How to Fix Your Broken Content Marketing ROI
What looks like negative ROI for content marketing can often be turned around. And if your content really is not pulling its weight, there are several easy fixes.
Read MoreSearch Results for social
Winning with Authority: an integrated framework for online marketing, by 15 experts
Source: www.slideshare.net
Do Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Demand Generation, Community Management and other marketing practices work in silos?
Not if you want to win.
Read MoreContent Marketing ROI: Do eBooks and White Papers Generate More Leads Than Blogs? A Data-Driven Answer
There are so many content marketing formats that it can be hard to decide which to focus on. White papers, ebooks, slideshares, blogs, infographics, curated content, videos, etc. They all have their merits but don’t…
Read MoreHow to convince your boss you need content marketing software
Most of us who practice content marketing rely on at least some kind of content marketing software. We’re software people by nature, so it’s only natural we’ve got a thing for digital tools. Of course, it is possible to stay on top of your content marketing work with just Excel and Google calendar. But at a certain point you’ll want to graduate to something more robust.
Read MoreHow We Addressed our Main Content Marketing Pain by Outsourcing to Freelancers
Today I’d like to share with you one of the biggest marketing struggles we experienced at Ivalua, the previous company I worked for and where I handled Marketing for over 2 years: content creation – and how we overcame it leveraging freelance writers.
Read More15 Proven Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Blog
Who doesn’t want more website traffic? Like money or good looks, it seems like it’s just not possible to have too much traffic to your blog.
Trouble is, traffic is tricky. You can buy it, sure. But if you don’t convert that traffic into dollars, you’re losing money. And to actually see ROI, you have to not just make back the money you’ve spent on advertising. You’ll also have to cover the overhead for your business and the time you spent managing it all.
If you go the other way and build up free traffic, you’ll have to get enough results to justify your time. Anybody can spend an afternoon building traffic to their blog. But did they get enough traffic from those efforts to justify the time spent and the opportunity lost?
It is, of course, possible to get an ROI on your blog traffic work. I’m about to give you specific ideas for exactly how to do that.
Read MoreContent marketing: is a blog always the right format?
“According to the experts, a blog will solve all your Internet woes. Blogging will increase your traffic, expand your audience, improve your engagement, position you as an authority, and allow you to shape the message in your space. So should you blog?”
Read MoreWhy Content Curation + Content Creation Is A Winning Content Strategy
Content. Content. Content. There’s no denying the fact that content is the leader of the online marketing pact right now. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s important. But the truth of the matter is that content has always been what great marketing was built on. Package it up. Call it something new. Do what you want. But when it comes to succeeding online, your content is the cornerstone of your strategy.
Content Creation vs Curation
Cast your net out there and ask around. Some will tell you that you need to curate content. Others will tell you that you need to create content. Ask me and I’ll tell you that a solid content marketing strategy combines both creation and curation. And I’ll tell you why. But first, let’s look at the benefits of them individually.
Read More11 Effective Lean Content Marketing Practices To Generate ROI
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s and MarketingProfs yearly survey on the state of content marketing, lack of time and lack of budget are among the top challenges B2B content marketers face. The other 2 challenges in the Top 4 are “producing enough content” and “producing the type of content that engages”.
In short: most B2B content marketers don’t have enough resources to both scale their content volume and maintain the required quality to generate ROI.
For the past 3 years, we’ve worked with top marketers, influencers, marketing software founders as well as our customers and users to define Lean Content Marketing as a set of best practices that make it possible for SMB marketers to generate positive ROI with limited resources and budgets. We’ve compiled our findings, experiment results, advice and best practices in the Lean Content Marketing Handbook for SMBs and today, I’d like to focus on the most effective practices that generate ROI.
Read MoreHow to share content with an image on Twitter for greater engagement
Twitter has become a very busy place. As we’re collectively following more and more people, our Twitter timelines become more and more crowded. The consequence: less organic reach, lower engagement.
Last year, observing the same phenomenon, I wrote that social media publishing had to dramatically change to keep yielding results for professionals and marketers. This post, which followed Facebook’s own admission that organic reach was declining for pages, was one of the most resounding ones on our blog with many of our readers confirming this trend through their own experience. Our recommendation back then was simple: use a content hub for all your content – not just your blogs and created content but also your curated content. Bring your social traffic to it so that you can have engagement on your own turf and drive conversions.
This is still the best thing you can do to align your social media and your content marketing efforts and get results. But today, we’re adding a new way to drive engagement up by making sharing your curated content as an image effortless.
Here’s how.
Read MoreCan You Afford The 10 Creative Types Needed To Build A Killer Content Marketing Team?
Creating content, especially in a lean marketing team, is an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. Having a dream team in place to create not only the social posts, blog pieces, and video snippets, but the strategy, big picture campaigns and creative long-term vision should be a top priority for marketers in 2015.
