Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 13

April 9, 2017

How to Do an Online Giveaway That Doesn’t Suck

Who doesn’t want something for free?

It’s a very enticing proposition.

Some of my best business-boosting hacks have taken place when I’ve offered something free.

I’ve given away free tools, free software, free headphones, free trips, free cash, and hundreds of free resources.Free is amazing.And hardly anyone will turn down a free gift, discount, etc. when it’s bestowed upon them with no strings attached. Research from Kontest proves that an online giveaway can have a profound impact on your marketing campaign.More specifically, they found that one-third of entrants will agree to receive information from brands and partners: On top of that, they found that new campaigns acquire a 34% audience increase on average: That’s pretty serious.But I’ll be honest. There’s a lot that goes into a successful online giveaway.There’s more to it than throwing something together, slapping up a prize, and expecting people to sign up in droves.It doesn’t work that way.The […]

Content Amplification Strategies: Tips From Barry Feldman

It’s tempting to love our blog posts so much that we expect others to find and share them automatically. We produce blog posts and display them for the world to see, without thinking about the content amplification strategy . But how often are those posts seen? Your content is competing for attention with millions of others published every day.

Publishing quality content, even beautiful content, is not enough. You need to have an amplification strategy to ensure your content reaches your audience.

We recently asked Barry Feldman , consultant, copywriter, and author of The Road To Recognition, to deliver a lesson on amplification on a BuzzSumo webinar. Below I’ve set out the amplification strategies he shared, along with a series of questions from the marketers who attended the webinar and answers from Barry and Steve Rayson. Key Takeaways

Content amplification is the process and practice of drawing attention to your […]

2 Funnels Are Necessary for Content Marketing

At the initial meeting with a new client, I ask a simple question: What is the goal for your content marketing efforts?

By far the most consistent answer I receive is “to generate leads and sales of our existing products.”

While this is an important goal to have in any content marketing strategy , we often focus too much on direct sales-related transactions to prove our content marketing return on investment.

In his book Content Inc. , Joe Pulizzi offers a way to think bigger about content marketing. The simple tagline, “Build your audience first. THEN create your product,” is exactly how marketers should approach content marketing. Use the content to attract subscribers and then figure a way to monetize them around a content product. There is more to content marketing than using the method to support your sales team.Unfortunately, many marketers (and, indeed, businesses) don’t think this way. We use tools, […]

What Is the Difference Between Content and Content Marketing?

Editor’s note: There continue to be a lot of questions about how content and content marketing differ. This post shares an insightful answer that resonates with marketers, so we are bringing it back.

What is the difference between content and content marketing? The answer is the destination you will use to attract and build an audience.

Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience (or “destination”) that you own, build, and optimize to achieve your marketing objectives.

Content is everywhere. There’s product content , sales content, customer-service content, event content, employee-generated content, marketing and campaign content. Even advertising is content.With content marketing you are attracting an audience to a brand-owned destination versus interrupting or buying an audience on someone else’s platform.Think American Express’ OPEN forum: Or Red Bull’s RedBulletin: Or my latest favorite content marketing destination, Casper’s Van Winkle’s: These are three great examples of content marketing destinations […]

Part 1: Getting started with content personalisation

This is the first of a three part series about content personalisation. The series will address when it’s advantageous for organisations to press pause and consider the best route to optimise its strategy and approach: Before getting started

After a series of “one-off’ forays into content personalisation

Post platform and tech investment

If content personalisation was easy, everyone would already be doing it. This is the inconvenient truth about personalisation which is defined as contextually targeted content to a specific person or user. While interviewing senior leaders for the Forbes “Publish or Perish” report, Mark Yolton, then senior vp of digital for Cisco shared the following: Personalised experiences improve content performance, but create huge upstream challenges. Introducing personalisation around just three personas increased content volume 30x and created pressure to update the website every four hours, instead of every week. Why such a large increase in content requirements? The […]

Eight Simple SEO Mistakes Killing Your Content Marketing

Search engines help you get new readers, viewers, and listeners for your content, but all too often you yourself are the reason search engines hold your content back from prominent positions in their search results pages.

