Weekend Reader: April 11 Edition

The Weekend Reader is posted every Sunday with my favorite eye-catching, inspiring, innovative and informative articles of the week.

How to Create a Killer Explainer Video for Your Startup: “This article focuses on the creation of live screen capture videos of someone demoing the website, but I think a lot of this same methodology can go into creating any sort of introductory video a company uses to explain their site.” [Read Write Start]

Are You Ignoring Email Marketing Because of Social Media: “Social media is on the minds of marketers everywhere. With its increasing popularity, marketers are thinking, “We need to be on Twitter! Let’s create a Facebook fan page! Crank out the viral videos!” Unfortunately, this often has no strategy behind it, and organizations are flying blind on the social web. While social media isn’t “killing” email like some people seem to think, it is causing email marketing to be ignored.” [Hubspot]

Ten Ways for Small Business to Use LinkedIn: “Many of these small-business people are using the site in ways you’d commonly imagine: finding leads, growing their business globally, or finding the right vendors. My buddies at LinkedIn recently provided me a list of ten additional ways small businesses can use LinkedIn.” [Open Forum]

25 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media: “One of the primary selling points of social media is the concept of engaging a potential customer or partner in your product or service. So how do you accomplish engagement on a personal level?” [Kyle Lacy]

Framework: Rings of Influence: “Recently, I spoke to a crowded room of senior marketers at a CPG retailer, one of the executives asked “What’s an indicator a company is advanced in the social space?”. I gave three answers, and one of them was “Developing a thriving unpaid advocacy program to evangelize for you and fight your battles.” The executives, which were used to traditional advertising and direct marketing had a lightbulb go off as I showed them this following framework.” [Jeremiah Owyang]

image credit: johnb49

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