February 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Northern Territory Indigenous Tours is a logical choice: It’s elementary, dear Watson

tess-and-sherlockI had a weird moment sitting with Tess Atie from NT Indigenous Tours in Darwin last week.

As she started talking about some of the experiences she gives her clients on tours in outback Australia, my jaw dropped because what she shared was exactly in line with what I was planning to blog about on my Baker Marketing Blog this week.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, I thought I was share a link to this weeks Baker Marketing blog here on The RITE Series.

The article in question is entitled, It’s elementary: The Sherlock Holmes approach to marketing your business.

What Tess was sharing with me was the moment when she stops her clients and points out the rich bounty of food they have just been trampling through, unaware.

So, too, the Sherlock Holmes mindset is one of trained awareness of how to view the world with a certain end in mind.

The point of the article I am sharing is that this gives us an insight into the essence of content we can create for our businesses.

I hope you find it helpful.

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing, Top End Tuesday Tagged With: , ,
December 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Is that a perfect blog headline or do you have a fire cracker up your clacker?

firecrackers up clackers and other headlines

Firecrackers up clackers and other headlines (Image Carly & Art via Flickr)

The NT News has a worldwide reputation, thanks to its brazen approach to headlines.

But is there anything we can learn from the paper for our online marketing efforts?

The short answer is, it depends on your goals.

But first, congratulations to the NT News, and Deputy Editor, Paul Dyer, for claiming a Walkley Award for the paper’s unique headline style.

Paul won Australia’s top journalism award last week for these headline gems:

  • Why I Stuck A Cracker Up My Clacker
  • Eyeful Tower
  • Dogs of Phwoaarr

We know the NT News gets talked about and noticed well beyond the Top End, and most of that is due to its headlines.

So let’s see if there is something of value for bloggers or whether this whole article is a croc (my attempt and injecting some NT News success formula – reference a crocodile).

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,
November 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How to keep you blog out of the lawyer’s office

mentos-steve-davis-copyright

This photo was referred to in the talk and discussion. I shot it with Instagram during the workshop and shared it online. I learned I I can sue anybody who uses this image to make money, even though I shared it with the world.

Have you ever sweated a little, just before hitting publish on a blog article?

Have you ever wondered whether that new web page had a little too much content ‘borrowed’ from other people?

Earlier this week, I pulled together some thoughts from a talk given by a partner at Andersons Solicitors in Adelaide, on the topic of social media marketing and your legal obligations.

The information was universally applicable and important, so here is the link for you to visit it yourself and maybe share with any colleagues or friends who are using the online medium for marketing.

Plan, Think, Publish: The legally safe approach to social media marketing

If you have questions or further comments, please share them via the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,
October 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Lights, Camera, Blog Part 09: Notes from the keynote

lights camera blog obm keynote summary darwin 2012

Vania and Phil crafting video at the Lights, Camera, Blog workshop as part of October Business Month, Darwin, 2012

Lights Camera Blog has wrapped up for October Business Month in the Northern Territory.

I promised to share the key points from the keynote presentation, delivered in the Darwin Entertainment Centre on October 17, so here they are.

You will also find a video version of this summary of Lights, Camera, Blog a little lower on this page.

People need you

The first point to note is that people out there NEED you.

Some KNOW you exist and want to become members or use your products and services.

Some DON’T – and have no idea they should become part of your world.

That is why Lights, Camera, Blog was created; to expand your marketing toolkit with some tools that are less than a year old.

Story is key

Humans love stories and we know that information shared in stories tends to ‘stick’ in our minds for a long time.

Certainly a lot longer than a list of features and benefits.

However, most of us have let our story making skills wither and we have become passive consumers of the Story Telling Machinery – newspapers, books, radio, television, theatre and cinema.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Lights Camera Blog, slider, Video Tagged With: , ,
September 18, 2012 By 1 Comment

Lights, Camera, Blog Part 03: Video and blogging give customers a peep behind the curtain

Steve Davis Lights Camera Blog October Business Month Promo 2012

Lights Camera Blog is about creating content that gives prospective clients a ‘peep behind your curtain’. Steve Davis on set for the OBM Keynote promo video shoot.

There is something about ‘the forbidden’ that intrigues human beings.

Whether it is glimpsing things we are not meant to, being first to enter a new fashion store or pushing our bodies to unnatural limits, we are drawn to such things like moths to flames.

The rationale behind Lights Camera Blog, my October Business Month keynote and limited workshop series the following day, is that all of us are interested in taking a peep behind the curtain of products and services we love or are researching.

This would explain why people queue up to visit confectionery plants, biscuit factories, backstage tours, even mines and smelters.

The simple but dedicated acts of producing interesting and helpful content creates an opportunity for someone searching for the products or services we provide to ‘taste and try before they buy’ by reading or seeing our approach to using or providing the products/services, or by approaching the problem they are trying to solve.

With this understanding, we can then decide what to do about it. We can decide:

Whether our targeted consumers/prospects would prefer written content or video

Whether we produce our video content in house or outsource it

Where and how we make the content available to the public

These questions will all be addressed in the lead up to the keynote presentation.

Today, I want to compare a different video example against the SocialCam ‘quickie’ produced last week.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Lights Camera Blog, Social Media, Video Tagged With: , , , , ,
August 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Glenn McGrath and Steve Davis – it’s not cricket, it’s business for NT October Business Month

The other Steve Davis as cricket umpire

The ‘other’ Steve Davis as cricket umpire in a fantasy photo shoot.

Is it true that all time Australian bowling great, Glenn McGrath, and cricket umpiring legend, Steve Davis, will both be speakers at the Northern Territory October Business Month in 2012?

