Group items tagged

Justin Pearse recently wrote a nice article on the state of digital content. He argues that content needs to be thoughtful, meaningful and well executed for it to be effective – it should be less about the brand, and more about the audience.

While his argument is absolutely correct, it pivots on the idea that engagement often begins and ends with a piece of content. The reality is that the failure of content marketing is in the belief that content exists in a vacuum.If you create a piece of content and don't support it, you're probably going to be disappointed. In other words, if we define experience as the beginning-to-end engagement with a brand, then content is simply part of the spectrum.

Digital content needs to be supported by great user experience (UX), solid digital strategy, attentive channel management and smart technology. To reiterate – it must be part of a system.

American businesses are in denial about the need to embrace social media. New research finds that 72% of businesses that use social media do not have a clear set of goals or a clear strategy for their social media platforms.

This lack of direction is happening despite the fact that 60% of Americans use some sort of social media, according to the Pew Research Center. Businesses, however, are not convinced that social media is anything more than a fad or a temporary phenomenon.

Altimeter Group recently studied the internal goals in corporate social strategy. The top priority stated by 48% of companies was “Creating ROI Measurements”. Hypatia Research showed management’s expectations of the return on social communities are rather low. Research by Chief Marketer shows that the number of likes, friends & followers are the most used metrics by 60% of U.S. B2C and B2B marketers.

There exists great controversy about the use of ‘reach’ metrics.

I noticed strong correlations between all of the metrics. This means that reach, amplification, conversations and sentiment appear to measure the same kind of digital influence.

The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55–64 year age bracket.

The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+.

Keep older users in mind when using social media, particularly on these three platforms. Our age makes a difference to our taste and interests, so if you’re focusing on younger users with the content you post, you could be missing an important demographic.

People who are active on social media are there because it’s a way that they can engage with their friends, family and favorite brands. As a marketer, you have to think about how you use Social Media personally, and then adapt your marketing strategy so that it fits in. When you go from looking at pics of your friend’s kid, to responding to another friend’s event invitation, a post screaming “SALE! SALE!” will stick out like a sore thumb.

Instead, post things that are conversational, or things that are just fun or lighthearted. Remember, this is a platform to build your brand’s identity and personality. People should want to do business with your company because they respect your values, admire your culture or appreciate the hard work you do to create your products and services.

What are Ways You Can Use Social Media to Market?Show images of creative uses/applications of your product. It’s still featuring your product, you just aren’t saying “LOOK AT MY PRODUCT!!!”Ask questions about things relevant to your product or service. If you sell real estate, start a dialogue about your worst moving experience or simply ask: “What does your dream house look like?”Post free advice. Position yourself as an expert. If you clean carpets, maybe you could post about how to get pet stains out of your conference room carpet. You’re not killing business for yourself, because people will still come to you when they don’t want to do it or they will refer you to friends. DIY people will find the tips anyway so they might as well be from you.

Having a thousand quality fans that do something is better than having a million followers that do nothing.

Instead of spending all your efforts on selling your product, develop and foster relationships with your community by providing relevant and useful content available to them at their point of need. Understand what your customers want and give it to them.

“PR is about pitching the brand to the media.  You help shape the story, but you don’t craft the story.  Brand journalism is about creating the actual content, finding the best ways to share it, and telling the stories of your people, customers, and brand.” You’re skipping the middleman, essentially. You’re no longer hoping for a third party to tell your brand’s story, you’re doing it yourself.

“Brand journalism is the use of a journalistic approach to storytelling on behalf of a brand.  It is the mindset of assembling and delivering a compelling story, but it is not impartial.  It presents the brand’s messages and perspectives.”

A brand that is creating and sharing terrific stories and entertaining content, however, will get noticed and those sales leads will come as you establish yourself as not only a source of information regarding your particular industry but a place to regularly stop by for good reading material in general.

71% of smartphone users search because of an ad they’ve seen either online or offline; 82% of smartphone users notice mobile ads, 74% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase as a result of using their smartphones to help with shopping, and 88% of those who look for local information on their smartphones take action within a day.

These are some of the key findings from “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” a study from Google and conducted by Ipsos OTX, an independent market research firm, among 5,013 US adult smartphone Internet users at the end of 2010.

General Smartphone Usage: Smartphones have become an integral part of users’ daily lives. Consumers use smartphones as an extension of their desktop computers and use it as they multi-task and consume other media.81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home 

By the end of the year, 80% of companies plan to use social media for customer service. On the consumer side, 62% of customers have already used social media for customer service issues.

A study by A.T. Kearney found that, of the top 50 brands, 56% did not respond to a single customer comment on their Facebook Page in 2011. Brands ignored 71% of customer’s complaints on Twitter. And, 55% of consumers expect a response the same day to an online complaint, while only 29% receive one.

. Create humanized response models to engender loyalty and build relationships. Many companies are guilty of creating robust and well-planned strategy for social customer service delivery -– but fall at the final and most important hurdle — creating a voice your audience can relate to.

