Archives for May 2014

Online Marketing News – Twitter Heading Over The Pacific, Facebook Gets Private, Most Don’t Automate

Facebook Adds Audio Matching to Get You Posting More About TV – Facebook wants you to post about TV so much that it will now start writing the posts for you. The social network today announced a new feature that uses a phone’s microphone to identify a show or movie airing on one of 160 TV channels. AdAge

Only 16% of B2B Companies Use Marketing Automation: Study – A paltry 16% of North American B-to-B companies use marketing automation technology, according to new study by SiriusDecisions. AdAge

Facebook Introduces Privacy Checkup Tool, And New Default Privacy Settings – Today, Facebook announced some changes to their default privacy settings for new users, as well as a new privacy checkup tool for current users. Search Engine Journal


Online Marketing News – Twitter Heading Over The Pacific, Facebook Gets Private, Most Don’t Automate

Brand or Customer: What’s Your Content Marketing Center? #fusionmex

Content Marketing Conference Europe

For over 1,000 years people used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe, not unlike how many companies still think the corporate brand should be the center of their marketing messages.

As with Copernicus’s 16th century observations about the Earth moving around the Sun, modern marketers in Europe and all over the world are realizing that the customer is at the center for content and messaging, not just the brand.

Some companies, agencies and consultants have made significant progress in this view of content marketing and we reached out to a number of them that will be presenting at the upcoming Content Marketing Conference Europe.

The question? We asked: What is one of the most important ways content marketing creates value for customers?


Brand or Customer: What’s Your Content Marketing Center? #fusionmex

How Content Curation and Tools Can Fit In Your Digital Marketing MIx

content curation marketing

There are many types of content a business can create to attract, engage and convert customers: Evergreen, Repurposed, Curated and Co-Created.

Of those content types, curated content offers numerous benefits that many companies are not taking advantage of. While content curation has grown in popularity since we first started writing about it in 2010, the question remains: Does it belong in your digital marketing mix?

The practice of collecting and filtering information and then adding value to it has been around a long time. Classic blogging often follows this “oreo cookie” format of sandwiching an excerpt of someone else’s information with your own. Doing so on a continuous basis is content curation and is as old as blogging itself.

I think there are three main reasons for the increased popularity of content curation for marketing:


How Content Curation and Tools Can Fit In Your Digital Marketing MIx

Integrate Social Media Marketing With All of Your Online Marketing Efforts

integrated marketing social media

Integrating content across channels of discovery and engagement like social networks is an important part of optimizing for the customer experience. In fact, according to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 83% of marketers stated they have integrated their social media and traditional marketing activities.

Social Media contributes to all aspects of the customer journey, so integrating social media marketing with overall online marketing efforts just makes sense if you want to connect the dots for customers from education to action. But how?

I recently did an interview on this topic with Roza Tsvetkova of Komfo in Denmark and thought I’d share it here:

What is new when we talk about social integration? What is key to the integration of social media with the other online marketing efforts?


Integrate Social Media Marketing With All of Your Online Marketing Efforts

Online Marketing News – Panda Gets New Fur, Facebook & Twitter Take The Shares, Loyalty Is Queen

Google Panda 4.0 Now Rolling Out; A New Panda Algorithm – Last night was pretty wild, with Google confirming an update over the weekend targeting spammy queries and also Google’s Matt Cutts posting on Twitter that Panda 4.0 was released. Search Engine Roundtable

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report – In the sixth annual social media study, more than 2800 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities, which social tactics are most effective and how content plays a role into their social media marketing. Social Media Examiner

Mobile Devices Drive 66 Percent Of Email Opens — Report – According to Movable Ink’s Q1 2014 US Consumer Device Preference Report email opens continue to migrate away from the desktop, which now represents a minority of all email opens. In addition, the tablet share of email opens continues to grow. Marketing Land


Online Marketing News – Panda Gets New Fur, Facebook & Twitter Take The Shares, Loyalty Is Queen

SEO Storm or Light Shower? Google’s Panda 4.0 Update

Google Panda 4.0

The thunder clap of Google’s Matt Cutts’s Twitter post could be heard across the web this week with the announcement of the search engine’s latest update, Panda 4.0.

Of course the type of Panda I’m talking about isn’t a cute bear from China. It’s the name of an algorithm used by Google to filter out low quality content from search results.

The first Panda update in Feb, 2011 was fairly aggressive, affecting about 11% of queries on Google and millions of searchers. Panda also had an impact on more than a few website owners who fell from the search results like hail from the sky.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports that this most recent Panda update is expected to affect 7.5% of English search queries and with 12.5 billion searches per month on Google, that could be a pretty big storm for the SEO world.