Well, it’s half true.

Glenn McGrath will definitely be a keynote speaker and no doubt be sharing stories from his cricketing days and his experience running the McGrath Foundation.

However, the other speaker will not be the famous cricket umpire but rather the ‘other’ Steve Davis, me, the marketing guy.

Today’s post is a brief one in the lead up to the September series of articles on this site that will be focusing attention on my Keynote address, Wednesday, October 17, 2012, and the OBM workshops I will be holding the next day, Thursday, October 18, 2012. Both events will be at the Darwin Entertainment Centre.

The topic this year: Lights. Camera, Blog.

I will be showcasing great examples of blog writing and video making done ‘in house’ by small businesses and organisations, to round off my previous two OBM keynotes on the future of marketing and the two commandments of social media marketing.

This year the focus will not only be on ‘why produce interesting text and video content’ but HOW to produce it ‘in house’ without going insane.

Details on all the speakers can be found on the October Business Month website.

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing, Video Tagged With: , , ,
August 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Blogging can reduce isolation, says Robbo the remote pharmacist

Full Frontal - Micallef Pharmacy Sketch

The Full Frontal Micallef Pharmacy Sketch, it’s all part of the job, says Robbo (Image from the Youtube video)

Blogging as a business marketing tool is often used to create content that cuts through the clutter of competitors and distractions.

But what about as a tool to bridge the gap between an isolated community or business and far flung readers or customers?

Enter Robbo.

Robbo is a pharmacist living and working in a remote indigenous community in outback Australia, about 150kms from the NT/SA/WA border.

In a random tweet last night, Robbo tweets as @bitethedust, he caught my attention with a link to The Life Of A Retail Pharmacist (see the video below).

It was just a link to a comedy sketch by the Full Frontal crew from a number of years ago. According to Robbo, it is pretty accurate portrayal of the unsatisfactory part of the job of being a pharmacist.

What struck me though, was that while Robbo clearly enjoys life in this remote community, he can also dip into conversations and relationships with people worldwide through his personal endeavour to share thoughts and observations of life and pharmaceuticals from a place unlikely to be a trending topic in social media circles.

This is someone who ‘gets it’, who understands that social media and social networking can be tools for engagement and discovery.

But there is something else that Robbo’s work does that highlights a change underway in our society.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks, Top End Tuesday Tagged With: , ,
August 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

What social media topics attract Top End business people to search online?

steve-davis-reflect-on-analytics

Coffee and analytics – a perfect ‘break’ combination

How long has it been since you looked at your website’s analytics data?

There are many things we can learn from taking a few minutes to reflect on most and least popular pages and blog stories, sources of traffic and keywords being used by search engines to connect readers with our websites.

Today’s brief reflection comes from the Google Analytics summary screen for theriteseries.com.au. I always make sure our clients have this inserted automatically into the WordPress sites we build at Baker Marketing.

The snapshot shows me the top five most read pages on The RITE Series for the previous 30 days. They are:

I can immediately see two aspects of my blog writing that are worth harnessing (Darwin Cup reference) for future blogs, namely:

  • Referring to current or socially important events
  • Naming items of specific interest to my target market (you)

Here’s what I mean.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media Tagged With: , ,
July 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Darwin Cup 2012 alert: Falling down is dangerous for equestrians and race goers

darwin-cup-stilletto

These heels will turn heads and twist ankles (Image by leyla.a via Flickr)

Australia’s Olympic equestrians have been suffering bruising falls at the London Olympics due to damp, marshy conditions on the course.

As we approach the 2012 Darwin Cup, our fears are not so much for horses but for race goers wearing high heel shoes.

Darwin Physio, Nick Jones, has written an important blog about the issue, entitled: Darwin Cup – Fashion and Pain.

I met Nick through the Online Marketing workshops run at the Business Enterprise Centre NT in Winnellie last year and wanted to showcase his writing for three reasons:

  • He has written an article that clearly links a need among his target market with a service he offers
  • He has published the article in a timely way (just a few weeks before the Darwin Cup)
  • He has asked for help in promoting his work via social media

On those first two points, Nick has thought through a public event and found some links between it and his business. Namely, everybody dresses up in high fashion, risking injury in the name of glam!

He has promoted his guide a few weeks out from the event, as suggested by an article here on the RITE Series earlier this year:

By writing something ‘event specific’ he also gets to piggy back on the search engine value of the term ‘Darwin Cup’, making it easier and more likely for Google to share a link to his article as people search ‘Darwin Cup’ on Google.

Thirdly, I received a tweet from Nick last week, along with the NT News and twitter account, Top End Tweets, asking us to retweet the link to his article, which I certainly did. Here is that tweet:

@NTNews @topendtweets @theriteseries please RT: Fashion can come at a high price this #darwincup #saveyourfeet http://ow.ly/cwTVj

Now it’s over to you, please share links below to articles you have written that tie Top End events to your business’ products or services.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,
July 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Beer inspires great blogging

Beer drinker's guide to blogging

Jason Harris from Big Shed Brewing – blogging in 3D

I probably drink less beer than anyone in the Northern Territory.

For the last decade or so I would have had about three beers a year:

  • Adelaide Oval test match
  • Boxing Day test match
  • AFL Grand Final

But this might be changing.

Recently I spent the afternoon with two brewers and they took me through a worldwide tasting of beer styles.

In the process, they were actually blogging, in 3D.

Take a look at the full story back on the Baker Marketing website: A beer drinker’s guide to blogging.

Tell me what you think in the comments, or over a beer!

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: ,
«Older Posts