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Why Informative Content Will Make You Think Content Marketing Doesn’t Work

March 21, 2018 No Comments

You might want to take an extra sip of coffee before you read the next paragraph …

We’re going to start with a brief geometry lesson today, but I promise it will be gentle. 🙂

Squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Similarly, content marketing is content, but not all content is content marketing.

In the past, I’ve referred to informative content as bland and boring, but those are just labels.

The crux of the matter is that creating strictly informative content will make you think content marketing doesn’t work.

I’m not splitting hairs

Both content and content marketing can aim to serve your target audience, but if you only create content, it’s not going to make an impact on your business.

Content may give someone the information they need, but it doesn’t form a bond between a visitor and your website.

It may attract traffic, but that traffic doesn’t build a community.

Content marketing gives someone what they need and a reason to stick around.

Maybe they add a comment. Maybe they subscribe to your site because they like your outlook. Maybe they share your content to show that your worldview aligns with theirs.

Content marketing has long-term effects. It attracts traffic — then leads, then prospects, then customers — as you grow an audience who supports your offer.

Content marketing is not only more effective, it’s actually easier to produce

If content marketing helps you more than content, then it must be more difficult to produce, right?

I’m going to say No.

Here’s why.

Many people who already have everything they need to produce potent content marketing for their businesses limit themselves because they are preoccupied with first becoming an “expert.”

They obsess over covering a topic from every angle, which leads to a sporadic publishing schedule.
They try to please everyone with their tone to avoid criticism.
They only write belabored, convoluted articles because they’re afraid shorter blog posts with focused points will look incomplete and discredit their authority.

Those three habits both make the creation process more difficult and lead to strictly informative content.

However, if the goal is content marketing, the content creator’s intention shifts to serving their target audience.

They want to help by publishing on a regular schedule.
They choose who they want to attract and accept that trivial criticism from the wrong prospects is inevitable.
They know that their point of view is more meaningful than trying to compete with an encyclopedia entry.

Content marketing is easier because you don’t have to know everything about your topic to get started.

The audience you’d like to nurture on a regular basis wants to hear your voice, not the same information they can find in mere content.

Let’s look at an example from songwriting. In “Everything Is Broken,” Bob Dylan wrote:

“Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground.
Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones,
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin’,
Everything is broken.”

He didn’t then go on to say, “Well, I mean not everything is broken. It’s important I point that out. There are some good things happening for me. You probably have some good things happening too. We’re all probably okay.”

That wouldn’t express a strong position. It wouldn’t empathize and connect with the person who is feeling like everything is broken. As a result, that wishy-washy song would be forgettable.

5 elements that transform content into content marketing

Now, content is actually a great starting place.

You need to have something useful to share with your audience, so it’s smart to care about creating a clear and complete presentation.

And once you weave in elements that make your content memorable, you activate its marketing power.

Whether you’re just getting started or thinking about revamping your editorial strategy, see if these five qualities are part of your content marketing mix:

Perspective. Why do you care about your topic?
Values. Are your beliefs apparent?
Significance. What’s at stake?
Community. How can someone become part of what you do?
Offer. What’s the idea, product, or service you sell?

The art of content marketing transforms easy-to-come-by information into a special platform that enriches people’s lives over time.

By Stefanie Flaxman

Sourced from copyblogger

In News

Uh-Oh. How Do We Mobile-Advertise to Gen-Z When They Don’t Like Their Phones That Much?

March 20, 2018 No Comments

Gen Z use their phones a lot, but are relieved when they are taken away. So how do marketers reach this age group if they have a love/hate relationship with their smartphones?

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Members of Generation Z are relieved when placed in a situation where they are unable to access their smartphones for several weeks. This is according to a new study conducted by Screen Education, a non-profit organisation that addresses smartphone addiction.

The study involved participants aged from 12 to 16, who spent 2-4 weeks at Camp Livingston during the summer of 2017. Because Camp Livingston does not permit its campers to bring smartphones with them, they are an ideal group for conducting research about refraining from smartphone use.

According to Michael Mercier, President of Screen Education, “Many children said they have become overwhelmed by their smartphones. They no longer can keep up with all their notifications, and they are burdened by the ‘drama’ they encounter through social media via their smartphones. Consequently, they were relieved to be separated from their smartphones because it eliminated that stress.”

This relief was reflected in a survey conducted with the campers after they had returned home. The campers were asked the extent to which they experienced feelings of gladness and frustration from being without their phones. “A large number − 92% − experienced gladness, while only 41% felt any frustration. We had expected the opposite,” said Mercier.

When asked what their experience would have been like if they had been allowed to bring their phones to camp, campers revealed just how severe smartphone addiction is among their age group. “They almost unanimously admitted they would have spent the entire time on their phones,” recounts Max Yamson, Executive Director of Camp Livingston. “They said they would not have formed deep relationships with the staff and fellow campers, would not have connected with their surroundings and nature on the same level, and would not have engaged as much in recreational activities.”

