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...Articles that attempt to predict the future of social media make for great link bait. We’re all desperate to avoid some shiny new toy eroding our advantage or destroying all our hard work. That’s why most of these articles focus on the new technologies of the day, written in a tone that implies an impending threat if the reader doesn’t adapt quickly enough.
Facebook buys virtual reality company Oculus, so the future of social media must involve virtual reality (VR). Pinterest stuns everyone with its rapid rise, so the future of social media must have more pictures.
These aren’t predictions of the future. They’re merely reactions to whatever is happening at the time....
Distributing information about your business in a way that viewers will find valuable — helpful and relevant to their business — is the definition of content marketing.
The goal is to create relationships by building trust in your company, boosting your credibility and enhancing your “go-to expert” status. There are numerous ways to distribute content: digitally, in print and in-person.
The methods or media you choose will depend on your audience (what channels they access), your budget (the time and money resources available), and your inclination (it’s not an easy undertaking but, done well, can be extremely successful)...
It's not polite to be rude but there are times when you should not feel guilty or bad about it, learn five valid reasons when it is OK to ignore LinkedIn Requests.
Many people say that LinkedIn is one of the best professional networking tools available, and that statement is not incorrect. However, the clause “when used correctly” should be tacked to the end of it. Similar to Twitter and other social media outlets, you must be strategic about who you add to your network and who you connect with, as well as what you say and share. The “anyone and everyone” approach that is often used on Facebook and on personal social media sites is not helpful, and in fact can be detrimental, when used on LinkedIn. Below are five reasons to ignore a LinkedIn request....
While a wide variety of professionals will define content marketing in different ways, no one who actually gets it would deny the central idea is to provide valuable insights and answers.
While a wide variety of professionals will define content marketing in different ways, no one who actually gets it would deny the central idea is to provide valuable insights and answers. Therefore when the conversation becomes about finding powerful content ideas and the drill-down process begins, more often than not, you’ll hear: • Identify your customers’ pain pointsand/or… • Answer the questions potential customers have.
You’ll get no argument from me. This is indeed the formula for success. How do you discover what questions to answer?...
Content Marketing is the New SEO. Having a Content Marketing strategy for your online business is key to SEO success in 2013. However, Content Marketing should be done correctly by following certain guidelines. Below is an infographic which shows the Do’s and Dont’s of Content Marketing....
As a content marketer, there are always questions you need to ask yourself and your clients in order to maximize your content. Ross Simmonds shares his. One of the ways I’ve helped clients achieve success is by really getting into the weeds of their work. I try to immerse myself into what they’re doing and what people think of them so I can identify what content is actually going to move the needle.
Here are three of the questions I always ask...
I first started to dabble with content marketing in 1998. At that time, I worked in the internal communications department for an insurance company. Our goal was to get the employees to use our internal processing and database services, rather than outsourcing. Our solution: We created a monthly print newsletter focused on educating employees on the latest Microsoft Office updates and enhancements. Over the following six months, employees did start to use more of our services. The newsletter was part of the solution that made this achievement possible. Now, 15 years later, I’ve seen all sides of this little, booming industry, and it has afforded me a bit of perspective. We’ve come so far, and yet there is still so much to be accomplished. Here are some of the things we (at CMI) have learned along the way. I hope you find one or two helpful nuggets of wisdom in here....
In traditional marketing, much-coveted sales leads were immediately “thrown over the wall” to the sales team, which would then be tasked with following up, qualifying and—hopefully—securing the sale. Today’s marketing mix is vastly different and includes non-traditional forms of marketing, such as content marketing, that have changed the way sales leads are generated. Today, leads are qualified and prioritized first, long before any engagement with sales personnel. By providing information to buyers as they move through the sales funnel, content marketing helps foster an environment of trust between prospects and the brand. This way, buyers will feel comfortable purchasing from that brand when they are ready to make a buying decision. This process aligns marketing and sales functions....
