The Scrappy Marketer

Latest Scrapbooking Industry Statistics from CHA

Here's a snippet from a recent press release from CHA, the Craft & Hobby Association:

Elmwood Park, NJ (April 26, 2010) National Scrapbooking Day has emerged as a way of celebrating the number one, top-selling category of the 39 craft segments in the $27 billion U.S. craft and hobby industry. National Scrapbooking Day is held each year on the first Saturday in May. It started in 1994 as a way of celebrating the joys of scrapbooking. 

According to the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) about 35 percent (or 40 million) of the 113 million U.S. households scrapbook, rubber stamp or make cards and spent approximately $4 billion* in 2009 on scrapbook, “Memory Craft” and other paper crafting products. 

According to Google.com, Scrapping is so popular that there are now well over 1.3 million scrapbook bloggers, thousands of scrapbooking events, and dozens of magazines dedicated to scrapbooking.

Read the whole press release at the CHA blog: craftandhobby.wordpress.com

Posted via web from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

5 Outdated SEO Tactics and 5 Alternatives - from Website Magazine

I found this to be a really useful overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics that have been used in the past, but are no longer effective with today's search engine algorithms. I also really appreciated that the author offers suggestions on "What to do instead" - all techniques that are easy to implement. Good stuff.

In the past it was easier to achieve high search engine rankings by “gaming” the system with questionable SEO tactics. But as search engines have evolved, many suspect SEO practices have been rendered useless. However, if you visit any SEO forum or upstart SEO blog, you will see many of these outdated tactics still endorsed as legitimate techniques. In an attempt to end the misinformation, below are five popular, yet outdated SEO tactics that no longer work — and some legitimate alternatives.

Read the rest of the article at websitemagazine.com

Posted via web from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

Inbound Marketing, a la Venn (and Hubspot)

diagram via blog.hubspot.com

In the article, "Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web", Rick Burnes of Hubspot explains the concept of "inbound marketing", which is essentially drawing people to your website with quality content.

The Venn diagram above illustrates this concept.
CONTENT: draw people in with quality content
SEO: help people find the content via organic search of target keyword(s)
SOCIAL MEDIA: Broadcast your content; let people know it's available. The people who find your message on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc have already "opt'ed in" by connecting with you, so theoretically, they should be receptive to your message/content.

Since great content is how I prefer to communicate with my audience, I thought I should link to this article, to illustrate what I've already been doing for years. :)

Online Press Room: American Library Association for Preservation Week

Here's a nice example of an online media/news room for an annual event:

American Library Association Preservation Week Event Toolkit

The page offers an archive of downloadable/printable promotional materials with information about the event, resulting in a two-fold benefit. The media can get logos and background information to write about the event, and local libraries can use the same information to promote their own events. Nice.

Posted via web from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

Job Hunting 2.0: Five Must-Ask Interview Questions

As I am currently searching for a permanent full-time job in marketing communications, I found this article about new approaches to traditional interview questions interesting.

Reporter Willa Plank checked in with Ben Dattner, founding principal of organizational consulting and research firm Dattner Consulting, to get his interview advice.

Here are his five must-ask interview questions:

1. In what ways will this role help you stretch your professional capabilities?

This is a reversal of the common question, "What are some of your greatest weaknesses?

2. What have been your greatest areas of improvement in your career?

3. What's the toughest feedback you've ever received and how did you learn from it?

This shows a candidate's ability to learn from mistakes.

4. What are people likely to misunderstand about you?

5. If you were giving your new staff a "user's manual" to you, to accelerate their "getting to know you" process, what would you include in it?

Read the whole article at finance.yahoo.com

Have you heard any common interview questions rephrased recently? Or what have you noticed during recent interviews that's different from previous job hunts?

Posted via web from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

7 Ways to Use Social Media to Create Buzz-Worthy Events

Jay Bear has compiled some tips on how to marketing real-life events via social media - I love how he lays it out from pre-event coverage to post. Really helps give you a mental timeline of how to plan out your marketing.

I gave a speech last week in suburban Cincinnati to the Mid-American chapter of Meeting Planners International, titled “7 Ways to Use Social Media to Create Buzz-Worthy Events”.

...There’s a total of 39 specific suggestions in the slides, but here are the highlights.

7 Ways To Use Social Media To Create Buzz Worthy Events

1. Engage

Get your potential attendees interacting with you early on by enabling some measure of feedback or crowd sourcing on the conference programming. South by Southwest has always led in this area, with its “panel picker” process that turns over 30% of the programming selection to potential attendees.

An easier way to do this would be to utilize something like Crowd Campaign, which gives participants a way to suggest content, and for others to vote on it. Or, you could go even simpler, and use Tweetpoll or PollDaddy (As I did when I asked you for feedback on potential new designs for this blog).

2. Intrigue

Almost all events have an official Web site. But very few (except for the geek events) take full advantage of all the free event listing and event management opportunities. At a minimum, you should create event pages on:

- Facebook Events
- Eventbrite (where you can also sell tickets, if you’re so inclined)
- Upcoming
- Linkedin (if it’s a business event)

Sure, its a bit of a hassle to oversee all of these event pages, but your attendees swim in different ponds. Plus, every conference has the same MVP attendee: some guy named Google. Why would you pass up a chance to double, triple, quadruple your search engine listings?

Read the rest of the post at convinceandconvert.com

Posted via web from Angie Pedersen's Posterous