Wondering what my new book, Above The Noise, is about? Here is a short video where I introduce a little detail about it.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good afternoon, everybody! My name is Carrie Morgan and I’ve authored a new book that’s coming out this summer called ‘Above the Noise.’ It’s about how to build trust, value and reputation online to rise above the noise.
I wanted to share with you a little bit what the book is about, because I think it’s so important for companies to slow down and really take time to evaluate, and take a deep look at their brands today, because that kind of clarification is truly what helps you rise above the noise. There’s so much conversation, content and social media activity online that it’s just more and more difficult every day to be heard.
There’s a couple of steps that companies need to slow down and spend some time with before they get too deeply involved in their marketing efforts to make sure that they’re targeting the right areas and the right audience, and getting the most out of their marketing efforts.
I specialize on online visibility, but I really focus on the organic, which is the unpaid side of visibility – which is what the book is about. Organic marketing is about the time you invest and the payoff you get from that time and effort that you’re spending, rather than advertising dollars (pay-per-click, Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, banner advertising – all types of paid media visibility). It includes content marketing, search engine optimization excluding paid SEM, social media and how you blend all these things together.
Above the Noise is a primer on where to start, because the very first chapter kicks the book off with a focus on understanding your brand, because you can’t create an effective strategy until you understand that who, what, where, why of your business. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or large, even a Fortune 50 company – without brand clarity, your messaging isn’t going to be on point and your marketing activity isn’t going to be successful.
So the first chapter really dives into how you evaluate that. How you do a SWOT analysis for your company and how you look at your competitive marketplace and analyze what they’re doing and how it applies to you, so that you can create messaging that really helps you rise above the noise, which is the second chapter of the book.
Once you have that brand clarity in place, the book goes on to teach you how to apply that to a brand strategy, your organic marketing, your public relations efforts and what your teams are doing – all working together to bolster your online visibility.
It’s pretty exciting and I take a little different perspective than a lot of authors would because instead of just jumping into what some of the biggest buzz words are in the marketing industry today, instead of saying ‘Oh, you have to be on Facebook, you have to be doing social media on these top platforms; and you have to be content marketing’, I really go into the strategic part of WHY. Why are you doing a certain social media platform and how does it benefit you? Who is your target audience? What is the best way to reach that target audience? How can you integrate your efforts for maximum reach?
I have over 23 years in the industry now, and a lot of time and energy during those years, those decades, has been focused on market positioning – going through the exercise of defining what a brand is and applying it to their marketing, positioning them within their competitors to stand out more, and applying those things to the digital side of marketing. Over the last few years, I’ve focused my expertise on taking traditional public relations and transforming it into digital PR, blending content marketing, social media and SEO into traditional PR tactics for a highly integrated approach – and this book shares some of those tactics with you. If you only do content marketing, or only SEO or only social, you’re not going to get the same ability to be more visible online than you can with an integrated approach.
It strengthens your results and makes it happen faster.
So this book targets entrepreneurs, business owners and marketers, sure, but especially small businesses, how they can do that most effectively. It helps them discover clarity around their brand, then consistently apply that clarity to their content marketing ,SEO and social media to build trust, value and reputation using three or four very specific tactics.
For example, I go into a bit of depth on how to build online reviews, because when it comes to elevating your company, Google reviews can make big difference in SEO rankings and conversion. It’s so fast to put together yet highly neglected by most companies. Restaurants are great at it, and some retail store fronts are, but for the most part, companies ignore this and it’s a highly valuable tool. It isn’t difficult to put together an annual campaign, for example, on how to ask customers for reviews and what to do with them, and how to point them to the right location. Do you want them on Yelp? Do you want them on Amazon? Do you want them on both? Do you want to give them the ultimate convenience of saying ‘Okay – here are the 4 platforms that we take reviews on!’ Reviews are an important way to rise above the noise, and critical in building trust.
Anyway – I’m about a third of the way through the book. I’d hoped to have it done by now, so instead of it being published in May, I’m bumping it further out so it’ll be later in the summer. I’ve had some issues with my wonderful teenagers come up and work that have pushed my deadline back. But I think it’s coming together really well and it’s really exciting.
I have a second book in the queue – The Digital Haystack – that targets marketers. Very excited about that one. It’s written on a much more sophisticated, deeper level for marketers that already have experience in online visibility, but want to maximize their skills and take it to the next level.
But anyway – if you’re a smaller business, an entrepreneur, Above the Noise has valuable tips, so let me know what you think! I have a couple of different online communities I would love you to join if the topic interests you. I’m on Facebook, but I took down my Facebook page for my agency, just because of the reach issues Facebook has. But I’m very present on LinkedIn, I’d love to connect with you there. I’m also on Twitter quite a bit – my Twitter handle is @morgancarrie – find me there.
I do have some upcoming fun things that I plan to do with the book. I’ll be releasing a couple of teaser chapters that I’ve pulled together and an online platform, so when I talk about strategy in the book, for example, you can go online to this platform and it’ll have some worksheets there, articles to learn more about it and other things to help you put ideas from the book into play and really adapting it so that your marketing fits.
Some exciting things in store! Be sure to subscribe, then you’ll get all kinds of things as they’re released. Above the Noise will be coming out later this summer. My publisher’s Motivational Press and it will be in bookstores, so it’s pretty exciting stuff.
Thanks for joining me today. If you have some ideas on what you’d love to see included in the book, feel free to shoot me a direct message on Twitter or reach out to me on any of the social media platforms. I would love your input.