Use these examples and key points to convince your clients and your peers to rise above the sea of jargon we all navigate every day... . .. So before you reach for jargon when you create content, ask yourself questions like, “What message am I trying to communicate here?” “Will my target audience find it both relatable and compelling, or am I resorting to jargon as a crutch because I don’t honestly know what I’m attempting to say?” Or, even worse, “Am I inventing made-up language to create what can be promptly dismissed as pseudo science?” If the answer to that last question is “yes,” then you’ll risk allowing jargon overload to defeat the purpose of the content by undermining the messaging campaign. An influential teacher inspires desired outcomes from students (i.e., acquired knowledge) by demystifying the unknown. As content marketing professionals, we should push ourselves — and our clients — toward this same standard....
Are social and content teams working closely enough, especially at enterprise organizations? Here are four tips for finding common ground between your social media and content marketing strategies. To maintain a healthy relationship between the two teams, some marketers look at social as the creation of micro-content. Yet, others might see this as limiting, considering how the rules of content engagement differ from those of social engagement across various channels.
As we wave goodbye to 2012 and say hello to 2013, there’s a good chance, you, like many other people, have been working to put together a content marketing strategy for the new year. No doubt you’ll have the objectives in place, created a well thought out strategy and work plan as long as your arm. It’s that last element I want to help you with in this blog post, by sharing a clutch of tools and services which will save you time, improve your results and give you the freedom to work on the creative aspects of your campaign....
Via Stefano Principato, massimo facchinetti
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In the past, most of us have made an educated guess at “How To Create Viral Content” and the “Best Practices for Getting Press.” But, what’s better than an educated guess? Factual research, right from the horse’s mouth.
Over the past two months, I surveyed over 500+ leading digital publishers to find out what they want, and don’t want, from content creators and outreachers. Coinciding with this research, I expanded my Harvard Business Review study to discover how age and gender may impact viral emotions.
Today, I’ve combined my findings into 43 actionable tips for creating viral content and placing it with high-authority publishers....
Are you getting the value you should from your content marketing? Learn 5 best practices your business needs to follow to get the results you deserve.
... ‘If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers’ says the always entertaining Joe Pulizzi in his packed-room presentation at Social Media Marketing World 2014.
The answer to this pathological content hoarding problem is content marketing, or at least it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, many businesses are not following important content marketing best practices and are seeing disappointing results because of it. According to research from Content Marketing Institute, 90% of businesses today are engaging in content marketing, but only 45% report it to be effective.
Here are 5 essential content marketing best practices businesses need to follow if they want to get the ROI that’s missing from their content marketing:...
A few weeks back, I sat through a “content marketing” presentation, where the presenter showed a number of case studies and talked about how the brands were leveraging the power of content marketing to grow their businesses.
Unfortunately, none of the examples were actually content marketing.CMI’s Chief Strategist Robert Rose calls these so-called examples “clever advertising.” In short, many still view content marketing as the Old Spice-style viral campaigns that are fueled by traditional media.
What content marketing really is...
“Your idea isn’t new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more.” —Mark Fletcher, Founder of Bloglines.com.
One of the benefits of my work is that I get to travel around the world to meet with fascinating people who have amazing ideas. Much of my speeches and my writings on content marketing are filled with the thoughts of others. Here are eight of my favorite content ideas that I’ve stolen. I’m sharing them with you in the hopes that they will help you as much as they’ve helped me....
... comes pre-populated with over 200,000 news sources, blogs, and social media accounts. You can set filters, and import your own feeds, including the Twitter handles you follow (I recommend @SocialMktgFella for really good news on San Francisco tech trends), as well. All this makes for a singular place to quickly survey relevant news and content, to be editorialized and curated for distribution through your blog, email, or preferred social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.
The platform just got better today, as ContentGems and HootSuite announced a new integration. The new app brings powerful content curation capability to what's become the leading social media management(SMM platform. And like the way Hootsuite has a free tier service so social media novices and light users can enjoy the tool, ContentGems now offers the same....
