 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
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.
If you don’t understand why you should use a particular tactic, you won’t know when to use it. This means you’re playing a guessing game, and the results will be all over the place.
I want to clear up as much of this as possible in this post.
We’re going to look at the 7 most important principles of content marketing and how you should apply them.
Once you understand how these principles affect your overall content strategy, you should be able to get a better grip on when you need to use specific tactics....
Wondering what the future is for blogs?
Is blogging dead?
To discover what the future holds for blogging, Michael Stelzner interviews Mitch Joel and Mark Schaefer....
I want to show you what types of content you should be producing in order to generate strong sales from the rest of your content marketing efforts.
Some of these might overlap with the content you’re already producing to generate traffic, but some will be new.
If you’re starting to see a solid level of website traffic but aren’t sure how to turn those visitors into customers, this post should help you a lot....
How do you make effective, engaging content that gets people to take action? Take some lessons from Carlos Abler, leader of content marketing strategy for 3M Global eTransformation. At the Intelligent Content Conference, Carlos demonstrated how personalized content can not only change behavior but also transform lives.
In his presentation about a University of Michigan case study, he described how a six-week program of personalized online content reduced smoking and increased healthy behaviors for the young adults who were enrolled in the study....
In this post, I want to dive deeper into one of these elements: the content aspect.
There are things you can do to instantly expose your content to a larger audience. In fact, I’m going to show you 5 of them in this post.
If you’re looking to get hundreds or thousands of extra views on your content, this is a post you’ll want to read closely....
The branded content singularity is near. In November, a piece of content marketing rose to the top of the charts.
I’m talking, of course, about GE’s fictional podcast, The Message, which tells the story of a group of cryptologists who use GE technology to decode a message sent from space 70 years ago. It rocketed up the iTunes chart to No. 1 on November 26, passing mainstay titans like This American Life and Serial.
In fact, as Nieman Lab notes, one listener even wrote in a review that the show is so good that they should start a Kickstarter to turn it into a movie. GE definitely doesn’t need a Kickstarter, but a comment like that is a clear sign that its branded podcast can stand on its own as a damn good replacement for those of us who are in Serial withdrawal....
Much in the way Maslow’s famous hierarchy maps the most fundamental human needs, the Full Stack Marketer has their own set of needs to reach the ultimate end state — sustainable growth for their product and company.
Like the construction of any great pyramid, the hard work must begin at the base, for only after a foundational layer of product innovation has been carefully mastered can the upper echelons take you toward the stratospheres of hyper-growth.
Building structures, particularly companies, that stand the test of time is not for the faint of heart because there are so many things that can go wrong. Hire the wrong crew, you build the wrong things. Run out of funds, construction screeches to a halt. Build too slow, the market turns on you. Builders who skip any single step in this hierarchy will inevitably fail; their engine of growth won’t be architecturally sound enough to withstand the pressures of a fiercely competitive landscape. And if continued maintenance and care for each level of the pyramid is neglected, the entire structure can vaporize into sand faster than you can imagine.
These are the Full Stack Marketer’s Hierarchy of Needs:...
For instance, take a look at how these two elements play out:
B2B – Within the confines of B2B, it appears that videos reign supreme in regards to marketing. Video is easy to watch, and has a way of exploring ideas, reviews, and more. This is telling, especially for those that are working within commercial grade sales. The instructional potential of videos also suit the common transaction of ideas and techniques between businesses.
B2C – As far as consumers are concerned, blog posts seem to be the content that works best here. Consumers consider blog data and reviews that take the format of personal experiences over video or other marketing elements. Essentially, customers prefer authentic and relatable content – testimonials from like-minded people, for example....
I share a lot of content marketing tips in my posts, but those posts usually assume you’re already doing content marketing, at least to some degree.
But if you haven’t started yet, or are very new to it, you won’t get as much out of those posts as those with some experience.
So, if you’ve felt that my past posts about content marketing have been too advanced for you, this one will help.
I’m going to give you a step-by-step process to follow to create a successful content marketing plan.
I’m talking about a plan that is simple to understand and execute but that can be used to drive thousands of qualified visitors to your website every month (in less than a year)....
If you want to win the hearts and minds (and dollars) of consumers in their micro-moments, you have to do more than just be there. You have to be useful too. That means connecting people to what they’re looking for in real-time and providing relevant information when they need it.
Mobile adds a rich layer of context on top of intent that lets marketers create even more relevant messages in micro-moments. For example, when someone searches for digital cameras, are they at home, on the street, or actually in your store? Is it 6 p.m. Friday or 6 a.m. Monday? The answers to questions like these play a role in determining what problem consumers are trying to solve, what creative they'll respond to, and what marketers need to think about when trying to engage them.
