How Brands Can Leverage Holidays for Their Social Campaigns Social Media Examiner Do you plan marketing campaigns around major holidays? Do you need ideas for your 2014 holiday social media marketing? From Valentines Day to Easter and beyond, holidays are an important time for brands to engage customers and promote products in new and exciting ways. And holiday-themed storytelling is an especially great way to build and cultivate a growing and engaged audience. Here are four ways brands use social media to create and promote holiday campaigns throughout the year. #1: Show the Fun Side of Your Brand With a Holiday Vine Because Vines show up in Twitter’s main feed, they’re eye-catching and easy for people to share across Twitter and Facebook. Home improvement store Lowe’s used Vine to animate everyday household tools to look like bursting fireworks and wish their followers a happy 4th of July. Lowe’s has used Vine in a number of ways to reach their followers. Use stop-motion video to bring your products to life in a quirky animation and send your followers a holiday message.
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.
11 Social Media Marketing Predictions to Watch for 2014 Social Media Examiner Are you wondering what changes and trends are coming to social media marketing in 2014? In 2013, we saw some big changes. Major platforms made serious strides toward monetization and there was a massive rise in visual marketing. To find out what the new year may have in store for social marketers, we asked 12 social media pros what they think is coming our way. Here’s what they had to say. And if you’re curious, here were the 2013 predictions. #1: The Resurgence of Advertorial Jay Baer Several trends and technologies will reach maturity in 2014 spawning considerable disruption in social media, but I believe native advertising and sponsorship will have the greatest impact. The future of marketing looks much like its past. In the 1950s, product placement and “this episode of Your Hit Parade is brought to you by Lucky Strike cigarettes” was the norm when companies wanted to reach prospective customers. The days of social media being “free” marketing for companies are over. #2: Employee Advocacy
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.” 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. Here’s another example. This Realtor Attracts Business without Marketing There’s a cable reality show called Love it or List It, and it’s a Canadian production that airs in several places, including on HGTV. So Hilary and David are full-time TV stars, right? Do you think David gets plenty of new business thanks to the show?
3 Google+ Tools That Take Your Marketing to a New Level Social Media Examiner Do you know you need to focus more on Google+? Are you having a hard time building your community on Google+? In this article I’ll tell you about 3 tools to build your presence on Google+ and get more value for your business. #1: Friends+Me—Distribute Google+ Content to Other Platforms Friends+Me automatically shares content from Google+ to other social networks by checking your Google+ business page and/or personal profile at regular intervals. Friends+Me has some excellent configuration options available, but you’ll need to spend some time setting them up. Sharing from Google+ to Twitter brings more traffic to your Google+ account. Features In addition to auto-syncing your Google+ content with other social platforms, this tool lets you: Here’s an example of a Google+ update reposted to Twitter. Setup When you launch Friends+Me, you’re asked to connect your Google+ business page or personal account. Add your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Tumblr accounts to Friends+Me. Summary Specify a title.
Content Marketing Playbook 2013 - 24 Epic Ideas for Connecting With... Greatest Content Marketing Strategy Sorry. I’ve been toting this one around in my pack for a while now and haven’t yet shared it with you. Here you go, the most powerful piece of content marketing advice you can possibly hope to hear. That’s it. Do it and enjoy the magic. I’ll expand on the idea ever-so-slightly… Your prospects aren’t going to buy your stuff until they get the answers they seek. If you can’t get to 30 in a hurry (I’m thinking 3 days max), ask for a hand from other people across your company. Here’s the beautiful appendix to the most effective content marketing tip ever. Create 90 pieces of content in 90 days based on the 30 questions. Create 30 blog posts. Go with this sequence: post, video, podcast. That’s 90 pieces of content I see you cranking out in 90 days—minimum. My guess is no. Okay, you might have seen one of the ten thousand articles about content overload. Get real and get on with it. Will this information overload prevent you from researching and making normal buying decisions? The list goes on.
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. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Now share your secrets. Visual Social Media, How Images Improve Your Social Media Marketing Social Media Examiner Do you use visuals in your social media marketing? Are you wondering how you can use images to take your marketing to a whole new level? To learn about visual social media, I interview Donna Moritz for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting). In this episode, I interview Donna Moritz, who is a social media and visual marketing expert. Donna shares the importance of visuals in your social media marketing. You’ll discover the types of images that work best and the tools you can use to create them. Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below! Listen Now Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry. Visual Social Media