It’s 2015: you’ve probably sent a Tweet in your lifetime. You know all about Snapchat, and you’ve even lost a few hours to Instagram. But does that make you a social media guru? Of course not—unless you consider your 13-year-old niece a guru.
So how are you expected to out social-media half the U.S. teen population, and create a winning strategy you can be really proud of?
Read MoreIn a world of constant content, it’s no secret influencers can help you augment your content marketing efforts, rise above the noise and generate results.
It’s important to determine the influencers who can generate the most impact, and build a streamlined process for engagement, relevant to your goals. When I’m planning our content for Traackr, I focus on a few main groups of influencers who I know will help move the needle for our brand. By sharing my model and process, I hope it helps you strengthen your own influencer marketing practice to create really great content!
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Editor’s Note: At Scoop.it, we’re strong advocates of the content hub and building a place for marketing content to live. Website and SEO expert Drew Hendricks has some answers to one of the more technical questions involved in creating a content hub: what type of hosting should I use?
Virtual hosting is one of the most common options people choose when buying hosting services. It is affordable and easy to use. If you use free hosting, you could be losing valuable sales. Spending the few bucks to upgrade to virtual hosting can really help you spike your sales as well as conversions. Read on to see how you could be missing out – and what you can do about it.
Read MoreContent Marketing and Influencer Strategy must work together for either to be successful. 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the past 2 years; and while content marketing is approaching mass adoption, getting a message in front of the right people at the right time is as formidable as it is essential. To rise above the noise, convey a message and mobilize buyers, content marketers are turning to influencers.
“Investing in a content and influencer marketing strategy can be one of the most impactful actions a business can make.” – Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
In the last 10 years, B2B and B2C organizations alike have quickly adopted content-driven strategies to attract, nurture, enable, inspire, educate and support their customers. Even as the platforms and tactics change, content as a strategy to reach audiences remains powerful and continues to grow.
Media richness is defined as a reduction of ambiguity. Whereas text can be misinterpreted, images and videos provide more concise delivery of information.
In an era when the average person skims content for the juiciest and most useful bits, companies have to say more with less and be very direct with content. Your web-using customer base prefers websites that specifically limit content length to six-second videos or 140-character posts, so your content should achieve brevity.
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Everyone knows that social media is the “it” thing to do nowadays: consumers,businesses, and marketing consultants are all reaping the rewards of social media involvement. But companies large and small are finding multitudes of other ways to engage customers socially, and drive traffic and convert leads into sales.
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When it comes to content marketing, businesses can easily lose their personality behind lackluster, “robotic” blogs and other web content. This can result in disengaged audiences, reduced thought leadership standing, and lower search engine ratings.
According to GetResponse blogger Marya Jan, creating quality content requires that you infuse the unique, mutual personality characteristics of businesses and their customers into whatever gets written.
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SEO has become a cornerstone in content marketing campaigns as businesses look to establish a presence on the Internet. However, SEO is about more than just making sure you have the appropriate keywords placed in landing pages and blog posts. Search engines are getting smarter – specifically Google – which is constantly trying to keep the playing field leveled with every new update.
Google’s goal is to ensure that Web surfers are getting quality results each time they submit a search query, and you need to keep these guidelines in mind to make sure your company site actually reaches your target audience. That being said, it helps to know how to optimize your SEO strategy to make sure that you’re always tapping into the potential of the Web. Here are eight tools you can use to enhance your current SEO plan.
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This is a guest post from our friends at Tackk.
Social media needs no introduction. Although initially created for personal use, social media is particularly important for many business marketing strategies. The social content your business creates gives your business a personality, creditability, and most importantly, expertise in your area. Here are some one-liners to use on your Facebook and Twitter accounts to show you know your stuff:
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Curation is the key to consistently delivering relevant content to your target audience, but how does it impact SEO?
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With 18.7 million bloggers online (Social Media Today), reading and writing blogs has become an essential part of everyday life. Among the most popular: personal, business and education blogs spark major interest in readers across the globe.
