The 5 Golden Rules of Content Marketing

If you’re a marketer or serve any function of marketing, the term content marketing has most probably passed your desk within the past year. It’s not a new item, but one that’s steadily grown over the past few years thanks to the quick, easy, and powerful tool that is social media.

Typically a marketing push successfully used by B2C campaigns, B2B marketers are taking note and pouncing on the lead generating capabilities that content marketing offers. According to a recent survey (pdf) published by the Content Marketing Institute:

• 60% report that they plan to increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months.

The survey goes on to reveal a plethora of other interesting statistics including the fact that B2B marketers are dedicating more than a quarter of their total budgets (26%) towards content marketing initiatives.

So with all of this content marketing flying around, and both B2C and B2B marketers recognizing the power of the draw and the market positioning that content marketing supplies, what’s the magic formula for success? I’d be lying if I said there’s a tried and true method that will resound with your target audience each and every time, but there are 5 practical and easy points to keep in mind each time you set out on a content marketing piece.

Transparency

As we’ve seen time and time again, even some of the best Internet hoaxes are viewed under a microscope and exposed for what they are. The same holds true for your content marketing piece. Remember, you’re putting content out there with the goal of drawing in readers, viewers, etc. that are genuinely interested in not only what you’ve got to say, but the fact that it’s coming from your organization.

One of the key factors in producing great content marketing is to provide value and knowledge to would be customers. That’s not to say that you’ve got to give the secret formula away, but tease your audience with ingredients 1 and 5. If they want the whole kit and caboodle, Sales now has a nurtured (if not qualified) lead ready for a conversation.

To this end, I always like to think of myself as a teacher rather than an advertiser or marketer when crafting a great piece. Consumers are there to learn, evaluate, and make informed decisions. There’s no need to shout an advertisement at them (that’s what television and radio are for). If the words ring true and nail the customer’s pain on the head, you’ll never need a “Buy Now” button, but over time, your sales team will begin to see the results with increased site visits, longer time on page views, and increased conversations.

Go the distance

Marketers are curious people. We’re always chasing another angle, seeking to address the next target audience, or looking for new ways to address the same audience, but in a slightly different way to achieve better results. To this end, it’s a common pitfall to want to serve all audiences, all at once, all the time.

When mapping out your content marketing strategy, take a look at the calendar first. We have 12 months in a year, and other departments around the office all have their own individual goals. Obviously a major support to sales, your content marketing rollout should line up with, or prepare the way for Sales’ targets.

If there’s a big push in Q3 coming up, make sure you’ve got a few targeted pieces lined up at the end of Q2 that can directly tie into what Sales has on tap with the ultimate goal of warming up the RFP plate a month of two in advance. In addition to succeeding on your own deliverables, pacing and prolonging your content release schedule allows you time to measure and refine (or redefine if need be) your overall message.

A two-way street

We’ve all heard this time and time again regarding the conversation that is social media, so don’t drop the ball when it comes to your content marketing. It could be as simple as flipping the “comments on” switch on your blog or really digging into those Facebook comments or reactions and exchanges on Twitter. Whether your readers know it or not, each and every comment they make is yet another opportunity for you to further push the underlying message within your piece. Got a reader who wants to know more about XYZ? Surely you’ve got a supporting piece or documentation on the subject and can reference them back to your site.

With that said, it’s crucial that you do in fact make the time on a daily basis to thoughtfully respond to comments, reactions, etc. If you’re out there creating interesting, thought-provoking content, wouldn’t it be a shame to let the conversation stop at the front door? Instead, invite your new guests inside for a drink or two, get to know them, and then, and only then, can you comfortably move into a sales cycle.

It’s not all about you

Tied to transparency above, remember that your content marketing shouldn’t be just about you and your organization. Creating original content takes time, money, and a lot of effort. If your organization doesn’t have a person devoted solely to content creation, there’s another way to offer great content that doesn’t require an original piece each and every time: Content Curation.

As a marketer, your reading, reading, and reading all day long. It’s your job to know what customers what, what they’re interested in, and where they are. If you’ve come across a great article that’s particularly relevant to your industry or organization, don’t hold back when it comes to sharing. Do not, however, just blindly share the words, but add your own take to it. Meaning, before clicking that Share button, or republishing a paragraph and linking to the original article, inform your audience precisely why you’re sharing this piece. Does it directly relate to, or support another piece that you’ve recently published? Does it provide a different take on one of your positions? Good or bad, let your audience know.

Curating content is a relatively quick and easy thing to do, and provides a number of upsides with few downsides. Your audience will get a better view into the way you and your organization think, they’ll appreciate that you’ve exposed them to another voice (and subconsciously praise you for offering another point of view that’s not directly your own), and you’ve given credit where credit is due to this outside author, a door opener that might lead to future collaboration or partnering with individual or organization.

