In today’s age of rapid content consumption—and rapid content creation—not all videos have to be award-winning productions to be successful. Depending on your audience, sometimes quick and easy is all you need.
In the B2B space, vlog posts allow companies to showcase the expertise of their subject matter experts, communicate with their audience at a more intimate level and share content in a format that’s more interesting to consume—making it a popular medium both on desktops and devices. Creating a successful vlog doesn’t happen without effort, however. Here, we offer a few tips to get it right.
A lot of content marketing is based on the old adage “show, don’t tell”. People don’t want to hear about why you’re great at what you do—they want you to prove it. And there’s no better way to do this than with a case study.
When it comes to generating new content, many businesses tend to reinvent the wheel rather than work with what they already have. Chances are, if you’ve been writing content for a while, your next blog post is already written. Here are a few places you can find it:
1. Old content
The best place to find new content is by reading through content you’ve already written. Particularly popular posts are a good place to start. Try exploring a different angle or updating outdated information.
2. Larger materials
A whitepaper doesn’t only have one purpose. Break it down into smaller chunks, pull out some interesting statistics, grab a quote or two and you have enough blog posts, newsletter articles, tweets and Facebook updates to last you for a while. An added bonus? All that material can link back to the original whitepaper.
3. The stockpile
If you have time to sit down to write a blog post, try to write a second one with a longer shelf life. Building a content reserve can come in handy – and save you when you just can’t find a decent story idea. If you’re not that organized, however, the comments of previous blog posts are also a great place to find ideas.
Want to find out more? Download our free report, Feeding the Content Beast.
In an informative piece in Social Media Today, Ben Harper discusses how social data must be a core component of your content strategy. He also points to three tools you can use to gather insights in-house. These include:
– Followerwonk: Followerwonk allows you to analyze any Twitter audience by age, location, and bio word clouds to give you a flavour of your audience. Combine this with the most influential followers and see who they are and what you do to give yourself a headstart
– Unmetric: Unmetric allows you to track your competitors’ social media content and get alerted when there are spikes in engagement levels, allowing you to react or use historical data to plan future activity
– Twtrland: this tool allows you to delve into the Twitter data of any profile to see their most influential tweets, top followers, and basic demographics
Are you tracking your company social data? If so, what tools are you using?
An excellent article in Fast Company by LinkedIn’s Jonathan Lister discusses why your content marketing strategy will ultimately decide whether or not customers will do business with you.
Some highlights:
Research shows consumers are 60% through the buyer’s journey before reaching out to brands for help on available options
There are a myriad of ways to gain greater understanding of your audience, but there’s no better barometer than the conversations you hear on the platforms where you have a constant stream of information.
Read the full article here – http://bit.ly/why-content-marketing-matters
One of the most frequent questions we hear from clients relates in one form or another to the dollar ROI from social media. As the industry matures, more data is becoming available to shed light on this question.
A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute examines the current usage of social technologies in four commercial sectors: consumer packaged goods, retail financial services, advanced manufacturing, and professional services. It concludes that the potential value to be unlocked by leveraging these technologies across the four sectors could potentially contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value.
Although the value that can be captured varies from industry to industry, all of them can benefit. The key to success? Creating the conditions for the full and enthusiastic participation of employees.
Click here for a copy of the study. Click here for a review of the report in Fast Company Magazine
For the latest information on, and best practices for, Mobile and Social Media marketing follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/mikerabinovici
Content marketing is gaining an increasingly important role for B2B marketers, and in companies’ overall marketing strategies . Below you will find a link to the 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends survey put together by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.
For purposes of the research, the survey defined content marketing as follows: “Content marketing/custom media (sometimes called custom publishing, custom content, or branded content) is the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.”
Here are some highlights:
• On average, B2B marketers employ eight different content marketing tactics to achieve their marketing goals.
• 60% report that they plan to increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months.
• Marketers, on average, spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing.
Industries with the highest rates of content marketing adoption:
• Professional Services………………………………..94%
• Computing/Software…………………………………93%
• Advertising/Marketing………………………………89%
• Healthcare……………………………………………………….89%
• Business Services……………………………………….84%
• Manufacturing/Processing…………………….83%
For a free copy if the report – Click Here
How is your company leveraging content marketing? What results are you experiencing? Leave a comment below or email me at michael at ar-com.com