The one-liners below are suggestions to include in your next blog post to capture attention, engage readers and increase conversions.
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Every day, there are more than 500 million tweets sent out onto Twitter. Approximately 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month. On a social networking website that has loads of traffic, how do you attract attention?
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SEO may be one of the biggest buzzwords of the decade, but what is it and why does it matter? SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, has become a critical component to the way that companies do business on the Internet. This guide will help you understand the definition of SEO, why it matters and how you can measure it in terms of your own business.
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According to Forrester, 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email. In a world of social conversations, that powerful stat supports that email marketing can still be a huge asset in your marketing campaigns. No matter what industry you’re marketing to, if you’re sending emails, you better be doing it well.
Check out this list of email one-liners [broken out by industry] that can drastically impact your email campaigns.
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Raise your hand if you have ever sat in a lecture hall. Keep it raised if you have ever felt alone in the lecture hall. If you have ever felt alone while studying for that big exam. Or if you’ve ever missed a class, needed lecture notes, but knew no one in that class. Keep it raised, if by the end of the semester, of the 500 people in that class, you only met 1 or 2 of them, and by ‘met’, I mean gave them a formal head-nod or stared at the back of their head for 16 weeks. Keep it raised if you have ever bombed a test, but you feel like you studied a lot. (You really didn’t have to raise your hand, but if you did, props).
Yes, we’ve all been through these pain points. You probably wouldn’t even be reading this post if you didn’t passionately agree with me that these problems need fixing. They need fixing so badly that, if they don’t get it, they can put a damper on your college experience.
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According to the Content Marketing Institute, original content should be the cornerstone of your content marketing. And curating content can raise your brand awareness and bring more visitors to your website. So how do these two fundamental marketing pieces work together? Very nicely. In terms of content marketing in any industry, how you marry creation and curation could mean your success or failure.
Specifically in education, EdTech consultants, teachers and librarians are doing a great job combining creation and curation to showcase student creativity, school information and thought leadership. We’ve pulled four worthy examples of users in the EdTech space who exemplify using powerful online tools to master creation and curation consistently.
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The Midwest is more than great BBQ and Tornado Alley. It’s a veritable pool of ingenious startups that are giving their coastal neighbors from New York to Silicon Valley a run for their money. From foodie startups to companies revolutionizing education, it’s crucial for investors and consumers alike to keep an eye on this surprising hot spot of entrepreneurship. Heading into 2014, here are five innovative Midwestern startups to watch.
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Last week, the latest edition of the #leancontent took place in San Francisco with an incredibly smart and inspiring talk from SmartRecruiters’ David Smooke. He enlightened an extremely engaged audience on the importance of guest blogging and how it can be used to build community and authority, especially for startups.
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It seems today that everyone wants to start a blog, given that there are more than 150 million blogs on the Internet. Despite the competition, it’s still a great idea. A blog can help you market your business or improve your hobby, but with so much competition, how can you break into the blogosphere with a bang?
I write and publish guest blog posts because writing – like your startup – is for other people. It’s reaching new audiences. It’s sharing new experiences, practices and revelations with old friends and new friends… and even brands. It’s communication for the modern reader. Blogging is increasingly how many startups reach their next customer. In fact, 76% of professionals who used content curation saw an impact on reported business goals.
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If you struggle with providing a steady stream of fresh, relevant content for your website, you’re not alone. Perhaps one of the best ways to overcome this challenge, while also increasing the value you provide to your audience, is through the process of editorialized content curation.
But while we know that this process (when done right) is beneficial in terms of driving traffic, extending reach and providing interesting and valuable content, what does Google think about content curation?
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As a social media manager, you’re probably aware of many of the pains that come with staying visible online and managing many social media channels at once. Luckily, there’s an answer to the woes of social media publishing: content curation. Here are 5 problems that social media publishers face and how content curation helps alleviate the pain.
