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Blogging Lessons from Fantasy Baseball: Use Your Assets Wisely

Earlier this week I participated in the annual player draft for my fantasy baseball league, a time-honored tradition that takes place all over the country and helps drive the $3.6 billion fantasy sports industry. In years past, our league had used a traditional “snake” format for drafting, which simply means that teams draft in a linear order in each round, the order reverses the following round and this continues until all team rosters are full.

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This year, however, we decided to try a new auction format, where each team is given a budget of 260 virtual dollars to bid on players any way they desire. The auction draft is more complicated than a traditional system but can also be more stimulating, as the level of strategy necessary increases immensely.

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Content Marketing: Forever Changing Our View of Cutting-Edge Marketing

shutterstock_161159720“Content marketing is fundamentally changing everything about marketing,” Steve Rotter, Brightcove’s vice president of marketing, put out there as his opening remark for his ContentTECH presentation titled “Video Technology Bootcamp – Fueling Your Content Marketing with Video.” From the way we staff our marketing departments to the way we allocate our budgets, content marketing is rocking the business space, Rotter argued during last week’s virtual event. Moreover, failure to recognize this movement leaves you trailing limply behind the competition.

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Advertising on Facebook? You Might Want to Read This

With over one billion users of the social media network scattered across the globe, sensible marketers simply cannot afford to overlook Facebook. Rather, they must study the site’s metrics, how posts are read and other information related to user behavior to capitalize on the sheer number of users that could potentially be exposed to their brand.

Taking into consideration that 23 percent of Facebook users check the site at least five times a day and 47 percent say the social media network has the greatest impact on their purchasing behavior (up from 24 percent in 2011), marketers need to study precisely how the site works and try to understand it as well as they can. And that’s not an easy task, considering the site’s regularly changing algorithms, security measures and other features being added or augmented often.7749074364_0025778f82_o Continue reading “Advertising on Facebook? You Might Want to Read This”

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California Dreamin’: State Tourism Board Takes Over YouTube

If you’re like me, then you are probably looking out the window wishing it were 70 degrees. Like the majority of the U.S. population struggling to get through February, I’ve had enough. I’m ready for spring.

Big_Sur_Coast_CaliforniaAnd if you’re like me, you probably can’t just get up and go to California on whim, where it actually is 70 degrees and sunny. But you can check out the state tourism board’s new Dream 365 project, where you can salivate over documentaries depicting people bicycling across the Golden Gate bridge, surfing through tidal waves, playing music on mountainsides and skateboarding on a half pipe in the middle of the ocean. And while you’re at it, if you aren’t already packing your bags, you can learn about a great new content marketing strategy that your business can use to spread brand awareness and get people excited about what you are doing: a YouTube takeover. Continue reading “California Dreamin’: State Tourism Board Takes Over YouTube”

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Quick Social Media Reminders for the Small Business

social mediaBy now, everyone is aware of the crucial role that social media plays in content marketing. From Twitter to Facebook to Instrgram, placing social media front and center has proven to be a golden content marketing strategy, not to mention it holds the power to significantly increase return on investment. In fact, a new HootSuite infographic displaying the results of a recent LinkedIn study shows that 89 percent of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) find social media to be effective for their content marketing strategy.

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True or False? Dispelling the Top Three Content Marketing Myths

ttrue or falseThere are a lot of misconceptions out there. For example, that all Australians drink Fosters beer and that you can die from consuming Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks at the same time. There’s even a myth that the famous candy bar, Baby Ruth, wasn’t actually named after the “The Great Bambino.” We know, shocker. Content marketing has its fair share of misconceptions as well. Below we uncover the truth behind the top three content marketing myths. Continue reading “True or False? Dispelling the Top Three Content Marketing Myths”

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Looking to Increase Your Brand Exposure on Facebook?

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Facebook is an ever-evolving network, as are all other widely adopted social media channels. Enhancements to appearance, navigation and, most importantly, presentation of content, are constantly being evaluated and tweaked. Within the past six months, Facebook has focused on delivering what it considers high-quality content to the end users. Meanwhile, organizations with Facebook pages have seen a decrease in the number of impressions per post. By changing the newsfeed algorithm, Facebook is providing organizations with few choices (one of which is to pay) to have their content be seen, even by their “fan” base.

It’s not that the quality of your content has gone down, or that your users aren’t interested in what you have to say. As marketers we need to guarantee that our content is seen and shared by our audience.

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What We Can Learn from Netflix’s Missed Opportunity

Like most self-respecting single people in America, I spent Valentine’s Day devouring the second season of House of Cards via Netflix streaming whilst refreshing my OkCupid smartphone app every few minutes. The possibility of such instant-gratification event television was unheard of until recently. In the course of one year, Netflix has changed the media landscape, turning the release of each new batch of episodes (whether it be House of Cards, Orange is the New Black or even Ricky Gervais’ Derek) into a streaming event. Rather than unspooling 13 episodes over the course of three months, the company drops entire seasons in one fell swoop, inciting editorial assessments on the nature of binge-watching and even a tweet from President Barack Obama himself, asking for ‘no spoilers’ after the release of House of Cards season 2.

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Facebook Takes One Giant Leap for Content

Up until recently, things were getting a little weird on the Facebook News Feed. Where else could you find cutting-edge industry stories mixed in with cat memes from your aunt? The News Feed was failing to deliver relevant information, and it was frustrating both businesses and end users.

492730401_fa847f3771_oIn response, the company has made some recent changes that are sure to clean up the News Feed and keep users on the site. In December, as the company celebrated its 10th birthday, it rolled out a new application designed to streamline the news delivery system. The update is called Paper, and it allows users to browse Facebook on their own terms by categorizing content according to subject matter. Now there are about 20 total categories that users can receive content in including Sports, Tech and Headlines. Users can individually customize their news options and get exactly what they want out of the Facebook experience.

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#Undefeated: What Marketers Can Learn from Cuse’s Incredible Win over Pitt

Wow… I don’t even know where to begin. Did you watch last night as Pitt came within 4.4 seconds of stealing my alma matter’s undefeated record? Am I rubbing salt in the wound? Should I stop now?

As a former Cuse grad who truly bleeds orange, last night was literally awe-inspiring. If you missed the game, the undefeated Orange went head-to-head with the incredible Pitt team to hold on to their winning record. It was nothing short of nail-biting and heart-pumping as Pitt looked as though they would finally be the team to steal our record-breaking run. And with 4.4 seconds to go in the game, Cuse down by one, freshman Tyler Ennis nailed a 35-footer to protect our record. Take a look right here if you missed it:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAOIdhEJ1Hg]

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