Content, content, content. Yes, the word ‘content’ is being banded about like some kind of must-have fashion accessory in the world of digital marketing....
...Peppered throughout the pages of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and blog pages you’ll see frequent references to ‘high-quality content’ which the search behemoth claims will help your site rank better. We all know by now that if Google says something, we should listen!
The question is, what kind of ‘quality’ content do you need for your site? Which of the many, many types is the most user-friendly, which provides the most SEO value and how much time do you have to dedicate to your overall content marketing strategy for each one?...
More brands and people continue filling the channels with their blogs, infographics, white papers, etc. As a result, we’re experiencing a deluge of content, most of it suffering from over-messaged, self-important corporate sales talk, or worse, shoddy workmanship. There’s no better example of this issue than our own marketing space where the effort to produce consistent content creates an ever increasing level of drivel. In fact, there’s so much “me, too” content, getting beyond a headline skim requires some real shake-up in the social media marketplace or a dramatic post. When readers find themselves inundated with ever increasing quantities of the same, creators find themselves producing content with diminishing value. The situation devolves to the point where content becomes spam. We all know what happens to spam. It doesn’t get read, it’s unsubscribed from, deleted, and relegated to the annals of digital indexing somewhere deep in Google....
If your content doesn’t reach the right people, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You could have the most fascinating piece of information – something that could change someone’s life – but it won’t matter if they don’t see it. When you come right down to it, there are two steps to building a brand: creating content and getting the right people to see it. Here is a five step process you can follow to get the right eyes on your content....
Are you creating content to help your buyers? If not, you need to build a content marketing hub. Here are 8 steps to build a content hub that converts.... Before you can begin building your content marketing destination, you need to understand (and be able to articulate) that your role as a B2B Marketer is not to explain to the world what it is that you sell. But to show the world how what you sell helps your buyers. That’s right, B2B Marketing is not about promotion. It is about telling stories. Stories from your customer’s point of view on how what you sell has helped them. In my presentation I present a brief history of how the world has changed for marketers. And yet, stories remain a critical component of marketing. Stories present an opportunity for B2B Marketers to not just meet the needs of our buyers, but to delight them as we enable them during the buying journey. The Content Hub Business Case The next step is to present your business case. To build a content marketing hub, you need to show how your current content marketing efforts fail to meet the needs of your buyers. A couple of ideas: Search metrics: show how your business is missing out on vital conversations happening in the earliest stages of the buying process. Web analytics: show how most visitors to your site already know who you are. Content analytics: show how the content you create is mostly late stage or isn’t being downloaded by anyone. Calculate the costs of this waste....
Ikea USA serves as a blueprint for social media content creation. There are some great ideas to steal from Ikea USA’s editorial calendar. If I were to reveal a hidden talent of mine, I’d say I’m good at assembling Ikea furniture. As most Swedes, I’ve grown up with flat packages and family quarrels around mounting manuals. I’m practically born with a hexagon key in my hand. Therefore, as a devoted brand advocate, I wanted to check out Ikea’s social media strategy; curious to know if it is as innovative as their products. Ikea Sweden is not on Twitter while Ikea USA tweets according to a clear content strategy....
Ikea UK pops on Pinterest and provides some great examples of boards showing other brands how it should be done. Pinterest saw massive growth in 2012 and this is set to continue in 2013 as people continue to engage with photos and videos. Pinterest is a great platform for businesses and brands to raise awareness and to literally show off their products. Here are 5 reasons to join Pinterest today.
A great example of how to use Pinterest comes from Ikea UK...
Do you know why your content marketing campaign is going to fail? It’s not because you can’t write great content… it’s actually because you don’t know how to promote it.
You can learn how to write great content, but if no one reads your content and links to it, there’s no point in putting it out there....
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Yes, content marketing is hard work, but so is getting out of bed in the morning. Keep calm and carry on.