content Archives - Page 2 of 5

March 2, 2017

Want to Know How to Make Influencer Marketing Work?

The Internet is a noisy, overcrowded place. Building momentum for your brand is often an uphill battle, and getting your audience to buy in can be daunting. So, how do you get people to take you seriously? How can you go from being just a little fish in a vast ocean to becoming a recognizable brand or even a household name? One strategy that’s proven to be effective is influencer marketing. The number of brands using this strategy has grown exponentially over the past few years. In fact, “interest in influencer marketing has risen more than 90x from 2013 to the present.” Here are some other stats to give you a better idea of the state of this strategy at the moment: “Influencer marketing content delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing.” “Twitter users report a 5.2x increase in purchase intent when exposed to promotional content […]

Identity Matters: How Content Strategists Build Trust and Loyalty

In 2009, whether you were a golfer or not, you likely heard about Tiger Woods. It started with a drama-filled Thanksgiving night with his wife. It ended with a public apology the following February. The superstar’s wholesome image unraveled publicly as one mistress after another came forth. Soon his marriage was lost, sponsorships gone, and fans bewildered. We were left wondering: Who was the real Tiger Woods anyway? Was everything we thought about him just a sham? Woods didn’t need a consultant to help him with his brand. He needed a therapist. He stated this himself in a somewhat bizarre 14-minute public apology. He also could have benefited from a crisis communications expert. But most importantly, Woods needed to figure out his identity – who he was and who he wanted to be. Identity is the foundation for authentic living. Many companies need to refocus on identity as well. […]

It’s Time to Pump You (and Your Content) Up

So, Copyblogger has been running for about 11 years now. And in all that time, we’ve never written a post about Arnold Schwarzenegger, unless you count that one time I compared long-form sales pages to the Terminator. Until this week. Entirely independently, Brian Clark and I both used the Governator to illustrate two different points about smart content creation. On Monday, Brian broke down persuasive analogies — citing a particularly effective analogy Schwarzenegger used to make an environmental point. On Tuesday, Stefanie brought a little relief by making some excellent points about why you lose business to your competitors … and how you can start to crush them. Like grapes. And on Wednesday, I explained Jonah Sachs’s idea of “ freaks, cheats, and familiars ,” using good old Arnold as an example to demonstrate all three. On Unemployable, Brian talked with Robert Bruce about the difference between good marketing […]

The ‘Less Is More’ Content Strategy

What is the ideal frequency for publishing content? In my view is there is no ideal frequency as it depends upon your site, audience and objectives. However, you can adopt different content strategies from high frequency publishing through to Jay Baer ‘s advice that you should only publish when you have something worthwhile to say. In this post I want to focus on the “less is more” content strategy. You can drive higher shares, gain more links and attract significantly more traffic using a ‘less is more’ approach. Yes, you really can drive more traffic by publishing less content. It is not magic as I will prove below. Brian Dean of Backlinko has executed this content strategy to great effect. Brian has published just 53 posts over the last five years, less than one a month. These posts have driven nearly 4m visitors to his site. The average shares […]

How and Where to Repost Blog Content Safely

It’s no surprise that after all the time and energy you put into creating a blog post, you want it to generate the reads and engagements you feel it deserves. Researching, developing, and writing blog posts is only the first half of content marketer’s jobs. The other half of the day consists of making sure that all of your hard work creating the post doesn’t go to waste. Promoting your blog posts on the right platforms and through the right channels is vital if you want your content to be read. But promotion is a tricky subject. And most of the time, it includes paid social advertising campaigns that are poorly managed and don’t see strong results. With this as the norm, it’s no surprise that some content marketers have started re-posting their blog content on other domains to maximize its visibility. While this may seem like a good […]

The Content Marketing Brand Management Checklist

Brand management is a little bit like dental hygiene: Those who avoid it are going to end up with big problems that easily could’ve been avoided. Yet marketers who fail to comply with brand standards and legal safeguards risk losing more than just a tooth. These failures often cost content marketers their credibility and, in some cases, their jobs. Just ask the people who sexualized IHOP’s pancakes , told Bloomingdale’s shoppers to roofie their friends for the holiday season, and put the male symbol on the cover of The Washington Post’s magazine for a story about the 2017 Women’s March. Perhaps the most painful part of these marketing blunders is that it wouldn’t have taken much effort to prevent them. Shout out to The Washington Post Express who accidentally put the MALE symbol for the WOMAN’S march on their cover today pic.twitter.com/xGS0XE8RTd Without an efficient governance system of necessary […]

Video Blogging: How to Create Consistent YouTube Content

Do you create videos to promote your business? Have you considered starting a regular video blog? To explore vlogging, I interview Amy Schmittauer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Amy Schmittauer , an online video expert. She founded Vlog Boss Studios and regularly produces awesome content for her YouTube channel, Savvy Sexy Social . She’s also the author of the brand-new book, Vlog Like a Boss: How to Kill It Online with Video Blogging . Amy explores how video blogging can help your business. You’ll discover what you need to start your own video blog. Video Blogging: How to Create Consistent YouTube Content featuring insights from Amy Schmittauer on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Share […]

Two Vital Elements that Might Be Missing from Your Content (and Precisely Where to Add Them)

It’s taken you more than 10 hours to write a blog post. You’ve researched the topic to the nth degree. You’ve edited it to within an inch of its life. Now it’s time to get it out into the world! You excitedly press Publish, and … even days later … crickets. Heartbreaking, right? We all like to think that the amount of effort we invest in creating a piece of content directly correlates to how deeply it resonates with readers . But, experience has repeatedly shown this is not the case. So, what’s the deciding factor if it’s not effort? Luck? Timing? Skill? Yes, the factors above do play a part. But, more often than not, it comes down to these two elements: If your content doesn’t hook readers in the first few sentences, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of it is, you’ve lost them. If you […]

5 Ways to Level Up Your Content Marketing Maturity

Large or small. Growing or dwindling resources. New or experienced in the content marketing realm. Every organization is at a different stage in their content marketing maturity, looking for innovative and even practical ways to bring their efforts to the next level. But as the old adage goes, you have to walk before you run—and that couldn’t be more true when it comes to growing your content marketing maturity. Simply put. In order to grow your content marketing maturity, you have to understand where you’re at and create a strategy to get to the next step. Using TopRank Marketing’s own content marketing maturity model —developed by CEO Lee Odden —below we offer insights to help you determine your current level of maturity, as well as tips to help you move on to the next. #1 – Stasis Stasis is the ground-level of our content marketing maturity model, with marketers […]

33 Tips to Build a Memorable Online Brand

“If you’re not on the internet. You don’t exist.” Seth Godin said that – or maybe it was Winston Churchill? Whoever it was, they had a point. Dramatic? Definitely, but not any less true. If someone Google’s (it’s a verb now, right?) your business and it doesn’t show up, then you’re as good as dead. But you already know this. You’ve been doing the online branding thing for a while now and it’s not working! Your brand doesn’t have that many followers on social media or maybe it does, but they’re not converting. Or maybe you don’t know this stuff, and are just preparing to hop onto this whole online marketing train everyone keeps talking about. Either way, you’ll be able to find some helpful tips in this post. These tips are probably not going to be a magic cure for your branding problems (it’s not a 12 step […]