The ExactTarget Blog The 30 Most Genius Content Marketing Examples of 2014 (So Far) In keeping with our trend of highlighting 30 brilliant social media campaigns, we now turn our lens to content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as "a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. " The brands and efforts highlighted in this post definitely meet those qualifications. They've created something that's valuable, relevant, and consistently useful to their audience (and a clearly defined audience, at that). Ultimately, I don't know what actions were driven by these campaigns because I can't peer into each brand's analytics and conversion rates. But I can attest that these campaigns caught my eye, and serve as shining examples of content marketing genius. I've organized these into content-style categories to showcase the trends shaping today's best content marketing.
How-To Content 1. 2. 3. The Context of Content. July 16, 2014 rosemary published this at 9:48 am By Lisa D. Jenkins It’s not the story, it’s the telling of the story. Last week, I was in the wilds of Idaho, rafting the Main Salmon River of No Return. I took images and footage sparingly because a couple of years ago I realized I was losing memories because I was too busy trying to capture them digitally.
When The Husband picked me up from my trip, I couldn’t wait to get home and show and tell him everything. The memories were easy for him to consume: the big bright trout I caught at the mouth of Sheep Creek, the massive bald eagle that flew just over my head, Oddly, the images and video were more difficult. You see a burned out forest. In the same way that story provides context that informs my image, you need to inform the content you share with context for your readers. It’s not just the pieces of your story that make it remarkable, it’s how you thread those pieces together that tell a remarkable story.
What does this look like?
Six Growth Hacks to Get More Conversions from Your Content Marketing. Content Marketing Playbook 2013 - 24 Epic Ideas for Connecting With... Here’s Why Your Online Marketing Doesn’t Work. – Spider-Man The Internet doesn’t care about your marketing. Online pioneer John Gilmore once said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Replace the word censorship with “your precious sales message,” and you’ve got the same outcome.
And yet, people still have problems and desires. They also have these amazingly powerful search and social media tools to find the answers to questions, the solutions to problems, and the perfect satisfaction of just about any desire. That’s the thing – online, those tools put them in charge, not you. People want information when making buying decisions. What you need is a media approach, not marketing. Spider-Man to the Rescue … of Marvel Comics I was a Marvel kid growing up. And yet, Marvel was in the throws of complete failure 20 years ago. Contrary to what you might think, Marvel only received a tiny fraction of that haul. So what was the strategy? Merchandise. In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel for $4.2 billion dollars. What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Content for Links? The Wrong Answer Could Cost You.
This Spiderman aims to please, but he’s just not the real thing As someone with roots in the search marketing community it’s been amazing to see how the the phrase “content marketing” has been adopted and redefined. Whether it’s opportunism or simply being adaptable to the times, the difference in approach to what content marketing is between digital marketing communities like Content Marketing Institute and many in the SEO and social media marketing world is striking.
For brands investing in content marketing, the difference between content for links / SEO and content for customers can be costly in terms of risk, return on investment and performance. What’s the difference? Content Marketing as More Content – Those who define content marketing as creating “more content”, especially search engine optimized content, tend to be focused on performance metrics like search visibility and keyword oriented traffic.
Why does it matter? Understand your customers and the buying cycle first. 18 Ways to Improve Your Facebook News Feed Performance Social Media Examiner. Are you frustrated with Facebook’s frequent changes to the news feed algorithm? Do you feel like you’re being forced to buy ads to reach your audience? While Facebook change is the rule rather than the exception, this article gives you 18 ways you can improve your Facebook news feed performance—and gain the upper hand. How Reach Is Created on Facebook Facebook defines reach as the number of unique Facebook users who see your updates. To see your page’s reach, go to Facebook Insights and look at your page’s Reach report. How much reach does your Facebook page have?
