Content Archives - Page 16 of 17

January 27, 2017January 28, 2017

What Type of Content Marketing Gets the Most Social Shares?

With organic social content from brands reaching new lows in reach and effectiveness, content marketers must look elsewhere for mechanisms to drive views and downloads. Social sharing is key here, as recommendations from real people are more trustworthy than recommendations from brands , in most cases and circumstances. Thus, if a reader/viewer/listener likes the content enough to recommend it to their friends/followers in social media, the producer of that content has a heightened opportunity for exposure, often to a net-new audience. But what type of content is most likely to trigger that sharing behavior , and how does it vary by industry and social network? New content marketing research from ClearVoice answers those questions (and more). ClearVoice is software company with a nifty content marketing management platform and network of content creators. They are a Convince & Convert partner. What Type of Content Marketing Works Best? In their study, […]

3 Brands Driving Change With Social Video

Cause marketing can be a tough sell. You need to tell a story that compels the audience to take action, while resisting the pitfalls of coming across as desperate or preaching. The medium can make a big difference. Unlike static images or text, video gives cause marketers the sensory tools to tell the type of rich, moving story that delivers important information while conjuring necessary emotion. To be successful, cause-related content needs to be sufficiently informative so viewers understand the cause, as well as appropriately digestible so they find it easy and enjoyable to share with others. It also has to be timely so it can be part of a larger conversation happening around the cause. Like any video, it needs to grab the viewers’ attention in 3 to 10 seconds to stop them from scrolling past. And it needs to be relatable and relevant to your audience so […]

5 Reasons SEO Should Take a Back Seat With Website Content

It makes sense at times to produce content without worrying too much about the SEO aspects. (Please know it isn’t easy for me, an SEO professional, to write that.) Some SEO purists suggest that website content be optimized at all times. It’s inevitable that someone – or a team – will follow an internal process and think about the content with an everything-SEO mentality. But there are situations when you don’t need to sweat SEO – or can at least scale back the effort. Here are five occasions to consider. 1. You’re writing about a new trend B2B and B2C brands sometimes want to be out front with a new industry phrase – long before it’s widely used. The phrase may not even have any or much detectable search volume. Businesses should write about emerging trends to underscore their expertise and vision and SEO may not be top of […]

How to Boost Your Digital Marketing With PR

Recently, I listened to the CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation tell me about his company’s profit and loss; and I realized that he considered marketing, sales and PR — all of it — as a single line item. In this man’s mind, anything driving new business belonged in just one single category. I can understand how that might seem logical; however, when you look at these separate operations as a joint function, you can’t really see how one affects the other. In fact, they are complementary; so lumping them together makes it hard to understand how to maximize those investments. What’s more, if you don’t think about the symbiotic nature of your various outsourced functions, you could be wasting money on ineffective initiatives. How critical is it to capitalize on your PR team’s earned media in your digital marketing? If the 2016 presidential election was any indicator, it’s your […]

5 Under-the-Radar Social Media Studies to Make You A Smarter Marketer

Written by Alfred Lua We are very grateful for all the research that has been done on social media. Social media studies have given us great ideas to improve our social media marketing , helped us understand the psychology behind social media behaviors , and made us better marketers . To help you better understand the ever-changing social media landscape, we jumped into the latest social media research papers, hoping to discover some under-the-radar insights to help supercharge your social media marketing strategy as we head into 2017. In this post, I’d love to share what we discovered and bring you some insightful and surprising social media studies of 2016, sharing the key findings and actionable takeaways you can try today. If any of these studies inspired you with more ideas to experiment with, I’d love to hear from you! 5 Under-the-Radar Social Media Studies to Make You A […]

How to Prove the Value of Social Media to Your CMO

Have you ever sat through a presentation that wasn’t meant for you? You stare blankly at a screen of numbers and nonsensical acronyms , then you disengage after five minutes and daydream about your after-work bike ride. When you’re trying to prove the value of social media to your CMO—or even CEO—you can’t afford to lose their attention. Their time is precious. Luckily, there are simple and effective ways to present your findings. The executives in your company don’t care about the day-to-day details of your brand’s social media strategy. They want to how your efforts are driving business goals. It’s your job to eliminate unnecessary data and present the findings that matter to the C-suite. What your CMO wants to know (and what metrics back it up) 1. How social contributes to revenue How has social contributed to the company’s bottom line? This is the most important question […]

Think Mobile-First for Your Mobile Content

“Think Mobile First” was a popular catchphrase a few years ago when the responsive web-site became popular and important; micro-displays of your website wouldn’t cut it anymore – users needed to have a whole new experience on their mobile device. Now that responsive layout is pretty well established, we as digital marketers need to begin thinking of a new mobile-first: content. Not just how your mobile content is laid out on the site, but rather is the content you are delivering appropriate for consumption on a mobile version of your site? Even though 77 percent of mobile searches were initiated at home or at work – where desktops are readily available , we are still stuck on mobile content in terms of layout; can you scroll, is it easy to click the CTA’s, is the alignment the same in horizontal as well as vertical. However, not much thought is […]

The 7 Traits of Successful Content Marketers

One of the most influential authors of my personal and career journey is Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich was first published in 1937. Now, in its 80th anniversary year, Mr. Hill’s lessons are still extremely relevant and valuable. I had the opportunity to dust off my copy of Think and Grow Rich (from 1960, with dog-eared and coffee-stained pages) a few weeks back during the holiday break. In its relation to content marketing, I noticed some clear takeaways that most corporate marketers simply do not embrace. In the book, 15 powerful chapters are helpful to all individuals, but seven chapters were spot-on relevant to content marketing . Here are quotes from the seven chapters with my notes for each one. Caution from Joe: The book is extremely chauvinistic. If you read it, just prepare yourself for that. 1. Desire “Whatever the mind can conceive and […]

The Art of Seductive Content Marketing

Phil Connors is having a bad day … over, and over, and over. The arrogant Pittsburgh weatherman has once again been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He soon discovers that visiting once a year wasn’t all that bad, given that he’s now living this particular Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. It all begins at 6:00 a.m., the same way each day. The clock radio clicks on with Sonny & Cher’s I Got You Babe , followed by the declaration, “It’s Groundhog Day … and it’s cold out there!” After the initial shock wears off, Phil (played by national treasure Bill Murray) realizes he’s in a time loop. No matter what he does each day, there are no lingering consequences for his actions, because he wakes up and starts over again fresh the next morning. This initially leads to hedonistic behavior, such […]

5 Writing Principles That Will Make Your Content Go Viral

Cast the first stone in me, those of you unwilling to create viral content that gets well shared! And cast the second stone in me, those of you unwilling to create and publish content that gets well shared and… linked! Eric Enge at Stone Temple claims we still need links to enhance traffic. And in the world of content shock , we have to outdo ourselves for creating something truly magical that would bring those links and shares. In 2015, BuzzSumo analyzed one million posts and shocked us with the results: 50% of those posts got less than 8 shares, and 70% of them didn’t get links at all! Sounds not inspiring enough, huh ? This year, they teamed up with Majestic and conducted new research to identify content types with a high potential to go viral. That’s all very fine, but… With all those articles on the one-works-for-all […]