BlueGlass Interactive has recently acquired Voltier Digital, a content marketing company specializing in infographics production and data visualization. We all knew infographics and visual aids used to deliver a certain message were becoming more and more popular, but this recent acquisition by BlueGlass to support their strategy to boost their digital offering once again proves this type of products will play a key role in overall content marketing strategy and production.

BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. an Internet marketing company focusing on social media marketing and search engine optimization, will integrate Voltier Digital into their operation, thus expanding their marketing capabilities. All Voltier Digital employees will join BlueGlass and Voltier’s three founders will hold senior roles on BlueGlass’ production and marketing teams.

“It’s hard to express how excited our team is about joining BlueGlass,” said Nicholas Santillo, CEO of Voltier Digital. “We have watched the impressive trajectory BlueGlass has taken since its inception and we are eager to add our team’s experience to an already stellar group of Internet marketing visionaries.”

BlueGlass Interactive Co-founder Chris Winfield described the move as strategic:

“I first started working with the team at Voltier in 2007 and I have always been amazed at their ability to constantly innovate and stay at the forefront of the inbound marketing industry. The need for companies to implement and execute effective content marketing strategies is constantly increasing, so we are thrilled to have one of the leaders in this space become a part of BlueGlass.”

The move is indeed strategic for BlueGlass, as they tap into a content marketing field that is bound to drive more sales in 2012 and more so in the years to come. The acquisition and the value they put on infographic production is confirmed by recent studies, such as the results published by the Custom Content Council,  showing more than 75% of US corporate marketers say they are aggressively (16%) or moderately (62%) shifting spending from traditional marketing to branded-content marketing.

We are already seeing the high use of data visualization products and their high potential of going viral – infographics have become a welcome and powerful addition to most blog posts, press releases, research results articles and pretty much any type of content published online.  Why they work so well? They are fun and colorful and explain in an easy, fact centered and easy to remember way the issue they focus on. And social media users love to share them – no matter what field they tap into, they take sometimes boring or complicated issues and make them fun and engaging.

Have you already included infographics in your content marketing strategy? Were you pleased with the results?

The rise of Twitter as a powerful social media tool as seen its deployment in a wide variety of marketing, journalism, and propaganda campaigns. Recently many companies have also begun to use Twitter as a Public Relations tool. From real time communication to brand reputation, Twitter can be used for public relations, but only if your PR team is wise and careful. Here are three factors to keep in mind:

Twitter creates a real-time dialogue without taking on dangerous newscasts

Almost like having your own global LP Chat software, Twitter creates a running dialogue with the world that can be updated so rapidly it begins to take on characteristics of real time communication. This can be extremely beneficial for time-sensitive events related to product releases, political campaigns, and even international stock market tips. With the world more connected than ever, the ability to spread information efficiently and instantaneously allows companies and public entities to address issues concurrently with network news cycles.

You should Tweet informative links that show that your company is working on the problem

Because Twitter allows you to share links with thousands, even millions of followers, what you say has added importance. Especially given the truncated nature of the message, when using Twitter for PR it’s important to remember to use your tweets wisely. After the 2010 oil spill, BP used their Twitter account to keep people updated about the efforts they were making to contain the leak and protect the coastal inhabitants and ecosystems. Links to reports on their efforts were probably far more effective at conveying information and reducing anger than a press conference full of lawyer-written canned responses.

Be careful not to add fuel to the fire

A recent McDonald’s campaign about new efforts to make their fast food menu healthy backfired when Twitter subscribers began to lampoon the global icon about the quality of its ingredients and health benefits. The campaign quickly became a joke and likely caused damage to the brand. If your company is perceived a certain way, don’t use Twitter to try and reverse that image. You’re setting yourself up for disaster. Twitter is for subtle branding adjustments, not a complete reputation overhaul. Tweets are composed of only 140 characters, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful as satirical weapons.