Source: www.b2bmarketinginsider.com
Michael Brenner makes an interesting list of all the various creative talents you would need in an ideal Content Marketing team. But while there’s no denying that this would be a dream team, it’s anything but lean.
Read MoreHow I Cut Down on My Curating Time While Increasing My Views
Editor’s note: at Scoop.it, we’re obsessed with how our customers use the platform and what improvements they make to their content process by using it. Here’s a time-saving Scoop.it hack by Joseph Rizzo, whose agency iNeo Marketing helps implement Marketing Technology.
As curators, we may have different objectives and different ways of pursuing those objectives, e.g., some curators scoop only the article without Insight, some focus almost entirely on Insight, hybrid of both, etc., etc. But there is something that is common to all curators…
Cutting down on the time to curate.
Read MoreDon’t Get Stuck With These Common Misconceptions About Content Marketing
Some marketers make “content marketing” interchangeable with content-marketing activities like social media. Learn 9 misperceptions that devalue content marketing and its potential for success, and find out how to avoid making them again.
Read More5 Top Marketing Experts, 15 Ideas and 2 ROI Analysis on Repurposing Content
Repurposing is a key strategy of the lean content marketing methodology. Megan Marrs has 11 interesting best practices and ideas on how to repurpose content efficiently in this great post which made me want to elaborate on this topic.
So here’s the take of several other content marketing experts on the value of repurposing content, a cheat sheet that summarizes key ideas to repurpose content (Megan’s 11 plus 4 others I added) as well as the ROI analysis of two of our own experiment with content repurposing.
Read MoreHow does Curated Content differ from Duplicate Content?
Even though it’s been addressed by a lot of professional SEO experts, including Google’s Matt Cutts, this is still a question we get a lot. So let’s review it in detail.
Read More4 Great things I learned as a community & content marketer
By this point, as a reader of this blog, it’s not unlikely that you’re familiar with my story. I was hired straight out of college as a community manager by Scoop.it and have spent the last few years diving into the worlds of community and content marketing on behalf of this awesome brand. As I prepare to move on to my life’s next adventure, I’d like to share some of my key learnings about community management and content marketing with you.
A majority of my day-to-day responsibilities at Scoop.it could fall under the umbrella of “non-traditional” marketing, which means that I put forth a lot of effort to learn about the space I had been thrown into. Today, I’ll share four key learnings and observations on community management and content marketing and I’d love to hear how you feel about them as well.
Read More4 Years of Professional Growth & Good Vibes, Curated
Dear Scoopiteer,
Ally here, as usual, bringing a special newsletter-themed design to the Scoop.it blog today, mostly because I have some news to share with you.
I started a college internship at a brand new company called Scoop.it on June 15th, 2011. Exactly one year later, on June 15th 2012, I started as a full-time community manager. Just about two years after that, in May of 2014, I took over the role of Director of Community & Content.
Now, after four amazing years, I’m turning in my Scoop.it hoodie (not literally, though, don’t worry) and taking on a new adventure.
Read More5 Ways to make time for content marketing when you don’t have any
Who has time for content marketing?
While small businesses are called the backbone of the American economy, they are also challenged with smaller budgets and less employees, which can make things like marketing and advertising very challenging. Content marketing is more than a valuable addition to a successful advertising strategy, it can also help:
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With brand reputation, management and awareness
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Connect better with existing and potential customers
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Increase website traffic and gain new leads
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Increase visibility for the brand and business
But for our struggling small business owner, who has the time for content marketing these days? The answer to this question is, make the time. Here are some tips on how to have a successful online content marketing strategy without spending an inordinate amount of time or money:
Read MoreToward On-Demand Marketing
The rapid incorporation of digital approaches has made marketing an industry of silos. It’s time to rethink the way we build our teams and our skill sets to break those walls apart.
Source: moz.com
How is Marketing structured in your company?
I’ve been thinking about how this translates to SMBs as obviously not every company has to do “government relations”. But whether the Marketing team is big or small, there are interesting distinctions made in this slide in terms of the skills they represent.
Read MoreThe one content curation best practice that you might not be doing
You want content curation resources? We’ve got content curation resources. I can preach until my face turns blue about content curation and content marketing best practices, but none of it really matters unless you’re also doing this one very important thing:
Read MoreAdding insight and editorializing your curated content.
Content is the fuel of email marketing: here’s how to ignite it
This post contains excerpts of our recently published ebook: “ROI or RIP: the lean content marketing handbook for SMBs” that you can download for free here.
According to research performed earlier in 2014 by Gigaom and reported by eMarketer, email marketing is still the most commonly used method of digital marketing, with a whopping 86% of respondents claiming to use it. If that’s not enough, though, over half (59%) of B2B marketers surveyed by HubSpot say that email marketing is the most effective channel for generating revenue.
