Caitlin Burgess

6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Setting Social Media Marketing Goals

Caitlin Burgess on Sep 19th, 2017     Social Media

In today’s digital landscape, chances are social media is a vital piece of your marketing mix. After all, people live on social platforms these days and projections show that worldwide social media users will surpass 3 billion by 2021.

But as brands and marketers fight for visibility in crowded, “algorithm-enhanced” news feeds, how many of you are actually reaching your strategic social media marketing objectives? Better yet, how many of you can say you have well-defined, relevant and measurable goals outlined within your social strategy?

As a marketer, you know there can be no strategy without goals. Goals are the foundation of your strategy, guiding every decision and tactic that comes next. But how do you define those goals?


6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Setting Social Media Marketing Goals
Leave a Comment
Anne Leuman

The Mighty Cheeseburger: How to Construct Your Content for the Perfect Bite

Anne Leuman on Sep 18th, 2017     Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

You might not know this but today, Sept. 18, is a national holiday to remember: National Cheeseburger Day. We know, we know, everyday now has an arbitrary national holiday that has little to offer outside of free food or funny tweets. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth celebrating.

For our own National Cheeseburger Day celebration, we took a look at what makes a great burger. From a perfectly toasted bun to secret sauces, there is a lot that goes into creating the perfect staple of American food. And as content marketers, we could relate to trying to find the perfect mixture of ingredients and techniques to create something that people love.


The Mighty Cheeseburger: How to Construct Your Content for the Perfect Bite
2 Comments
Tiffani Allen

Digital Marketing News: Better Text Ads, Lifestyle Templates & AMP for AdWords

Tiffani Allen on Sep 15th, 2017     Online Marketing, Online Marketing News

Seven Tips for Writing Better-Performing Expanded Text Ads [Infographic]
Writing text ads is a challenge – how can you be compelling enough to drive a conversion with such limited space? There are several tricks of the trade explored in this new infographic. MarketingProfs

Google to Advertisers: Get Your Mobile Landing Pages Ready
Google recently announced that in two weeks, AdWords advertisers can use AMP pages as landing pages for their ads. This provides a seamless user experience when searching through Google and could have implications for page rank. Search Engine Journal


Digital Marketing News: Better Text Ads, Lifestyle Templates & AMP for AdWords
Leave a Comment
Nick Nelson

Digital Marketing Tools & Tactics: What the Trends Tell Us

Nick Nelson on Sep 14th, 2017     Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing Trends, Tools & TacticsAs the old saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same — a saying that certainly has resonance across the marketing industry right now.

As it stands, the top challenges many of us are facing in 2017 are, in essence, the same ones we’ve been battling for years. According to an expansive aggregation of digital marketing studies and reports from Getapp Lab, the industry’s top pain points include: lack of time, knowledge, and resources; difficulty converting leads into customers; and diminishing reach in an increasingly crowded digital environment.

The analysis offers a widescreen view of the current landscape for businesses, highlighting tactics that are leading the way, solutions being embraced to overcome prevalent hurdles, and emerging technologies that hint at the direction of the marketing industry for startups and enterprises alike.


Digital Marketing Tools & Tactics: What the Trends Tell Us
Leave a Comment
Caitlin Burgess

Our Top 11 Content Marketing Takeaways from #CMWorld 2017

Caitlin Burgess on Sep 13th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World

Last week, thousands of marketers from all over the world descended on the Rock N’ Roll capital of the world, Cleveland, OH, for the seventh annual Content Marketing World Conference and Expo.

Featuring more than 130 speakers, keynotes and panelists, dozens of different tracks, and a whole lot of orange, the four-day event was exciting and inspiring. And the TopRank Marketing team was out in full-force, providing live coverage, learning from some of the best in the business, dancing to 80s classics and making new connections.

While it’s nearly impossible to distill all the inspiring insights we collected during the event into this one post, we’re going to try. Below we share a handful of insights that really resonated with our team.


Our Top 11 Content Marketing Takeaways from #CMWorld 2017
2 Comments
Ashley Zeckman

4 Tips to Stop Killing Your Content Team from Workfront & Nordstrom

Ashley Zeckman on Sep 12th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World

The pressure is on! Content marketers are being expected to create more with less. And often, that means creating more content without adding additional team members.

Unfortunately, the content copywriters are often the ones that bear the brunt of these situations which can be exhausting and cause content burnout.

To help ease the pain, Workfront’s Heather Hurst and Nordstrom’s Erica Gunn shared some great tips to help you scale work with the resources you have in their presentation at Content Marketing World.

Want to keep your content team happy and productive? Here’s what to do:

#1 – Build a Business Case

Ok listen up, this part is important:

Before you start anything, you need to understand why you’re doing it and whether it rolls up to the most important goals of your company.


4 Tips to Stop Killing Your Content Team from Workfront & Nordstrom
Leave a Comment
Joshua Nite

How to Find the Stories in Your Data for Compelling Reporting

Joshua Nite on Sep 12th, 2017     Content Marketing World, Google, Online Marketing, Web Analytics

Our hyper-connected digital world is defined by an overabundance of data. Everything’s measurable, trackable, and quantifiable. Want to know how many people died on screen in your favorite movie? Or how much ice cream the average American eats per year? The data’s at your fingertips.