According to Yamson, “The study shows that the campers were glad to have left their phones behind so that they could experience a deeper level of engagement.”

“The research also revealed a stunning insight,” said Mercier. “Many campers discussed the experience of face-to-face communication as though it were a novel one. They exhibited a sense of discovery at learning that face-to-face communication is far superior to screen communication when it comes to building friendships and getting to know other people.”

Yamson added, “One camper said that in four short weeks she got to know her friends at camp better than she knows some of her friends at home – because she mostly communicates with her friends at home through screens.”

Other key findings include:

92% said it was beneficial to have gone without their phones while at camp
83% considered having gone without their phones for several weeks to be an important life experience
35% were successful at curbing their smartphone use after leaving camp
17% tried to influence a friend to spend less time on their phone after leaving camp

The researchers plan to follow this study up with additional research during the summer of 2018.

Marketers trying to catch the attention of this demographic may need to think carefully about how they approach mobile advertising for this generation of digital natives. It’s another day in the life of modern media.

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Storytelling Is a Mindset: Tricia Travaline & Clare McDermott on the Latest Content Marketing Research

March 16, 2018 No Comments

By Rachel Haberman

Over the course of 2017, Skyword surveyed nearly one thousand content marketers from around the world on how content marketing is practiced within their organizations, stratifying each on the Content Marketing Continuum™, a framework for understanding the relative maturity of an organization’s content marketing program, from Bystanders and Novices through Experts (brand publishers with an always-on editorial strategy), Leaders (brand storytellers), and Visionaries (the top two percent of respondents).

In partnership with Clare McDermott, cofounder of Mantis Research and former editor-in-chief of Chief Content Officer, Skyword analyzed the results and published a research report in January 2018 that captured a snapshot of how content marketing is being practiced today and outlined the commonalities among the highest-performing content marketers.

Clare joined Skyword CMO Tricia Travaline on February 14, 2018 for a live discussion of the most interesting research findings. The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Storytelling Isn’t a Tactic, but a Mindset

Clare McDermott: Our first finding is that storytelling isn’t so much a tactic as a mindset. And by that we mean, we’re all showing up every day to publish e-books, publish blogs, to get it done one day after another—and that’s good. But we find that Leaders and Visionaries really have a sense of purpose that’s much bigger. Their content really is about sharing their organization’s values and culture, which is such an important part of telling good stories.

The survey asked, “To what extent have individuals and teams across your organization adopted the craft of storytelling?” Eighty-three percent of Visionaries reported widespread adoption. For Leaders, it was a little bit over half and Experts as little as 30 percent. The overall average was 27 percent.

I was actually a little bit surprised by how low this is, and I think the phrase that probably tripped people up and that dampened a positive response on this question was “across your organization.” I tend to think that’s what’s missing, that the marketing team knows the mission and knows the purpose, but it might not be shared across the organization. Tricia, would you agree with that? Do you feel the same way on that one?

Tricia Travaline: Yes, I absolutely do agree with that. We have heard the terms “story” and “storytelling” for several years now—in a way storytelling is marketing’s greatest buzzword—but not many people really understand the craft of storytelling. That’s one of the reasons that we partnered with Robert McKee, who is a storytelling guru and bestselling author. We have to be taught the craft. That’s why Tom, our CEO, is on the road with Robert teaching storytelling seminars, because it’s something that you have to learn, just like any craft, just like any form of art: You’ve got to learn it and then practice.

Creativity Needs Discipline

CM: And you perfectly teed up the next finding, which is about creativity requiring discipline. I like the way you talked about craft, because I think storytelling is an art and a craft. And by craft meaning, what are the standards, the tools, the processes that you put in place to ensure that you can do this consistently?

So let’s look at the data here. Again, the survey asked, do you use both brand standards and editorial guidelines for your content marketing program? Nearly all Visionaries say yes to both of those things. Leaders are at 70 percent, and Experts are at 40 percent. The average is about 31 percent. My hunch here is that most people are using brand standards. It’s something that they’re familiar with. Editorial guidelines? Not as much. It’s really a model from the media world.

For those who don’t know what editorial guidelines are, it’s setting your strategic goals—why are you publishing, who are you talking to, where are you going to find those people—as well as things like tone of voice, the topics you want to address, even the policies that you have for publishing.

So we see only 30 percent doing both of those. Tricia, is that your experience with Skyword customers, that they’re not using editorial guidelines? I guess the bigger question is, do people understand what they are and their value?

TT: We work with our customers to create editorial guidelines. But one of the reasons I think there’s a gap is that companies aren’t connecting their brand strategies to an always-on editorial strategy. Experts have pockets of innovation within their organization where they’ll have this really fabulous editorial strategy around a particular destination. But to move to a Leader status, you’ve got to be able to connect it to your brand strategy—what does your brand stand for, what is its purpose, which audiences share your values? And then, how does your always-on editorial strategy support your overall brand strategy? To me, a big thing that’s missing today is the connection between the two.

