If there is one thing I’ve learned about content marketing it’s that not all digital channels are ideally suited for every industry. Before you get started, you should first take into consideration the types of channels your audience uses the most as well as the ones capable of encapsulating your voice most effectively.
Continue reading “Three Essential Content Tactics for Travel Industry Marketing”
If you’re anything like me, then you’ve been counting down the hours—not days, but hours—until spring comes rolling along. And now that it’s just around the corner (only 10 days away!) it’s time to start thinking about everything spring: birds chirping once again; buggies buzzing around; the soon-to-be beach weather; and the 2014 MLB and NCAA seasons if you’re a sports lover.
Continue reading “Ready to do Some Content Marketing Spring Cleaning This Year?”
Say what you will, but Facebook still reigns as one of the world’s top social networks. According to the latest study by GlobalWebIndex.com, Facebook boasts a nearly 50 percent utilization rate by active Internet users worldwide. Facebook usage is also highest in North America with a 59 percent utilization rate among active users. Meanwhile, Google+ only achieves 15 percent and Twitter 25 percent.
Continue reading “Three Easy Ways to Instantly Engage More Customers Using Your Facebook Page”
This week, it was revealed that Pinterest launched its first application programming interface (API), which enables brand partners to use real-time data from the social sharing platform to generate lists of the most-pinned items in their physical stores.
Continue reading “Pinterest’s New API Allows Brands to Take Content Marketing One Step Further”
Searching for the perfect holiday gift to spoil yourself or that special someone? Instead of scouring hundreds of stores only to come up short, try checking out your social media feeds for some holiday shopping inspiration.
According to a recent infographic by Crowdtap, a collaborative social marketing platform, almost 65 percent of shoppers use social media to search for gifts, while 70 percent purchase items they’ve found on social media. Moreover, social media and peer recommendations have proven to have an enormous influence on the habits of holiday shoppers.
In fact, 90 percent of recently surveyed participants said they trust social media recommendations more than any other form of advertising, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Shopping for holiday gift ideas on social media is like having all your closest friends shopping with you except there are no long lines, pesky salespeople, or crowds of unruly shoppers.
Continue reading “Holiday Shopping Made Easy with Social Media”
It’s always a good fight in the content marketing arena; in one corner we have the blog and in the other the eNewsletter; while video is getting prepped for the next round, the infographic is making its way into the boxing ring; meanwhile, whitepapers and case studies have been duking it out to no end. Between all of these messy matches, though, appears to be one consistent winner—one content marketing tactic that remains triumphant over all: social media.
Continue reading “New Content Marketing Study Reveals Astronomical Growth of LinkedIn”
Horror drama series The Walking Dead transports millions of viewers each week into a post-apocalyptic world seen through the eyes of a group of Southerner survivalists as they deal with flesh-eating “walkers.” The show is widely known and well-received for its portrayal of an exponentially disruptive second world – and how one group of strategic individuals makes it through day-by-day.
Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Content Marketing Edition”
Some things in life just go better together – for instance, peanut butter and jelly, milk and cookies, Barbie and Ken, Batman and Robin. The same could be said about content marketing and social media. Social media has become an integral part of businesses’ content marketing strategies, helping to amplify customer engagement, boost lead generation and spread brand awareness.
B2B marketers are using a number of social media platforms to distribute content more frequently than they did last year, according to Content Marketing Institute’s “B2B Content Marketing 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends –North America” study. In fact, marketers are now using an average of six social platforms, compared to just five last year. Continue reading “The Surprising and Not-So Surprising Demographics of Social Networks”
I myself am a visual learner, who would rather look at pretty pictures than read a 1,000-plus word article—and I’m not alone. In fact, 65 percent of the population is comprised of visual learners and 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than plain text. For content marketers, this means marrying compelling content with eye-catching visuals.
Visual content garners big results as it not only helps catch the reader’s attention, but it also increases engagement and drives website traffic. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and consider the following: would you rather read a press release full of text or a post with one or two eye-popping images?
When the commanding forces of social and mobile combined – widely known as the “social revolution” – companies were pushed to accelerate content marketing strategies to further engage existing customers, to pique the interest of those uninterested and to keep their brand at the forefront of as many churning minds as possible.
Having said that, we’ve read countless articles jam-packed with pieces of advice about how Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram can help secure leads, increase traffic and establish companies as thought leaders in their respective spaces. I don’t know about you, but it’s all beginning to morph into one giant, redundant social marketing entity. Where’s the splash of uniqueness that keeps these words of wisdom fresh? That’s exactly what sparked the light bulb above my head when I caught wind of a new tool, Foursquare Time Machine.
Continue reading “Foursquare’s ‘Time Machine’: A Content Marketer’s New Best Friend”