The ready availability of data is great for marketers. It helps us optimize performance, personalize content, and prove our value to the business.

But data in a vacuum isn’t informative or useful. It’s not about the facts and figures themselves; it’s about how we shape that data into compelling stories.

As an Analytics Advocate at Google, Adam Singer has years of experience finding and revealing the meaningful narrative in datasets. His presentation at Content Marketing World 2017 was all about how to create clean, informative, compelling data visualizations.


How to Find the Stories in Your Data for Compelling Reporting
Leave a Comment
Caitlin Burgess

12 Questions You Need to Answer if You Want to Launch a Video Content Strategy

Caitlin Burgess on Sep 12th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World, Video

There’s no question that video is an increasingly important digital marketing tactic. Humans are visual creatures by nature and, when done right, video allows brands to tell their story and create meaningful, emotional connections with their audience.

For California-based Jordan Vineyard and Winery, video content has become a central piece of their marketing strategy. Lisa Mattson, Director of Marketing & Communications, shared how they’re winning at video during her Content Marketing World session “How Jordan Winery Crushed Content Marketing With a Video-Centered Strategy.”

For a little background, Jordan Vineyard and Winery has been around since the early 1970s, and until Mattson came on board, they’re marketing strategy hadn’t changed in more than 40 years.


12 Questions You Need to Answer if You Want to Launch a Video Content Strategy
Leave a Comment
Amy Higgins

Stop the Marketing Killjoy: 5 Ways You’re Turning off Audiences with Bad Video

Amy Higgins on Sep 11th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World, Online Marketing, Video

It might only be 1pm in the afternoon, but it’s five o’clock somewhere – a perfect time for a great dry martini.

Research “how to make the perfect dry martini”, and you’ll get over 1,560,000 results. Ask a content marketer “how to tell a good story”, and you’ll get about the same quality of results — except when you ask the fabulous Tim Washer. Like the perfect dry martini, Tim’s strategy for how to tell a good story is simple, neat, and well…perfect.

In his session at Content Marketing World, Tim not only shared how improv can help your B2B marketing, but he shared the five ways you can kill the joy in your videos.

What are his simple rules of how to stop the marketing killjoy?


Stop the Marketing Killjoy: 5 Ways You’re Turning off Audiences with Bad Video
1 Comment
Joshua Nite

How adidas Put Culture at the Core of Their Content Marketing Strategy

Joshua Nite on Sep 11th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World

Frank Thomas of adidas

Jean Giraudoux once said, “The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

It’s a funny indictment of how to take exactly the wrong approach to authenticity. But too often, brands and marketers miss the sarcasm. We target an audience, then carefully cultivate an image to appeal to them. We create the appearance of a culture that matches theirs. And then we’re surprised when our target audience sees right through it.

What if we stopped trying to fake sincerity and turned the whole process inside out? Instead of crafting a culture to match an audience, why not attract the audience that matches your culture?


How adidas Put Culture at the Core of Their Content Marketing Strategy
Leave a Comment
Caitlin Burgess

5 Radiant Writing Secrets Inspired by ‘Charlotte’s Web’

Caitlin Burgess on Sep 11th, 2017     Content Marketing, Content Marketing World

Some pig. Terrific. Radiant. Humble.

In the classic E.B. White novel, Charlotte’s Web, these simple yet impactful words save a life and make another better. And for prolific writer, marketer and speaker Ann Handley, these words also make the title character the best content marketer in the world.

“In just four [phrases] she had to make her case. Wilbur was her product.” Handley passionately told Content Marketing World attendees last Thursday. “I mean she was looking to save this pig’s life people. … And Zuckerman was her audience.”

Handley’s passion for Charlotte’s marketing abilities stems from her “literary crush” on author E.B. White. She even attempted to purchase his Maine estate where we wrote 12 of his 14 novels, including Charlotte’s Web.


5 Radiant Writing Secrets Inspired by ‘Charlotte’s Web’
Leave a Comment
Tiffani Allen

Digital Marketing News: Visual Content Trends, Facebook Ads Controversy & Bing Retargeting

Tiffani Allen on Sep 8th, 2017     Online Marketing, Online Marketing News

The Hottest Visual Content Marketing Trends in 2017 [Infographic]
Visual content can help you boost your content marketing efforts in terms of engagement and resonance. This infographic shows the most common types of visual content marketing, what type of visuals consumers prefer and more. Social Media Today

Facebook’s Ad Metrics Come Under Scrutiny Yet Again
There’s been some recent controversy over Facebook’s estimated audience size that it gives to advertisers. A research firm recently compared their estimated audiences in the U.S. against the Census and found discrepancies totaling in the tens of millions in some cases. Fortune

Bing Ads Now Shows Remarketing Bid Adjustment Suggestions Based on CPA Data
Bing has announced that they’ll be using advertisers’ data to help them drive more leads through retargeting bid adjustments. This includes giving recommendations to advertisers and helping them estimated the changes in conversions they can expect. Search Engine Journal


Digital Marketing News: Visual Content Trends, Facebook Ads Controversy & Bing Retargeting
Leave a Comment