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Q: What kind of content should a local business develop? A: The kind that converts! Okay, you could have hit on that answer yourself, but as this post aims to demonstrate: There are almost as many user paths to conversion as there are customers in your city, and Your long-term goal is to become the authority in your industry and geography that consumers and search engines turn to. Google’s widely publicized concept of micro-moments has been questioned by some local SEOs for its possible oversimplification of consumer behavior. Nevertheless, I think it serves as a good, basic model for understanding how a variety of human needs (I want to do, know, buy something, or go somewhere) leads people onto the web....
You want to be writing the right content, right?
I mean, if you're not getting anything out of your blog, why are you (or your content creators) spending hours researching, writing and formatting?
This article will break down the 10 most important pieces of content and how they can be used in combination to attract readers, generate leads, nurture those leads into signups and those signups into upgrades....
I see many parallels between a startup as a whole and content marketing, and taking a lean approach to marketing could yield several benefits.
Most importantly, you’ll be able to get: - a better return on investment (ROI)
- more consistent results from your marketing
- less stress and frustration
In this post, I’m going to break down all the different ways that you can apply lean principles to your marketing—lean marketing....
Since last year, the distribution landscape has changed considerably. One company on the old list went out of business. A few have lost a lot of their relevance. And Facebook has gotten much stronger, continuing on its path to world domination, one suggested post at a time.
Clearly, not all distribution platforms are created equally. Social networks each have certain types of people drawn to their respective news feeds—think of lunchroom cliques from high school. For marketers, it’s crucial that precious ad dollars are spent wisely on the clique that’s most likely to respond to your work. There needs to be clear objects for any distribution initiative so marketers can pair smart content with the right platform, and as a result, the right audience.
As you think about how to make your content more effective, here’s our updated breakdown of the most important distribution platforms in 2015....
You can use many methods to improve your conversion rate.
But very few can improve your conversion rate as much as case studies can.
Case studies have a few big benefits: - they resonate with prospects
- they show that your product or service can work
- the transparency increases the trust a reader has in you
All of these benefits are important, but the last one—in particular.
Trust is one of the most important factors in conversion rate optimization....
If our content never moves, if it simply sits on a website without any views, shares, and engagement, it has about the same value as the world’s greatest movie script locked from view in a cold, dark vault. The investment in our content is largely wasted.
In this post I will cover 12 “quick hit” structural actions you can take with your content to make it more “shareable.”
The basic idea is that we want to remove every possible obstacle in our control so there is simply no excuse not to share your content!
Here we go. Let’s ignite …
It’s not just marketing and advertising executives who’ve discovered the benefits of a content marketing campaign.
According to Insideview, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads on a monthly basis than companies that don’t. And a whopping 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles—and not via advertising.
If content marketing isn’t a part of your overall marketing strategy, you should reconsider....
However, like much of the content out there on the internet, most branded content is not exceptional. Some brands just don’t get their customer base, while others recycle articles, photos, and videos instead of producing original pieces and are too pushy trying to sell their products.
If you’re gearing up to start your own branded content website, and want to get the most content marketing ROI, you should research what the best-of-the-best brands are doing. We spoke to four of them — Casper, GE, Barneys, and Williams-Sonoma — about how they built their sites and consistently put out excellent content.
These content creators discuss about their content marketing strategies, their methodologies, and their goals when it comes to building a branded content site....
With only 21% of B2B marketers saying they are successful at tracking content marketing ROI, it’s inspiring to see success in an unexpected (even perceived as stodgy) environment: academic medical centers. We’re proud to share the story of Wake Forest Innovations, the commercialization arm for Wake Forest University and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. I was fortunate to speak with its Director of Marketing and Business Development, Vishal Khanna, who is a finalist for Content Marketer of the Year. (The award will be announced at Content Marketing World in September.)
Vishal was chosen as a finalist for his dedication to performance in content marketing. While you may not work for an entity in an academic medical center or a university, you will find insights and lessons to learn from Vishal’s story. He and his staff of one full-time-equivalent employee and two 30-hour-a-week contractors rock performance by executing a content marketing strategy that an agency helped them develop....
Businesses need to create new content at an unprecedented rate. Seventy percent of B2Bs are creating more content than they did just one year ago, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report.
With this growth in demand comes a unique set of problems. How do business owners continually create new, original content? How do they regularly come up with topics that haven’t already been covered a thousand times before? And perhaps most importantly, how do they find the time to create this content while still trying to run their business?
Fortunately, using content creation tools can help significantly. This post will look at some amazing tools to help you continually create unique, relevant content for your audience....
The exponential growth of content marketing has revealed an interesting skills gap that is hindering the efforts of companies to transform content marketing from a promising set of experiments into an agile, scalable, strategic function in the business.
As brands expand their use of content and rich media assets to deliver engaging experiences to their customers, they are using a whole new lexicon and set of skills. Teams responsible for content planning, production, and measurement must be able to work together, speak the same language, and be focused on a common set of tasks even when geographically dispersed.
Brands create content marketing teams from different sources — in-house, agencies, and freelancers. This structure creates the potential for a modern-day Tower of Babel – people try to communicate with one another, but each speaks a different language and they differ on what content marketing is....
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....
Over the past few years, content marketing has evolved from being just another trend, to becoming a necessary component of digital marketing. Businesses of all types and sizes are adopting content marketing tactics to meet their marketing needs, which explains why content marketing has become one of the most competitive online marketing tactics to date.
However, there are still tons of businesses and companies not utilizing content marketing in their digital marketing strategies, and if that includes you, then check out these cold, hard facts from the latest content marketing benchmark reports:
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“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%....
