In today’s fast moving search and social web, content flows in every direction throughout a variety of platforms, formats and devices. With a global population of over 7 billion, there are over 2.3 billion internet users. More importantly, there are 6.7 billion mobile subscribers – 91% market penetration (source). Ubiquitous internet access is enabling consumers and brands alike to create, consume, publish, interact and transact – anytime, anywhere. At the same time, “newsrooms have 30% fewer reporters than in 2000, which corresponds with 31% of US adults that have stopped turning to a news outlet because it no longer provided … [Read more...]

I think our team has done a pretty good job on this blog of advocating internet marketing tactics according to their practical use over the years. Our goal: To help marketers put things in perspective and make informed choices. One particular area of focus has been on content marketing. Rather than just pontificate about the latest trend, our approach is to experiment, optimize and share what we learn. For example, we’ve implemented content marketing projects for organizations that range from several Fortune 50 companies to Content Marketing World, the Mac Daddy of content marketing events. That experience has inspired many popular and useful … [Read more...]

Is Twitter the right place for your social media investment? Whether you have time or ad dollars to spend, this is a question that marketers are visiting and revisiting as the demand for social media performance increases. According to Twitter, 35% of consumers that follow a brand are more likely to purchase from that brand. Twitter users are also 47% more likely to visit the company’s website and 35% are more likely to retweet content from a business they follow. Is Twitter right for you? How do you know the performance of your Twitter engagement and marketing activities?  Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to Twitter Analytics without … [Read more...]

What does it mean to “optimize” your presentations? Keywords in your speech? Including your Twitter handle on all slides? Repurposing the slide content through Slideshare, Flickr, Visual.ly and on blogs? The answer is yes – all of the above. And more. More marketing and communications pros are getting on board with the idea that public speaking is fuel for content marketing. The problem is, the focus on creation and promotion centers around individual content objects or presentations. An optimized presentation strategy means having a narrative or story that includes your brand’s key messages and how the live presentation is … [Read more...]

I’ll start this post off with my point: Dismissing search is ignoring demand from buyers & the media. A digital marketing exec I follow on Twitter shared a CMI article that posted this weekend, Why SEO May Be Irrelevant When It Comes to B2B Thought Leadership”. As a long time realist about the role of search in online marketing, I wasn’t sure if this was simply linkbait or a well reasoned, data-informed argument. It’s a cliche to respond to “SEO is dead” articles because those writers are almost always uninformed or have an agenda unrelated to optimization. However, this post was on CMI, a highly respected site. The … [Read more...]

As marketers accumulate information about customers, it is also important to identify common characteristics and patterns to help guide messaging, engagement and offers. Behaviors that contribute to your business objectives like, sales, advocacy, sharing, referrals and repeat business might contribute to your understanding of an “ideal” customers that can be characterized as a persona.: Admin Bob – Influences the CEO on software purchases and cares about price, service and speed. Being able to identify your “best” customers also means there’s another end to the spectrum:  patterns that reflect undesirable customer behaviors and … [Read more...]

In a few weeks I’ll be giving a talk at the University of St Thomas in Minneapolis to a class on community management on a topic that I think will interest many of our readers. Online Community Management is a function that has existed in the digital world for a while now, stretching back to the days of bulletin boards and online forums. Today that role looks a bit different. Not be confused with a Social Media Manager, a Community Manager is typically the “voice of the brand” on the social web as well as the voice of the community back to the brand. Functionally, this translates to social media listening and engagement but also … [Read more...]

Social content curation and social content creation are often the core to many brands’ social networking efforts. Curating and sharing useful content associates the topics with the brand and creates an affinity for the brand as what I like to call, “the best answer” for their areas of focus. Growing social participation is motivating many companies to aggregate content produced and curated by the brand’s own employees. This is a compelling opportunity to harvest the brand’s own collective wisdom. A single destination for curated social content fuels a brand publisher model that supports brand storytelling, content … [Read more...]

