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Communicate with Customers Without Selling

Communicate with Customers Without Selling
Useful content should be at the core of your marketing Consumers have shut off the traditional world of marketing. They own a DVR to skip television advertising, often ignore magazine advertising, and now have become so adept at online “surfing” that they can take in online information without a care for banners or buttons (making them irrelevant). Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way. Enter content marketing. But what exactly is content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. And they do.

Content marketing §History[edit] 10g Backin package (1902) Advertising has long used content to disseminate information about a brand, and build a brand's reputation. In 1891, August Oetker sold small packages of his Backin baking powder to households with recipes printed on the back. In 1911 he started publishing his very successful cookbook. In 1895, John Deere launched the magazine The Furrow, providing information to farmers on how to become more profitable. Michelin developed the Michelin Guide in 1900, offering drivers information on auto maintenance, accommodations, and other travel tips. 35,000 copies were distributed for free in this first edition.[5] Jell-O salesmen went door-to-door, distributing their cookbook for free in 1904. The phrase "content marketing" was used as early as 1996,[7] when John F. Recently, content marketing has become more prominent, especially where digital and online marketing is concerned. §See also[edit] §References[edit]

44 Content Marketing Resources The term “content marketing” sounds like a hip buzzword to describe the latest marketing craze, but in reality, the concept has been around since the first newsletters came rolling off the presses. And if there’s one single reason why companies around the world continue to incorporate “content marketing strategies” into their yearly plans – it’s because it has been working for hundreds, if not thousands of years! Let’s go over a short recap as to why content marketing is a good marketing strategy to employ for today’s online audience: Show You’re an Authority on a Subject – When you offer unbiased and valuable information on a given subject matter, you earn trust with people who visit your blog or website. The following resources below will help anyone learn about why content marketing is important to any business and how to get the most of it. For Beginners For beginners to people looking for primers on content marketing, these links will get you on the right track. 1. Writers block. 14.

Content Marketing Today Going Where the Customers Want Us - @REI #giftpicks In person, passion and enthusiasm is judged by voice, tone, excitement, actions, and facial expressions. Online, demonstrating all five can be difficult to say the least. REI decided to change that with their recent @REI #giftpicks campaign. To put it lightly, REI loves the outdoors and should you walk into any store nationwide, this sentiment would be well represented. Over the course of one week, the REI social and video teams answered 90 questions from their avid fans and created individualized YouTube videos for each user. Angela LoSasso, director of customer acquisition and advertising at REI, said her team had many goals for the project, but one insight stood out. “Social Media Manager Lulu Gephart and her team did a great job of embracing the tools and the platforms that our customers are using,” LoSasso said. As many community managers will tell you, when customer feedback and inquiries come in, it can be difficult to respond to each one.

Free Editorial Calendar & Campaign Planning Documents - Top Nonprofits Great online communication doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you are a small organization or a large international NGO, communication in many forms is likely crucial to your success. I have adapted several resources to help you better plan, understand goals, and focus and align your team around a communications strategy. A big thanks to my friend and colleague, Jonathan Cottrell of User10, for creating the documents from which these have been adapted. These may not be the perfect fit for your organization, but they should provide a decent framework upon which to build upon. In order to best facilitate this, we’ve shared these documents using Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-alike 3.0 Unported. Free Editorial Calendar – Lite Edition This downloadable free editorial calendar combines content idea generation (second tab) with planning, scheduling, and a commonly used channel checklist. Download ‘Free Editorial Calendar – Lite. Free Editorial Calendar for Large Campaigns Tips

Why Content Marketing Is King When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing has just been crowned king, far surpassing search engine marketing, public relations and even print, television and radio advertising as the preferred marketing tool for today's business-to-business entrepreneur. Late this summer, HiveFire, a Cambridge, Mass.-based internet marketing software solutions company, surveyed nearly 400 marketing professionals about the state of the business-to-business, or B2B, market, and discovered that marketers are retreating from traditional marketing tactics such as search marketing and have made content marketing the most-used tactic in their brand-enhancing tool box. Fact is, according to HiveFire's B2B Marketing Trends Survey Report, twice as many B2B marketers now employ content marketing as they do print, TV and radio advertising, according to the survey. So what exactly is content marketing? How have you used content marketing to enhance your brand? Photo: Thomas Pajot/Shutterstock