Always Be Measuring

David Mamet thinks that sales professionals should ABC (Always Be Closing), but I offer up that marketing professionals should ABM (Always Be Measuring). To be frank, if you’re not measuring your efforts, you’re not marketing.

With this in mind, it’s vital that you measure the success or failure of your content marketing strategy. Starting with the very basic page views, time on page, and bounce rate web metrics, make sure that every single link that goes into your content marketing piece is trackable. If you’re using Google Analytics to measure your success, are you using their URL Builder tool? Have you dug into bit.ly’s free, simple, and highly effective link tracking analytics?

You’ll want to drill as far down in the metrics as possible to truly analyze your content marketing efforts, as well as have some numbers to show the boss at years’ end. As it’s already a part of your established sales funnel, be sure not to miss the count on which qualified leads arrived via a content marketing piece. Likewise, how many of these qualified leads then converted to paying customers? Lead forms, promotions, contests, etc. are all viable methods of tracking these prospects/leads/customers.

Again, there’s no one golden formula for content marketing success. Some audiences will eat white papers for breakfast but have no interest in your videos. Conversely, your RSS subscriber count might be through the roof, but your email newsletter has been falling flat. This is precisely what your measurements are for, allowing you to put your best efforts into the most successful channels. By following and applying the above steps you’re well on your way to creating engaging, successful content marketing pieces that are sure to resonate with your audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Taylor is a Digital Media Consultant based in Vienna, Austria. A writer, communicator, photographer, and doer of cool things with good people, Dan works with brands to maximize their social footprint across the web via a variety of media channels. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter

Twitter launches Promoted Products for small business advertisers who use American Express

Twitter has today launched its advertising program specifically aimed at small businesses with an American Express card. The program appears to be designed as a test run for rolling out advertising options suited to smaller businesses on a larger scale.

The test group will be small at first, with a larger group getting access to the product after a few weeks.

Twitter says that it wanted to make the process simple, allowing business owners to ‘get started in minutes’ with no previous experience in advertising. It offers benefits like gaining new followers and amplifying your tweets through Twitter’s automated services, which will help you automatically identify and leverage the Tweets that hit home with your audience the most.

Users of the program pay per follower gained when using the Promoted Accounts product, and per-click, retweet, reply or favorite for Promoted Tweets. They are also offering targeting by region, including cities, countries or worldwide areas.

Promoted Tweets will simply pull one that Twitter deems to be likely to be enjoyed by your users from your existing trove of tweets. It will place it in their timeline, but you only get charged if they follow you or engage in your tweet in some ways. The Promoted Accounts feature places your account into the ‘who to follow’ box of users who Twitter feels are likely to be a good match for you, and likely to follow.

The program is currently open only to American Express card holders or merchants who accept the card. If you fit into that category and want to try out the promoted products, you can register here. As a bonus, American Express will give $100 in free Twitter advertising to the first 10,000 eligible Cardmembers and merchants that register. After this initial run, the program is likely to be expanded out beyond just Amex customers, but this should serve as an initial jaunt that helps Twitter work out the bugs in its advertising system.

Late last month, Twitter announced that it would begin showing ads in its official mobile apps, in addition to its desktop services, but it only showed them to you if they were following the brand who initiated the campaign. Last week, Twitter said that it was expanding this test, enabling brands to target Promoted Tweets to mobile users that “share similar interests with their existing followers. ”

SOURCES: IMAGE CREDIT

Google Giving Away $50 Million in Free Advertising to Promote Video AdWords

Aritcle by Mashable

Google officially opened up its AdWords for video product to all businesses on Monday with a new program offering $50 million in free advertising to small businesses.

The company announced on Monday that it is offering $75 in free advertising for 500,000-plus businesses. (The originalpost on the offer set the number at 500,000, which would come out to $37.5 million in total. A YouTube rep says the 500,000 isn’t a set number.)

Introduced in September, AdWords for video is based on the same technology as AdWords, but is applied to video on the Google-owned YouTube. While with AdWords you pay for clicks and set budgets via bids, with AdWords for video, you only pay when someone watches your ad. The program was actually opened up for all businesses in December, but Monday is the official launch, which Google is helping to publicize with the $75 offer.

Those interested in taking Google up on the offer can click here.

The AdWords for video program is Google’s latest attempt to monetize YouTube, which draws 800 million unique visitors a month. Google doesn’t disclose financial data about YouTube, but analysts have estimated that the site’s revenues were in the $1 billion range in 2011.

Image courtesy of Flickr, tschein

11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn

With over 135 million users, 59% of which are located outside of the United States and with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using the network for marketing and recruiting purposes, LinkedIn has become a critical platform for building, connecting with, and growing your personal and professional networks.

As the leading business social network, LinkedIn offers the chance to connect with professionals all around the world and from all industry backgrounds. But how do you convert networks into customers, and ‘likes’ into sales?

