Game of Thrones

I love “Game of Thrones,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” At a glance these series seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but they do have one common denominator: they have the “spoiler effect.”

I’ve been seeing the “S” word everywhere lately, especially with the fourth season of “Game of Thrones” now at full speed. Every website you visit, radio station you tune into and tweet you see contains some sort of clause warning: “Spoilers ahead! Do not continue if you have not watched yet!” The fear that someone will stumble upon a juicy online review or overhear a spoiler-filled conversation has become a very real one. We’ve all probably seen irate fans share rants on social media about how people need to respect the fact that others haven’t caught up yet. This still happens even for “Breaking Bad”—whose series finale aired last September.

Continue reading “The ‘Spoiler Effect’ and How It Can Transform Your Content”

I don’t know about you but for me, 2013 was a prominent year for content marketing. In the past—say, five years ago—things were so much different. Just take a look at the Content Marketing Institute’s list of 2009 content marketing predictions, where industry pundits were calling social media a “new frontier” for marketing.

It’s amazing to think just how far companies have come with the use of social media for content marketing purposes. Just yesterday, industry figures were applauding companies that paved the way by making corporate Twitter accounts. Today, a company is expected to have a maximum 60-minute response time on social media and can lose credibility with just a single spelling error in a post.

The reins are being tightened and companies have been forced to jump through more hoops than they care to admit this year. This pressure suffocated some brands and enabled others to rise to the top. Here are three social media content marketing campaigns that I think absolutely killed it in 2013. (Take note: these guys took the social marketing bar and raised it a few notches).

Continue reading “My Three Favorite Social Content Marketing Campaigns of 2013”