Search engines want to show the world your content, but not if you’ve made mistakes that undermine the user experience and search engines’ guidelines.

So give the search engines what they want by avoiding the following common mistakes that content creators make.

1. Short Content Google likes long-form content because it gives searchers enough information to satisfy their needs. Generally, the more in-depth the content is, the more likely it solves the searcher’s intent or question, and that is what Google wants.A SerpIQ study found that content shown in Google search results in positions 1-3 had around 2,400 words, on average. In short, long-form content ranked better in Google. Does this mean you should be […]

#154: 7 Content Creation Ideas to Use When You’re Feeling Uninspired

Don’t you wish for a button you could push to get your creative brain synapses firing when it seems like they’ve gone on vacation?

While we’re waiting on that magic, I’ve got something to bring you back into the light because we’re all human, right? You may be the most creative person EVER, but for whatever reason, there are times when content inspiration is elusive and it is a battle to come up with something new.

This is especially true when you’ve been in the game for a while and feel like you’ve covered every angle of your industry. The good news is there are always more directions you can explore.

Here’s a quick tease of the strategies I talk about on today’s show to help you create new content when you feel less than gung-ho: I’ll tell you about how I just dusted off some old content and gave it a […]

How to Find Killer Content Ideas

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   Whether you’re a novice writer or a pro, at some point you’ll get writer’s block and will find it difficult to come up with potent, relevant content ideas for marketing. If you’re in a rut, or simply need new topics to align with your strategy, follow the tips below to help guide you to new ideas. Keyword research

For people who like to just get going quickly on content, keyword research can seem like a drag or burden that can that holds them back. However, the exact opposite is true. Not only is keyword research not a burden, it is a necessity that can be used to drive your content strategy and get you to your end goal faster than if you skipped it.

Once you have your marketing strategy in place and a strong understanding of your target audience and the actions […]

6 New LinkedIn Features You May Have Missed

If you’ve logged into LinkedIn over the past few weeks, you may have noticed something different. Actually, everything is different, because LinkedIn completely overhauled its desktop site.

After Microsoft acquired the job search and networking website in 2016, LinkedIn announced it would redesign its desktop website to more closely mirror its mobile apps.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with more than 467 million members worldwide. However, LinkedIn members aren’t actually spending much time on the site. In fact, only 23% of LinkedIn users visited the site every month at the end of 2016. That’s not a great monthly active user number, and the website redesign was meant to “create more value” for LinkedIn members — and, hopefully, make them want to spend more time on the site.

For example, the LinkedIn desktop homepage used to look something like this: Source: LinkedIn And this is what my LinkedIn homepage looked […]

6 Ways to Energize Your Content Marketing Team (and Your Content)

Nearly half of B2C businesses have small content marketing teams supporting the organization. Yet, 73% of businesses will produce more original content in the coming year, which means content teams will spend more time keeping the engine running with little time or headspace for innovation. While boosting the size of your team might seem like an obvious solution, it’s expensive. If you really want to improve your team’s ability to produce quality content, you better protect their opportunity for creativity. Here are six ways to help your team create more amazing content and improve your content marketing program in unexpected ways. 1. Aim for more creative, less standardized process Adobe’s State of Create 2016 survey confirms that 73% of workers today feel increasing pressure to be productive versus being creative at work. Of course, there are always deadlines to meet, but if your team members don’t have space to think, experience diversity of thought, or have the ability to engage in new experiences, their creativity will suffer. A recent study showed that unfamiliar experiences can contribute to a 50% increase in creativity. Even small changes in one’s environment can provide a boost including lowering the lights , adding some ambient noise , or even just taking a walk . As the leader, you want your team knowing they have the freedom to do what’s needed to conjure their muse. Remember, your team will follow your lead, so show them how you change your environment to fan your own creativity. 2. Encourage more risk-taking When you’re focused on getting the next piece of content to market by deadline, it’s easy to shy away from trying new things. Untested ideas carry the risk of your team not hitting goals, so it feels safer to go with the tried and trusted. Yet, […]