 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
Content marketing is quickly becoming a primary focus on the Web. The expansion of blogs and websites that use content as a main format make it a hot topic for any marketer and content creator. But it is an adapting field like any other, and you might be worried that you’re not exploiting the method as much as you should be. Content Strategy Versus Content Marketing There has been a lot of talk lately about content marketing, especially since blogs have become so ingrained with other social media. There has also been a lot of talk about content strategy. The obvious question becomes: What is the difference between the two? Are content marketing and content strategy the same thing? Not really. A better way to explain the way the two differ is to say that content strategy is the process of developing a plan for marketing a product, website or concept. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a tool that can be used to carry out that strategy....
If you're not sure where to begin when crafting Pinterest boards for your business, here are eight simple and effective places to start.... In her book Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business, marketing and branding expert Karen Leland provides a Pinterest roadmap that will help you drive website traffic, boost your brand and build business. In this edited excerpt, the author describes eight types of boards you can set up in order to strengthen your brand and drive traffic. Before you begin to create new boards on Pinterest, it's smart to consider what types of boards would serve you best given your overall Pinterest marketing goals. We'll explore eight ideas to consider when building your business boards....
Creating great content is integral to attracting more and better traffic. Awesome content isn't ordinary and doesn't fade into the background. It stands out from the crowd, and is worthy of discussing, writing about, talking about, and publishing.... A couple of years ago, Scott Stratten of "Unmarketing" book fame (a great read) was asked his best SEO tip. His answer: write "awesome frickin' content"! Since then Panda iterations have had SEO practitioners reinforcing similar "content is king" mantras, and have had SEO doomsayers laughing maniacally at how SEO is dead (once again!). While Google's Panda updates did help define "better content" through a user-focused lens, with Panda's future as part of Google's primary algorithm, it seems an opportune time to help redefine exactly what is "awesome frickin' content."...
If your content doesn’t reach the right people, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You could have the most fascinating piece of information – something that could change someone’s life – but it won’t matter if they don’t see it. When you come right down to it, there are two steps to building a brand: creating content and getting the right people to see it. Here is a five step process you can follow to get the right eyes on your content....
Confused about content marketing? I think most bloggers are. Think it’s a big waste of time? I think a lot of bloggers would agree with you. I, on the other hand, have it all figured out, and let me tell ya – when implemented properly content marketing can make your blog a household name almost overnight. Wanna promote your blog or website? Let’s talk about content marketing. What is Content Marketing? I think a lot of bloggers are under the misconception that content marketing is a combination of the posts you publish on your own blog, the guest posts you get published, and article marketing. But it’s so much more than that. Content marketing refers to any content you publish anywhere: eBooks and white papers Mini-Guides Articles published on article directories Guest blog posts Your own blog posts Articles published on industry-related websites Articles published on content sites like Examiner.com, Ask.com, Demand Media, etc. Anything you publish on Squidoo, HubPages, Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, etc. your newsletters, videos, infographics....
We're going back to the basics. Expert content marketers with defined and working strategies can skip this article. For the other 90 percent of you, use these 3 building blocks to start developing one... I average about three speeches a week revolving around the topic of content marketing. At every one of those events I ask, “How many of you have a documented content marketing strategy?” That answer has never been more than 20 percent, and usually just a few hands are raised. Think about that for a minute. Content creation and distribution is booming. We’ve never seen brands more active in developing content to attract and retain customers. Our latest research tells us that more than one in every four marketing dollars is spent on a content marketing initiative. Yet, almost no one has a concrete strategy for the deployment of those content assets. (I’m virtually shaking my head.)...
We’ve got to come up with a better name for social media. When people hear that phrase, most immediately think of the “what I had for breakfast, aren’t my kids great, isn’t my life fabulous” world of Facebook. And that is overwhelmingly what social media should mean to many people. And that can make talking about social media to C-level executives a challenge. It doesn’t change the fact that social media can be – and is – a great business tool, both for B2B and B2C organizations. It just means that we have to do a better job of explaining to skeptical clients how social media can work for them. It’s not, “Look at me.” It’s, “Check out this information that’s valuable to you.” In the end it is about me in some sense: as a marketer I want you to notice me, but I stand a much better chance of building a strong relationship with you if you’re noticing me because I’m providing you with useful or insightful information. So am I talking about social media now? It kind of sounds like I’m talking about content marketing. Really, I’m talking about both because one isn’t really effective without the other....