SEO Storm or Light Shower? Google’s Panda 4.0 Update

Facts Tell, Stories Sell – How Infotainment Inspires Action in B2B Marketing

10 B2B Marketing Masters

In the B2B marketing world, there’s a perception that “B” means “boring”.  Of course that’s just not the case with modern B2B marketing.

According to a recent CMI & MarketingProfs study, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing across an average of 15 different tactics. But it’s not just quantity that wins with B2B buyers.

Individual buyers and buying committees have to sort through a lot of information to make decisions and the marketers that can make the experience of information discovery, consumption and next steps a easy and positive one, will win the day.

One of my favorite expressions that illustrates this evolution in B2B content is:


Facts Tell, Stories Sell – How Infotainment Inspires Action in B2B Marketing

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry ReportMike Stelzner over at Social Media Examiner has published the 6th Annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report based on a survey of over 2,800 marketers.

It’s a pretty robust report at 50 pages and covers the gamut of social media marketing topics from the most important social platforms for marketing to the most important social content types to the ways marketers will be changing their approach to social media in the future.

Some of the highlights include:

  • 92% of marketers say social media is important for their business (up from 86%)
  • 58% of marketers say original written content is the most important form of content
  • 68% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogging
  • 61% of marketers plan to increase Google+ activities in 2014

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Online Marketing News – Fridays For Engagement, People Don’t Know Ads Are Ads, Tablets Everywhere

Google In-Store Behavior

Google: Local Searches Lead 50% of Mobile Users to Visit Stores [Study] – Searches with local intent are more likely to lead to store visits and sales within a day. New Google research says that 50 percent of mobile users are most likely to visit after conducting a local search, while 34 percent of consumers on tablets or computers will go to a store. Search Engine Watch

Facebook, Google+ Lead Twitter, Instagram For Reach Amongst Young Adults [STATS] – Facebook’s reach amongst young adults is still unmatched when compared to all other social networks, reports Statista, citing a recent study from Harvard University’s Institute Of Politics. AllTwitter

36% of People Still Don’t Realize That Google Adwords Are Ads – Last year, we published the results of user tests which found that 41% of users were unaware of the distinction between paid ads and organic listings.  Econsultancy


Online Marketing News – Fridays For Engagement, People Don’t Know Ads Are Ads, Tablets Everywhere

Modular Content – Creative Repurposing for Content Marketing

Modular Content

There are many content types and tactics for content marketing. Each has it’s place. Each offers unique benefits.

Creating original content on an ongoing basis can be a challenge, so most marketers practice the fine art of content repurposing.

For example, you could take a long eBook and turn it into 4 blog posts, leverage for a newsletter and excerpt it in an article submitted to an industry publication. Or you could take a speech heavy video and transcribe the text into a blog post, using screen shots for the images. You could also modify content for different target audiences, which is a form of repurposing that is more about personalization than just getting extra mileage out of your content. After creating your “reimagined” content, the common next step is to deconstruct it into micro-content for social sharing.


Modular Content – Creative Repurposing for Content Marketing

What Makes a Business and Marketing Conference Great?

Marketing Conference

According to the Convention Industry Council (pdf), in 2012 there were over 1.8 million business meetings, events and conferences held in the US attended by 225 million participants generating over $280 billion in spending. The volume of participants has grown 10% since 2009.

Clearly, the business conference industry is booming. The number of marketing and communications conferences alone is overwhelming compared to when I started attending and speaking at conferences in 2005.

Attending and speaking at business, marketing and client user conferences is a big part of our marketing and while there are changes with so many new, niche events popping up, I don’t think our conference participation will change. The challenge is, with so many conferences to choose from, which events provide the best return on investment? What makes a great business conference?


What Makes a Business and Marketing Conference Great?

3 Advantages Public Relations Brings to Digital Marketing

digital PR marketing

Numerous journalists are jumping the newsroom ship to “brand storytelling” as content marketers and an increasing number of public relations firms are evolving as integrated marketing communications agencies.

As more companies adopt content marketing and integrate their marketing activities across owned, earned, shared and paid media, there’s an opportunity for marketers to tap into the expertise of the PR world.  PR is a grossly underutilized strategy for marketers and presents a unique means to evolve from Stasis to Storytelling on the Content Marketing Continuum.

According to a content marketing study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, the top challenges for content marketers include: Not producing enough content, not creating content that engages, not producing a variety of content, lack of integration across marketing channels.


3 Advantages Public Relations Brings to Digital Marketing