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In a platform world, publishers face tough decisions on where to place their resources. In August, The Economist faced this head on and axed its ailing Pinterest and Tumblr accounts while ramping up its commitment to LinkedIn.
The publisher had been experimenting on Pinterest for the past six months. But even with a social media team that had grown from two to 10 people, The Economist couldn’t make it click. “From day one, it was a struggle,” said Denise Law, community editor at The Economist. “We found it difficult to articulate what our raison d’être for Pinterest was. It’s not the place to share serious content; it’s more where people go to share ideas.”
For Pinterest, The Economist was posting pieces from 1843, its culture and lifestyle magazine, then called Intelligent Life. Articles from travel blog Gulliver’s Travels were also going there, as well as pieces from its archives and links to items from The Economist Store. But it was gaining no traction. When it cut the account, it had 5,000 followers. “Not enough to move the needle,” said Law, adding that its Tumblr account shared the same fate. Earlier this year, The Economist also culled a number of its Twitter accounts.here's
The Economist’s approach to social media is, according to the publisher, to promote quality over quantity. It’s taken that mission to LinkedIn, which it uses for brand awareness rather than to drive traffic. By tweaking its approach to publish a broader spectrum of content, The Economist saw its LinkedIn follower count grow from half a million last year to 2.4 million, and it continues to grow at a rate of 25,000 followers a week, according to Law....
“How can we get more visitors to our website?”… You’re certainly not alone, as increasing traffic is often the number one problem faced by marketers today. The bad news? Saying “get more traffic” is easier said than done. You could write guest posts (Leo wrote 150 articles in 9 months when Buffer first launched), optimize for SEO traffic, or drive visitors through social media. The options are endless. This article focuses on the latter, though. In this post, I’ll share the seven most powerful lessons we learned at Hubspot from running social media experiments to increase our social media referral traffic by 241%....
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....
Brief-writing is the unsung art of content marketing. Get it right and you dramatically increase your chances of hitting a home run. Get it wrong and you’re more likely to win the lottery (it’s possible but don’t hold your breath).
And since most marketers aren’t the ones actually writing or designing or producing the content in their editorial calendars, the brief is the most important place to exert leverage and make an impact on the final product. It all starts here.
So what goes into a great content brief? The usual stuff plus six critical extras you don’t see in many briefs....
I will get straight to the point since I have so much to share.Long story short:Some weird things have happened since the morning of September 12, 2014, the day 1,009,964 people viewed the story of my life.
It was my second article to get big traffic, and since then my life has become a bit intense at the crossroads of freelancing, startup-ing, and blogging.
Here is the thing I want to share with everyone in this post:I am starting to come up with a set of tactics that have been working repeatedly for getting huge traffic and visitors, and turning them into subscribers or followers across all networks.
My findings come from online marketing, managing social media and growth for the businesses of friends and clients, and my own work....
B2B marketers also need an artistic side to go with their scientific roles in attracting potential buyers.
According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 80 percent of responders said they research a product online before buying. Today, it’s not enough for businesses to have a voice in traditional channels. In addition, brands must be active online in order to influence purchase consideration – with emphasis on the word “active.”...
As a result, we at Vertical Measures have created the following eight-step approach that businesses can adopt to begin the quest of creating content their audience will find and love, and see success through content marketing. (In fact, I just published a book that covers these eight steps in detail.)...
Content marketing is more important to B2B businesses. Who is succeeding and why? Below is a infographic that details B2B Content Marketing Trends for 2015.
Here are 15 B2B case studies. They show how content marketing drives ROI with B2B businesses who: - Know their audience
- Don’t create content for the sake of creating content
- Use specific content solutions to impact different stages of the buying cycle
- Integrate internally with their teams...
Some have deep pockets to solve this. RedBull for instance became a media company with its own record labels, studios and a content pool of 50,000 videos.
Do you?
As an SMB, chances are… no.
So how does a content strategy for the rest of us look like?
Answer: Low cost / fast / high impact.
Easier said than done of course but here in Silicon Valley we have examples every day of companies with limited budget changing the world in a radical way. So we got inspired by the Lean Startup movement and together with other marketers decided to apply that to marketing: speed and agility can make up for lack of budget.
Here’s a framework on how to do this. L.E.A.N means:...
We get it, your inboxes are jam-packed with must-read trend predictions for 2015, and no doubt some of them are right on the money. We can all feel the shift: This year will be a game-changer, especially in the field of social innovation.