As you can see, it’s not just marketers who are using Twitter as an online tool. Corporate executives also use it as a PR strategy, and for good reason. Twitter can be a powerful vessel for information, but it must be used wisely and carefully.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

7 years ago, on a similarly cold winter, but less snowy if I remember correctly, I went ahead and started my very own blog on the Blogger platform. It was long before the Google buyout of this popular platform, long before I gave up on my dream of being a journalist and, yes, long before the wonderful world of PR won me over and sparkled this version of the Words of a Broken Mirror Blog.

Seven years later, I have tested a lot  of everything that has to do with blogging, from niches to frequency to communities. I kept learning more about coding and customizing and html, and JavaScript, and how blogs generally work. A few social media channels later, lots of business articles, guest posts across the blogosphere, a few hosted contests, a travel blog and an online magazine for women, I am still blogging with the same great pleasure I experienced 7 years ago. 

I have grown and so has my career. I have launched my own company in the mean time and although we’ve had our share of difficult patches, it has always been profitable and every year made it better. It also gave me the choice I always wanted, at least in theory – choose how and when to work and never have just a job again.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than a comment on a post I’ve written. To this day, I am not more thankful for anything, from new business to recognition, than I am  for the many wonderful friends I made online. Some still are close by after all this time, some have went on with their lives, but I cherish them all, as they have all taught me something, shared a nice word when I needed it, offered their piece of advice when I asked for it and somehow helped me get so much closer to who I wanted to be.

In all honesty, the Words of a Broken Mirror PR and Marketing blog has been a bit sidelined in the past months. Life, work and clients took over and I have posted less often here. The good news is things are about to change. Mirror Communications is doing well, we will expand our team a bit and we have a lot planned for 2012. Nice surprises for us and for our friends, new projects and more services and packages to launch. That is why WoBM will only grow stronger and more useful this year so stay tuned and again…

….THANKS FOR READING, FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! Happy blogging to you all!

As we usher in the new year, you might have made a wide variety of resolutions related to losing weight, spending less money, or drinking less, but if you own a small business or work as a freelancer, a resolution you might have neglected to make is to build up your online brand. So many times our resolutions are geared toward reducing the negative effects of something, and not increasing the positive effects of something else.

Building a brand online requires a multitude of incremental steps that start with your acknowledgment of the importance of having a clean bill of health. There are a wide variety of services out there, such as ReputationManagers.com, that can help you dispel slander or negative reviews. But when it comes right down to it, you need to proactively manage your image you put out onto the Internet. Here three ways to take control of your online brand:

Use your Facebook fan page to make personal connections with your fans and customers

If you’re a one-man/woman show this is easier, but if you have a big personnel, it’s time for you to designate one person, or even a team, to handle your social media relations. This is a big part of PR now. The position is often called Social Media Director, and this person(s) is responsible for using sites like Facebook to reach out to customers. A Facebook fan page offers an incredible opportunity to create one-to-one friendships with your followers. If you run a business, this could translate to excellent word of mouth. Take, for example, the Southwest Airlines ‘free tickets’ meme that has spread like a wildfire through Facebook.

Tweet it up

Twitter is billed as a micro-blogging site, but it’s also a great way to micro-manage your online perception. A dicey article about you on Huffingtonpost.com can yield hundreds or even thousands of negative comments. Counter this by Tweeting a brief explanation or just something positive to lessen the damage. This should in turn yield a fresh wall of positive Tweets that will be seen as more current than the original article. Twitter is way to stay on the offensive and to be seen as working in real-time communication.

Use viral video to your advantage

In the aftermath of the disastrous BP oil spill, the company took to the TV and the Internet with videos in which the CEO made personal appeals to the public, claiming that the company was going to do everything it could to fix the problem. While the videos might not have convinced everyone, they received thousands of views on YouTube and probably lessened the public outrage over this horrific accident.