CM: I’d like to insert here how important it is that these documents are not static documents. They’re not something that you build once and then put it away and perhaps show it to the new hire; it’s rather something that you’re always updating, coming back to, and using as an exercise to think things through, to define what it is you’re doing and why.

Focus on Quantity or Quality? Do Both

CM: So number three: focusing on quantity or quality. The finding here is, do both. This one is, maybe not controversial, but perhaps counterintuitive. In the last year especially, there’s been such a big focus on quality, as well there should be. But really quantity still is important.

If you look at Visionaries and Leaders, they are simply doing more of everything, be it articles and videos and podcasts; sales-related content; advertising; serial and episodic content; or movies, conferences, and concerts, those being obviously much less common.

The one that interests me the most here is the serial content. It’s such a huge opportunity for brands and not something people are doing a lot of. The one example that I point to with serial and episodic content is Intel. They do a fabulous job with this, and they’ve taken on really complex issues like AI and virtual reality and laid it out in a very consistent way. They tell stories through many different forms and many different channels and do a beautiful job making serial content.

Tricia, is there anything else you’d call out here?

TT: As you say, you hear a lot of people saying, don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality—but what we’re finding is that the Leaders and the Visionaries are doing both. I think it has to do with this idea that you are creating customer relationships versus focusing on transactions. It depends upon how close you want that relationship to be. If you want to be interacting with your audience on a daily basis, you need to have new content, refreshed content out there on a daily basis. If you only have new content once a month or once every six months, then that’s how often you’ll interact with your audience.

In order to reach people via search and to have Google reward your content, you have to have new content out there. You have to be doing things differently if you want people to come back to you as a destination, to use you as a resource, to interact with you daily. You have to be there for them when they are looking for that content.

Need Help Organizing Your Team? There Are No Rules

CM: Let’s move on to finding number four: Do you need help organizing your team? So, do you want some sort of formula to apply to your own organization to know how to set up your team? Here there truly are no rules.

Looking at these two charts—and here we’ve segregated out just the Leaders and Visionaries and asked who is responsible for producing the majority of your content—you can see here that there’s no one way to do it. There’s a lot of diversity in how it’s done. Some people are calling on people throughout the organization to publish. Sometimes it’s really focused in marketing. Sometimes it’s calling on freelancers.

I think the message here that’s really important is that we’re all operating under a set of constraints: Our companies are organized in a certain way, we maybe have a global organization where there are content teams dispersed in different regions or different divisions, you may have different amounts of talent throughout the organization, even different technology. So when people ask me this question, the answer is it kind of depends. It depends on what you have and what you’re going for.

Tricia, do you find anecdotally that this is something people struggle with in terms of what’s the best way to organize and staff their teams?

TT: Absolutely. We’re finding that some of them don’t have the right skill sets in house. Especially if you’re in that Novice stage, and you’ve had very traditional roles. All of a sudden you have to be hiring editors and strategists and analysts and bringing in different skill sets. It’s not easy to transform traditional marketing teams.

One thing that we are hearing from the marketplace in a big way is that they need to connect their teams. They need to give senior management the visibility into what’s happening throughout the marketing organization. They need to eliminate the silos that exist. These companies have advanced content marketing operations that are fueling all of their channels, and they need to work more efficiently. That’s something that marketers at all levels are struggling with today.

CM: That’s interesting. The other thing I hear a lot of too is that when a company does hire a lot of outside talent and freelancers in particular, is how to ensure that those people, even if they are not traditionally employed by the organization, that they understand the values and the culture—that they are still a part of the team even if they are not traditionally part of the team. Do you find that too?

TT: Absolutely. Our services team oftentimes takes on the role of educating those freelancers and to make sure that they’re really in tune with the brand. Both our editorial team and our services team work really closely with our clients’ freelancers to ensure that they are always up to speed.

We spend a lot of time with our freelance writers who contribute to the Content Standard to make sure that they know what our strategy is, how our audience is changing, what our voice is. Training and ongoing communication is critical whether you’re managing internal subject matter experts, or whether you’re managing freelancers.

Visionaries Take an Iterative, Agile Measurement Approach

CM: So finding five: Visionaries take an iterative, agile measurement approach. It’s never more true than today that you can’t just dial in your KPIs and decide this is how we’re going to do things and just sit back and watch success come to you, because it just no longer works that way.

What we’re seeing here is that Visionaries tend to focus on strategic measurements—things like engagement and goal conversions and sales attribution being the holy grail. That is so hard to do, but somehow 91 percent of Visionaries and a little more than half of Leaders have figured out how to do that. It’s notoriously challenging.

The real head-scratcher for me here is that 18 percent are not measuring at all. Tricia, do you think that’s surprising?

TT: Yes, absolutely. I think that not measuring your content in any way goes against everything that we do as marketers today.

