, I started the r/CanadianBacon sub on Reddit so Hardbacon expertise can be found on Google. (PS: For those of you that are not aware, Google search result now mostly display Reddit threads for any query, which basically relegates websites like Hardbacon to the second page of search results) There are already 630 Canadians in this sub and I personally answered dozens of personal finance questions from the members. We are also getting better at paid acquisition and running campaigns on Facebook, Bing and Google (yes, the irony is not lost on me). We launched 2 Linkedin newsletters (Canadian Bacon in English and Gras Dur in French) that generated 15,000 articles views so far. We are also running multiple ads campaign to grow our email newsletter and are currently working on a soon to be launched SMS-based newsletter. My point is there are always other ways. Thanks Google for teaching me importance of traffic diversification :)

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Dear reader,     Warren Buffett is sitting on a cool 134 billion US dollars.   Yet he lives in a plain-Jane house, drives a 2014 Cadillac XTS, and eats at McDonald's.   That, I'm sure you'd agree, is penny-pinching of the highest order.   On the other side of the shiny gold coin is this:   Elvis Presley in his prime was raking in $130,000 for one-night performances and pocketing a cool million for each movie deal.   Yet he was always a dollar short and a day late. Mostly because he gave away Cadillacs like there were Skittles and could burn through cash faster than a pyromaniac in a paper factory.   Of course, the above two examples are the extremities of money management.   Buffett's way requires you to have the discipline of a Shaolin Monk, while Elvis's requires that you have the "consequences-be-damned" attitude of a degenerate gambler.   So where is that "money management" sweet spot, huh?   Well, like most other things in life, that sweet spot lies in the middle way between those two extremes.   I do believe Aristotle called this the "golden mean" - the perfect middle ground between too much and too little. Well, if you apply the golden mean to everything in life, you'll be sitting pretty, right?   Not so fast, Chuck.   There are always exceptions to the rule.    And the "golden mean" is not immune.   Well, luck for you, dear subscriber, Papa maverick is a fan of the exception to the rule. A student of sorts. And... it just so happens that an exception to the rule concerning the golden mean is something I know a thing or two about.   And that thing is this:   Branding!   Yes, both personal branding and business branding.   Listen up:   In the world of business branding, playing it safe in the middle won't cut it.    You've got to channel your inner maverick and go for broke. Because in a sea of sameness, it's the ones who dare to stand out that make waves and capture market share. Summin' to think about. For more "summin' to think about" content, boogie over here: www.kelvindorsey.com

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Content Can Fuel Growth: Chalet Market's 105% Shopify Traffic Boost https://lnkd.in/g67s7574 Tired of stagnant online traffic with your Shopify Store? Chalet Market, a Montana-based gourmet food purveyor, faced the same challenge. They partnered with Content Basis to revamp their blog strategy and the results speak for themselves: a 105% increase in Shopify traffic in just months! This case study examines the strategy behind their success, showcasing how a weekly content plan fueled significant growth. Want to learn how to drive your own Shopify traffic? Check out the full case study. #ecommerce #contentmarketing #shopify #digitalmarketing #casestudy #foodandbeverage #businessgrowth

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Something I'm seeing a lot more of lately in the media? Fewer "How You Do X" articles and more "How I Did X" articles. Here's why and how to capitalize on this trend: There's a glut of impersonal, AI-driven content currently flooding the internet, and I think many publishers are trying to differentiate themselves by featuring a real human being in their "how-to" content. It's one thing to produce an article with instructions on how to do something. It is quite another to say, "hey, here's a real person that just did this, and here's who they are and how they did it." Putting a face on your "expert" makes you and your content that much more trustworthy and relatable. I think that's why we're seeing headlines like "I'm a mom of three and I remodeled my bathroom in 30 days for under $2,000. Here's how I did it." (You get the idea.) Here are a few ways to take advantage of this trend: ✅ If you have customers who have used your product or service and experienced great results, connect with them. See if they might be willing to share their results with the media. (This can be used as owned or social content as well!) ✅ If you provide a "visual" service of some sort, make sure to take before and after photos. For example, if you are an interior designer, you want photos of the room before and after so you can showcase what changed. (Just make sure you have the right to use the photos for media purposes!) ✅ Similarly, collect "before and after" data as well. Let's say you provide a service that helps your client save money. You'll want to be able to document how much money they began saving once they started using your product or service. Bottom line: yes, leverage your internal experts for media purposes. But your customers might be the better option in some cases. #pr #mediarelations

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