Joshua Nite

Marketers, Assemble! The Super-Powered Team-Up of Content Marketing Confluence

Joshua Nite on Apr 25th, 2018     Content Marketing

Content Marketing Super Team

It’s been a spectacular decade to be a nerd. The superheroes we love leaped from the page to the multiplex, each movie connected to the rest with the kind of complex storytelling we love in comic books.

It started with Iron Man in 2008. This weekend, “Avengers: Infinity War” hits theaters, with over two dozen heroes throwing down against a celestial being with godlike powers (who, for some reason, has a chin that looks like a raisin).

The Avengers and Content Marketing

The California Raisins reboot looks really dark.

I’m pretty stoked.

Team-up events like this are great because a superhero team is always more powerful than the sum of its parts. They can use their powers to complement each other in unexpected ways:


Marketers, Assemble! The Super-Powered Team-Up of Content Marketing Confluence
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Nick Nelson

A Non-Agency Guy Reflects on His First Year at TopRank Marketing

Nick Nelson on Apr 23rd, 2018     B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing, Integrated Marketing

TopRank Marketing Team

Liking where you work is not an optional luxury. At least it sure shouldn’t be.

Spending 40 hours of every week at a place you dread is a tough way to go through any stretch of life. I’ve been there and I’m sure many of you have as well — especially if you work in digital marketing, which can often be a fast-paced, demanding, and stressful field.

So last year, when I decided to pursue a new professional venture, finding the right culture fit was a huge priority for me. As I started exploring the possibility of joining the TopRank Marketing team, I had some reservations; not because of anything specific to the company, but because it’s an agency.


A Non-Agency Guy Reflects on His First Year at TopRank Marketing
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Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: Gen Z’s Snapchat Love, LinkedIn’s GIFs, & Google Gets More Time

Lane Ellis on Apr 20th, 2018     Online Marketing News

Digital Marketing News: Gen Z’s Snapchat Love, LinkedIn’s GIFs, & Google Gets More Time

Snapchat Remains Teens’ Favorite Social Platform, Instagram Their Top Marketing Channel
Snapchat has remained the top social platform among teens, who also see Instagram as the best way for brands to communication with them, according to Piper Jaffray’s latest semi-annual “Talking Stock with Teens” survey. MarketingCharts

LinkedIn Teamed Up With Tenor to Add GIFs to Its Messaging
A feature allowing the use of animated GIF images has begun rolling out to LinkedIn users, the latest in a series of changes to add more fun to the business-oriented social platform. AdWeek

Google, Others Cut Into Facebook Share Of Consumer Time
Google’s properties including YouTube have grown more popular among U.S. adults than Facebook, with both taking up a greater share of consumer time than the properties of Verizon, Amazon, Snapchat, and Twitter, according to recently-released January 2018 Nielsen ratings data. MediaPost


Digital Marketing News: Gen Z’s Snapchat Love, LinkedIn’s GIFs, & Google Gets More Time
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Anne Leuman

What Content Marketers Can Learn From an Adept Dungeon Master

Anne Leuman on Apr 18th, 2018     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing Lessons from Dungeons & Dragons

It’s probably not news to you that 91% of B2B brands use content marketing to attract, engage, nurture, and convert their audience. However, it might be surprising to learn that only 9% of those brands rate their content marketing as “sophisticated.” Sophisticated meaning that their content marketing is successful, scales across the organization, and provides accurate measurement to the business. This puts a lot of pressure on content marketers to elevate their game and provide more worthwhile and valuable content experiences.

Patrick PinedaAs an adept Dungeon Master (DM) of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) games, TopRank Marketing’s Motion Graphic Designer, Patrick Pineda, can relate.


What Content Marketers Can Learn From an Adept Dungeon Master
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Lee Odden

6 Top Marketing Challenges Solved by Influencer Content

Lee Odden on Apr 16th, 2018     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Marketing Challenges Solved by Influencer Content

Whether you’re a new Marketing leader at a company in need of establishing wins quickly or part of a growing organization with ambitious revenue goals, the challenges within marketing today are greater than ever.

To help make sense out of these challenges, I’ve listed 6 of the top obstacles to brands achieving effectiveness out of their marketing and how collaborating with influencers on content help solve each problem.

1. Challenge: Ad Blocking

600 million devices are using ad blocking leading to a loss of $22 billion in ad revenue for publishers (PageFair). If buyers don’t ever see your ads, what chance do you have?

Challenge solved: Contrary to ads, influencers are liked and because people pay attention to the influencers they follow, shared brand messages are far more likely to attract and engage buyers.


6 Top Marketing Challenges Solved by Influencer Content
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Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: Cryptofluencers, Google’s Infinite Scrolling, Influencer Trust Grows

Lane Ellis on Apr 13th, 2018     Online Marketing News

Digital Marketing News: Cryptofluencers, Google’s Infinite Scrolling, Influencer Trust Grows

Influencer Marketing Has Hit Cryptoworld
The proliferation of cryptocurrencies over the past several years has led to a sharp recent increase in the number of paid influencers hired to help promote and legitimize both small and large players in the cryptoworld. Digiday

Google launches Reach Planner for YouTube & video ad forecasting in AdWords
Google is offering a more powerful video campaign reach estimate tool called Reach Planner, aimed at YouTube and Google Display Network advertisers, and featuring reach data to help find the best video product mixes. Marketing Land

80% Lose Trust in Local Businesses if Online Information is Incorrect
Businesses that have incorrect or inconsistent information online lose trust among 80 percent of consumers, while even out-of-date or poor quality photos cause 50 percent of consumers to have diminished trust, according to a recent report. Small Business Trends


Digital Marketing News: Cryptofluencers, Google’s Infinite Scrolling, Influencer Trust Grows
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Lee Odden

Relationship Powered Link Building #Pubcon Florida

Lee Odden on Apr 12th, 2018     Link Building, SEO

Relationship Powered Link Building Pubcon

Keywords, content and links. This is the currency of the Search Engine Optimization world and the rules for spending that currency seem to be in a constant state of flux.

