Content Marketing: Page 160

  • Does Your Website Explain Itself?

    If your business website could talk, what would it say to your visitors? But wait, your website does talk! And what it tells your prospects may make or break your online marketing efforts. Does it communicate what you intend and does it do so effectively? If not, what can you do to correct this? We've established time and again that content is the most important component of your online marketing strategy.

    By • May 12, 2015

  • The Types of Data Brands are Collecting with Social Media Contests

    ​Marketing professionals recognize social media contests as one of the most popular and effective ways to gather data from users and consumers. But what types of data are brands collecting? And what does the data they're collecting say about the marketing industry now? To answer these questions, we analyzed a database of nearly 1 million promotion forms used by brands around the world.

    By • May 12, 2015

  • SMTPowerTalk 4: "Keeping It Real" in a Social Media Marketing World

    Can marketing be truly authentic? Is there a difference in approach when one focuses on sales? Can social analytics show us how to fake online behavior? These are just some of the questions we tackled at the #SMTPowerTalk this month.

    By • May 12, 2015

  • SEO: How to Avoid All the BS

    I'm NOT calling SEO BS. I'm not saying you don't need to understand SEO. You do. And when you do, search will become a leading ingredient in your marketing mix and possibly the largest source of traffic to your website. I'm not saying you shouldn't do SEO. If you're doing content marketing, it comes with the turf. If you persist in knowing little or nothing about SEO, you're sabotaging your success.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • The Generational Content Gap: How Different Generations Consume Content Online [INFOGRAPHIC]

    As online audiences continue to grow and diversify, it's essential for content marketers to understand what resonates with their customers. One of the most important factors is how different age groups will react to specific types of content.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • Why Brands Need to Shut Up and Listen on Social Media

    If I could pinpoint the most important thing we millennials want out of life, I'd bet on the significance of the opportunity for our voices to be heard. Most brands are too busy tooting their own horns on social media to take a step back and put their digital ears to the ground in order to really use social listening tactics to find and connect with millennials.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • Are Emotions Driving Your Marketing Decisions?

    We all hear similar descriptions of the small business owner - they wear multiple hats, have too much on their plate, they are hard to pin down. And this is completely true. For those of us that have been in the corporate world, it's sometimes hard to understand the challenges of a person who is the equivalent of the CEO/CFO/VP Sales & Marketing/Chief Customer Officer and any other "C" label you'd like to give them. There is no shortage of articles that try to help these owners to be more organized, make better decisions, and take control of their day. In this post, I'm going to focus on one thing that you likely have not heard much of - be more data driven vs. emotion driven in your marketing decisions.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • The Key To Organic SEO Success

    The key to organic SEO success is conceptually simple - you have to please Google AND your intended audience. But getting all the necessary ingredients in place to satisfy both can sometimes, often times, be a real challenge.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • 3 "Boring Industry" B2B Content Ideas That Aren't Boring

    A lot of B2B companies in boring industries are intimidated by content marketing or just skip it all together. So what if you're not writing about the newest tech gadget that appeals to the mass market? Here are 3 B2B content ideas and examples from my time working with a "boring industry" client that I found gave us the best traction.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • How To Find The Right Content Distribution Channels With Data

    So you've just finished a very good piece on a topic that your research shows is 'hot' right now (and thus meant to attract a lot of attention, shares and traffic to your blog). You've invested a lot of time in optimising the way your content flows as well as how your article 'looks', so that first-time readers can quickly scan through it, understand its value and decide to give it a closer look and (hopefully) a couple of shares.

    By • May 11, 2015

  • When Groupthink Kills a Perfectly Good Website

    With things like big data and GoToMeeting, large groups of people can collaborate over great distances, using this data to make a series of decisions about their new website. And then once they've implemented these decisions, a new group of folks comes in to question everything - usually a board of directors or someone from the C-Level. Sound familiar? It's never pretty.

    By • May 10, 2015

  • Driving Website Traffic with YouTube Cards

    It seems all the social media sites are adding the use of cards as an option with their platform. So, of course, YouTube added interactive YouTube Cards as part of their video platform. These cards are meant to eventually act as a replacement for annotations and some have already been labeled as "annoying" and "obstructive".