There dozens of ways you can approach your company’s online identity, too many to list here. However, they all revolve around the core idea that social media is a storm of energy that can and must be harnessed. Staying active on these sites is an incredible way to evolve your PR strategies and refurbish your online brand.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

Guest post by Mihaela Lica Butler

One of the most important components of your PR strategy has to be reputation management. Your business and personal success depend by and large on public perception. Reputation is the essence of who or what a business or person is.

Unfortunately for the SME or even some corporate decision makers, not much information exists in simplistic form, there are no real “simple guides to reputation management.” But, the infographic below, provided by KBDS Digital Marketing , does a nice job outlining some do and don’t practices and possible remedies for negatives. An old Chinese proverb roughly states:

“Don’t consider your reputation and you may do anything you like.”

Graphic Courtesy of KBSD Digital Agency

Maybe the most valuable lesson that can be “re-learned” from this graphic is how companies and individuals can get a “so called” exterior vision. Judging for yourself the quantitative view of your reputation may lead to a filtered view. Seeking the advice and feedback of others in your network, even expanding your network for the purpose, can help your reputation in the short and long term. No matter what methods you employ though, it is crucial to listen and respond when customers speak. The social revolution just empowered billions, but it can empower you too.

About the author
Mihaela Lica Butler is an experienced PR professional, senior partner and founder of Pamil Visions PR. She writes about the latest in the PR field at Everything PR and is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others). She also occasionally writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. To stay in touch with her latest work, follow her on Twitter.

As web marketers enter into the new year, it’s important we take time to consider what’s right around the corner. Whether you’re a part-time blogger or a salaried employee of an internet marketing agency, so long as your income is connected to technology you’re always going to need to be staying one step ahead. 2012 is set to become a memorable year for online marketers and entrepreneurs, so don’t allow yourself to get behind on the next big things in web marketing. In summary, expect the following to unfold sometime later this year:

Personal App Revolution

First came Siri available on the iPhone. Soon, everyone with a smartphone will have a personal assistant app. These services will partially render traditional SEO obsolete – and at the very least force a rewriting of the rules regarding the value of page rankings.

News Will Get the Clicks

With the advent of voice activated searches underway, pay-per-click is slowly going to subside into oblivion. The dwindling sources of PPC revenue will come almost entirely from news seekers and others attempting to retrieve recent information immediately, making constant updating a top priority.

Infographics Will Spread the Word

Infographics are a relatively new Internet-based media phenomenon in which highly detailed information is delivered by-way of an equally detailed graphic. They’re perfect for being linked to, sent via mobile text, and ultimately for online entities to market themselves.

QR Couponing

Now that the majority of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones, which include barcode scanners, expect QR codes to finally take off as a legitimate form of online advertising. QR couponing will particularly become effective, further breaking down the wall that separates online advertising from its real world products and sales.

Flash Abandonment

In late 2011, Adobe announced they were halting development of their mobile version of Flash. Expect more and more online entities to depart from the platform altogether. This is for the simple fact that Flash is unsuitable for smartphones and even more unsuitable for tablets.

Before you sit down and start planning your 2012 online marketing strategy, it’s critical that you do your best to see what’s around the corner first. It’ll save you time spent playing catch up, as well as provide you with “first wave” time that others in your field won’t have the luxury of possessing. Be one of the first to act on the upcoming internet marketing trends of this year and expect to be rewarded because of it.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

First of all, Happy New Year to you all Hope 2012 is just as you have imagined it to be and then some! Now it’s back to business..

A while back I told a good friend of mine selling career and business related products and services that December will be an awesome month for him. He’d sell more, a lot more than in the previous months. He did not believe me, not entirely. He then told me December had been an amazingly pleasant surprise.

The truth is I drew a very obvious conclusion. Whenever a year ends and a new one starts, we start reviewing our lives and somehow see the negatives, then decide to do something about it. We start working on our resumes in December, we start planning, in our head or on paper, we buy products and services to help us achieve our goals, from business to weight loss and so on.