Reach is generally influenced by one or more of the following actions: You post content to your Facebook page. All four actions are interrelated. For example, if you publish content (organic reach) that your fans react to, friends of those fans will see that content (viral reach). The more kinds of reach you generate with an update, the more people see that update. . #1: Create a Content Strategy #2: Know When Your Fans Are Online. 10 Goldmines for the Savvy Content Prospector. Digging up stunning content that will delight your audience doesn’t have to be hard work – if you know where to look. Here are ten of our favorite places that make content curation easy. 1. Email. Many of the internet’s top blogs now offer the option to subscribe via email. Why not set up a new email account just for these subscriptions? That way, they don’t clog up your inbox, and you’ve got one place where you keep on top of everything. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Now share your secrets. A Beginners Guide to Content Marketing. Content Marketing Plan Methodology.
How to design a content strategy for your business. Where Search, Social Media Content, and Content Marketing Meet. 3 Amigos of Content Marketing and a Muy Bien eBook Strategy. Posts to Inspire Your Social Media Audience. ImagesTextVideosOther People’s ContentWebsite/Blog postsPodcasts Pictures in social media are the dominant type of content post, but text plays an important role in your posts too. Look at Twitter, the majority of posts there are text. Then, look at Facebook. The reach is best for text-only posts too. The argument there is that images are the most interacted with, which increases the reach. That is why it is good to have a mix of different types of content. In this post, our focus is on text. So how do you come up with ideas for text posts? Let’s focus on 6 Inspiring Types of Text Posts for Your Social Media Content. #1) Questions Asking questions is at the top of the list for text content. Here are some examples. Facebook or Twitter? #2) Giving people choices makes them more likely to answer.
Now I want to give a plug for my friends over at Post Planner. The key to remember is when you ask a question, keep it simple and try to keep it relevant to your business too. #3) Quotes #4) Tips. 7 Secret Coca-Cola Formulas to Successful Content Marketing. Here at Avaya, we’re focused on helping you be more successful today than you were yesterday. To that end, we’re constantly searching for insights to share with you about current business trends in communication, social media and the way technology is improving the bottom line.
This past week, Avaya’s social media team in Santa Clara spent the afternoon at BlogWell, a one-day conference for communication professionals sharing best practices and emerging trends. Speakers included executives at Coca-Cola, Whole Foods, Intel, Xerox, Citrix and others. Coca-Cola, in particular, stood out as a company pushing the envelope on social media and branded editorial content. Coke recently revamped its corporate homepage, and is focusing its efforts on hiring journalists to help them produce a daily digital magazine. So what’s driving Coke’s resurgent interest in editorial content? “We’re building a network of [Coca-Cola Journey] editors,” Callahan said. . #1: It’s not always an article.
What you should know about creating good social content [infographic. 5 Ways to Freshen Up Your Social Profiles. When was the last time you updated your social media profiles? Are they starting to feel drab or dated? Your social profiles may be in dire need of a refresh! And are you sharing the types of updates tailored to the latest platform designs and suited for today’s social media marketing? With recent changes to major platforms, you may be missing out on using some of the cool new options. To freshen up your social media profiles and take advantage of the latest updates, implement any of the following five ideas. #1: Optimize Your Google+ Profile for the Platform’s New Design Google+ social profiles were recently redesigned.
The new Google+ design features 1, 2 or 3 columns of content, depending on the device being used. Here are a few tweaks you can make to spice up your new Google+ profile. Add a new high-resolution cover image. Add larger media to the items you post. Here’s an example from HubSpot: This image demonstrates what a full-width card looks like in the new Google+. Your Turn. Why you need repetition in your content strategy. One of content marketing's biggest challenges is coming up with new material. One of content marketing's other biggest challenges is overcoming something you've been told not to do since you were small: repeating yourself. By "repeating" I'm not referring to verbatim repetition. You don't want duplicate content issues on blogs or web pages (think of the subsequent SEO penalties). You don't want to tweet the same tweet, or post the same update multiple times to a Facebook newsfeed.
Image source. But a degree of repetition can be invaluable, sometimes imperative, to successful content marketing initiatives for four primary reasons. The stream Your blog has millions of readers. Time or season It's summer. Message reinforcement There's a reason why you can still sing the jingles from commercials you heard when you were eight years old, or recognize certain brand logos by their silhouettes. Channel cohesion You said it here. 1. Break Free of Old SEO With These Building Blocks for More Meaningful Content.