CM: The thing that is really hard is to measure over time and to figure out why things are successful. Is it because of a new algorithm, or is it because you’re doing something else right? That is so true now more than ever. I’m sure you’re seeing a lot of angst over all the algorithm changes and resulting changes in traffic and really trying to figure out why that is. Is that true?

TT: That is so true. For instance, even now, Google is about to come out with new algorithms around mobile and you can’t control what they do.

So you have to be agile, you have to be constantly measuring your content’s performance to know if there’s been a change in it. You have to be constantly monitoring, and then you have to be agile enough to respond to changes that are out of your control.

You also have to continually try new things, experiment with different things, and measure them. If they work, keep on doing them; if they don’t work, don’t be afraid to walk away.

Pain Is Universal

CM: So on what you just spoke about, Tricia, experimenting and iterating, let’s get to our last finding, which is actually my favorite, because it is so true and I like to spread this message among stressed-out marketers, and that is that pain really is universal.

When you look at Visionaries compared to all others on these various issues, they tend to worry less about some things, not surprisingly perhaps, about resources and budget, but they are challenged on many other issues at the same rate as everyone else.

I think that’s a really nice way to end in the sense that we as marketers really have to make peace with discomfort. If you’re feeling discomfort, if you’re feeling stress, that actually means that you’re pushing, you’re learning, you’re taking risks. I think that moment when you feel secure—I’ve got this, I’m doing this just the right way—is perhaps a sign that you’re not pushing hard enough.

In fact, it’s a topic that I wrote about recently for the magazine: When you’re managing teams, how do you keep that balance between wanting to support your team, wanting to inspire confidence, but at the same time wanting to keep pushing people to that point of discomfort so that they can learn something new and so that your team can take on new ideas and new experiments?

TT: If you move into the Leader or the Visionary stage, the work doesn’t get easier; it gets harder, because you’re challenging yourself more. You’re asking yourself to be great. I always say that we’re not looking for perfection but we are looking for excellence.

I’m going to quote Robert McKee here. One of the things that he always says is that even though marketers love the term “journey,” he hates it. He says life is not a journey; it’s a struggle. And in marketing, I truly believe that the sooner we accept that marketing is not a journey but a struggle, the more likely we are to be able to deal with the pressure that exists within it. We accept the fact that this is a struggle, and we’re going to struggle together at it.

CM: I think that’s so true. Probably about six weeks ago, I had a conversation with a very well-known marketer who’s published a lot of books, and I won’t say who it is, but he said to me, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” And we all really have to understand that even those people who really seem like they know exactly what to do and are sharing their expertise with others, we’re all really just trying to figure this out.

For more, download the report: Inside the Content Marketing Continuum™.

By Rachel Haberman

Sourced from skyword

In News

Sick and Tired of Doing Content Marketing Without a Plan? Read This

March 15, 2018 No Comments

By Larry Kim

Case studies. Whitepapers. Blog posts. Social content. Videos. Newsletters.

Your content obligations never end. In fact, B2B marketers employ an average of 13 different content marketing tactics.

And it’s no wonder — content marketing has incredible potential for those who can master the craft. According to this year’s B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report for North America from CMI, the most effective content marketers allocate 42 percent of their total marketing budget to content.

Companies are increasingly spending more on content, yet just 30 percent say their organizations are effective at content marketing. Incredibly, 55 percent aren’t even sure what content marketing effectiveness would look like.

Where’s the disconnect?

For starters, the mere thought of content marketing can be overwhelming, particularly for SMBs and mid-sized brands. Developing a strategy is key, yet so many miss this critical first step and instead jump head first into content creation, just to say they’re creating something.

That’s just not sustainable. You can’t throw your resources at creating different content types without having systems in place to measure its efficacy and adjust for better marketing ROI over the life of your campaigns.

A key consideration is deciding which content type or types are most worth your time, effort and resources. Which pieces of content resonate best with users? Which are best for each stage of your funnel? Which content types generate not only the most, but the best quality leads for your business?

This awesome and comprehensive infographic explores 11 popular content types, with an analysis of each that includes:

What it is
The benefits of doing it
“Sweet spots”–where this content type works best
How much it costs to outsource
How difficult it is to start and maintain
Power tips to help you master this content type

Selecting the Right Types of Marketing Content

If you’re struggling to keep up with your content obligations and not sure the various pieces of your content marketing strategy are really working together, check this out and keep it handy. The key to the best content marketing ROI lies in focusing your efforts where they have the potential for greatest impact.

Check it out:

Image: Venngage

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Larry Kim

Sourced from Small Business TRENDS

In News

Using Models in Your Advertising Campaign? Be Careful With Their Make-Up

March 13, 2018 No Comments

It could be sending the wrong message to your intended audience.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

An academic study has found that women wearing heavy makeup are less likely to be perceived as leaders. Of course, it depends on what you are selling and to whom. But if you want your model to portray leadership, then stay away from the make-up kit.