Email marketing needs content and content marketing needs email
Why are email marketing and content marketing such a great match? And what does it mean for your marketing strategy?
Read More7 Actionable blogging tips for content marketers that are proven to get results
Blogging remains the pillar of content marketing, particularly for SMBs. But when you browse many company’s websites, you realize their blog is under optimized.
So why is blogging for content marketing so difficult?
1. It’s hard to maintain the discipline: even when you have an in-house team of content writers, creating content is time consuming and it takes a lot of efforts to maintain the rhythm. Publishing great content on a consistent basis costs a lot.
2. It’s easy to get demotivated by the lack of impact. Initially a blog doesn’t get much traffic so for ROI-driven management team, it’s tempting to dismiss it into the “tried this; didn’t work” category.
Fortunately, getting results out of your content marketing in general and out of your blogging efforts in particular is accessible to anyone. Sure, it requires some particular techniques but the good news is they’re not particularly hard to implement.
Read MoreThrow an influencer lovefest – a guide to influencer outreach and content creation
In 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!
Read MoreROI or RIP: The Lean Content Marketing Handbook for SMBs
Some say content marketing is only for people with deep pockets, and that short of creating Star Wars, you’ll struggle to make an impact. We happen to disagree.
Over the past three years, we’ve been diligently working with SMBs to find success with content marketing via our products, our blog, a Meetup series, and endless conversations with clients as well as subject matter experts. The results of this work have added up the lean content marketing ideology, which is the practice of optimizing content strategies in order to create the highest impact with the least amount of time and resources.
Read MoreIntroducing Scoop.it Content Director
The absolute need to deploy a serious content marketing strategy has been obvious for quite some time now – at least amongst businesses with a reasonable online ambition. Content is the lifeblood of SEO, engagement, brand awareness, thought leadership and ultimately lead generation. So, while “Content is King” might not be the latest scoop; it doesn’t necessarily mean that every SMB has deployed an effective content strategy.
And by effective, I mean a strategy that delivers a positive, measurable ROI.
Since 2011, we’ve been providing SMBs with an effective way to curate content as part of their overall content strategy. As our user-base has grown, we have fielded several surveys to assess the value of curation, and to understand what the next, major need would be as far as content marketing is concerned.
As we suspected, SMBs who include curation in their content marketing report a positive ROI. We also understand that concrete return on investment is the overarching objective for SMBs. While content is still king, it also needs to fill the treasury! It’s ROI or RIP.
In order to deliver ROI, content marketing for SMBs needs to be lean.
Read MoreThe one decision we all make constantly. Or why we must curate or die in 2015.
The key to success in a myriad of web content that may drown us in 2015 is to curate content. The whys and hows are explained in-depth inside this article.
Source: www.searchenginejournal.com
It’s interesting to see that content curation is evolving from an opportunity to a necessity as Julia McCoy from ExpressWriters recently noted in the Search Engine Journal explaining how we must curate content in 2015.
Why is that happening? Why is this accelerating?
Read MoreThank You, Community Managers!
Dear Community Managers,
A few short years ago, the term ‘community manager’ snuck into business world. Companies were rushing to find themselves one, even though they might not have even been sure what exactly he or she would do once she came along. Some of us have been doing it forever (since before the title was even created!), and some of us have just begun. Regardless of which of these categories you fall into, we at Scoop.it have one thing to say: thank you!
Read MoreWhere to start for good SEO: great content or link building?
Is it possible to perform well in search rankings by simply producing good content?
Source: moz.com
Just how far SEO evolved? “Good content is the new SEO” has been the new motto for a few years. But is it true to the point where you can ignore link building?
Moz’s Rand Fishkin gives his view on the question in this video.
The short version of his answer is that “yes it’s possible but it’s very tough“. Up to the point where he admits to admiring these sites:
“I find looking at websites that accomplish SEO without active link building fascinating, because they have editorially earned those links through very little intentional effort on their own. I think there’s a tremendous amount that we can take away from that process and optimize around this.“
While I feel it’s a little disappointing that he doesn’t give any numbers or more conclusive arguments, I also think the interesting question is:
What should you focus on first? Good Content or link building?
Read MoreWhy lean content marketing is the future of content marketing
Source: www.slideshare.net
Read MoreContent & Community Management: The Perfect Pair
Two of the most up-and-coming job titles floating around the tech world these days are content marketer and community manager. My professional journey happened to start with one and lead to the a combination of the two, and I’m not alone.
As community managers, our job is to make sure that the community dedicated to the brand or product that we represent feels satisfied, proud, and willing to spread the word. Having a suite of content specifically dedicated to community management efforts can be more useful in this area than you may imagine.
I talked to a few top community managers to explore how they have integrated a content strategy with their community strategy and what they had to say was quite interesting.
Read More