Solid content strategy (what you’re going to post on your page)Promotion strategy (how you’re going to continually increase your fan base)Engagement strategy (how you’ll respond to fans and build community)Conversion strategy (how you’ll turn your fans into customers)

the average ER for most brands and businesses is a mere 2%!

It’s perfectly within Facebook’s Terms of Use to do a giveaway on your fan page. The rule of thumb is does everyone get one? If the answer is yes, you’re good to go—that’s a giveaway. If the answer is no because you’re drawing select winners, then that’s a promotion where you must adhere to Facebook’s Promotions guidelines and use an app to administer the contest/sweepstakes.

with the top 20 publishers seeing a staggering increase in social interactions (likes, comments, shares) of 288 percent between September 2012 and September 2013.

on average, referral traffic from Facebook to media sites has increased by over 170 percent throughout the past year.

Gawker posted the largest year-to-year growth in Facebook engagement, at 549 percent, followed by BuzzFeed at 495 percent. “Old media” stalwarts The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corp. delivered strong performances, as well, seeing increases of 160 percent and 122 percent, respectively. The Huffington Post was the strongest performer for the month of September 2013, generating nearly 18.5 million social interactions from 15,839 published articles.

What’s the worst thing about the Oregonian‘s strategy? For me, it’s the singular focus on pageview growth as a measurement of performance.

I would much rather that the Oregonian and other papers focused on something approaching engagement metrics instead of pageviews, whether it’s through the kind of approach that Forbes takes — in which returning visitors are seen as 10 times as valuable as first-time readers — or some other measurement that shows whether reporters are building long-term relationships with their audience.

you need writers and team members who can think strategically about the content that will resonate most with your audience.

Search for people asking questions about your keyword or phrase on Twitter.

“Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information packrat, it is more about putting them into a context with organization, annotation and presentation.  Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic or theme.”

The acknowledged leader in this field is the US State Department, which now boasts more than 150 full-time social media employees working across 25 different offices. It uses familiar sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as well as local equivalents, such as VKontakte in Russia. Ambassadors and other State Department employees are encouraged to establish an online presence.

"The State Department is really creating what is effectively a media empire that could soon be the digital equivalent of old school international broadcasters like the BBC," he says. "But they not only see it as part of a broadcasting strategy, they are looking at the wider potential." Social media acts like an early warning system of emerging social and political movements, he says. It is also a way of reaching online opinion formers, and a means of correcting misinformation very quickly.

The State Department now has an internal version of Wikipedia called Diplopedia, which has more than 14,000 entries. To encourage internal networking, there is also an equivalent of Facebook called Corridor - in the look and feel, the two are strikingly similar - which has over 6,500 members.

the role of content strategy is focused on the brand’s relationship with its target audience

with your content. Desktop PCs and laptops are where the internet matured, but nothing in technology stands still – and while platforms such as game consoles and TVs are currently underutilised, this will not be for long. It’s clear that mobile devices will be key in the future, but smartphones and tablets are not yet fully featured computers, and this poses one of the biggest challenges.

when planning you will need to ensure that your content is planned and built so that it renders in the way you intend on different browsers, operating systems, native mobile interfaces, mobile applications, media players and access technologies.

Primetime will be all the time, every hour, every day, as time spent on digital networks, especially mobile, continues to surge.

As the first truly global technology, a marketer's online strategy is now — or should be — synonymous with their mobile strategy.

While great work will be seen on many screens, brands will be discovered first on mobile in 2014.

the brands that win will prioritize engagement over exposure. They will flip the traditional approach of using mass reach to connect with the subset of people who matter on its head. They will super-serve the most important people for their brand first and use the resulting insights and advocacy to then broaden their reach and make the entire media and marketing plan work harder.

This generation has grown up living digital lives. This has fundamentally changed their relationship with media and technology — and with brands. They don’t want to be talked at, but they do want to be invited in to the discussion. They thrive on creation, curation, connection and community. As a result, we call them Gen C. The behaviors of Gen C have less to do with the year they were born and more to do with their attitude and mindset. For example, while 80% of people under 35 are Gen C, only 65% of Gen C is under 35 [1].

Gen C cares more about expressing themselves than any generation before.

Share breaking news updates: Lavrusik and Hershkowitz said posts that included the terms “breaking” or “breaking news” saw engagement 57 percent higher than non-breaking news posts

Use a conversational tone and include analysis: Posts with a personal tone or clever language saw engagement of 120 percent above the average, and posts with analysis received 20 percent more referral clicks.

Start conversations by asking questions and responding: Posts with prompts for conversation of questions saw engagement 70 percent above the average

When I ask participants why they’ve chosen to receive emails from a particular source, read a specific blogger, or follow a certain Twitter user, they give me a variation on the same answer: “Because I like their unique point of view.” Readers will only listen to you if you’re giving them something they can’t find anywhere else.

My numbers-based research has confirmed the importance of uniqueness and novelty. The data shows that novelty is contagious; ordinariness is not.

Tweets with uncommon words get Retweeted more often than the usual things we see every day. Having a unique way of expressing yourself will earn you more Retweets.