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What's the best time to tweet? To blog? To post? to get the most attention? Interactive clock will show you the best time when most the world is awake.
Ahava Leibtag is a digital strategist, content creator and President of Aha Media Group. She give us 2012's top 10 content strategy articles.
Contributions from Margot Bloomstein, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Karen McGrane, Rachel Lovinger Corey Vilhauer and Gerry McGovern, among others...
Three examples of brands using social media to distribute some cutting-edge visual content that's primed for going viral.
Interesting examples of visually arresting content from Sweetgreen, Vibrams and Sharpie.
Here's a fun infographic from Fisher Vista, turning content marketing into a board game.
Scrabble, anyone?
When it comes to content marketing, one format stands above all others - video. It's the most powerful medium for switching-on a customer and delivering a memorable experience.
Interesting article by Steve Davies on how car companies are for the most part missing out in the content marketing race.
The winner in terms of video shares is Kia, with their Soul Hamster Party Rock Anthem.
VW seem to be doing well too, but still all have a long way to go. They still seem stuck in the 'ad paradigm' - too afraid to stop spending on expensive TV and newspaper campaigns in case some senior exec fires them for not doing their day job.
"Car makers spend millions every year, stocking and maintaining press fleets, flying journalists around the world and providing the subject matter which we’ll write about and hopefully help sell their cars.
"Advertising agencies then sign-up campaigns based on publisher’s editorial schedules, all of which is coordinated by product teams to compliment the timing of press junkets and the provision of free long-termers."
Steve argues that ultimately both paid and earned media are part of the same value system, fostering awareness, conversation and an increase visits to retail channels.
Sadly, most car brands seem to see them as two separate things.
"Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle."
In BI Intelligence's full report on mobile video, they examine who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and look at the mobile video monetization opportunity.
In this deck, you'll see the full charts and data behind the report.
"It has never been easier to educate and market with content, but with this ease comes a major challenge.... I’ve also witnessed first-hand how [it] can be a huge waste of time."
Scott Scanlon makes a very important point.
The ROI of an article is strongly related to its sell by date. Most companies simply cannot afford to produce endless content marketing content with a short shelf life. We are not newspaper publishers.
Evergreen content is content that never goes out of date. It has a long time to get an ROI. And for your target audience, it may be better that they can find one well-written, evergreen article than subscribe to a stream of short throwaway snippets.
"Here are a list of tools that you can use to approach content strategically, as well as some ideas for new ones."
In the second part of this series, Matt Heron looks at the tools content strategists use.
(In the first part he discussed some of the roles and approaches taken by results-oriented content strategists.)
To be honest, most of these tools you should know already - Google Docs, MailChimp, Google Analytics - but Matt gives you some new ways to use them.
Recently, I looked at how respondents to our Content Marketing Survey Report are measuring the results of their content marketing efforts.
"Following on from this, I thought I'd provide some insight into the content marketing objectives for the blog, the metrics we look at to measure success, and the lessons we learn from them."
My article of the week from Graham Charlton of Econsultancy. For my money, the best article for some time on measuring the value of content marketing.
The home for shite that SEOs write....
At last! A place to expose the volume of meaningless crap that 'content marketing experts' are coming out with.
Anyone know who is behind this?
Very funny twitter stream - @ShitBoundOrg
"The Aberdeen Group has published research investigating just how much the use of content marketing software tools impacts marketers’ key objectives, such as site traffic, leads, and new customers.
"The study’s findings show dramatically higher performance from marketers who use content marketing software platforms."
Toby Murdock of Kapost neatly summarises the Aberdeen Group report...
"The study found that best-in-class marketers are over 80 percent more likely than laggards to use content marketing software platforms.
"It seems that in their efforts to become publishers, the successful marketers are also the ones using the software tools to help them."
Content marketing was high on the agenda in this week’s Changing Advertising Summit hosted by the Guardian.
Juliet Stott gives a good summary of the tips from the experts on content marketing strategy...
- Create a mission statement
- Have a dedicated content marketer in your team
- Tell or create your brand story
- Become the leading expert in wiriting about your field
- Collaborate, co-create and curate
- Be social by design
- React 24/7
- Think mobile
- Be visual
- Measure
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Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand. When creating content for SEO, you should be focusing on the quality of the content over the quantity. Keeping that in mind, the infographic below from Brafton, explores how ...
Via Anthony Burke
Ian Waugh gives us a brief review of Karen McGrane's latest book, Content Strategy for Mobile.
"McGrane gets it out of the way on the first page: this book is not just about mobile. Mobile is the wedge that we will use to force open the door to structured, user-centered and nimble content."
Forking content, adaptive content/responsive design, writing and editing, IA and analytics are all covered in this book. Not news if you've heard Karen talk over the past 12 months, but good to read in one neat package.
