The Internet is a noisy, overcrowded place. Building momentum for your brand is often an uphill battle, and getting your audience to buy in can be daunting. So, how do you get people to take you seriously? How can you go from being just a little fish in a vast ocean to becoming a recognizable brand or even a household name? One strategy that’s proven to be effective is influencer marketing. The number of brands using this strategy has grown exponentially over the past few years. In fact, “interest in influencer marketing has risen more than 90x from 2013 to the present.” Here are some other stats to give you a better idea of the state of this strategy at the moment: “Influencer marketing content delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing.” “Twitter users report a 5.2x increase in purchase intent when exposed to promotional content […]
It’s Time to Pump You (and Your Content) Up
So, Copyblogger has been running for about 11 years now. And in all that time, we’ve never written a post about Arnold Schwarzenegger, unless you count that one time I compared long-form sales pages to the Terminator. Until this week. Entirely independently, Brian Clark and I both used the Governator to illustrate two different points about smart content creation. On Monday, Brian broke down persuasive analogies — citing a particularly effective analogy Schwarzenegger used to make an environmental point. On Tuesday, Stefanie brought a little relief by making some excellent points about why you lose business to your competitors … and how you can start to crush them. Like grapes. And on Wednesday, I explained Jonah Sachs’s idea of “ freaks, cheats, and familiars ,” using good old Arnold as an example to demonstrate all three. On Unemployable, Brian talked with Robert Bruce about the difference between good marketing […]
Identity Matters: How Content Strategists Build Trust and Loyalty
In 2009, whether you were a golfer or not, you likely heard about Tiger Woods. It started with a drama-filled Thanksgiving night with his wife. It ended with a public apology the following February. The superstar’s wholesome image unraveled publicly as one mistress after another came forth. Soon his marriage was lost, sponsorships gone, and fans bewildered. We were left wondering: Who was the real Tiger Woods anyway? Was everything we thought about him just a sham? Woods didn’t need a consultant to help him with his brand. He needed a therapist. He stated this himself in a somewhat bizarre 14-minute public apology. He also could have benefited from a crisis communications expert. But most importantly, Woods needed to figure out his identity – who he was and who he wanted to be. Identity is the foundation for authentic living. Many companies need to refocus on identity as well. […]
The Content Marketing Brand Management Checklist
Brand management is a little bit like dental hygiene: Those who avoid it are going to end up with big problems that easily could’ve been avoided. Yet marketers who fail to comply with brand standards and legal safeguards risk losing more than just a tooth. These failures often cost content marketers their credibility and, in some cases, their jobs. Just ask the people who sexualized IHOP’s pancakes , told Bloomingdale’s shoppers to roofie their friends for the holiday season, and put the male symbol on the cover of The Washington Post’s magazine for a story about the 2017 Women’s March. Perhaps the most painful part of these marketing blunders is that it wouldn’t have taken much effort to prevent them. Shout out to The Washington Post Express who accidentally put the MALE symbol for the WOMAN’S march on their cover today pic.twitter.com/xGS0XE8RTd Without an efficient governance system of necessary […]
How and Where to Repost Blog Content Safely
It’s no surprise that after all the time and energy you put into creating a blog post, you want it to generate the reads and engagements you feel it deserves. Researching, developing, and writing blog posts is only the first half of content marketer’s jobs. The other half of the day consists of making sure that all of your hard work creating the post doesn’t go to waste. Promoting your blog posts on the right platforms and through the right channels is vital if you want your content to be read. But promotion is a tricky subject. And most of the time, it includes paid social advertising campaigns that are poorly managed and don’t see strong results. With this as the norm, it’s no surprise that some content marketers have started re-posting their blog content on other domains to maximize its visibility. While this may seem like a good […]
The ‘Less Is More’ Content Strategy
What is the ideal frequency for publishing content? In my view is there is no ideal frequency as it depends upon your site, audience and objectives. However, you can adopt different content strategies from high frequency publishing through to Jay Baer ‘s advice that you should only publish when you have something worthwhile to say. In this post I want to focus on the “less is more” content strategy. You can drive higher shares, gain more links and attract significantly more traffic using a ‘less is more’ approach. Yes, you really can drive more traffic by publishing less content. It is not magic as I will prove below. Brian Dean of Backlinko has executed this content strategy to great effect. Brian has published just 53 posts over the last five years, less than one a month. These posts have driven nearly 4m visitors to his site. The average shares […]
Video Blogging: How to Create Consistent YouTube Content
Do you create videos to promote your business? Have you considered starting a regular video blog? To explore vlogging, I interview Amy Schmittauer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Amy Schmittauer , an online video expert. She founded Vlog Boss Studios and regularly produces awesome content for her YouTube channel, Savvy Sexy Social . She’s also the author of the brand-new book, Vlog Like a Boss: How to Kill It Online with Video Blogging . Amy explores how video blogging can help your business. You’ll discover what you need to start your own video blog. Video Blogging: How to Create Consistent YouTube Content featuring insights from Amy Schmittauer on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Share […]
Content Writing Tips: How to Write Copy for Landing Pages
by Jennifer Johnson February 21, 2017 Alexa, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, SEO To get users to take action on a landing page, you need compelling, action-oriented copy. The following content writing tips will help you create engaging copy that can initiate valuable conversions on website landing pages. Know Exactly Who You’re Talking To All other copywriting tips won’t improve your landing page if you skip this first step. To write compelling copy, you must first know exactly whom you are talking to. Define your target audience’s demographics and characteristics, so you are aware of their habits, what they want and need, and how they speak. Your copy will be much more focused, clear, and direct when you have one target audience in mind, rather than a largely undefined audience. To gain insight into who your current audience is, use Alexa’s Site Overview tool, which is part of Alexa’s Competitive […]
How LinkedIn Uses LinkedIn for Marketing [Infographic]
If you’ve applied for a job within the last several years, you’ve probably used LinkedIn somewhere along the way. Whether you’re updating your resume, applying for a role, or communicating with a recruiter, LinkedIn has become a huge part of the modern job search. And while LinkedIn might not be your first thought when it comes to content sharing, there are 467 million users on the network — and that number grows every year . For marketers, this means a huge opportunity to reach an engaged community through sponsored content, messages, and campaigns. To help folks get a grip on how to effectively use the platform, the folks at LinkedIn published a guide that explores how they use their own marketing tools on the network. They’ve also distilled the results from various sponsored content tests they’ve run into the infographic below. Among their findings about successful advertisements on LinkedIn: […]
Use Design to Elevate Your Content Marketing
< All Articles You have defined your audience personas, created an editorial calendar and spent hours researching and writing the perfect content for your customers. Now you’re ready to crush it with your content marketing, right? Not quite. Content marketing is getting increasingly competitive and noisy. In a 2015 survey by the Content Marketing Institute , 77% of marketers reported using content marketing for their strategy. 76% planned to increase their content production in 2016. With so much content fighting for the attention of your audience, marketers need more than just good writing to set themselves apart. As you plan your content marketing strategy, consider using design and visual storytelling to differentiate your content from the competition. Why design? Rather than explain why the visual element of content marketing is so important, let’s try the show, don’t tell method with an infographic: We are a visual […]