If we want to be ahead of the curve, we have to be creative, forward-thinking and incredibly innovative when it comes to designing new products, services and brands. This list is all about taking the top 10 innovation trends of 2015 and transforming them into actionable opportunities that you can run with and profit from in the year to come....
Simplistically, consumers consume content that resonates with them. Mostly, this happens on a subconscious level, and something as basic as the colour of the dress being worn by the model can dramatically sway a campaign.
Simplicity, however, is not something commonly associated with subconscious processing, which is where technology finds its place. Results from A/B testing, when fed into algorithms, determine not only which dress, for example, will present the best returns, it goes much deeper: information such as a black dress will work on a female audience aged between 25 and 28 years, using Android mobile devices.
Naturally, the queries all stem from creative output – this is always the starting point. Additionally, certain aspects of the campaign, for example, the target audience, need to be defined. Once the basic parameters have been defined, scientific metrics should be overlaid. By using algorithms, hundreds of permutations can be created, and the most effective easily determined....
Rather than listing more examples, with this post, we want to offer you a methodology to ensure that your brand doesn’t make an appearance in “Part 3.” To catch potential mistakes before they make it to your social media messaging queue, it’s helpful to set up an editorial process for your posts. You probably have one in place already for your content marketing platform, and those translate easily into social media messaging, and won’t take up too much of your time and effort. But if you’re unfamiliar with the idea and the process seems intimidating, we have prepared this handy flowchart, along with a list of questions to aid you with the vetting of your social media posts.
As CMI research shows, marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are more effective than those who don’t have a written strategy. Yet, only 27% of B2C and 48% of B2B marketers have developed a plan.
If you lack a written strategy, a one-page plan is a great place to begin. If you have a detailed strategy but struggle to gain traction, boiling it down to one page will make it easier. A one-page strategy can help you:
- Crystalize your content marketing strategy
- Gain stronger buy-in more quickly from executives or clients
- Keep content producers strategically aligned...
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Perhaps most reflective of this has been the award-winning juggernaut of REI's #OptOutside campaign, which won the Titanium Grand Prix on Saturday. If for some reason you weren't one of its 6.7 billion media impressions, essentially the company closed its doors on Black Friday, encouraging its employees and everyone else to get out into the outdoors. Beyond the ad, starring REI chief exec Jerry Stritzke introducing the idea from a wide-open office, the brand also created a helpful online guide to hiking trails and other outdoor activities around the U.S.
By encouraging us to drop out of the annual shopping day, the outdoor retailer aims for more sales and brand loyalty. The company said the brand's social media impressions went up 7,000%, with 2.7 billion media impressions in 24 hours, while overall the campaign attracted 6.7 billion media impressions, 1.2 billion social impressions, and got more than 1.4 million people to spend the day outdoors. Meanwhile, more than 150 other companies joined REI to close their doors on Black Friday, and hundreds of state parks opened up for free.
If Cannes is the ad and marketing industry's Oscars, than this is arguably Best Picture. The Titanium category is meant to honor work that breaks new ground, crosses boundaries, and pushes the industry forward. The win adds to the campaign's Media and Promotions Grand Prix, picked up earlier in the week, and its run of wins at other industry awards like the D&ADs, and Best of Show at the One Show awards in May....
As social media becomes less shiny, many of our clients are realizing that social media success relies on having a content marketing plan.
While we’ve been hired to come in and “do” social media, our constant gentle push about sharing stories through original content (read: the RIGHT content for our customers) is finally being felt.
Our biggest client came to us this month ready to tackle the reason social media exists in the first place: storytelling. More specifically, telling their story in such a way that the consumer aligns with, trusts, and recognizes the brand.
While putting together their agenda, I thought it may be helpful to share so everyone can get clear on their content marketing plan or agenda for 2016....
Everyone makes it sound so easy. Post a few times on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and the traffic will pour in.
In reality, it’s not easy. And like with anything else, you need to spend some time learning how to do it properly.
I assure you it’s possible. My nutrition blog case study received over 9,000 visits from Facebook alone last month, despite being a new blog.
But as I noted in that second-month update, it could be doing even better. My friend Mike, who is running the site, is a really smart guy, but it’s still taking him some time to really understand how to use social media to its fullest potential.
You should care about social media traffic because it is one of the biggest referrers of traffic at your disposal. In early 2015, social media traffic made up 31% of overall traffic.