The research from Abertay University found that women wearing heavy makeup were less likely to be thought of as good leaders. The study was led by Dr Christopher Watkins of Abertay’s Division of Psychology, and published today in Perception journal. It revealed that the amount of makeup a woman is wearing can have a negative impact on perceptions of her leadership ability.

Study participants were asked to view a series of images featuring the same woman without cosmetics and with makeup applied for a “social night out”.

Computer software was used to manipulate the faces and the amount of makeup was also manipulated in the face images.

Each participant completed a face perception task where they judged sixteen face-pairs, indicating how much better a leader they felt their chosen face to be compared to the other face.

It was found that both men and women evaluated women more negatively as a leader if the image suggested she was wearing a lot of makeup.

Dr Watkins said, “This research follows previous work in this area, which suggests that wearing makeup enhances how dominant a woman looks. While the previous findings suggest that we are inclined to show some deference to a woman with a good looking face, our new research suggests that makeup does not enhance a woman’s dominance by benefitting how we evaluate her in a leadership role.”

The study was carried out by Abertay graduates Esther James and Shauny Jenkins and used a measurement scale common in face perception research, which calculates the first-impressions of the participant group as a whole, working out an average verdict.

Dr Watkins has carried out previous high-profile studies including work looking at how women remember the faces potential love rivals and the role of traits related to dominance in our choice of allies, colleagues and friends.

To view the full study click here.

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In News

How To Use Weird and Funny Ideas in Your Viral Content Marketing Strategies

March 13, 2018 No Comments

By Amanda Sparks

Going viral is every content marketer’s dream. When a piece goes viral, the brand is immediately catapulted into fame and becomes an internet sensation. The readership/viewership can bring huge numbers to a website, and, with that kind of traffic, revenue is not far behind.

What kinds of content go viral? They certainly are not the conventional blog posts that, while important and effective, offer nothing unusual, exciting, or fun. Content that goes viral has to be wildly humorous or even weird to result in the sharing that makes a piece go viral. And once a piece does go viral, it is often picked up by news media, providing even more publicity for the brand.

So how do you create this kind of content? You can learn much of the strategies by studying the content that has gone viral and trying to emulate the tactics that have been used. Let’s take a look at some content strategies that have gone viral and see what you can take away from them.

Pick a Key Feature of Your Product That Sets It Apart

If you have a unique product, focus on that and present it in a way that captures a reading or viewing audience. Of course, you may make it funny or strange, but you can also make it shocking. CamSoda is an adult website, and there are certainly thousands of them to attract visitors and customers. They decided that its challenge was to feature something unique (and a bit shocking) to spread its brand and get a competitive edge. While male registrants can use a normal password, they can also use pictures of their penises – the company calls it Dick-O-Metrics. The thing itself, of course, was not obligatory and even not active, and you still were able to log in with your normal info, but the concept went a bit viral, and the company was even featured on Mashable and Cnet.

Of course, you probably do not have an adult website as your business, but can you find a unique feature to add that will capture attention. Get your team together and see what you can come up with.

Monitor Web Trends and Be Interactive to Gain Backlinks and Social Attention

Trending content is usually temporarily, but its lifetime is usually pretty enough to take advantage of it and spread the word about your product with its help.

Manual interactive features. American cartoon “Rick and Morty” was the sensation of 2017, and itself became a trend. The adult cartoons entertainment website Adult Swim has launched a Flash app Elastic Man, that features Morty Smith, the main protagonist of the cartoon.
Elastic Man in action
The concept is as simple as ABC: if you like Morty, just pull his face. This page earned 27 thousand social shares and impressive 3.7K backlinks, not to mention a huge increase in traffic to the website.
Quizzes. People love quizzes. That’s why Facebook is full of them. If you can offer a contest of sorts, where followers can “test” their knowledge or expertise, you will generate lots of engagement and even shares. SEMrush created a “test Keyword Kombat” that allowed users to test their skills in determining the most popular keywords. A simple, but creative concept made a great deal of interacting with the regular readers and target audience, which consists of professional marketers and SEOs.
Email Campaigns that touch and interact. No, email marketing is not dead. In fact, if done right, an email campaign can result in a major increase in opens, and, if sharing buttons are placed in those emails, recipients will share great content they receive. It is all in the subject lines and the promise of cool things to follow if those emails are opened. A Halloween-dedicated email campaign, launched by Essay Supply, took advantage of the hype around “Rick and Morty” most popular episode “I’m a Pickle Rick!” and the results went wild.Screenshot of the letter to the customers
According to the company’s data, it was targeted to the regular customers and was based on the received leads, and showed impressive stats: a 69.4% open rate and enormous 42.1% click rate on the pickle button.

Being a Little (or really) Weird is a Good Thing

This strategy will require that you really know and understand your target audience. The same weirdness that is appreciated by a senior citizen will not be equally appreciated by a millennial. Same rules apply for different ethnic and cultural groups. If you have your target audience clearly identified, you can get a bit weird with your marketing, have some fun yourself, and create some very engaging content.