I suspect the seasonal extended family reunions play a decisive part, that’s why most of our planning effort happens between Christmas and New Year’s Eve! We go to face our loved ones who somehow are our biggest critics as well, tell them about our lives and have them point out where we went wrong. Or they don’t, but they start talking about their accomplishments and all we have to do is compare notes and figure where we need to improve. 

I believe there is nothing wrong with using whatever it takes to motivate ourselves. The problem is we plan and buy in December, start pushing hard in January, and by February we’ve already allowed ourselves to tone it down and take it easy, we’ve already found ways to accept the reality of our life instead of trying to change it. Things might pick up some speed around our birthday, whenever that is, but then we wait for Christmas again to find motivation to go on with our plans.

What’s wrong with new year resolutions is that we should not use holidays and the generally accepted calendar to boost our efforts and decide what our lives should be like. It applies to our personal lives, our careers and our businesses. We should always work on improving everything about us, on getting where we want to be.

As Yvonne DiVita of Lip-sticking puts it,

Here’s the skinny – your business needs to thrive all year long. Your business needs to be on the leading edge all year long. Your business should be launching new ideas and new projects throughout the year. You can time them to specific holidays, if you like, or specific calendar events. But, don’t plan them according to an ‘end’ or a ‘beginning.’

Today is a beginning. It presents overwhelming opportunity to wow your clients/customers. Tomorrow will be the same. Monday will land on your desk and do the same. The only similarity in them is… that they are all open to creative ideas that will make your customers stand up and cheer.

If you need an end and a fresh start to motivate you, try to do that every morning, or every week, or even every month. Don’t let the December-powered January fever fade away! And try to decide for yourselves what your lives should be or where your business should be a an hour, a day, a month, a year from now! Just keep at it and start fresh every day.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting more. We should appreciate what we have, but wanting more and better is not such a character flaw. We actually all do it: we want to travel more, run faster or further, get more clients, sell more products, touch more people with our words and so on.

What will you do today to achieve your goals?

Dale Carnege’s influential 1936 self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, proudly sits on many PR professional’s bookshelves and in the Kindle queue’s of the digital library of many SEO services. The copy is usually in pristine and proper condition – because it has never been opened or touched since purchase. While playing a great prop in the professional business arsenal, it gets read as often as The Prince by politicians or The Art of War by generals.

If you are curious as to how the book applies to the current social media landscape, there are six guidelines the book gives to make people like you. Here they are with the proper social media advice to accompany them for our modern, networked times:

Become Genuinely Interested in Other People

While most people view social networking as a selfish, indulgent, and sometimes vain experience, you can get to know people intimately by following their posts. Get to know their personality by actively engaging them in content they post and not straying off of their interests when sending them messages

Smile

Too often people post about what is going wrong in their lives. The fact is that no one wants to get dragged down when checking out Facebook and Twitter. Make sure to keep your posts positive so you don’t lose followers, friends, subscribers, and friends.

Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language

Fake aliases are far too common on social networking sites. If you are going by an obscure, inside-joke ridden nickname and want to effectively network, you should consider changing your Twitter handle or Facebook profile back to what’s on your driver’s license.

Be a Good Listener

You shouldn’t use social media platforms to monopolize conversations. If you are littering the   Facebook News Feed with pointless posts, people are going to grow weary and either not follow you or not take anything you say seriously.

Talk in Terms of the Other Person’s Interests

If you are commenting on someone’s content post, do not try to veer the subject towards another topic. They posted for genuine discussion and by delivering you will score rep points.

Make the Other Person Feel Important

Instead of waiting for people to post or send you messages, actively go out and do it yourself. There is no bigger endorphin releaser than seeing a new notification, receiving a Twitter mention, or getting a DM.

