Online Marketing Blog

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth millions. The thing about content marketing is that it’s not just about informing and educating, but creating an experience that your audience can feel. Whether you’re a consumer or business customer, decisions are not made solely on logic, but emotion. As content marketers, we have an opportunity to tie into the experiential state of information influence by leveraging media like video.

eMarketer reports a lot of support for the growth in video investment: Online video is expected to grow 55% this year and is the top format for content marketing. Stats about YouTube are pretty compelling.

Did you know?

• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube

Just about every day I do a Q and A with someone new related to Optimize, online marketing in general or about topics related to our agency’s marketing consulting practice. It might be prep for a journalist interview, blogger interview, Twitter chat or helping a friend out with a book like the Q/A below for Rob Garner (VP at iCrossing and SEMPO board member).

Q/A is a great format since so much of search and social media based content discovery is about answering questions.  Editorial calendars for blogging are useful, but new topics add some nice flavor to the theme. Social linking for example. I don’t use that term at all, but the practices and outcomes involved are absolutely relevant to connecting consumers with brands for business.

Over the past few weeks my unread messages in my email account have been piling up.  Between the hourly pleas for my help in fundraising for the upcoming election to the endless newsletters from companies that want my business, there is simply no time to read all of this information.  Even worse, I am intentionally avoiding the majority of this communication because frankly, it’s irritating.

Pretend for a moment that I am your customer.  Is this the sort of reaction you would like me to have to your marketing messages that took countless hours and manpower to create?  How can you create a meaningful connection with your customers without overwhelming them with too much content?  In this post I have focused on 3 tips that you can use to communicate more effectively with your customers starting today.

Over the past 2 months I’ve given book presentations in New York, the UK, Belgium and Toronto. And now, we’re finally going to have a proper book launch for Optimize in the great state of Minnesota.  Since summer is in full swing and people are already sharing that Optimize is their preferred lakeside reading material, why not combine great networking, food, drink and a little info-tainment with a beach themed book launch party?

TopRank Online Marketing along with Vocus, Digital People, MIMA, Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul, PRSA Minnesota, Minnesota AMA, IABC Minnesota and the Minnesota Blogger Conference are sponsoring a little get together on July 25th at Aria Jeune Lune in Minneapolis.  With that kind of sponsorship and promotional firepower, this will be one heck of an event.

The Consequences of Digital Ad Bombardment

This infographic from upstream addresses the dangers over overloading customers with too many ads.  Highlights include:

• 66% of adults say they receive too many promotions and are exposed to too many adverts
• 0.1% is the click-through rate compared to 1996 which was 7%
• 66% of consumers say they are turned off by unwanted advertising on their mobile or smartphone

This Week In Online Marketing News

Don’t Like the AdWords Display Ads You’re Seeing?
Google is making it possible for users to now dismiss or mute paid ads appearing in their browser.  Google says that this new feature will allow them to deliver more relevant ads to consumers.  Once a particular ad is muted, it will not appear in your stream again.  Read on to learn more.  Via Search Engine Land.

In the United States Independence Day has become a day free of work where individuals can spend time with their families and friends setting off fireworks, eating, drinking, and being merry.  July 4th is indeed a day for celebration, but also a day for reflection.

In 1776 the 13 American colonies were facing a series of challenges.  They believed that they were being treated unfairly and were forced to live under a set of antiquated rules and regulations, many of which denied them basic human rights.

Forward thinking marketers and sales representatives are facing a less extreme but relatable set of challenges today.

• Employees may feel that their voices are not being heard
• Teams are  working under a set of processes that are no longer effective

One of the great talents of an effective content marketer is the ability to re-create or as my pal Ann Handley says, “reimagine” content.  This is a topic we’ve covered many times in the context of SEO, PR and blogging. As the popularity of content marketing becomes an essential component of many business marketing plans, interest in the right mix of creation, curation and re-purposing has justifiably skyrocketed.

Many companies don’t have the resources to create anything new or don’t believe customers need anything more than product features and benefits pages. Optimizing archived newsletters, press releases, images, video, PDF spec sheets and MS Office docs was born out of the need to diversify what constitutes marketable content for search and consumers.