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Open University, Corning and SAP have been killing it with optimized, creative content marketing. Learn from their most successful campaigns. ...Quality rules the day when it comes to content creation. We write often here on the importance of content planning and optimization and Lee Odden offered a complete framework for optimizing across SEO, social media and content marketing in his book, Optimize. Here are just a few examples of brands killing it with great content. Check them out and see what lessons you can take away to improve your own content strategy....
The most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques that exists today.... ... We wanted to give you the most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques available today. This resource is chock full of tactical, immediately actionable ideas that you can implement in your own business — to start building a community of fans and followers, to increase engagement and traffic to your website, and to drive sales. We’ve included everything from planning to writing to promoting your content so you have all the information you need to all be insanely successful and prosperous on the Web — all in one place!...
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....
Confused about content marketing? I think most bloggers are. Think it’s a big waste of time? I think a lot of bloggers would agree with you. I, on the other hand, have it all figured out, and let me tell ya – when implemented properly content marketing can make your blog a household name almost overnight. Wanna promote your blog or website? Let’s talk about content marketing. What is Content Marketing? I think a lot of bloggers are under the misconception that content marketing is a combination of the posts you publish on your own blog, the guest posts you get published, and article marketing. But it’s so much more than that. Content marketing refers to any content you publish anywhere: eBooks and white papers Mini-Guides Articles published on article directories Guest blog posts Your own blog posts Articles published on industry-related websites Articles published on content sites like Examiner.com, Ask.com, Demand Media, etc. Anything you publish on Squidoo, HubPages, Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, etc. your newsletters, videos, infographics....
Unmissable content is content that makes you feel like you’re life has changed for the better because you didn’t miss it. How Do You Create Unmissable Content? Stop posting just so you can say you posted something today, post when you have something remarkable to say. (Pretty good, huh?) Now that’s not to say you have to completely dump your posting schedule and forget about planning ahead. We both know how important it is to post frequently and consistently....
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....
From PaidContent Live 2013, we brought you five different entrepreneurs who talked about ways in which they are changing up business models for media and the ways in which people consume content.... It’s fair to say that the future of news consumption and media won’t look like a bunch of traditional newspapers copied onto the desktop web, and when five different entrepreneurs addressed paidContent Live Wednesday about the ways they’re bringing content online, the approaches were as diverse as the startups themselves. However, a few themes came out of our presentations from Paul Berry, founder and CEO of RebelMouse, Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and CEO of Spreecast, Matt Galligan, co-founder and CEO of Circa, Aria Haghighi, co-Founder and CTO of Prismatic, and Josh Miller, co-founder of Branch. Here were the ones we found most compelling...
... Just like with any other social media platform – or your digital marketing strategy in general, come to think of it – going in with a sales pitch full of shameless self-promotion is never going to get you the social proof, site traffic or conversions you need. The other users on Pinterest aren’t just users; they’re potential leads and, instead, should be nurtured in the same way as in the other areas of your campaign; with great content and a bit of community spirit. Basically, you should act on Pinterest as you would on any other social network. Perhaps even more so, as it’s one of the most informal and community focused platforms around: hashtags are used to create conversations and find related content, commenting on and liking pins is common best practice and you can even join ‘Community Boards’ that multiple users can pin to. Most importantly though is the heart of Pinterest; ‘repinning.’...
Crafting a Unique Brand Story to Help Your Small Business Win ... The right story will help your small business stand out in the marketplace by building trust through emotional connections, demonstrating that you understand your customers’ needs and showing that you are the brand that delivers. Ask yourself how you add value, and then find ways to present your brand as human and caring. Here are 11 questions for you and your colleagues to seriously ponder as you work to determine what kind of story you want to tell. Like a fingerprint, your story is your brand’s unique point of difference. Once you have defined your story, you will need a platform that you can use to tell it. One of the best ways to tell your story is through a blog....
There are still a number of marketers and business owners that need to be persuaded to try content marketing for the first time. Here are 2 foolproof methods for getting that buy-in. ...If you present your content marketing plan as a pilot, you’ll immediately see the key decision makers let their guard down. It’s not as much of a commitment as a full-blown content marketing strategy. But as you sell the Content Marketing Pilot, be sure to include the following: The length of the Pilot – should be at least six months.The overall goal of the Pilot…or how the business will be different after the Pilot.Agreed-upon metrics that, if you hit, will enable you to move forward with “more episodes.” This could be an increase in leads, more subscriptions, shorter time to close business, an increase in “quality” leads…just to name a few....
Nichole Kelly explains why an amazing content strategy and a big trash can are the key to success in social media. In marketing circles we’ve been talking about content marketing for a few years, but for some reason it hasn’t resonated with executives. And it’s partly on the shoulders of marketers who ask for budget approval on a “social media” campaign instead of a content marketing campaign. It also doesn’t help that content marketing isn’t a big company that the news stations can report on. It is a disparate, disconnected, organic being that safely hides behind the curtain generating success or failure of online campaigns. Respectfully, it is the elephant in the room. When a marketer’s social media campaign fails too many times they chalk it up to the social network being wrong versus the fact that their content strategy was wrong. We need to stop talking about “social media” and start talking about digital content marketing. Because content is the backbone to any successful campaign or strategy. The best digital marketing strategy will fail every time in execution if the content behind it sucks. The problem is creating amazing content consistently isn’t easy. It takes focus, creativity, a willingness to test and a preposterous threshold for failure....