And being useful in those moments matters. Take the fact that 51% of smartphone users have purchased from a company/brand other than the one they intended to because the information provided was useful.
Seventy-three percent of consumers say that regularly giving useful information in their advertising is the most important attribute when selecting a brand....
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....
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....
|
It’s natural to think that wider adoption brings increasing competition. While that’s technically true, the outlook isn’t as bleak as you may think.
After all, even though adoption is increasing, the number of B2B and B2C organizations who consider themselves effective at content marketing is dismal — 30 percent and 38 percent respectively. What this should tell you is that there is a gap, and you can fill it.
Make 2016 your best content marketing year ever by making one-percent improvements in these areas...
We asked several sources from the last year -- each of whom approaches content marketing from a different angle -- to share their takes on the major trends emerging in the discipline.
Michael Farmer, chairman, Farmer & Co.; author, “Madison Avenue Manslaughter” Content marketing, which requires 24/7 storytelling to engage consumers, is more the natural domain for PR firms than for advertising agencies. As content marketing becomes more important in the media mix, advertisers will be prepared to assign relationship leadership to their PR firms.
I predict that PR firms will take advantage of this and backwards integrate into more traditional forms of advertising, becoming highly effective AOR competitors to ad agencies. Content marketing will propel PR firms from the sidelines onto the playing field with much larger budgets if they take the appropriate strategic steps....
Our annual content marketing research literally has thousands of data points our research team digs through each year. While the quantitative data is interesting, we get most excited about pondering ways to turn the findings into actionable ideas to help you improve your content marketing.
One of the key areas we focus on is effectiveness: What percentage of survey respondents say their organizations are effective at content marketing, and how has this changed since last year? And, more importantly, what can you do to become more effective at content marketing?
The chart below shows the percentage of responding marketers who rated their organizations a 4 or 5 in terms of effectiveness (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very effective” and 1 being “not at all effective”) on our last two annual content marketing surveys...
Earlier this year, content marketers expected to increase their budgets, expand their offerings, and deepen their commitment to content marketing. Almost 30 percent expected content marketing to be their most important tactic in 2015. A retrospective of the year from BuzzSumo examines how that investment panned out.
Having increased their investments, 80 percent of B2B marketers made sure their investment was protected by creating a strategy. The most mature content marketers invested up to 46 percent of their budgets, while effective marketers allocated 42 percent; the average B2B marketers allocated 28 percent of their budgets into content marketing overall.
While marketers have developed strategies, 48 percent of haven’t documented their strategies, and up to 70 percent lack consistent or integrated strategies. But marketers are learning from their mistakes, with 67 percent relying more on content and research to make their B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago....
To say native content has grown since last year would be an understatement. In 2014, Pressboard combed through 1,500 pieces of content for our "best of" list -- this year it was closer to 7,000. To give you an idea of how far the space has come, we had to buy VR headsets just to review a couple of the entries.
2015 was the year that native content moved from experimental to fundamental and nearly every major publisher and brand discovered the power of stories, instead of ads. Here are some of the best from the last 12 months...
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....
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....
But I’m going to assume that you have at least a decent grasp of how to manage your team and content strategy.
Instead, I want to focus on the second main point – tools.
I’m going to share with you 15 tools that can help you create better content as a team, while minimizing the chance of mistakes.
You definitely won’t need all of them, but you’ll probably want to use at least one from each of the four main classes of tools.
When emotionally-charged content is placed in front of the right audience, it can spread at an incredible rate. We recently had this happen with a Fractl client campaign called Perceptions of Perfection, which we executed for Superdrug Online Doctor.
Here’s a look at the results during the first few days of the campaign launch...
To improve the impact of content marketing, companies need to put together a data-driven content marketing strategy, part of which includes looking at buyers’ personas and buyers’ goals.
Below are five steps to build a to connect buyers’ goals to your content marketing strategy.
Here are 5 steps you can use to connect your content to buyers’ goals....
According to CoSchedule’s 2015 Better Blogger Survey, time management is the biggest challenge facing today’s writers, with 22 percent saying they can’t carve out the time needed to produce content, and 20 percent saying it’s tough to plan posts ahead of schedule....
For more tips on how to make your blog stand out among the noise, check out the infographic below....
If you have an ecommerce site, you may be struggling with how to implement an effective content strategy. You may have found that product and sales pages don’t easily lend themselves to compelling, share-worthy content. This is why many business owners get stuck: they think a content strategy only works for online publishers; not for ecommerce sites. They know the benefits of having a solid content strategy – increased traffic, organic search rankings, brand awareness, conversion rates, and sales – but don’t know how this works (of even if it can work) on an ecommerce site.
This article will walk you through some strategies for using content to achieve the benefits listed above for an ecommerce website....
|
Buffer shares a great collection of content marketing tips