With 91% of B2B companies doing it, content marketing has quickly become one of the most popular mediums for marketers....
In part 1 of this series on content marketing, we discussed the difference between companies that try to close too fast with their potential customers versus other companies that really treat it like a marriage. They take the time to build trust with their prospects through tools like content marketing, which ultimately leads to long lasting partnerships. With continual advancements in technology, customers have greater access to more data. In this new era of widespread transparency, consumers value a new form of currency: trust and relationships. Content marketing and thought leadership is the key to developing this trust and building stronger customer relationships, which in turn positively impacts the bottom line. In the previous article, we reviewed some ways to actually perform content marketing. In this article, we will see it in action....
Excellent list of algorithm-based content aggregators, including hybrids with voting or editorial components. These are the best of the best tools for content marketing, curation and PR....
There is a growing market out there for content marketing. Not the old fashioned kind where magazine companies would create custom magazines for brands, marketers, and retailers. I am talking about the Internet version in which brands, marketers, retailers and other businesses create blogs, twitter accounts, facebook pages, and the like and then spend money filling those pages with content. Many brands have full time employees creating this content. Others use third parties and even freelancers to do it. In many ways I see this as the future of online marketing. Instead of paying tens of millions of dollars a year (or more) creating banner ads and paying to run them on pages filled with someone else's content, marketers can create their own web and mobile presences and use the most efficient form of advertising, pay per click advertising, to drive traffic to these pages and then engage in a conversation with their customers and potential customers. I like to think of this as moving the message from a banner to your brand and changing the engagement from a view to a conversation. It also helps that this approach works better on mobile where we are spending more and more of our time every day....
It’s the age of “content strategy” and “content marketing.” Wherever you turn, more and more often, that’s something you’ll hear. ... Engaging in a good content strategy for websites is hard enough; After all, it takes many resources to create content editorial for a simple blog. Why would anyone want to spend time (and probably money) for content to go onto social media? Aren’t we just going to share links and pictures? A large part of your social media campaign should indeed consist of sharing interesting and relevant content, posting statuses or tweets that help users, engaging readers/followers, etc. Content for this is predominantly “sourced,” but how and when you present it also matters. There’s a fair amount of strategy involved; and apart from mere strategy, there’s “content strategy” even for social media.
Crafting a Unique Brand Story to Help Your Small Business Win ... The right story will help your small business stand out in the marketplace by building trust through emotional connections, demonstrating that you understand your customers’ needs and showing that you are the brand that delivers. Ask yourself how you add value, and then find ways to present your brand as human and caring. Here are 11 questions for you and your colleagues to seriously ponder as you work to determine what kind of story you want to tell. Like a fingerprint, your story is your brand’s unique point of difference. Once you have defined your story, you will need a platform that you can use to tell it. One of the best ways to tell your story is through a blog....
|
Today I’d kind of like to open it up and talk about how you define “great content.” After all, that’s one of the popular buzzwords these days, along with “killer content,” “unique content,” and “engaging content.” They all pretty much go hand-in-hand, but they all mean different things to different people, and their meanings can vary from blog to blog....
Open University, Corning and SAP have been killing it with optimized, creative content marketing. Learn from their most successful campaigns. ...Quality rules the day when it comes to content creation. We write often here on the importance of content planning and optimization and Lee Odden offered a complete framework for optimizing across SEO, social media and content marketing in his book, Optimize. Here are just a few examples of brands killing it with great content. Check them out and see what lessons you can take away to improve your own content strategy....
The most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques that exists today.... ... We wanted to give you the most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques available today. This resource is chock full of tactical, immediately actionable ideas that you can implement in your own business — to start building a community of fans and followers, to increase engagement and traffic to your website, and to drive sales. We’ve included everything from planning to writing to promoting your content so you have all the information you need to all be insanely successful and prosperous on the Web — all in one place!...
Since roughly one out of six Google daily search queries have never been seen before, you must provide relevant content marketing about your organization, brands and products that your current customers need and prospects seek to make their purchase decisions.
Your content by itself isn’t sufficient; it must be findable by your target audience. Therefore, content marketing and search optimization must go hand-in-hand to generate bottom-line results. To ensure your content marketing efforts super charge your search optimization, here are seven actionable marketing tips....
