5 Ways to Utilize Facebook Posts for Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about creating relevant and compelling content in order to change or enhance consumer behavior that’s favorable to you. And where else to better utilize this strategy than in a billion-people social hub that is Facebook? So read carefully and jot down these important tips that will surely help your brand with content marketing.

Tips on using Facebook for your content marketing strategy

1. Content creation through Social Listening.

Probably the greatest thing about Facebook from a marketer’s perspective is that you don’t have to guess what your consumers are thinking since they’re going to post it anyway. So this is the best time to listen. Tip: Find out how people relate to your brand, how they see it and use it on a daily basis, etc. by searching hashtags:

…

A smart technique for online lead generation

Envisage entering the office after a relaxing weekend to find the information of several piping hot leads sitting on your desk - Sounds too good to be true? Think again. Historically sales and marketing teams have relied purely on avenues such as a trade shows to make their mark. Online marketing gave new options, but there are many competing, often laborious forms to capture vital prospect information. Online Lead Generation, and in particular web-based lead scoring, is a newer approach to these traditional ways, making it possible to obtain viable business opportunities. Potentially it can create a cost-effective platform which requires less marketing spend as every potential lead is captured and even identified by company. We will give a briefing about these techniques in the next free Smart Insights webcast with this post introducing the approach - please register here. …

An introduction to the "Hero's Journey" method of storytelling

Your product or services will likely solve a problem for your customers, or fulfil particular needs and wants. No matter how boring you view this product, it sits within a ‘story arc’ that can always be made interesting to consumers facing the challenges that it solves. In Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a basic pattern of storytelling is defined as a ‘monomyth’ or ‘hero’s journey’. This is a pattern that can be seen in a wide range of storytelling from around the world. Essentially, protagonists within a story go through a number of common stages, as below:

From Homer’s The Odyssey, to Medieval Romances and modern sci-fi adventures such as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and Avatar, this story arc persists: The protagonist is inspired to go on…

Defining budget and timescales for video production

[caption id="attachment_29675" align="alignright" width="330"] photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minor9th/4528040004/[/caption]

Whether you're joining the video revolution for the very first time, or thinking about your next online video project, one thing will be paramount to ensuring its success: preparation.

Like any other marketing strategy, setting clear goals for video production is an essential part of your preparation. Clearly defined goals will stop you from wasting time and money, and ensure your video delivers an effective message to your target audience.

It's all very well deciding you want to increase the use of online video in your marketing strategy, but skipping the vital step of setting realistic goals will limit the success of your project.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said: by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Setting Your Goals

Goal setting is a powerful process to help keep you focused.…

Approaches to shape your Content Marketing in 2014

1,700 of the great and the good of the content marketing world gathered in Cleveland, Ohio last week to make the case for content marketing. These are the main insights I took from the event.

This year the CMW 2013 agenda focused on justify content marketing and proving content marketing effectiveness in both B2C and B2B markets.

In between the Godfather of Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi, hosting the event, and the incomparable William Shatner with his surprisingly relevant closing address on storytelling, were sandwiched almost every major player in the content marketing firmament.

1. A definition of content marketing

Joe Pulizzi launched his new book ‘Epic Content Marketing’ at CMW 2013 and as well as being an excellent must-read for ALL marketers he managed to finally pose…

A review of usability best practice for UK Universities

I worked in Higher Education for 14 years, so I found Wedcredible's Education Report 2013 extremely interesting, since their survey benchmarked the websites of 10 UK universities to assess their online user experience. With changes over the past few years, with higher UK fees and more demand on universities and FE Colleges to provide a positive experience for home and overseas prospective and current students, from the first and every ongoing touchpoint - it's increasingly important to engage and provide a good experience throughout the customer lifecycle (from enquirer - applicant - student and beyond to alumni). Students or at least their parents are paying customers with 'set expectations' and the HE market is very competitive multi-nationally and domestically, as the government changed regulations and opened up HE provision to more providers such as FE colleges.…

Ideas to trigger an emotional response from your campaigns

The use of psychology in email marketing is often not at the front of many Marketers’ minds. This fascinates me since we’re so used to seeing the effects of overtly psychological marketing everywhere else we look; on TV, the radio and on public transport. It’s become part of the scenery of our daily lives. Why then is such an effective factor often overlooked when it comes to designing emails? Surely we should be doing all that we can to engage with people?

An important factor to consider is that everything we send to recipients will generate an automatic emotional response; be it positive or negative, large or small. The reason for this is because of the way our brains are wired.

We have so many decisions to make on a daily basis that it would be impossible for us to make a fully…

The what, why and how of infographics marketing using social media

In today’s fast-paced social media world, if you want your message to be seen, you need to include a visual. Whether it’s a picture of your dog, a map, or an infographic, articles with images attached get 94 percent more total views than plain text. Of all the visuals available, infographics are an especially compelling way to capture the attention of online readers.

Consumers are bombarded every day with so much social media content that you need to include something that can get their attention and educate them quickly and succinctly. Whether you’re using a visual social network like Pinterest or Instagram or a text-based platform like Twitter, infographics fit the bill. So what is it that makes infographics so engaging in a social media format? Infographics are popular…

The rise and fall? of infographics

According to the volume of searches in Google Trends shown in this infographic, the popularity of infographics has increased by 800% over two years since 2010.

Perhaps surprisingly, the latest figures have shown a slight decrease in searches since May this year. Do you think infographics are becoming less effective from your use of them?

We think infographics remain a great tool to visually share and represent information and knowledge, both within the organisation and externally for outreach. Of course, it's important to get the quality right as Dan Bosomworth explains in his post giving 10 best practices for the perfect marketing infographic. We try to produce useful infographics which help marketers explain practices such as those we have collected in our free Digital Marketing Infographics pack.

We've noticed a growth in use of tools for creating…

A Solid Lead Generation System starts with a Nose for News

Whether you are a kid with crayons, a Journalist or a Content Marketer, we all have an expectation that audiences will love every sentence we write. After all, we put a lot of effort into each thought – how can the story not be perfect? The harsh fact is that most web readers skim stories, which means that it takes even more effort to make the important points of a piece relevant, clear and arranged in a logical style. For Content Marketers, this storytelling technique is particularly important in developing a lead generation system. 

Four Tips for Content Marketers

Content marketers would do well to imitate Journalists, who by training are some of the best storytellers because they focus on the following areas: 1. Relevance. Answers to the key questions of who, what, when, where, how and why are the foundation for making a story…