By following Dale Carnege’s classic steps and just tweaking them ever so slightly, you will be on your way to winning more friends and influencing more people. This will ultimately lead to more business, better social networks, and a more fulfilling life full of variety and conversation.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

It is no secret that if you want to increase your website statistics and increase your brand’s revenue, you are going to have to implement some sort of social media campaign into your marketing mix. Instead of plugging a brand with a press release or an advertisement, Twitter and Facebook are becoming the most relevant forces in a brand’s life cycle. While most of the people on these services can be labeled as followers, a very select few have a certain je nai sais qua and are able to promote beyond belief. Here are 5 types of social media users who can generate buzz for brands:

The One With the Hollywood Credentials

All of the recent celebrity social media news has surrounded Alec Baldwin and his recent “run-in” with an American Airlines flight attendant. Baldwin refused to quit playing the popular game “Words With Friends” and caused a scene when he got kicked off the plane. According to The Washington Post, Baldwin’s tirade caused #letalecplay to trend worldwide and boosted the number of people playing the game. Baldwin’s scene was such an effective form of social media marketing that he will even get cross promotion for his television show 30 Rock out of the ordeal.

The One With the Industry Authority

From digital marketing to information technology, the biggest players in the game are going to have the most followers on Twitter and the most subscribers on Facebook. These are the types of people we turn to when we need a highly technical question answered. By Tweeting them, we are participating in a much more personal and social form of communication than a general Yahoo! Questions conversation. If you’re business’ website is mentioned by an authority, expect traffic to go through the roof.

The One With the Weird Taste in Music

The pop princess, pretentious indie kid, or heavy metal slacker are all cultural memes that most of us knows very little about. They dig deep into their respective underground worlds and come back out with music to share with us. We may not like to admit it, but most of us follow a couple of these people on Spotify in order to further satiate our ever growing and increasingly eclectic tastes in digital music. This is great for touring musicians who need to get their name out there.  They can freely distribute their music which can then be shared on Spotify and seen on Facebook.

The One With the Local Weatherman

While the national news media has a far reach, there is no more trusted authority than our local media personalities. National media can advertise large products and brands, but the smaller, more local personalities are making sales and generating publicity for small local treasures. Everything from restaurants to special events can benefit from social media posts from the local media.

The One With All of the Followers

By sheer coincidence and luck, some people are able to generate a staggering number of followers. While you may not know how they got so many people to listen to them, the A/B testing they can provide for a brand is phenomenal. Those who want products endorsed should latch on quickly because these types of people usually amount to a flash-in-the pan.

While your traditional media mix is still important, having the proper social media influence can propel your brand to new heights. Figure out the audience you want to reach and try to do some outreach with the types of people they follow. If all works out, you too can have massive social media influence.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

Guest post by Mihaela Lica Butler

In developing your communications methods and network, there’s no doubt you’ve been faced with the dilemma, “To what extent do we try and automate the process?” As technology progresses, the fine line between human mechanics and digital automation sometimes becomes blurred. And then a great chasm between them presents itself – your message lost to overdone mechanization.

Any communicator simply has to automate aspects of their marketing and outreach efforts, but the balance between personal resource and marketing machinery has to be maintained. You have already experienced this, the first time an incensed reporter for the New York  Times flamed you or an account exec, the last time a client’s message was tossed aside offhand.

The infographic below from HubSpot, may re-acquaint you with a balance any company should employ.

New leads, the two way conversation in the new digital age, straight out selling, it’s crucial to know when and where, how much, you can employ mechanized marketing techniques and tools. As we said, you already know this. For more information about “messaging” and the new marketing method, you may also want to read this post on integrated marketing, or consulting the publications at ELOQUA on mechanize marketing strategies.

About the author
Mihaela Lica Butler is an experienced PR professional, senior partner and founder of Pamil Visions PR. She writes about the latest in the PR field at Everything PR and is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others). She also occasionally writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. To stay in touch with her latest work, follow heron Twitter.