Joshua Nite

What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

Have you heard the good news about quality content? It’s the latest innovation that’s sweeping the nation. It’s going to revolutionize your content marketing efforts. If your current strategy is to crank out crappy content, then quality content is going to blow your KPIs away!

Okay, sarcasm aside: Every content marketer knows their content needs to be good to be effective. We call it “quality,” or “value,” or “usefulness.” But all of these traits can vary widely depending on your audience. For example, conventional wisdom might say that 500-word blog posts don’t connect with readers. But that word count may be just the right length for the people you want to reach.

So, when we get into the specifics, quality is relative and highly subjective. But it’s possible to define quality content marketing in a more universal way:

What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

Beyond the Hype Cycle: It’s Time to Redefine Influencer Marketing

Joshua Nite Influencer Marketing

Every marketer should consider getting a tattoo of Gartner’s Hype Cycle, as a reminder to keep us from chasing shiny objects.

The Hype Cycle goes like this:

A new hotness emerges. It could be new technology, a new strategy or tactic, some new thing.
There are wild predictions about how the thing will revolutionize the world.
People scramble to get on board with the thing before they even understand it.
The new thing doesn’t measure up to elevated expectations.
People get disillusioned with the thing and decide it’s worthless.
People actually learn how the thing works, get sophisticated in using it.
The thing turns out to be pretty awesome and is used productively.

Beyond the Hype Cycle: It’s Time to Redefine Influencer Marketing

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

Joshua Nite Content Marketing

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 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

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

Joshua Nite Facebook, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Advertising, Twitter

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

B2B Podcasting: What, Why and How

Joshua Nite B2B Marketing, Podcasting

Okay, B2B marketers, time for a pop quiz:

Which content marketing tactic can hold an audience’s attention for a half hour or more at a time?
Which tactic inspires an audience to subscribe to your content and make a regular appointment to consume it?
Which tactic can help boost thought leadership, raise awareness and engage influencers in your industry?
Which tactic is in the title of this blog post?

The answer, of course, is podcasting. These long-form audio programs first emerged in the early 2000s. Back then, they were a niche format for hobbyists and tech nerds (like me). But the rise of the smartphone brought podcasts to the masses. Now, there are hundreds of hours of programming available on every conceivable subject, in every genre from true crime to horror to musical. But we haven’t hit content shock for podcasts — it’s still a growing market.

B2B Podcasting: What, Why and How

This Changes Everything: How AI Is Transforming Digital Marketing

Joshua Nite Content Marketing, Email Marketing, SEO

Will artificial intelligence (AI) put marketers out of work?

It’s a question I’m seeing a lot lately, and to me, it’s a strange one. It’s like if everyone 150 years ago was asking: “Will the tractor put farmers out of work?” Of course, John Deere didn’t put farmers out of business; better tools just made them more efficient and better able to scale.

Granted, the tractor did reduce the demand for horses and farmhands. So, no, AI will not put you out of work…as long as your work is creative, innovative and intelligent. If all of your daily work can be done by a machine, eventually it will be.

This Changes Everything: How AI Is Transforming Digital Marketing

Content Marketing Evolution: 5 Major Content Marketing Trends for 2018

Joshua Nite Content Marketing

Content Marketing Trends 2018

Do you remember upgrading from an old square TV to a high-definition model? It was an amazing leap forward in the viewing experience.

Then came 3D televisions…and no one really cared. Then even bigger screens, then curved displays, OLED, smart TVs, 3D and 4k. None of these advances have really fired up the imagination of the TV-buying public. These incremental improvements just aren’t compelling enough to inspire me to upgrade.

The same thing happened with smartphones. The iPhone’s touchscreen-only design was revolutionary, and now every modern phone is a sleek rectangle. Since then, it’s been incremental change and vanity features. I can unlock this phone with my face instead of my fingerprint? And I can turn into an animated dancing unicorn? Yawn.

Content Marketing Evolution: 5 Major Content Marketing Trends for 2018

The Content Marketing Juggling Act: How to Consistently Create Quality, Engaging Content

Joshua Nite Content Marketing

The secret to juggling is to always have one of your chainsaws in the air. Simple, right? You have one more chainsaw than you have hands, so don’t try and hold all three at the same time. Simply, always be throwing and catching at least one.

Ready to rev up your chainsaws and try it? Raise your hand… if you have one left.

As anyone in the industry knows, content marketing is a lot like juggling chainsaws. It’s easy, we’re told: You just have to consistently produce high-quality, engaging content. But if it were that easy, everyone would already be good at it. Statistics show we’re not there yet: 54% of B2B marketers say producing engaging content is their top challenge, and 50% say producing content consistently is.

The Content Marketing Juggling Act: How to Consistently Create Quality, Engaging Content

4 Search Trends That Made Waves in 2017

Joshua Nite SEO, SEO Tips

For the past two decades, the pinnacle of search sophistication was talking to a search engine like you’re Tarzan. “What are the best hiking boots for men?” became “best hiking boots men.” “How many ounces are there in a pound?” became “number ounces pound.” Question words, articles, adjectives, or any such linguistical fanciness would confuse the humble algorithms.

But search is finally getting smarter. Search engines can parse whole phrases, decipher intent, zero in on results that will delight the searcher. And search is moving beyond the desktop or even the smartphone touchscreen, accepting new kinds of input, and displaying output in other formats than the standard ranked list of links.

4 Search Trends That Made Waves in 2017