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...
Content on social media networks Is vital to create engagement with your prospects and customers. There is a fast emerging trend for content to be written and produced in snack size bites. This could be video, text or visual mediums. Our attention spans seem to be following the development path of micro-processors. Smaller and faster. The art of the long conversation, the slow contemplation of the future of the planet over a meal and prolonged human concentration have maybe become so endangered that we don’t value depth of thought and long form communication anymore. Dinner parties could soon become 15 minute events....
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Creating great content is integral to attracting more and better traffic. Awesome content isn't ordinary and doesn't fade into the background. It stands out from the crowd, and is worthy of discussing, writing about, talking about, and publishing.... A couple of years ago, Scott Stratten of "Unmarketing" book fame (a great read) was asked his best SEO tip. His answer: write "awesome frickin' content"! Since then Panda iterations have had SEO practitioners reinforcing similar "content is king" mantras, and have had SEO doomsayers laughing maniacally at how SEO is dead (once again!). While Google's Panda updates did help define "better content" through a user-focused lens, with Panda's future as part of Google's primary algorithm, it seems an opportune time to help redefine exactly what is "awesome frickin' content."...
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....
Since roughly one out of six Google daily search queries have never been seen before, you must provide relevant content marketing about your organization, brands and products that your current customers need and prospects seek to make their purchase decisions.
Your content by itself isn’t sufficient; it must be findable by your target audience. Therefore, content marketing and search optimization must go hand-in-hand to generate bottom-line results. To ensure your content marketing efforts super charge your search optimization, here are seven actionable marketing tips....
How do you create strong, meaningful, powerful content that sells, converts and engages your customers? The secret lies in creating a fool-proof content strategy that works for each and every website right from a small business to a large corporate site. In creating a content strategy for your website, essential tasks such as keyword research, content gap analysis, site maps and content audits take a back-seat to the creation of a content map, a simple diagram that places key pieces of info at your finger tips. A content map is an invaluable tool that assists content strategists and it’s elements are the building blocks for your entire website right from content to design to development and marketing. I like to use the content map that Joe Pulizzi and Christina Halverson used on slide 42 of their slideshare presentation – Web Content Strategy – How to Plan for, Create and Publish Online Content for Maximum ROI....
We're going back to the basics. Expert content marketers with defined and working strategies can skip this article. For the other 90 percent of you, use these 3 building blocks to start developing one... I average about three speeches a week revolving around the topic of content marketing. At every one of those events I ask, “How many of you have a documented content marketing strategy?” That answer has never been more than 20 percent, and usually just a few hands are raised. Think about that for a minute. Content creation and distribution is booming. We’ve never seen brands more active in developing content to attract and retain customers. Our latest research tells us that more than one in every four marketing dollars is spent on a content marketing initiative. Yet, almost no one has a concrete strategy for the deployment of those content assets. (I’m virtually shaking my head.)...
How do you decide what to write about? Does your blog have a content plan? Do your social media posts have some structure and relationship to your blog posts or your other marketing programs? If your answer to any of these questions is “no,” you are likely missing opportunities to extend the reach of your marketing, to reinforce other promotions and activities, and to encourage your audience to make connections to your website, your blog, and other content you are producing. Effective social media marketing strategies need a powerful content plan....
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.
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....
CMI's blog strategy is a case in point on how engaging influencers in your industry can lead to content marketing success. Find out how it worked for us.... ... we didn’t have the resources to pay for raw, educational content about content marketing, we knew exactly where we needed to turn: our influencers. When we announced the original CMI blog, the first group we reached out to was our database of social influencers. Dozens of these influencers were more than happy to help us out, as we had been promoting them for years without ever asking for anything in return....
Are you looking for the best content curation resources on the web. Look no further as I provide 30 of the best content curation resources I use every day. Today, there are so many options available and we each have to find a way to find, filter, consume and share the information that is relevant for us. I use email alerts from RSS feeds, Twitter lists and a few key websites I visit every day to make sure I can stay on top of the latest trends and news in business and marketing. So here, I have curated my own list of the top sites of business and marketing information – some of which are great examples of content curation themselves. I invite you to visit these content curation resources, subscribe to their RSS feeds or follow them on twitter. I’ve also created a twitter list of these resources and other influential bloggers that you can also subscribe to…
Michael Buller shapes content marketing strategy at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Learn how he targets a consumer audience and overcomes industry challenges.... Beyond our traditional social media channels (Facebook and Twitter), I think SlideShare has been the most successful. Some of our videos have really done well separately, just as YouTube videos and the videos that we link from our site.
For our research publications, we’ve created separate apps for all the various tablets. That’s been a little disappointing in terms of the number of downloads. They’re free apps, but we can’t seem to get as many interested eyeballs as I would like. I think it’s difficult, as people aren’t actively searching for this type of info. It’s not something they say: “Oh, cancer research. That would be a fun app!” So trying to get some attention to that amidst all the thousands and thousand of apps out there, and trying to drive traffic to the apps that we’ve created has been challenging for us....
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This article presents perfect examples of the correct way to implement creative content marketing. I find this article interesting in the regards to how successful the campagions that were used as examples had been so uniquiely different from one another. Again re-enforcing the content that was taught in week 7 in IMC. The means of communication that they use in the examlpes shows that the brands did their homework on their target audience and used creative methods to draw them into the conversation.