Anna Ritchie
Marketing & communications practitioner, and product manager for TMCnet. Focus on content marketing and social media with a specialty in Online Community-building for businesses. Follow @Connectincloud and @apritchie
Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency
Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...
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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction
In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...
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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call
Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...
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IGEL Advances Future of Work
IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...
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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN
Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...
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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War
Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...
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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise
Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...
Full Story »Why You Need a Twitter Button on Your Online Community
September 28, 2011As any marketing practitioner knows, keeping track of all your online community, company website and social media activity, discussions and content can be daunting. I feel like I’m constantly slogging through comments and links and likes and tweets (before I’ve even had my coffee) trying to figure out which pieces I’ll re-tweet, comment and link to, and so on and so on…
That’s why marketers are focusing on integration as a main priority for 2012- and are looking to marry the 3 pillars of their online marketing (website, online community and social) activities by making sure messages are consistent and the sites are all “speaking” with each other. Now, how the heck do you even do this?
Coca-Cola's Sweet Lessons in Online Community-Building
September 6, 2011Recently, I stumbled upon this article, which outlines how companies are changing their retail strategies to meet the changing needs of consumers who, though spending less due to the current economic conditions, are also still highly engaged in mobile, video, social and traditional e-commerce activities. The article highlights Coca-Cola, who launched an exciting social and interactive campaign in 2009 with their “Freestyle” vending machines which people can use to select flavors and combinations of their choice for a unique, personalized drink. Now, the company is taking this feature online with an interactive Facebook page and Smartphone Apps that allow people to choose a mix, name the drink, get a code then go to a machine to get their blend dispensed.
That’s more than a yummy refreshment.
Is Your Online Community a Disaster?
August 29, 2011Since the media focus in the past week has been all about hurricanes, I’d thought I’d take a few moments to discuss some common online community hazards, and how to avoid a complete marketing disaster.
In a recent article, every Online Community has a dark side, I outlined some general best practices to employ, with some tips on what to avoid when managing an online community. In addition to these fundamental online community-building principles, there are some design fundamentals that companies can easily implement to prevent their site from looking like a disaster-zone. Because let’s face it, content is great, but appearance is probably equally- if not more- important to site visitors.
B2B Companies are Rocking Social Media...No, Really!
August 22, 2011A few months ago, we published this blog entry that challenged some of the traditional notions that B2B companies couldn’t, and aren’t, benefitting from social media as much as B2C companies.
Intrigued by this assumption, I posed this question to some of my LinkedIn comrades in several discussion groups (ps. I’m loving the engagements and discussions happening on LinkedIn these days…)
Here’s what I asked, and what I learned from the fantastic participants:
Think Before You Tweet (and Other Manners for Online Community Managers)
August 17, 2011Social media as a marketing tool can be invaluable for companies large and small who are looking to boost their online presence. But social media use on an online community requires some slightly different tactics from your corporate social accounts, and over the past few months I’ve observed some social media behaviors that I would encourage, and discourage, for online community managers.
1) Think Before You Tweet
Twitter is an excellent content sharing tool, and the more content you share the more likely you are to improve your SEO and reputation in your industry.
Every Online Community Has a Dark Side
August 9, 2011Online communities are great for businesses. In fact, I spend most of my day writing about, talking about, and reading about how successful and profitable these sites can be for online marketers. So when a recent SEO webinar participant asked us to explain the downsides of online communities, I was a bit taken aback. Immediately , I thought “Ridiculous.
What to Outsource on Your Online Community (and What to Keep For Yourself!)
July 26, 2011Recently, I read a great blog post by Michele Linn via the Content Marketing institute that provided tips on what content marketing activities to outsource to an agency or consultancy vs. keep in-house. Among the top activities were content creation (i.e., “Leave it to the experts” or “Give it to people who have more time than you”) and strategy development (i.e., Partnering with an expert who can tell you best practices or help you figure out your internal gaps). The biggest things to keep in-house?
2 SEO Techniques the Experts Say Will "Make or Break" Your Online Community
July 22, 2011In a recent “SEO and Online Communities” webinar, experts Jonathan Allen (Search Engine Watch) and Rich Tehrani (CEO, TMCnet) joined forces to give viewers the latest research and best practices on SEO and Search Marketing tactics companies should implement, and avoid.
Throughout the discussion, Allen and Tehrani highlighted how online communities are growing in popularity as a great SEO-booster, mainly because they are content-driven and offer truly valuable and educational information to site visitors – something the search engines love to see.
Here are the 2 SEO techniques Allen and Tehrani emphasized during the webinar as “critical practices” online community managers should consider when building and maintaining their sites.
3 SEO Myths Dispelled
July 13, 2011I’m in post-webinar bliss. Not only did a record number of people register for yesterday’s SEO-focused online event, but both the discussions from expert speakers and questions from attendees were extremely original and thought-provoking.
Jonathan Allen, Director of Search Engine Watch, teamed up with TMCnet’s CEO Rich Tehrani to discuss the latest research and best practices for boosting your company’s SEO, and ways to use online communities to do so. Even though many companies are utilizing smart SEO practices to boost their search engine ranking (hopefully many have learned from recent SEO-punishments as a result of the Panda update) there are still 3 myths which came up during yesterday’s session that I think yesterday’s webinar dispelled, and would like to gather additional reactions to.
Promotions and Multiple Pages: Social Media Disasters...or Opportunities?
June 29, 2011In a recent article posted on the eMarketing group on LinkedIn they listed “5 Social Marketing Disasters”. I found this list interesting, but didn’t necessarily agree with all of these being categorized as “disasters”. If you have a proper online community, then some of these “disasters” can actually benefit your business, but they need to be done right.
Take disaster number 1, “Creating too many groups, pages, etc”.