How do you create strong, meaningful, powerful content that sells, converts and engages your customers? The secret lies in creating a fool-proof content strategy that works for each and every website right from a small business to a large corporate site. In creating a content strategy for your website, essential tasks such as keyword research, content gap analysis, site maps and content audits take a back-seat to the creation of a content map, a simple diagram that places key pieces of info at your finger tips. A content map is an invaluable tool that assists content strategists and it’s elements are the building blocks for your entire website right from content to design to development and marketing. I like to use the content map that Joe Pulizzi and Christina Halverson used on slide 42 of their slideshare presentation – Web Content Strategy – How to Plan for, Create and Publish Online Content for Maximum ROI....
Content Marketing is important to the success of your biz, so we’re going to keep bringing you lots of info, including this newly released infographic from Uberflip. If you’re targeting other businesses (B2B), you may wonder how your marketing tactics compare to others, or may be looking for inspiration. We think you’ll find both in this infographic; here are a few key points: 94% of B2B marketers create new content rather than share. 82% of B2B marketers use content marketing to gain new customers and leads. The top three ways to share content: Social media 87% Website articles 83% Email 78%...
With social selling, you’re no longer simply pushing information about products and services out to your audience. Instead, you’re discovering what they’re passionate about, which can lead naturally—organically—into a discussion of how you can solve a problem or improve their lives, and why your company is the right choice to help them,” Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara said recently, as I was researching technologies that enable this kind of social approach. Building a socialized selling strategy involves completing the following three basic stages: Research: This stage is all about identifying your ideal customer – also called your Buyer Persona – then finding out what their fears are when buying your product: Content: This stage is all about creating content that speaks to the buyer persona you identified in the first step. Distribution: This stage is about getting the word out about your content, then using the results to refine future content.
From PaidContent Live 2013, we brought you five different entrepreneurs who talked about ways in which they are changing up business models for media and the ways in which people consume content.... It’s fair to say that the future of news consumption and media won’t look like a bunch of traditional newspapers copied onto the desktop web, and when five different entrepreneurs addressed paidContent Live Wednesday about the ways they’re bringing content online, the approaches were as diverse as the startups themselves. However, a few themes came out of our presentations from Paul Berry, founder and CEO of RebelMouse, Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and CEO of Spreecast, Matt Galligan, co-founder and CEO of Circa, Aria Haghighi, co-Founder and CTO of Prismatic, and Josh Miller, co-founder of Branch. Here were the ones we found most compelling...
Are social and content teams working closely enough, especially at enterprise organizations? Here are four tips for finding common ground between your social media and content marketing strategies. To maintain a healthy relationship between the two teams, some marketers look at social as the creation of micro-content. Yet, others might see this as limiting, considering how the rules of content engagement differ from those of social engagement across various channels.
Everyone loves the new visual bookmarking site Pinterest which grew by a staggering 400% in 2012 to nearly 40 million users. But how can you take advantage of the insane virality of this social network?
Six years ago, in April 2007, Joe Pulizzi started the Junta42 blog with a post he wrote, entitled, Why Content Marketing? Over the course of these six years, the industry has changed dramatically, and Junta42 transformed into the Content Marketing Institute. To date, we have published over 1,600 posts on our site, covering everything from trends to how-to basics (Joe, himself, has written more than 715 of those posts). Now that’s compelling content marketing! Even though the company is no longer Junta42, we still have a soft spot for the number 42. So, to celebrate our anniversary, we couldn’t resist bringing you 42 of our favorite posts from the past six years. This list is a combination of the posts that have had the most traffic and shares, the ones members of the CMI team find themselves emailing most often, and some gems from our super-smart contributors that we think everyone should know about....
Ikea USA serves as a blueprint for social media content creation. There are some great ideas to steal from Ikea USA’s editorial calendar. If I were to reveal a hidden talent of mine, I’d say I’m good at assembling Ikea furniture. As most Swedes, I’ve grown up with flat packages and family quarrels around mounting manuals. I’m practically born with a hexagon key in my hand. Therefore, as a devoted brand advocate, I wanted to check out Ikea’s social media strategy; curious to know if it is as innovative as their products. Ikea Sweden is not on Twitter while Ikea USA tweets according to a clear content strategy....
|
Here are seven good content marketing books to educate yourself as well as valuable contrast between content strategy and content marketing.