Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Have you been thinking about turning your organization's communications into your version of a metropolitan newspaper newsroom? Here are some examples you should look at.

According to a study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs only 38% of B2B companies think their content marketing is effective. The same study also states that only 35% of the companies have a documented content marketing strategy.

My guess is that some of these companies do not even know whether they are effective or not. They cannot say what “effective” really is in regard to content marketing without goals, metrics etc. It would certainly help with effectiveness of content marketing to have a strategy at hand.

Here are 9 essential elements any content marketing strategy should include....

At this morning’s American Association of Advertising Agencies’ public relations forum, the New York Times’ executive vice president of advertising Meredith Levien threw a cat in with the pigeons.

The Times’ sponsored content (or ‘native advertising’ depending on your preference for buzzwords) was performing roughly as well as its editorial content, Levien said. In some cases, much better. The newspaper’s interactive feature for the Winter Olympic games in Sochi, produced with United Airlines, was viewed nearly 200,000 times, far superseding a typical editorial piece. Its paid post program launched in January and it has signed on eight advertisers, with more set to join shortly.

Levien’s remarks will inevitably serve as proof for fans of sponsored content and those who consider it the intellectual apocalypse, that their side is in the right. There are two groups of people with nothing in common who have their arms in the air right now yelling “I told you so.”...

As we all move along the content marketing maturity curve together, the biggest companies are starting to hit a new problem: lots and lots of different teams within your organisation will be generating content for their own needs – without any coordination, orchestration, strategic validation or quality control. It's the age-old challenge – local relevance vs. central control – but it's a fairly new issue for us content people and it's an increasingly important one.  

Content Proliferation Syndrome

The problem is created by the power of content itself. Once they see it, everybody wants some. Different departments are making content. The product guys need some. The consultants need some. The press team needs some. It's not just marketing, it's sales, customer service, HR... anyone who needs to communicate messages. Different disciplines are making content. You can see content proliferation just within marketing alone: The SEO guys are making a new eBook....

“Content is a shitty business. You listicle-making sheep are following us off the cliff!”- Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachineDespite Jarvis’ colorful warning to the crowd of PR professionals at the Council of PR Firms Critical Issues Forum, dubbed “Content Frenzy,” we PRs came to listen and learn at the feet of the media and content pundits.

The forum’s subtitle, “Holy Grail or Spam-a-lot?” pretty well sums up the PR dilemma. We’ve drunk the content Kool-Aid. No one doubts its potency, nor PR’s ownership claim, given our storytelling DNA and earned media chops. But literally every second brings a new flood of the stuff — tips lists, cat videos, white papers, parodies, inforgraphics, you name it. We’re in a frenzy to make our content bigger and stronger, but with so much out there, how to go beyond the listicle? How can we make ourselves and our clients heard?...

Discover 16 of the freshest and most scintillating content marketing statistics to inspire your inbound marketing strategy.

93% of marketers are familiar with the concept of custom content. Let that fact sink in for a minute – it’s pretty mind-blowing, to be honest. While brand storytelling is really nothing new, how long has branded web content really been a trend? No more than a few years, which is why it’s so amazing just how quickly it’s taken the world of business by storm.

Following the runaway success of our semi-recent blog, 55 Shareable Stats on Content Marketing Trends and Tactics, Axonn Research was kind enough to reach out with a copy of their recent report.

We couldn’t wait to hear what this leading research firm had found about Content Marketing Trends in 2013 by surveying 424 business leaders, and we’re pleased to report that the research was every bit as insightful as we imagined. Join us as we count down Axonn’s findings on how marketers and brands interface with custom content for lead generation...

Campaign Monitor, a simple email marketing solution for businesses and professionals, has taken this bottom-up approach to building a social strategy. And we’re honored to share how they’ve done it.

Campaign Monitor is a fast-growing, industry-leading company with some really incredible ideas on growth and strategy. Their marketing team, which has grown to five times the size in just over eight months, has the awesome privilege of sharing the email marketing message with others via a big number of different channels, social media included, and has just undergone this very exercise of hitting the drawing board and coming up with a rockin’ new plan.

Here’s a bit more about how Campaign Monitor redefining their social media strategy in light of their new ambitions, and how social management tools like Buffer fit into their daily workflow....

If you don’t use content marketing, there is a big chance your brand gets left behind, and it’s your competitors (who’re using content marketing) that run away with your customers.

You can’t afford to let that happen.

You must learn to not just survive but thrive in a landscape that is constantly changing. While there is no easy way of doing this and it is imperative you do the hard yards, there are a few not-so-clandestine secrets that can make your job a little easier.

Let’s unravel them....

There’s significant momentum for publishers toward increasing the production of video content, on account of both the strength of video as a medium for storytelling and high video CPMs as advertisers begin to move their TV spends online (see the Chicago Tribune’s coverage for one example). An increase in video content across the board, of course, means that it’s all the more important that we have a sense of which parts of our audience we can hope to reach with video. To that end, below is a brief survey of the state of online audiences and their consumption of video.

Imagine you’re a content consumer, not a marketer. You’re about to start your own business. Every night you lie awake gripped by fear that you won’t be able to make your mortgage payment.

One day, you find a guide for starting a business that SERIOUSLY helps you. It’s full of information you need, and you begin to trust the people who created it. So, when it’s time to get something for your business, such as project management software, you know just where to go.Now, return to being a marketer. Why should you create long-form content and how are you going to do it? Read on....