1. Learn from your peers

Successful marketing is all about listening to what your market needs. The LinkedIn Groups feature provides a space where you can discuss issues with others in your industry and learn from their advice. You can bounce ideas off industry experts and stay informed on new developments. You also have an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in a certain industry/area allowing you to build relationships with current and prospective customers in a more organic and credible fashion.

2. Build on your niche

It doesn’t matter how specific your company’s product or service, LinkedIn allows you to connect with companies or individuals by industry, company size, geographic location, and more. By targeting your network-building, you are able to focus your time on building relationships that count.

3. Use Company Status Updates

You can post the latest news, product updates, videos and promotions on yourCompany Profile and instantly learn how it is being received with likes, comments and shares. Just like with any community, make sure your content strategy is relevant, adds value and promotes discussion. Use feedback to adjust your posting frequency or alter your content based on what is popular or what is missing.

4. Ask your audience

LinkedIn provides a channel to your audience, but communication doesn’t have to be one-way. You can use your Company Profile to ask customers what they think, and engage with issues they might face. Asking for feedback can provide a wealth of market information from your core audience. If your Company Profile is too limiting, consider setting up a group or groups that meet a particular need among your audience.

You can also use LinkedIn’s polling feature. LinkedIn Polls is just like any other polling service: everyone can ask any query, include possible answers (as much as five) as well as select how much time it’s going to run. There is an ability to share content out via your social networks or upload it on your website to acquire the highest possible voting power. Analytics data is what’s valuable here: you can break down voters by age, gender and even seniority.

5. Use LinkedIn Ads

If used correctly, LinkedIn Ads can offer a low-cost alternative to traditional advertising. Because of the number of LinkedIn accounts (135 million worldwide), each with detailed profile information, LinkedIn Ads can specifically target your demographic by industry, geographic location, seniority, age, or by LinkedIn Group in a way few other channels can.

6. LinkedIn Recommendations: Give Generously

Your LinkedIn profile might look great, and you may have hundreds of connections, but in a crowded market what is going to make your company stand out? How will potential clients and customers know to choose you above your competition? The answer goes back to one of the basics of marketing: a positive recommendation by others is worth a hundred times what you will ever say about yourself. The secret to attracting great LinkedIn recommendations is to offer them yourself. Businesses, whether suppliers, clients or partners, are far more likely to give you a positive recommendation if you offer one first.

7. LinkedIn SEO

When people search for your industry or product, how are you going to come out on top? Just following the basics, such as making sure your profile is complete and accurate can help, but spending a bit of time over the keywords in the Specialties section is also important for driving traffic. You can also customize your URL to give your company’s name rather than a sequence of numbers, which can help search engines to find you.

8. Enrich your profile with LinkedIn applications

You’ve driven traffic to your LinkedIn page with targeted ads, great networking, and an informative profile, but what now? You’ve got so much more great information that will benefit your customers, but how are you going to tell them about it?LinkedIn apps can help, giving you the ability to add your blog to your profile, upload presentations, add polls and your Amazon reading list, collaborate with document sharing, and many other ways of enriching your profile to help it stand out and offer new ways to engage.

9. Meet like-minded people at industry events

The LinkedIn events tool is a great way to easily search for relevant events (physical events, webinars, workshops, roundtables, etc) where you can meet your peers. LinkedIn search will display events related to your network connections as well as industry and geographic location, both past and present. Utilize this feature to extend your network face-to-face.

10. Integrate your LinkedIn presence into your other properties

Prominently display “Follow Us on LinkedIn” button on your other social properties to help grow your network.

You can also add “LinkedIn Share” button to your other properties to make it easy for people to share your content and help it travel father.

The “Recommend” button can be prominently displayed on your website to give visitors to website a little bit of a nudge to recommend you on LinkedIn. The recommend comes in two formats: one for the company page itself and also one for the products and services page.

11. Measure your success

Make sure to track your performance as you go and make changes to your strategy based on that data.
On your Company Page’s Analytics tab, you can now see how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page and how many of them are following your company. You can also see what industries, functions and companies these professionals come from as well as track how they are interacting with your Careers Tab or Products and Services Tab, how many are clicking on your promotional banners, and how many choose to contact employees at your company. And for every one of these data slices, you can compare yourself against similar companies to benchmark your performance.

Just recently LinkedIn also launched a brand new Group Statistics dashboard that delivers unique insights into groups: demographics, growth, and activity.

LinkedIn can seem daunting at first. If you think of your social media marketing as an extension of your traditional marketing, you can start to think of ways to integrate your standard practices into your LinkedIn networking. You don’t have to start from scratch; much of your marketing media, from videos to presentations and documents, can be shared through your profile and used to reach new, targeted audiences, especially those you may have trouble reaching through traditional marketing methods.

Also read: 5 LinkedIn Campaigns Worth a Look

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