Dollar Shave Club. A little throwback to the case from 2012, which is already five years old, but can be considered classics of video marketing, and is worth mentioning here. Dollar Shave Club, a company that was founded in 2011, is based on a concept: if men could have razor blades delivered directly to their mailboxes, through a subscription service, they would never again face a morning with only dirty old razors to use. Founders Dubin and Levine were young, and their sense of weirdness was evident in the explaining video “Our Blades Are F***ing Great”, they created for the landing page of their website and posted on YouTube.

The video, which cost only $2500, gained in general 25M views on YouTube and 98% of positive reactions, almost 50K of social mentions, and highlights at FastCompany, Entrepreneur, Mashable, and Inc.com. Finally, the incredible flow of traffic crashed their site for a while. Within the first 48 hours, there were 12,000 orders. Their weird approach was continued on their social media pages and in their blog, with continued success, and helped them grow their traffic from zero to 550K since 2012.

In 2016, the company was sold for $1 billion (!) to Unilever.
Wendy’s. This case differs a bit from the traditional SEO approach, and, besides the weirdness and uniqueness of the case, it shows the opportunities for social media usage and their integration in the marketing campaign.

As much as marketers are told to be respectful to customers even when they are complaining or hateful, an American fast food chain, and one of McDonald’s and Burger King major competitors, Wendy’s has a different take on this advice. The managers of Wendy’s Twitter account have developed a quite weird, sometimes aggressive, but still well-balanced and humorous way of interaction with both the competitors and the customers.

This approach and results regularly draw the attention of the masses, and, thanks to its viral style, reportedly gets the highlights at highly trafficked UGC websites, like BuzzFeed and Bored Panda, along with the respective sources, like Business Insider, Fortune, and Fox News. Wendy’s traffic? Almost 5 million, and it has increased twice since the beginning of 2017.

With only 5% (which is the share of Twitter traffic), it is 250K, not to mention the constant news here and there about the tweets of Wendy’s and successful roasts of the competitors, that hugely increase brand awareness.

Next actions?

So here is your challenge — how can you take these five concepts and examples, get creative with the products and/or services you are marketing, and get a little funny or weird yourself. It is difficult to know just what will go viral, but even if your content is still able to generate a big increase in traffic, you have winning content.

By Amanda Sparks

Digital marketer, psychologist, former writer at Huffington Post, content manager at Essay Supply. AI fan and bullying researcher. Analogue at birth, digital by design.

Sourced from SEMRUSH

In News

Why Facebook Video Ads Should Only be Just Six Seconds Long

March 12, 2018 No Comments

Facebook is now the most popular places that advertisers are putting their video ads, even beating YouTube.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Top marketers know that digital video is one of the most powerful tools to increase consumer engagement and brand loyalty. In fact, according to a new study from Clinch, brand marketers are ramping up their production of digital videos with an emphasis on creating campaigns specifically for Facebook and YouTube.

The study found that 78 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of video ads in 2018, while only 43 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of static banner ads this year.

Social is Video

When it comes to digital video campaigns, Facebook reigns supreme, representing 46 percent of all video ads produced. When adding Facebook-owned Instagram into the mix, this number leaps to 74 percent. YouTube comes in a close second at 41 percent.

Says Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch, “It’s no secret that Facebook and YouTube dominate the digital media landscape and we don’t expect this to slow down, particularly with the Facebook algorithm change which requires brands to pay in order to be seen. In 2018 brands will increase spend and leverage the rich data that these platforms provide. However, the data and platform are just two pieces of the puzzle. Creative is the critical third piece. If brands aren’t uniquely tailoring their creative specifically for each platform and by audience, opportunities will be missed and ROI will be lowered.”

Nearly three quarters of marketers are adopting online video from their TV commercials. 44 percent indicated that they don’t shorten commercials for each platform’s suggested length. While TV ads remain a critical source of video content, the user experience of each social platform is very different than traditional TV. For example, TV ads are 15 to 30 seconds long but Facebook and YouTube recommend six-second videos.

Etzioni continued, “We were really surprised to learn that marketers were taking a one size fits all approach to video. In 2018, marketers will awaken to the fact that investment in creative will increase ROI and personalisation at scale, and will become the norm for digital video as it has become for static ads.”

Defining Social Personalisation

While 50 percent of respondents say they personalise their video campaigns, brands can be doing a lot more. Those that are personalising their creatives based on data are seeing big results. Nearly 90 percent of respondents who have customised Facebook or YouTube video ads reported seeing benefits. Furthermore, 70 percent of those who customise said that they have seen improvements in their key performance indicators (KPIs).

According to Etzioni, in the next few months, the definition of personalisation will change. “Rather than creating a handful of versions – one for men, one for women, one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast, we expect brands to be using data insights to personalise at scale. This means hundreds if not thousands of versions of videos where the message and creative is tailored to their specific needs and interests. This will create a more meaningful experience for the consumer and transform video campaigns from simply brand awareness to direct response opportunities,”

The full report, “How Leading Brand Marketers are Using Personalised Video to Drive Sales,” is available for download here.