With over 725,000 views on Slideshare in just 2 days, this 2013 Internet Trends report from Mary Meeker & Liang Wu from KPCB is a must read. There are over 2.4 billion internet users world-wide and huge opportunities in store. This report speaks to the state of content (including photos, video and audio) and how it is increasingly findable, shared and tagged. Digital content is created and shared 9 times more now than 5 years ago. Mobile use is expanding at a dramatic rate and implications for smartphones, tablets and even wearable devices are explored. In Other Online Marketing News… Google blimps will bring the web to Africa. Search giant … [Read more...]

Over the past few years, there’s been a tremendous focus on content creation in the search and overall digital marketing world. Once you get past the hype, there are plenty of well documented case studies showing the ROI of a content marketing approach. Unfortunately, content marketing campaigns are often guilty of paying little more than cursory attention to the optimization of digital assets for search. There might be a “keywords” or “SEO” check box on a task list, but it’s not anything that takes full advantage of search based discovery. The content might be engaging and inspire action, but good luck finding it on … [Read more...]

Within the realm of B2B marketing, stories, not “features and benefits” allow brands to create relevant and engaging connections with prospective customers. Successful digital marketers use a variety of content marketing tactics to tell stories according to the goals of both brand and customer. Even though 71% of B2B content marketers use case studies, they are often an under optimized form of brand storytelling. Case studies provide a structured problem and solution format that provide context, situation and challenges that the reader can empathize with. Case studies also supply insight into how a problem was solved, paving the way for … [Read more...]

U. S. Army Social Media Handbook Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day to remember all the men and women who died serving in the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. While much of the workforce in the U.S. takes today as a holiday and marks it as the start of Summer, it’s important to honor the sacrifices made by these brave individuals in service of our country. Stories of remembrance during Memorial Day are often told through traditional news media covering parades or honoring the heroic actions of individuals and units. Social Media also plays a big role in military communications. If you thought creating a … [Read more...]

Kmart is at it again with a clever follow up to their highly popular video “Ship My Pants” that has had over 17 million views. The play on words this time is “Big Gas Savings” with over 1 million views in 2 days. Like the Old Spice videos that went ballistic, the question remains: They’re very creative and popular, but will these videos get shoppers in stores and buying at Kmart?Flickr is Biggr. Users now get 1 terabyte of storage. I’ve been a pro Flickr user for many years and during Yahoo’s pre Marissa Mayer days, it had an uncertain future. Now Flickr is adding 1,000 x more storage for users and some new … [Read more...]

What if you could tap into the minds of 3,000 marketers to find out where they stand when it comes to social media marketing? How valuable would it be to know how your peers are handing the time commitments, social media platforms and measurement? Lucky you and lucky me, the answers to those questions are found in today’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Michael Stelzner and Social Media Examiner. A few of this year’s social media statistics:86% of marketers say social media is important for their business 69% plan to increase their use of YouTube 58% of marketers are blogging and 62% will increase blogging in 2013 49% … [Read more...]

For a recent presentation at a corporate communications and PR conference, I polled my network of digital marketing and PR pros working client-side about the most pressing questions they’re dealing with when it comes to integrating Marketing and Public Relations. Since we’ve been working in the digital marketing and PR space at TopRank Marketing for well over 10 years, it was interesting to see  the diverse feedback from companies of various sizes and industries. But several themes revealed themselves that I think our readers will relate to. Thanks to feedback from Digital and Integrated Marketing Communications professionals like Corinne … [Read more...]

According to a CMI and MarketingProfs study, 91% of B2B Marketers are using content marketing and that means a few things: First, it means content marketing has gained critical mass within the popular marketing mix and any company in a competitive industry would be hard pressed to attract business without it. Second, it means competition to stand out with your brand’s content is only going to get harder as more companies adopt content marketing best practices and mature in their skills. As companies evolve from simply recognizing the important role of content and experimenting with it, to achieving content creation competency and quality, the … [Read more...]

Fast changing trends and serious competition has digital marketers chasing the latest and greatest tactics like hamsters on exercise wheels. Good advice is both hard and too easy to come by. Search “social media marketing” on Google and there are over 1 billion results. All the scrambling often means core skills are overlooked. In fact, one of the easiest things a company can do to improve online marketing performance is to stop sucking at the basics. When it comes to optimizing for search and social media, well implemented basics are as good for search engines and social networks as they are for your customer’s user experience. Here … [Read more...]