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....
There are a number of indicators that point to the fact that consumers are self-educating now more than ever. With the wealth of information available online, it has become easy for people to educate themselves on pretty much any topic, and purchase products and services that help improve their lives.
Blending Brand Loyalty
I recently made a decision to improve my diet. After doing some research online, I learned that adding nutritious smoothies to my morning routine could improve my health and increase my alertness throughout the day (selfishly helping me close more sales). The information I was reading was easy to find, and backed by several doctor’s recommendations.
It turns out the information I was consuming was published by a blender company. This piqued my interest. The blender was expensive, but it would play an instrumental role in helping me achieve my personal goals, so it was a no-brainer to execute the purchase. At no point in this process did I ever speak with a broker or direct sales person at the blender company. I went online (after doing some price comparisons) and purchased the blender on a popular e-commerce site....
The sharing of content has become a breeding ground for brand plugging and promotional stuffing. The result is audiences are now starting to see some content shared by brands as being deceiving, missing out on the fact that when you strip away the advertising pitch many of these brands have powerful stories to share.
Content marketing is primarily about sharing great stories and as you earn the audiences trust you can begin selling your products. The hard sales pitch tends to turn off potential customers, so rather going straight into selling mode, start with building trust and credibility through informative content that adds value....
In 2015, digitally enabled brand and product experiences are now dominating the purchase journey, however the path to buying has largely been removed from the retailer and is now firmly in the hands of consumers. The Deloitte Digital study on Digital Influence reveals that “over the past 3 years, consumers have stated that digital interactions can affect multiple points along their shopping journey, and the steps in the process may not be directly attributable to the eventual purchase.” In other words, brand and marketer digital influence has some impact, but it has dwindled and become part of the process, not just the click to buy influence it once had.
Not only has the general purchase journey changed from one dominated by social media marketing, the path taken varies dramatically by product category, device used and more. In other words, how people are consuming digital content along their purchase journey is different depending on what product the consumer is considering AND which device they are using. Therefore marketers must invest in understanding the deeper consumer behavior at the category level, not just the retail or wholesale level. This is likely the most significant and complex change facing digital marketing to date!...
More than anything else, what you need is step-by-step guide for creating content that converts. Keep an open mind, and learn how I create content that converts at all times...
You might believe that it somehow gets easier — or requires less time — to market your business as your online presence grows. You’d be wrong.
Even if you stairstep the number of platforms, channels, and methods you use, there comes a point in which you just can’t keep up with it by yourself, let alone continue to grow into new areas.
The only options are to embrace the marketing ceiling or start delegating some of the marketing work....
Having not published original content on the blog for 30 days, we saw only a 4 percent dip in traffic compared to the previous month.
The extra time off allowed us to experiment with content in some amazing ways. Our most successful experiments were these:
- Create new email drip campaigns based on Buffer blog posts
- Update older blog posts with new information, graphics
- Create SlideShares
- Republish content to Medium
- Bundle tools posts into Product Hunt collections
I’m happy to explain fully how we went about this experiment and all of the 14 strategies that we tried. And happy to clarify anything in the comments!
Executives want to know a marketing strategy’s expected ROI before they commit money and resources to it. But content is a different animal than other marketing initiatives. It doesn’t produce impressive short-term results; it bolsters long-term profits. Once a content marketing strategy proves its worth, executives feel more confident investing in it. The challenge is convincing them to take the initial plunge.
Here are six selling points you can use to persuade your company leaders that content marketing will go the distance for your brand
Here's something all marketers could stand to learn. The best traditional publications are consumer-oriented, while brands often publish with a “me” mentality. When a business becomes so focused on sales numbers, it can quickly turn off audiences with sales- or spam-like content.
Traditional media, on the other hand, builds engaged, loyal audiences that it can monetize. By following the lead of successful publications, brands can use some of those dollars to attract qualified clients.
Find your tilt factor
Good content needs a differentiating element. Joe Pulizzi calls it “content tilt” — it leads to unique content that makes a publication stand out. The tilt depends on the brand’s distinct philosophy and audience. Respected publications know their audiences well, and they build these four traits into everything they publish...
In this episode I interview Jason Miller, the senior manager of content and social at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. He’s the author of Welcome to the Funnel: Proven Tactics to Turn Your Social and Content Marketing Up to 11. Jason is also an excellent photographer specializing in rock bands.
Jason focuses on creating sharable content that also generates leads.
You’ll discover how content ties into influencer relationships and how to leverage it....
Social media and search engines aren’t equipped to handle the distribution of today’s content marketing and media deluge. According to Mark Schaefer’s book, The Content Code, by 2020 the amount of information on the Internet will have grown by 500 percent. Even at today’s rate of online publishing, social media and search engines can barely keep up fulfilling their promise of content distribution for many brands and media outlets alike.
Only 10 organic search engine results appear on the first page of most search engines and organic social media visibility is declining like the Russian economy. With online publishing growing every day, brands are being forced to find new and innovative ways to get their content in front of the audiences that matter to them.
BROKEN VISIBILITY PROMISES MENDED
In addition to the changing tech environment, a new ecosystem of content promotion has arisen to fill the visibility hole left by the unfulfilled promises of organic search and social media. The channels and tactics for content promotion are advancing, affecting everything from influencer outreach and media relations to native advertising and sponsored content....
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What's the best way to show local searchers that you're an authority in your niche? You guessed it — through your content. But that can be a pretty vague and overwhelming term; what are some actual ways to make a difference, conversions-wise? Miriam Ellis explains.