Between major algorithmic updates to better filter content, links and aggressive tactics to removing several important signals SEOs use to improve marketing performance of their websites, the search engine optimization game isn’t what it used to be. Change is a constant with SEO but one thing is certain at the moment: A LOT more companies are asking about how they can create some buffer against the volatility of Google organic search listings. Some have been hit by Panda or Penguin updates, but even more are realizing their over-reliance solely on organic SEO has them feeling a little uneasy. This is not to say SEO is the reason to be uneasy, because it’s not. Putting all your online marketing eggs in one basket is what should cause concern. Beyond the singular SEO focus is the growing realization that consumers use more than search to find information and make purchases.
And to be successful with online marketing, companies need to be where their customers are. Where to start? 1. 2. 3. 100+ Content Strategy Insights. 7 Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Strategy. Complete Beginner's Guide to Content Strategy. “Content” is everywhere. It’s ads and longform copy, images and videos, stories and metadata. But what’s the point of it all? That depends on the content strategy. Content strategy plans for valuable, findable, meaningful content. For many people, content seems to begin and end with publishing. But for a content strategist, content begins with defining requirements, and identifying user needs. Before writing a word, content strategists outline the brand’s message, and the organization’s goals. In this article, we’ll take a look at Content Strategy—that amalgamation of strategic thinking, digital publishing, information architecture and editorial process.
What is Content Strategy? Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. If content is king, then content strategy is the king-maker. Today, content strategy is the process that ensures content is published, edited, republished, repurposed, and archived at the right times.
Marketing Branding.
Your Content Strategy Should Not Be Real-Time. Michael Brito, Senior Vice President of Social Business Strategy at Edelman, is a Guest Contributor to the HootSuite blog, and author of “Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization.” I won’t get into the Oscar’s real-time content marketing circus the other night. No need to play Monday morning quarterback and talk about what these brands should have done to be more effective and capture the attention of blah blah blah. That would be too easy. I wouldn’t even call it real-time either. What matters is that that real time content creation or what’s being described as a newsroom for brands should not be the focal point of your content strategy. A content strategy (notice I didn’t say a content marketing strategy) enables and positions a brand to tell a very consistent story across the media landscape. A content strategy requires planning – months of planning in some cases. Other things to consider when delivering a content strategy are the following:
Don’t Forget The “Marketing” in Content Marketing.
Your company is awash with great content. Are You Running A Business Or Building A Legacy? By David Cohen I was just reminded while watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi that excellence is achieved when no one is looking. My business has gotten to a place where day-to-day operations require very little of my time. After 11 years of owning businesses, this is the first time I can say that. I just had my first vacation where I was able to walk away and truly not step back into the business during that week. This is a testament to our people and our team. However, I’m feeling a little lost with this extra free time.
Reaching for things to satiate my dangerously idle mind, Jiro reminds me that quality still has to be fought for every day. I was recently talking with one of our illustrators who pined that none of his favorite projects had seen the most success out of our catalog. We work in the realm of storytelling. Watching Jiro was an inspiration for the importance of craft.
Editorial content. 48 Elements of Writing Persuasive Content. So, You Want to be a Web Editor? Know These 11 Things. How to Develop a Social Media Content Strategy. Do you have a social media strategy? Does it involve content? Should it? The other day I drove past a local convenience store that makes most of its profit from beer, Slush Puppies and beef jerky (not that there’s anything wrong with that). A big sign out front asked passers-by to Like them on Facebook. “It’s official,” I thought. “Now every business in America has a Facebook page.” Unfortunately, few businesses actually have a strategy for their Facebook page, or for the rest of their social media activity. If your social media engagement is reactive rather than proactive, it’s time to step back, take a deep breath and develop a content strategy that will engage your community. A content strategy doesn’t end with good signage.
What Is a Content Strategy? Last year while doing some research into what certification organizations were doing in social media, I interviewed Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, who said, I thought this was brilliant. Listen. The Discipline of Content Strategy.