At TopRank Marketing, we take a conservative approach to attracting links through purely organic means. Our focus is on creating content that’s actually worth being linked to with an emphasis on customer engagement and share optimization over pure SEO value.

The irony of this approach is that while we don’t “build links” directly for SEO, the attraction based approach we take typically results in links that are very high value and sustainable that many overt link building tactics.

In this session at Pubcon Florida, Ann Smarty @seosmarty from Internet Marketing Ninjas broke her multi-year silence on link building to share her current insights on the topic of link building through relationships.


Relationship Powered Link Building #Pubcon Florida
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Lee Odden

How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Improved SEO #Pubcon Florida

Lee Odden on Apr 11th, 2018     Influencer Marketing, SEO

How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Improved SEO

This session on influencer marketing and SEO is the first up for me on day one of Pubcon Florida, which has grown from a one day to a two day event. It’s easy to see why: The speaker line up is chock full of current smart search marketing advice from a great collection of expert practitioners.

With moderation duties handled by Susan Wenograd @SusanEDub the speakers for this session included the dynamic duo of:
Marcela De Vivo @marceladevivo from SEMRush
Dixon Jones @Dixon_Jones from Majestic

First up is birthday woman Marcela De Vivo. Happy Birthday Marcela!

Influencer Marketing is hot right now for a variety of reasons: consumers increased use of ad blocking, increased competition and working with the right influencers can make your marketing more effective, especially with SEO.


How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Improved SEO #Pubcon Florida
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Joshua Nite

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

Joshua Nite on Apr 11th, 2018     Facebook, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Advertising, Twitter

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks Report 2018

Social media marketers, how are you feeling? Take a minute to breathe if you need to. The last few months have been a wild ride. Fatigue, vertigo, and even a little nausea are perfectly understandable.

As I said before, social media isn’t dying, but it is changing. Marketers are used to quick changes, naturally, but it’s important to be sure we’re making the right changes. We should approach evolving our social media with the same data-driven, strategic rigor that applies to everything else we do.

The good folks at Rival IQ recently published their 2018 Social Media Benchmarking Report. The data points to some clear directions for the next evolution of social media marketing.

Here are some of the key data points – and, more importantly, what you should do about them.


Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus
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Caitlin Burgess

Crushing Conclusions: Why Content Marketers Shouldn’t Skip the Ending

Caitlin Burgess on Apr 9th, 2018     Content Marketing

Importance of Conclusions in Content Marketing

We marketing writers spend a lot of time crafting a piece of content. In fact, according to Orbit Media’s most recent blogger survey, most writers spend about three and half hours crafting one blog post—which is a one-hour jump from its first report in 2014, highlighting to me the focus on quality over quantity of output.

But let’s be honest, regardless of how long we spend on a piece of content, we have our priorities in terms of how we spend that time. The title, while just a few words, is how we grab audience attention or entice the click. The introduction is how we hook the readers. And, of course, the body is at the heart of it all where we make good on everything we’ve promised in the headline and introduction.


Crushing Conclusions: Why Content Marketers Shouldn’t Skip the Ending
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Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: CMO Diversity Shortfalls, Goo.gl Retirement, Facebook’s New A/B Tests

Lane Ellis on Apr 6th, 2018     Online Marketing News

Brands Fail to Meet the ANA’s Diversity Goals, Too

Brands Fail to Meet the ANA’s Diversity Goals, Too
Progress has been strong in CMO gender balance while ethnic diversity continues to face significant shortfalls, according to new research from the Association of National Advertisers and its inaugural CMO scorecard. While 45 percent of top marketer positions examined in the ANA member data were female, only 13 percent were people of color. AdWeek

Instagram Makes Stories Advertising Easier with Automatic Full-screen Support
Instagram advertisers can now have square or landscape ad photos or videos automatically reformatted for full-screen utilization, one of several new features the firm recently announced as part of an effort to improve Instagram Stories. Marketing Land


Digital Marketing News: CMO Diversity Shortfalls, Goo.gl Retirement, Facebook’s New A/B Tests
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Alexis Hall

To Gate, or Not to Gate? Answers to an Age-Old Digital Marketing Question

Alexis Hall on Apr 4th, 2018     Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

When Not to Gate Your Content

Modern marketers understand that quality, engaging and relevant content is at the core of any integrated digital marketing strategy. After all, in a world where consumers are increasingly self-directed in researching their options to make purchasing decisions, that quality, engaging and relevant content aids their journey and decision-making.

But let’s face it. While marketers want to inform and engage their audience, they ultimately want to generate viable leads to meet their goals and grow their respective businesses. Oftentimes, that means deciding when, where and how to gate certain content assets. In fact, perhaps one of the most common questions we get from our book of clients is: “Should I gate my content?”

The answer? It depends.


To Gate, or Not to Gate? Answers to an Age-Old Digital Marketing Question
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