Just recently, Scoop.it announced that Scoop.it curators will be able to connect their personal profiles for the purpose of Google Authorship, and at the same time, can now connect a Google+ Business Page for sharing curated content. This is really exciting news, as busy business owners and social media managers can now use Scoop.it to curate and share great content to all of their branded social media profiles – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+.
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Every time I visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, I see something I’ve never seen before. In fact, t’s considered the most influential museum of modern art in the world. With that in mind, meet Klaus Biesenbach. Klaus holds the title “Chief Curator at Large” at MoMA. If you’ve visited the MoMA and walked away impressed (like I have), Klaus has a lot to do with that.
As content curators, we should all aspire to be like Klaus. After all, wouldn’t it be great if our content collections drew as much interest, respect and admiration as the collections at MoMA? In order to achieve this feat, we need to become highly effective content curators. In other words, we need to curate Internet content as we would fine art.
Let’s consider seven habits of content creation that would make Klaus Biesenbach proud.
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While Webster’s might define a nerd as someone who is unstylish, unattractive or “hopelessly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits” — nerds and geeks have increasingly become accepted among the mainstream. And lately, they’ve become more well-known for their enthusiasm for things they love. If you love to write or read, you might be a word nerd. If you have an unhealthy obsession for fashion, you could be geek chic.
No matter your interests, being well-educated is a great way to becoming a more well-rounded person. It also has a habit of making a person more enlightened, i.e. less judgmental and more congenial with others of different backgrounds. Here are some things you can do to keep your mind young and to expand your horizons.
Read MoreBefore today, imitation was the greatest form of flattery. If your idea was good enough to be copied, then you were golden. But now, with the state of the web in our lives, this balance is shifting. While “copying” still does exist online, the concept of “copying” is now simply a way to bump your own Google ranking by farming someone else’s content. This, is not flattering. Even if correctly cited, 100% republished work is simply cheating to get ahead. Curation, on the other hand — the meaningful selection, enrichment, and sharing of existing media — combines imitation and creation. Curators have to create a new perspective or idea on top of the existing media which supports the content in the original.
Read MoreCommunications from branded properties, celebrities, or anyone with a “following” can often come of as false, contrived, and sometimes insensitive, even if they have the best intentions. This article was inspired by a recent email campaign I received, where the “reply” email address was “no-reply@redacted.com.” This gave me pause. I don’t know why this particular email campaign set me off, but I was genuinely irritated that they would really prevent me from interacting with their brand. Who wants to be told they actively can’t reach out to someone who is proactively talking to them. That’s basically a brand saying “you don’t matter and we don’t want to talk to you.”
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Our knowledge sharing institutions of today are beginning to “humanize,” to focus more of their resources on creating readable, shareable media than on reporting cold, hard facts, simply to stay relevant and on top of peoples’ online radars. To make facts more palatable, many medias will interpret ideas with respect to their own unique brand Point-of-View, one only has to consider CNN versus FOX news here in the USA. But, do institutions who stand and a major knowledge source for world readers have a responsibility to keep bias out of their findings? Is “fact omission” or “spin” an appropriate way to interact with vital facts? Or, as I seem to see it, has major marketing technique got its claws too far into our knowledge sharing institutions and our own lives (because, really, we as readers are the ones who perpetuate this problem).
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It may be hard to get into learning again after being out of any type of educational establishment for some time. It’s either because education loses its luster once we’re not being rewarded with letters and pieces of paper, or because we’re so used to being passively taught. We didn’t have to read the whole history (or economics or Philosophy of Man’s Infatuation With Bacon) book. We got an abridged version in class (okay not the bacon one) between daydreams and texting under the desk.
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I recently got back from some travels, and as I walked around Germany, Italy, and my hometown near Washington, DC., I could not help but think about my relationship with technology and how it has evolved throughout the years. Living in San Francisco and working in Silicon Valley, I often forget that other cities are not as inspired by technology. Not so long ago, I too did not quite comprehend how technology could and would change my life.
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