Lindsey LaManna of SAP gives us a good infographic that neatly captures the KPIs for her content marketing.
"This site has already received 347,709 unique visitors, 395,478 visits and 574,676 page views since its launch just seven months ago.
"Visitors are engaging with the content, which is created by both SAP employees and external authors, and spending almost five minutes every visit.
"Even more impressive is the statistic that 29% of visitors come to the site from organic sources and 6% come from social sharing."
What I like is how simply the infographic tells the story in numbers. Reach, Engagment and Conversion. The KPIs and supporting metrics. What it doesn't tell is what is happening at micro level (article by article) or how things are changing over time. But for now, this is good.
Are they The Real Thing? I read yesterday that Coke have a new revamped corporate website, a nice example of responsive design.
Another great article by Danyl Bosomworth, Managing Director of First 10 Digital, and co-founder of Smart Insights.
We were all in awe of Coca Cola's Content 2020 marketing vision. We may not have understood all of it, but it sounded like the future.
But that was before Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon and made Coke's efforts look a little, err... dull.
Danyl extracts 7 learnings from Coke's content marketing strategy:
- Big brands are publishers
- Content needs to be great
- Have purpose
- Great ideas and creative
- The importance of data
- Storytelling binds content together
- Strategy and commitment
Reference this checklist for a reality check on whether the content you're creating is actually valuable.
This is a useful checklist from Corey Eridon to make sure your content is on the mark...
- Topic addresses persona's needs/questions
- Aligned with reader's understanding of subject
- Aligned with reader's stage in sales cycle
- Tone is clear and accessible
- Written with specificity
- Good examples used to clarify stuff
- Benchmarking data used
- Right content type used to explain concept
The key word seems to be 'align'. But how little content marketing seems to be 'aligned' to audience needs and contexts.
How do we tell if an article is properly aligned? It is one thing to write something great for our carefully crafted personas - and that is a good start - but how do we know that the spike in site visits is actually from our target audience, and not from a bunch of tire kickers?
Two answers: good web analytics and meaningful customer feedback. There is no silver bullet, but we have to close the loop and get some actionable insight or we may never know if our content is aligned or not.
This post gives suggestions for better online writing, including discussion on writing with an active voice and succinctly.
Via Pedro Da Silva, paulo oliveira
"Mike and Leah sit down with Karen McGrane on the eve of her book’s publication."
"We discuss why Content Strategy For Mobile is awesome, why you should buy it, how you’ll be a better person for having read it, and why restaurant websites suck."
"While content may be king, simply publishing information is no longer enough."
Karen Webber makes a good point. The sheer volumes of content being produced now, often in the name of content marketing, means that quality is suffering.
"In their rush to get content published, many companies miss this trick, according to one industry commentator.
"Last Exit creative director Lisa Kay told the Financial Times that in many companies there is a get it done and get it out the door mentality, with not a great deal of attention to detail."
"'The stuff I see that people often create in PowerPoint presentations posted online makes me want to cry,' Ms Kay added."
"Matt Cutts hinted that the varying levels of quality mean [Google] might view infographics as a content type less favourably in future."
There is little point in producing poor quality content for our target audience. Volume is no substitute for value.
In fact it might even have a negative effect - your brand could quickly be associated with unhelpful, dull and down-right anoying information.
This brought a smile to my face, so I had to Sccop it.
Ok, maybe it's oversimplified, but then it makes a clear point - content strategy doesn't have to be complicated.
9 ways a content marketing support team can provide powerful leverage to your business online ...
Eric Enge puts together a very good plan for creating an effective content marketing team.
"To sum it up … A serious content marketing effort takes a lot of … well, effort.
"You are not going to build a large, engaged audience without bring a lot of expertise and personality to the table. You need both.
"This is why your SME is a critical part of the picture."
"What is 'great content' exactly?"
"The question is not as simple as it sounds.
"Defining great content depends on your point of view. What does it consist of, how is it used, and how to measure its value, are just some of the perspectives to be considered..."
Rick DeJarnette, in-house SEO at MSN.com, gives a good account of what makes great content from an SEO's point of view. Easily readable by humans, easily readable by robots, well-structured, well-tagged pages, plenty of links to it...
But the mechanics don't make great content. They just make it easier to find.
It needs to be interesting, compelling, useful, of the moment. All the SEO's in the world won't make a dreary article into a great one.
So what is the secret of great content?
Now if I told you that, it wouldn't be a secret.
Check out NetBase.com's “real-time mood meter,” with dials that deliver up-to-the-minute voter sentiment on the upcoming election.. It's an example of a content strategy that brings new meaning to metrics.
Via Fabrizio Faraco
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