    By • May 10, 2015

  • 5 Sexy Rules of Customer Retention

    Estimates vary, but it's very clear that generating a sale from an existing customer is much easier than doing so with a new one. The "probability of selling to an existing customer is "60 - 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%" With that information in tow, it becomes increasingly obvious that as marketers we should be tripling our effort on these existing customers versus our new ones. The problem is retention is so much less sexy than acquisition. How do we attack this reality and address it?

    By • May 10, 2015

  • How to Publish Content that Caters to Natural Consumption Behavior

    By strategically placing topics that matter to various segments of your target market, you can attract all of them with a single document. As that document gets passed around, they each can gain something from it, and find those things easily because they are in places that match their natural consumption habits. By serving all of layers of a target customer in one document, companies can reduce publishing costs.

    By • May 10, 2015

  • Getting Started With Demand Generation: Content Required

    How much content do we need to produce before we can just get started? What pieces do I have to create to make this work? And when will I start to see traction on all of this content? These are some of the most common questions I hear when speaking with folks about planning a demand generation-focused marketing approach that is anchored by content.

    By • May 10, 2015

  • Global Digital Content Market to Reach more than $150B

    Across the digital content arena, there has been a gradual transition from the pay-per-download model to a month-to-month or annual subscription. This transition is very apparent in the mobile space, where the majority of applications are now free at the point of download.

    By • May 9, 2015

  • Revenge of the YouTubers: The Growing Power of Social Influence Marketing

    With the majority of us struggling to produce online video content that garners views in the hundreds or occasionally thousands, perhaps we can learn something from those who regularly earn millions. Combining schoolyard humor with glaring transparency, abject goofiness with disarming relatability, these YouTubers have found a way to tap into the collective Zeitgeist of their audience to deliver content that is both enjoyed and valued; by doing so, they create real and lasting influence. Moreover, they've managed to build this influence organically by activating both their own and their audience's passions, all while entertaining and educating.

    By • May 9, 2015

  • 7 of the Hottest Headlines and How to Create Your Own

    Readers use your headline as their first selection criterion when deciding what to spend their time on. Just like a book is still judged by its cover, each content piece that you produce gets evaluated by your readers in a few seconds based on its headline.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • Custom Audiences + Lookalike Audiences: A Social Media Advertiser's One-Two Punch

    Over the past few years, direct response has overtaken branding to become the dominant objective of online advertisers - and the percentage continues to climb. What does this mean for social media marketers in 2015? Now more than ever, the ability to drive user acquisition and boost customer retention is key to business growth - and being able to point to data-supported results is crucial; not just for marketers themselves, but for the social media networks that host ads. Major players like Facebook and Twitter have been paying close attention to what brands need and ask for, adapting features and ad units to fit marketing demand.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • Stop Treating Pinterest Like a Social Media Platform

    Pinterest is one part social, one part search, and two parts inspiration, making it a completely unique platform. If you continue to treat Pinterest like Facebook and Twitter, you're making a huge mistake. Keep reading to learn why.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • Solving Twitter and LinkedIn's Ad Problem: It's Time to Ditch the Checkboxes

    Last week was a big one for social media giants Twitter and LinkedIn. They admitted to their investors and to the world that their display advertising platforms, which represent a significant amount of their revenue, aren't working as well as they'd like.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • Fighting Content Loss to Facebook Messenger App

    Marketers are users and readers too, and sometimes we let our own personal user experiences shield us from spotting potential marketing blindspots. Take the Facebook Messenger app roll out last year, when users were forced to download the standalone app if they wanted to continue sending text-based messages through the social network. Users were outraged, but very quickly it became the top fifth app, with a reach of 43.1 percent.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • New Research: Content Marketing vs. Native Advertising

    New research on the variables surrounding the waning efficacy of outbound marketing and the return on investing in content marketing and/or native advertising.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • 5 Quick Tricks to Motivate Your Team for an Inbound Content Strategy

    While most people immediately think of monetary rewards when considering incentives, the effect of recognition on employee well-being should not be ignored. When you let people know that you appreciate the hard work they do for you, it reinforces that working hard for you is worth it.

    By • May 8, 2015

  • 5 Ways to Target Travelers with Facebook Marketing

    By now, any travel brand with a digital marketing strategy in place will have some role for Facebook in its overarching approach. And while we know organic reach is nowhere near where it once was, this doesn't mean travel brands ought to forget Facebook outright.

    By • May 8, 2015