Group items tagged

As might be expected in a difficult economy, lead generation topped all digital budget categories with almost 27% followed by display/banner at just under 20% and search at almost 19%.   As to what is driving digital media investments in 2012, audience composition, ROI and measurement capabilities, audience reach, and data targeting were selected by more than three-quarters of the respondents.By a wide margin, click through rate is the most important factor in campaign success with cost-per-engagement and interaction rate almost equal in importance.

Content marketing, which includes white papers, case studies, videos, custom websites, video and white papers, is among tech marketers’ top five spending priorities for 2012.  Led by collateral at 71%, followed by webcasts/virtual events at 61%, videos at 59%, research at 55%, and articles/features at 54%, marketers are investing in a wide variety of content marketing or custom programs.  Agencies are much mo

s for social media, YouTube and Facebook lead all platforms with LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter not as popular. Among BtoB respondents, 53% found social extremely/very valuable for finding relevant technology content on the Web, which is double the 2010 figure.  Not surprisingly, 18- to 34-year-olds are most active with social media.  According to all users in the IDG survey, 60% rely most on tech sites, 46% peers or colleagues, and 43% independent tech journalists/bloggers.

Most of your content is getting lost in the shuffle. Recycle it! Let the customer’s social activity tell you what they prefer. Engagement in social is good, but not if that’s all you get. Some top brands have made the transition to acting like publishers with dedicated internal and external teams cranking out content.

Top tactics used by savvy publishing brands are: Storytelling – high quality engaging content on an going basis Infographic Creation – relevant lists and how to’s Visual Content Marketing – compelling visuals eBook Creation – great for lead generation eMailer Personalization – targeting with relevance and being the information / education source Content Curation within an Industry – keep people coming to you because you find what’s hot and important to your customers, making it easy for them to keep current Webinars / Pod Casts / Google Hangouts – establishes authority Slide Share Presos – extends your corporate social graph and thought leadership Case Studies – SEO value and high share currency Videos to Motion Infographics – video is growing

Brands have a need for smart content routing and unique displays which enable them to maximize customer engagement and experience at every touch point, increasing site participation, and garnering higher social share just begs to get fracked.

Content creation is 80% promotion and 20% content creation. Part of that 80% is finding influencers.

Start out by contacting one or two that have the personality type you want to be associated with, a shared message, and that your audience would like.

Once an influencer sends their audience to you, work extra hard to keep the newfound audience engaged and coming back to you for more creative, influential, and authoritative content.

Google +1s are more highly correlated with search rankings than any other social factor, including Facebook likes/shares and Tweets.

“We have a lot of our clients whose titles are actually changing from SEO Manager to Content Strategist,” Dotterer said. “Search engine optimization sounds like you’re doing something to the engines themselves, but what you’re really doing is optimizing online content. You optimize it by changing the content you’ve already created to better fit the voice of the consumer. You also optimize by finding the gaps in the content so we can create more.”

The importance of content creation has encouraged more companies to get their SEO, social and creative teams more involved in content strategy,

Another way to get shared by influencers in your field is to research which sites they visit frequently. Then either guest post for one of the sites or pitch an article about your company to people who already write for it.

Involve influencers in the creation of a piece of content, and they have a vested interest to help promote it. Do an interview with a targeted expert, request a guest post for your blog or get a quote for an article you’re already writing.

Take time to research, write, edit and fact-check articles. Shift your thinking away from quick fixes and ideas that have probably already been done. Instead, come up with unique concepts and strive for more ambitious projects.

Google said it has redesigned its privacy and security dashboard "from the ground up" to better integrate it into other privacy controls and to make it more touchscreen-friendly.

More than 150 million people have used the My Activity feature to track down old links and videos, and "tens of millions" have used the Privacy Checkup tool to change their preferences. The "Takeout" feature lets your export your data out of Google, and has been used to export one exabyte of data since its creation in 2011.