Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Employ someone and you have to consider salary, workspace, and equipment; not to mention benefits like medical care and paid vacation time.

Conversely, freelancers are only paid for the work they do.

This is generally (though not always) more cost-effective than taking on someone in-house, and allows you to increase or decrease their workload as needed.

This makes outsourcing extremely flexible, which is a huge win for small businesses.

But don’t get too excited just yet… there’s a hard part: actually finding great freelancers and managing them effectively.

Thankfully there’s plenty of tools designed to help you do just that (and many more being released all the time).

Let’s take a look at some of the more recent additions to the market that can help you to outsource and manage your content creation in 2016...

As we all should know when it comes to building an audience, “content is king”. However, with the mass-production of online content and Google’s latest algorithms, quality content should be the main focus of all content contributors.

Quality content is content that manages to be error-free and engaging. While having error-free content is only a matter of having a good command over the English language, and ensuring that your content gets proofread by a qualified editors (if necessary), creating “engaging” content opens up a whole new chapter.

The purpose of this article is to help you create high quality content more often.Here are 10 secrets on how to create engaging content that should keep your readers hooked and coming back for more....

It's no surprise to see a decline in search volume when it comes to link building and a continuing growth for content marketing.

Content marketing is becoming more and more popular to build relationships with your audience, and if you don’t take action now and build a solid content marketing strategy your competition will get ahead.

To stay ahead of the curve, it is essential to keep up to date with the latest content marketing trends. To make it easier for you, here are top 7 content marketing trends that will rule 2016....

This past year, we've seen the importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. At the same time, both video and infographics have become powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers.

To help you keep pace with these trends, let's take a look at some statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales....

In 2005, we were reportedly exposed to over 3,500 brand messages per day. Nowadays, that figure is closer to 10,000 (if not already higher).

5.3 trillion display ads are shown online each year, 400 million Tweets sent daily, and 4.75 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every day.

This relentless stream of content makes it harder than ever for your message to cut through the noise and get attention.

And while there’s no secret formula to creating content that gets shared, often, the content that people share isn’t random. By understanding some of the science behind successful content, you can increase your chances of success.

Here’s our guide to breaking through the noise.

Adding video to a landing page makes it 53% more likely to appear on the first page of Google results. (Source: AdWeek Social Times)

A thumbnail image of the video is presented on the search engine results page (SERP), which makes it stand out amongst the text-based listings and is therefore twice as likely to get clicked. What’s more, YouTube is the second largest search engine and the web’s third most trafficked site. 

Social success

People love sharing video on social media networks. And social networks are encouraging people to share video. Facebook has made a clear commitment to video adding auto-play, view counts, and more mobile functionality to its native video player. Twitter has a native app allowing you to record, edit and tweet videos under 30 seconds long. Vine is ALL videos.

Live streaming apps such as Blab and Periscope are rocking social media. The list goes on....

Regardless of whether your business is looking to build or buy your content marketing expertise, setting yourself up for greater success will take dedication, determination – and an enterprise-wide view of every piece of content you produce. Fortunately, the processes don’t need to be overwhelming if you have the right tools and guidance on hand.

When it comes to creating successful content marketing initiatives, I’ve found that most of the tasks can be divided into four key areas (with a bit of overlap here and there): thinking, planning, doing, and improving.

With this in mind, I’ve compiled a DIY tool kit of checklists, templates, and resources that can help make running your content marketing program a lot more manageable....

Name one brand that isn’t in social media.

Give up?

That’s because today, when something is not in social media, it probably doesn’t exist. People, events, brands, even government institutions are engaging their followers through social media.

Brands invest in social media marketing because it doesn’t just guarantee awareness or increase profit. Social media gives you a platform to be closer to your followers and ultimately earn their loyalty.

As a blogger, you may not have thought about it, but you need to see what you do as a business. You have to build your brand – if you want to succeed, that is.

A survey by The Social Habit showed that 53% of Americans who follow brands in social media channels are more loyal to those brands.

As expectations increase, as technology improves, standards are raised.

TAnd if you want to make sure that your content marketing stays effective in the future, you’ll need to adapt.

I prefer to look ahead to the future and try to stay ahead of the curve.

Would you like to do the same?

I believe there are 7 main ways that great content will be different in the future, and I’m about to tell you what they are....

If you aspire to be a successful content strategist or marketer, here are nine things you should plan to learn. And the sooner you do, the better!

1. User experience is as big a part of your job as anything else

Yes, there are professionals who are paid solely to think about the user experience, and how it can be made as seamless as possible. But that doesn't mean you can sit back and forget about it. Each content piece needs to have some thought behind how the user will experience, consume, and act on it.Speaking of users...

Having your post go viral on social media – getting hundreds of Likes, Shares or Retweets as a response to your efforts – is the one thing that excites every social media administrator. But in order to get one step closer to achieving that, you have to understand what triggers people to share in the first place.

The New York Times Customer Insight Group published a fascinating study called the Psychology of Sharing, and defined 5 top reasons that motivate people to share content with others online:
-  To Inform and Influence - 49% say sharing allows them to inform others of products they care about and potentially change opinions or encourage action
-  To Show Your Identity - 68% share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about and to reinforce the image they would like to present
-  To Connect with Others - 78% share information online because it lets them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with, and 73% share information because it helps them connect with others who share their interests
-  To Feel Valuable - 69% share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world
-  To Show Support - 84% share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about...