Super Bowl blackout turns into viral gold for Oreo - Related Stories - Word of Mouth Marketing SmartBrief Skip to main content Browse All Briefs by Topic Super Bowl blackout turns into viral gold for Oreo Forward to a friend 02/4/2013 | BuzzFeed Oreo took advantage of the Super Bowl's third-quarter blackout, sharing an image on Twitter captioned with the words "You can still dunk in the dark" that was retweeted thousands of times. View Full Article in: BuzzFeed Media | Marketing | Food & Beverage | Food Manufacturing | Advertising | Business | Small Business Published in Briefs: [ + 2 more] SmartBrief Job Listings for Media View More Job Openings ©2014 SmartBrief

Six retailers that used product videos to improve conversion rates Product videos are a great way to improve conversion rates online as they reassure the customer by helping them make an informed purchase decision. One of the main problem with ecommerce is that you can’t hold the product in your hands before you buy it, which is why offering free returns is such a great selling point. But video is also a great way to limit the impact of returns, as it gives customers a full view 360 degree of the product. We've previously blogged best practice tips for ecommerce product videos, and recently looked at the rise of video in 2013. With this in mind, here’s a round up of some stats showing how product videos have improved conversion rates for six online retailers... Ariat In a presentation last year equestrian sport supplier Ariat said that visits where a product video had been viewed had a conversion rate that was 160% higher than visits where no video was viewed. Fitness business Zappos Anonymous case study For retailer A, the conversion rates were as follows:

Content Marketing | Branded Content Marketing | mcmurry.com 7 Social Media Rules For Brands In 2013 2012 was a big year for social media. Facebook officially took over the world, Twitter collectively told the world they didn't want to play anymore by locking up their API, and Pinterest made everybody with time to kill happy by sucking them into a near endless supply of beautiful food imagery and cat pictures. 2012 was also, quite possibly, the most irritating year of social media to date, particularly in the “social media for brands” department—including gems such as offering a 20% coupon to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy deal with their “boredom,” epic #McDStories (who didn’t see that coming?), and hijacked hashtags. Come on, guys. Now that it is officially 2013 and we’ve all had a few days to let the last bits of 2012 wash over us, we can effectively identify some of the most epic social media fails of all time. 1. Keep your accounts separate. Sign up for a brand-only account. 2. Twitter hashtags are great. Imagine you're face to face with your customers. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The rise of video in 2013 As companies further embrace the need for content, video is becoming a bigger part of editorial calendars and content teams. Gone are the days of shooting a 10 minute interview and slapping it up on YouTube. Consumers' tastes have become more sophisticated and short form video content has become our brain candy. But what will 2013 bring the industry in terms of video? We reached out to a few industry experts as part of our January trends series to see what they thought we'd see in terms of video strategies in the upcoming year. Matt Lawrence, Creative Director of Studio at Huge Companies need to realize that video has become the primary channel for consuming content online. Mike Knowlton, Murmur I think the biggest think companies need to have in their strategic approach to video for 2013 is a strategy for engagement. Ryan O'Donnell, CEO of Let's Gift It It goes without saying that video is really powerful. Mark Kirschner, Vice CMO, Rakuten We're going to see increased video for shoppers.

Deploying Volunteer Marketing Armies with Internal Social Media Brian Solis inShare306 Guest post by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, inspired by their new book The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social. To harvest all of the interesting and important happenings around your company, create an internal social media system. No one person in your company knows everything. This internal news wire enables employees to co-create a living history of the organization, and that helps shape the proactive messaging you’ll distribute across the social web. Share as much as you can via the internal social media system, even the things that might seem minor or unimportant. Information Democracy Perhaps your company isn’t large enough to have departments and divisions. Internal Social Media via Yammer Here’s a sample of postings: ‘‘Carol has arrived with a delicious assortment of Dunkin Donuts. ‘‘Don’t let the kids see this . . . a website that creates a font from your own handwriting for free. Information Optimization

10 sites pour créer une infographie Les infographies permettent de visualiser plus facilement un ensemble de données parfois complexe. Une image est parfois plus parlante qu’un long discours ! Elles permettent de comprendre en un coup d’œil les principaux enseignements d’une étude quantitative par exemple. Certains utilisent également ce type de visualisation pour présenter leurs compétences au sein d’un CV original. De nombreux services existent pour réaliser facilement une infographie : nous en avons sélectionné dix. Réaliser une infographie en ligne Infogr.am Une référence, puisque l’outil a déjà permis de créer plus de 340 000 infographies ! Piktochart Ici aussi, il s’agit d’une référence : plus de 100 000 comptes ont été créés sur le site, vous pouvez donc utiliser le service les yeux fermés ! Easel.ly Il s’agit d’un outil très facile à prendre en main, qui permet de réaliser une infographie facilement. Une infographie représentant l’activité sur les réseaux sociaux What About Me Visual.ly Vizify Get About Me CV Gram Kinzaa

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