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In News

Advertising Product Results? Put Images Closer Together

March 7, 2018 No Comments

Consumers believe a product is more effective when images of the product and its desired outcome are placed closer together in advertisements, according to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

“Merely changing the spatial proximity between the image of a product and its desired effect in an advertisement influences judgment of product effectiveness. Consumers tend to judge the product to be more effective when the two images are closer versus farther apart,” write authors Boyoun Chae (University of British Columbia), Xiuping Li (National University of Singapore), and Rui (Juliet) Zhu (University of British Columbia).

Advertising done right: The “problem” (wrinkles) and the solution (Wrinkle cream effectiveness) in very close proximity.

Many advertisements promoting the effectiveness of a product show both a product image (anti-wrinkle cream) and an image of the promised results (a face without wrinkles). Objectively, the distance between the two images should not affect how consumers judge the product’s quality.

This advertisement is done so well, the text about the product’s effectiveness is actually touching the face of the model.

In a series of studies, consumers were asked to judge the effectiveness of a variety of products promising specific results (acne cream, pain reliever, nasal allergy spray, bug spray, fabric softener). Consumers tended to assume a product was more effective when its image was placed closer to that of its promised effect. The proximity of the images was more influential when consumers were less knowledgeable about a product category or when the results were expected sooner rather than later.

Here we see there is some distance between the product (a razor that gives a perfect shave) and the outcome (Mourinho’s perfectly shaven face).

Companies should understand the subtle effect that spatial proximity between images has on consumer judgment of product effectiveness. When companies want to promote the immediate effects of their products, images of the product and its desired effect should be put closer to each other in an advertisement.

“The spatial proximity between visual representations of cause and effect in an advertisement can influence consumer judgments of product effectiveness. The closer the distance between an image of a product (an acne treatment) and that of its potential effect (a smooth face), the more effective consumers will judge the product to be,” the authors conclude.

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In News

5 Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out For in 2018

March 5, 2018 No Comments

Make sure to keep an eye out for these five social media marketing trends that are taking over the digital marketing world in the upcoming year.

Did you know that on an average, we scroll through at least 300 feet (90 meters) of content daily? Not every brand’s campaign grabs our attention. It is a difficult and competitive game, as brands are trying harder to grab our attention, while our attention span has been reduced to a mere eight seconds. Brand strategy in the coming years will try more than ever to connect with their audiences across a variety of social platforms. It becomes imperative that your campaign works, more so taking into account the speed of feed. We have curated a list of five trends that we believe will impact your social media strategy in 2018.

Adopt Chatbots

https://giphy.com/gifs/11FyVJOvLleR5S

Gone are the days when chatbots meant unresponsive, hilarious and outright ridiculous software. Today, chatbots can do a lot more than just solve customer issues or order pizza for you. Various studies state that 20% of business content could be machine generated by next year. When we teach machines how to create authentic and engaging stories, the potential for advertising and marketing will become multifold. Chatbots interact with the users and deliver the solutions that they are looking for at the speed of light. Bots are developing to become smarter and empathetic. This engagement feels personal, from the user’s perspective. Chatbots are definitely a must-try social media marketing strategy in 2018 for your business.

Momentary content makes for good engagement:

Snapchat was the early adopter of momentary content. Instagram and Facebook followed suit, owing to the huge popularity of Stories format in a short time. These content are ephemeral and disappear in 24 hours. Brands are creating a whole new digital marketing strategy for their momentary content marketing. Having your stories appear at the very top of your follower’s feed keeps your brand at the top of their mind. Many brands do a live story session with a subject matter expert. This helps the user look out for the brand more so as to not miss an informative session. Ephemeral content marketing strategy is something that you should try in 2018!

Augmented reality boom

Augmented reality blurs the line between reality and computer-generated content by enhancing what we see, and hear. The adoption of augmented reality on mobile phones is a quick and easy way for brands to reach their target audience. Many brands are taking their products right inside the homes of users through exclusive filters. IKEA has released an app called Place which allows users to preview how the furniture would look in their homes before they buy. As more people get warmed up to augmented reality, more people will start to feel like they are missing out on things and want to become a part of it. However, you would also have to check where your strategy fits. Make sure your AR adds value for the user and don’t simply create one for the sake of it.

Influencers are here to stay

Influencer marketing has grown so much over the last two years that the popularity has made it difficult to know whom to trust. Consumers expect genuine reviews from genuine influencers. Brands must seek to work with relevant influencers with industry background or knowledge. Viewers are already bored of seeing brands engage popular influencers who promote teeth whitening and a mobile phone app with the same vigor. In 2018, try and create worthwhile relationships with influencers and maintain them. Influencer marketing is going to become more authentic with brands moving to real experts instead of social influencers.