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....
How often should you post to your social media accounts?
For many marketers, this question is tough. Here’s why: Social media is a very flexible and fluid part of your marketing strategy. It’s not easy to draw the line between how much you could be posting and how much you should be posting.
That’s why we created the 2015 Social Media Benchmarks Report. Marketers need actionable, tailored insight to improve their social strategy, and that’s not easy to come by. There’s millions of helpful social media statistics out there, but the most helpful ones are industry-specific.
So if you want to see how your social media strategy stacks up against other companies in your space, check out our industry-specific social media analysis below. You can also click the links below to jump to individual verticals...
Forget metrics and marketing objectives. Ask yourself what business challenges the marketing team is accountable for solving. Then, set the content performance indicators based on the ultimate results you want to bring to the table. Not every type of content will resonate with all audiences at any stage in their buying journey. That’s why you need a strategy.
As you approach content marketing, set your priorities before you decide on formats or frequency. Ask yourself questions like: - Do we need to build more brand awareness, because buyers don’t even know who we are?
- Do we need to get more traffic to our website?
- Do we need to do a better job of engaging online visitors?
- Do we need more email subscribers, and more contact names for sales?
- Do we need to do a better job of nurturing our leads, or cross-selling products to our customers?...
Do you want to improve your social media marketing? Are you curious about what works for large companies? The best way to add techniques to your repertoire is to look at what brands with high levels of engagement are doing.
In this article I’ll share 26 tips, an A-Z guide, from brands doing an excellent job of social media marketing and getting results to match.
Content marketing was voted the top marketing activity to drive commercial results in 2015, according to Smart Insights, so competition will be tough and the need to create a focused plan is paramount.
Even though content looks set to take over the digital marketing landscape in 2015, brands still need to get the fundamentals right. This means coming up with a clear strategy, researching consumer data, distributing content in the right places and measuring campaign effectiveness.
By doing so, B2C companies can overcome challenges such as creating engaging content that resonates and appeals to customers, on a regular and consistent basis.
Take a look at the infographic below for an overview of, the most commercially important digital marketing trends for 2015, marketers' top goals for 2015, most popular B2C content marketing tactics, 7 content marketing planning techniques, and more.
As a small business owner, the concept of content marketing makes you raise an eyebrow and ask yourself lots of questions that might include:
Do I really need a content strategy to speak my mind and bond with my clients? Couldn’t I just let the words flow freely?
Don’t let your upcoming experiences provide the answers to these questions.
Trying to convey your messages without a well-researched, documented content marketing strategy would be like trying to steer a ship without a helm. In this case you would probably drown in a sea of disparate content pieces that do not actually add value to your audience and don’t do a great job at representing your business....
The phrase “people trust people, not brand advertising” should be updated to state: “People trust real people and real friends, not social media and/or brand advertising.” Nowhere is this more evident than among the Millennial generation, who for all their good intentions and social-do-goodness, are less trusting of what they read and see in social media.
An October 2014 Student Monitor survey queried college students about the the media through which they learn about products and services. The number one channel by which students preferred to receive product/service information was good old-fashioned word of mouth (48%). Interesting, “ads on the Internet” was second at 39%, well ahead of “information on the Internet” (21%) and “product reviews online” (18%)....
Content marketing was big in 2014. Last year, more businesses began regularly investing time and money into content marketing than ever before. That’s not much of a surprise when you consider the following facts found in a recent writtent.com blog post:
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads. (Source)
78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing. (Source)
Website conversion rate is nearly 6 times higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). (Source)
If you haven’t yet taken the time to invest in developing and implementing content marketing strategies for your business, now is the time....
...more often than not, we don’t write content with the reader in mind. For the professional writer you hire, it could just be a means to an end, i.e., a paycheck. When that’s the case, the core content marketing mantras, things like “this piece of content should address a problem or help the reader out,” seem to fly out the proverbial window.
Articles are mostly used as filler and that’s the reason the ROI of content marketing is often much less than expected.
Want a solid ROI for your content marketing efforts and ultimately be able to use your content to improve your conversion rates?
In this article, I will be talking about what needs to change for that to happen and how to effect those changes....
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![How To Thrive In An Evolving Content Marketing Landscape [VIDEO] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/C9aVLEHktDmQVK4Lr6dXvzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Interesting social media/social marketing case study lessons on where and how to allocate resources. Great social media lessons.