Welcome to the Fathom Blog
News & analysis on digital marketing & analytics
Fathom Core Value Stories: May Edition
Every month at company meetings, a handful of Fathomers are recognized in front of the group for extraordinary manifestations of our four core values (“everyone a leader,” “be the consigliere,” “make order from chaos,” “reward sustainable results”). This space immortalizes their accomplishments for the world to see. I hereby present the 7th edition of Core Value Stories:
- Everyone a Leader, Cheryl VanJaarsveld (pictured) — For providing outstanding strategy to a client’s automated lead-generation campaign that incorporated what they were asking for without straying from our plan’s overall goals.
- Be the Consigliere, Clinton Dugan – For quickly jumping in with informed and enthusiastic social-media consultation to help close additional business for an existing client.
- Make Order from Chaos, Dusty Steinbrink – For being particularly helpful with two landing page projects on short deadlines, including the redesign of a microsite. Each of these projects helped increase the conversion rate and overall performance of the campaigns.
- Reward Sustainable Results, Caroline Bogart –For facilitating the writers’ persona training for Q1, part 2 of a writing course on conversion style. This has enabled the group to produce better customer-centric writing around their respective buying cycles.
To the victors go the spoils … huzzah!
Fathom’s Kurt Krejny Among Presenters at Digital Summit 2012 Atlanta
The second annual Digital Summit takes place in Atlanta tomorrow and Thursday, May 9-10. Founded by entrepreneurs, its aims are to convene decision-makers in technology and finance to ”promote forward thinking and thought leadership on topics related to Internet technologies.”
Kurt Krejny, Director of Online Marketing, will be contributing to the discussion on social media by talking about using Twitter for acquisition and retention with targeted outreach.
Kurt has previously spoken at many industry conferences and relishes his role as a public voice of Web-oriented entrepreneurial activity and innovation. On the Digital Summit stage he joins other notable names such as Simon Heseltine, Director of SEO, AOL/Huffington Post; Michael Greer, Chief Product/Technology Officer, The Onion; John Trimble, Chief Revenue Officer, Pandora; and Frederick Townes, Sr. Technical Advisor, Mashable.
- Follow Digital Summit on Twitter @DigitalSummit_ (note the trailing underscore)
- Follow/communicate all the event action with the official hashtag: #DSum12
And if you’re there, say “hello” to Kurt.
The Blogging Gospel According to Seth
One of the reasons we love blogs so much at Fathom is because they are such an excellent means to provide fresh content to your website on a regular (weekly? daily?) basis. That is, as long as your blog is on your domain and NOT on some massive blog-hosting platform. You want all that fresh content featuring your important keywords to be generated right where you live for search engine cumulative effect, and it does truly work over time.
Another strong point about blogs is that they can establish oneself as an expert in an area. Seth Godin, for example, is a really respected guy in the online marketing world, and his blog is rated by many to be the best in the industry. He blogs about all things marketing-related, but in a syncretistic manner using all sorts of subject matter to make his point, which makes for entertaining reading. And reading should be entertaining!
I came across this interesting article on Neil Patel’s website QUICKSPROUT, illuminating 10 things any blogger can learn about blogging from Seth, and although the whole “list” aesthetic of many online articles is getting old, some of the points mentioned are quite empowering. A few I found encouraging were: blog every day; write like you talk; avoid time-sucking meetings and television and blog instead; edit, edit, edit!
None of these points offers any new revelation, and they’re all pretty much common sense. But as C.S.Lewis once wrote, “good teachers don’t teach you anything new, they simply remind you of what you’ve forgotten.”
So bloggers, start your engines. You CAN use blogging as an effective content marketing strategy to increase your content, site rankings, and expertise quotient in your industry—no matter what business you happen to be in. Go for it, just like Seth.
Comment: Feel free to share your thoughts.
Category: Content Creation, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO
“Big Data” Facts and Statistics That Will Shock You
Did you know in 2011 humans created 1.8 zettabytes of data? That would be equivalent to 200 billion high-definition movies that are at least 120 minutes long. It would take one person 47 million years to watch all those movies. All of this data that humans create doubles every two years. If properly used, data can help you make better decisions and have a positive effect on your business’ bottom line. The problem lies when businesses do not know how to use the data or collect poor-quality data.
How Bad Data Can Hurt Your Company
Check out these facts and statistics about how poor-quality or misunderstood data can cost your business millions:
- Bad data or poor data quality costs US businesses $600 billion annually.
- Poor data or “lack of understanding the data” are cited as the #1 reasons for overrunning project costs.
- Poor data can cost businesses 20%–35% of their operating revenue.
So, what is the solution to this problem? Hiring a team of big-data experts to sort through and make sense of the data can significantly help your business earn more money.
How Data Can Benefit Your Company
Check out the two cool facts below about how good data and best practices can have a significant impact on your business:
- Performing data-quality best practices can boost a company’s revenue by 66%
- If an average Fortune 1000 company can increase the usability of its data by just 10%, the company could expect an increase of over 2 billion dollars. (Source: InsightSquared infographic)
As you can see, Big Data, if used correctly, can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.
Social Media for Education
In a world where technology is becoming more prevalent in classrooms and the education system, I would like to focus today on a social networking platform that I recently stumbled upon. Figment.com is an online community focused on the creation, discovery, and sharing of works of writing. It is a superb example of how the power of social media can affect change and inspiration.
In December 2010, co-founders Jacob Lewis and Dana Goodyear launched Figment expecting the site to be like a Facebook for teenagers interested in young-adult fiction. Shortly after, they observed the traditional social media mindset of ‘liking’ and gathering friends was not what the users were interested in. Instead of simply sharing or rating books and documents, users themselves wanted to be the writers, thus opening up a new way for teens to write content, explore peers’ work, and provide and receive feedback.
The company’s tagline, “Write Youself In,” challenges users to write. Yes, to simply write about anything and everything they can imagine. As long as you are over the age of 13, you can sign up for a free account and start writing and connecting. Figment also provides free publications by professional authors and has a library of more than 350,000 pieces. While this could eventually lead to authors using the popular online community for marketing advantages, publishing is not the main point of the site.
Figment.com
One of the biggest advantages of the site is how educators can use it as a teaching tool; teachers can create a private group and include their students. This allows for collaboration and review by the teacher and other students as well as the ability to monitor students’ writing. After their assignment is complete they can make their works public where all users—as well as published authors— can comment, which can challenge the writer to expand the content or take the ideas to the next level. “Figs,” as users like to be called, are not just data-dumping on the site, but are a highly engaged audience.
While the marketing potential is certainly there, it is more important to focus on how this is transforming the idea of social media as well as providing a new way to interact with schoolwork and education. Instead of merely sharing ideas that are already out there with people you already know, this community is creating a huge collection of original content with the entire user base. It allows students to feel empowered that their teachers are viewing and commenting on their writing, and their peers and even professionals are getting involved. Figment gives them a safe environment to express themselves, the exhilaration of knowing their voice and ideas are not going unheard, and the motivation to keep writing themselves in.
