Our new mobile responsive home page and customer journeys
22nd August update: New library search and other updates
It's nearly a couple of months now since we redesigned the site to update our design style and to make the site fully mobile responsive on smartphone and tablet. In this note I just wanted to let members know about another round of updates.
Since the original relaunch we have updated our blog page template to be responsive too, so you can access our updates "on the go" more easily. Thanks if you left a comment with support - it's been nice to get a lot of positive comments!
We did have a few support queries about mangled layouts with the previous updates - this can happen when the previous design stylesheet is in your cache if you have accessed a page before. A simple refresh of the browser should sort this, you may need to do this for the the new…
Bringing ideas to life - developing the perfect process for content ideation
"Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change." Barbara Januszkiewicz
Ideas are the lifeblood of campaigns and the content strategy to support them. Creating brilliant ideas and developing them into unique and appealing content is what marketing campaigns have used to generate audiences for years, and that won’t be changing anytime soon. The value of the creative process is something we recognize and respect at Zazzle Media, which is why we spend hours – many, many hours – honing that process. In this post, we'll describe 12 process steps to consider as part of content ideation.
But contrary to popular belief, there’s a lot more to producing fantastic ideas than huddling together crossed-legged in a Zen-like state, shouting random ideas at each other during a wacky brainstorm session. Adopting the structured approach this article suggests will help produce consistent results across the board, whatever…
Getting noticed with 'Three S Timing' for content marketing campaigns
In my previous article covering the core tenets of the Watertight Marketing Framework, I looked at earning the right to a person's time. This can be achieved by developing a range of time-chunked materials will help you to steadily increase the amount of a person’s time they are willing to give you. Today, I'm moving on to deciding exactly when you put that material out there. That is, what month of the year, what day of the week, and what time of the day?
Once you have your range of materials mapped to a buying decision in place, you'll need to prepare a content marketing timing plan for its release. You can do this simply and powerfully with Three S Timing:
Selectivity
Scheduling
Seasonality
Selectivity – showing up when they’re in a buying mood
You’ll…
New research shows 72% of brands don't measure success
Content marketing is now a key digital strategy, but this infographic shows that measuring content marketing effectiveness is still a challenge for many marketers. Research from surveys including the joint SmartInsights-Hubspot Content Marketing ROI research highlights shows that companies are struggling to know how to measure content marketing ROI. Recently, Bite's research shown in this infographic supports this - they commissioned RedShift Research to survey over 100 Marketers to find out the roles of who is driving content marketing, resources allocated to it and the importance of video content.
Key findings include:
81% of companies have a dedicated Content Marketing role or are looking to invest in a this as the board sees this as a priority amongst 43% of businesses.
Top 3 benefits of content marketing are: to drive sales, customer retention and customer loyalty.
…
Mobile apps to manage your digital marketing life
The modern marketer can reap massive benefits from the mobile app revolution. Useful marketing software is becoming increasingly available in app form, making tools and data readily available on the go. From uploading blog posts to tracking campaign metrics, apps allow marketers to access information at their fingertips quickly and conveniently.
But of all the apps available, which are the best for the marketer, and particularly the digital marketer? I’ve put together a list of the apps I find most useful, both to keep up-to-date personally, but also to manage company social network activity.
The Best Social Media Management Apps
Founded back in 2008, Hootsuite is a popular…
A tutorial showing you the options to set up this new GA feature
When Google Analytics launched in 2005 it democratised web analytics with its feature rich offering, since then Google has worked hard to add new features to a product that is now considered a viable alternative to most enterprise level web analytics tools. But until recently GA lacked a key feature that many of it’s competitors have had since the first half of the last decade, that is the ability to group content at the session level.
Grouping content has lot's of applications, for retail sites grouping categories and products is important, for media sites, different types of stories and today all businesses need to know which types and formats of content are supporting their content marketing.
Other tools around the time of Google Analytics’ launch, such as HBX, dealt with this very well but Google, with its URL based content reports…
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21 Jul 2014
Do you have an app strategy? 5 options for reaching and engaging your audience through mobile applications
The growth in popularity of mobile apps
In January 2010 Apple announced that 3 billion apps had been downloaded in the 18 months following the launch of the AppStore. Growth has since increased month-on-month and shows no sign of slowing down.
Source: Statista: Number of Downloads from the Apple App Store
Number of apps available to download from Apple App Store as…
3 techniques to weave content marketing into your storytelling
In 1791 a Dublin theatre owner named Thomas Daly bet his friends that he could invent a word that didn’t mean anything in 24 hours. Thinking he was crazy, the friends took the bet. Thomas chose the word “quiz” which hadn’t ever been seen before, and he plastered the word all over walls and billboards in the city of Dublin.
24 hours later, the theatre audience was speaking of and using the word “quiz” in conversation, and Mr. Daly won a large sum of money from his counterparts.
There is a strong chance you’ll never forget this story. The next time the word “quiz” is brought up in conversation you’ll think of Thomas Daly. That’s the power of stories.
Stories have been around since the beginning of time and continue to enthrall us.
There’s something visceral about the plot, drama, and heroism in stories that we…
Connecting content on a deeper psychological level
The many different types of content marketing give great opportunities for brands to develop storytelling in new ways. Previously, Dan Bosomworth explained brand storytelling techniques in-depth. In this infographic we gain insights on how people will respond to the content we share, showing how are brains are wired to connect with compelling stories. Did you know that...
'The brain processes images 60 times faster than text, and 92% of consumers want brands to create stories around ads. Because of this, marketers should be delivering linear content with clear narratives and using images to tell their stories".
This storytelling infographic from Onepost shares this insight, explaining that 'finding the right story will activate part of the brain to listen, absorb and transpose it into their own ideas and experiences, making it memorable'.
…
SmartInsights tool review: Touchstone
Rumour has it that the next Indiana Jones film will see our favourite archeologist searching for the greatest undiscovered treasure of modern times: the perfect subject line.
In the meantime, we're left looking for guidance on how to improve subject line performance by using the "right" words. Do we say "free" or "no cost"? "Summer" or "Summertime"? "Deal" or "Offer"?
Any tool that helps us consistently pick out the best words or phrasing would, of course, have two huge advantages:
The benefits go straight to your bottom line: subject lines have a big influence on opens, clicks and other success metrics.
You can skip a lot of A/B subject line testing: A/B tests are not always easy to do right (and can give misleading results if done wrong).
Unfortunately, the tools or reports offering advice on subject line wording tend to suffer from two critical flaws.
First, they commonly base recommendations on a review of past subject lines and the…