Make more videos

We are addicted to mobile phones, and we love our videos. In 2017, 90% of the most shared content on social media was in video format. If you are not using videos yet, you will have to quickly start using them and master the art of capturing the user’s attention in the first 3 seconds. Video is the quickest and the closest way you will come face to face with your target audience. As with everything, you need to have a clear strategy before creating a video. Taking advantage of Facebook Live and Instagram Live is also a smart strategy. Ensure that the video is of the highest quality and engaging. You will also have to consider making the best design and make sure to add subtitles to attract users when they are watching with sound off.

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In News

How to be heard over the noise in content marketing

March 5, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from THEDRUM

In the beginning, when online marketing was merely a twinkle in the eye of the internet, gaining online exposure for your brand was straightforward enough.

If you knew what you were doing, a little bit of social media and journalist outreach was an effective strategy to engage with your potential audience. However, as we witness an increase in audiences far and wide consuming the majority of news and content online, it’s fair to say that the landscape has grown up.

Today, social media, blogs and other news portals are oversaturated with content on content on content. It’s becoming increasingly hard to be heard as a brand. As large corporations clock on to the benefits of online marketing, they’re storming into the marketplace with gigantic marketing budgets, campaigns and agencies. Subsequently everything else is drowned out and gaining exposure online as small to medium sized business suddenly becomes impossible.

The content marketing revolution

“An abundance of content online means the quality is decreasing.” I have heard this so many times. I would disagree. Why do people assume scarcity equals value? What this actually means is that in order to stand out against the noise, marketers are having to create unique and remarkable content that is more targeted and relevant for its audience than ever. More content means more opportunities for better quality. It’s just harder to find, and create.

But how can we do this? Content marketing campaigns, of course. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an evolution of the news, whereby there’s a mix of creative campaigns frequenting the headlines in place of traditional media tactics. Whereas branded news and stories dominated the columns in the past, we’re now seeing a shift towards creative marketing campaigns across the news.

Coming from a more traditional PR background, I essentially see this as the digital version of the offline PR stunt. Some maverick somewhere decided that they’d take the principles of PR – coming up with something compelling that will gain virality – and they executed it online. The difference is that digital presents the opportunity to be even more interactive with its audience, leading to additional marketing tactics, data capture and surveys, for example.

Spice it up with an influencer

As more marketeers catch wind of this, it’s almost become to go-to and we’re dealing with the same content oversaturation problem again. Therefore, in order to run a successful and effective content marketing campaign, we need to implement some sneaky alternative tactics.

You may be experts in what you do, but your audience won’t necessarily know that. Let’s be honest, the likelihood is that your brand doesn’t currently hold enough weight on it’s own, causing your content marketing efforts to flop. You need additional authority, and that’s where using influencers comes in.

Start by reaching out to other higher profile businesses in relevant industries to see if they’d provide comment. This may sound like a difficult task, yet you’d be surprised. Business leaders generally support positive exposure for themselves as individuals as well as their brand, and will be more than happy to comply, seasoning your piece with that essential authority.

It’s easier than you think to reach out to high profile experts via public or decentralised social media platforms such as Reddit or Twitter. Gaining comments from experts in their field in this manner not only helps add the weight to gain exposure, but also aids in the share potential, as these influencers have a huge audience on social media.

Top Hopics

A easy way to ensure that people are going to talk about your topic is to make sure people are already talking about your topic. How? Before you start a content marketing campaign that’s relevant to your industry, think whether there are any ongoing controversial conversations, current trends or hot topics that you can piggyback to support your idea.

Sometimes this can be something as simple as national holidays, such as Christmas, Hanukkah or May the Fourth. On that note, pop media such as films and TV series’ gain a load of exposure during the times they are released and broadcast, so try to leech off that coverage as well.

A content marketing piece that is focused around current trends means outreach will also be easier, as you’ll already have a list of media and news outlets that are speaking about your topic ready to outreach with your content marketing piece.

Where shall I begin?

Tapping into influencers and trends is an opportunity to be creative. Sure, go ahead and try a combination of the above, but don’t be afraid of trying something totally off-piste.

One of the beauties of being a content marketer in a time of such an abundance of content is that it means there’s so many fantastic examples of successful creative pieces online already. Don’t just blindly carbon copy, but note the tactics used within these and don’t be afraid of taking inspiration from other ideas.

Reading industry relevant blogs, and using ideation tools such Buzzsumo and ‘Answer the public’ is recommended to get an idea of what already exists around certain topic areas.

I understand if you’re still wary of creating content that has had parallels to content that already has been covered. But don’t always try to be entirely novel in everything you do. Look at Wordsworth or Van Gogh; the best ideas come from inspiration from others, and there’s no reason why this can’t transfer into digital marketing too. I firmly believe that if something has had traction before then a new and innovative slant on, it will be picked up again.

Create something amazing that doesn’t shout louder over the noise, but is heard simply as it whispers it’s relevancy, as a unique and remarkable piece of content marketing.

By Jess Hawkes, Digital PR Specialist

Sourced from THEDRUM