Understanding your social media site integration and improving its impact on your inbound marketing
Social media is now a truly established inbound marketing channel, with capacities to re-engage a customer base and influence huge audiences. So much so, that links, buttons and widgets that connect websites to profiles are ubiquitous. Indeed, there is barely a site hosted without them.
I think it is safe to assume that the vast majority of people will consider it best practice to have them on websites, yet how many of us think consciously about their potential impacts on a website?
Creating distraction and exit points without motive
Linking to social media accounts from websites can, of course, be hugely advantageous for a business. However, having scoured websites from a wide range of sectors, it is noticeable that many do not use them in ways that channels users sensibly.
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Examples of how content marketing has evolved from 1895 to 2014
Did you know that content marketing started in 1985 when John Deere launched 'The Furrow Magazine' and P&G were the first to sponsor a soap opera, and this is where the term 'Soap Opera' comes from?
We're sharing this video since it gives a simple introduction and interesting examples of how content marketing formats have evolved from sponsorship to video to editorial. Of course, the video is an example of a piece of content marketing too...
[youtubevideoembedder id="jC43QhFxFrY"]
As the video states: 'Content marketing is at the centre of many brand's marketing strategy with powerful visual content, as it becomes so much more personalised with the tools and technologies that marketers have today.
'Content Marketing is Engaging consumers with the stuff they really want, in a way that serves your brand's purpose and ideals, rather than just trying to jam your logo onto their periphery,'
Keith Blanchard, NYC
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5 key elements that distinguish the great online quiz from the ignored
In July 2014, quizzes built using Interact were viewed 1 million times. Of those million views, 90% came from the top 10% of quizzes built. To discover what sets excellent quizzes apart from the rest, we ran some statistics, put together graphs, and delved deep into the psychology of what causes some quizzes to outperform the rest.
What we found is that all the best quizzes have a good degree of similarity, meaning that there IS a formula for the perfect quiz. I'm here today to share that formula with you.
Every great quiz has 5 essential elements that come together to make up the content.
1. A title that stands out above social media noise
2. A cover image hook
3. Conversational questions
4. Uplifting and challenging results
5. A sharing plan
Let's take a look at each element and the data behind what works.
Step 1: Differentiating yourself with an…
By
07 Nov 2014
How to measure the marketing effectiveness of video content
Your video is clocking up hundreds of views, which is great. But does that mean it’s successful?
Not necessarily.
A revved up view counter in YouTube may indicate that your video is popular, but it doesn’t tell the full story.
For example, it doesn’t tell you how many people only watched the first couple of seconds before dipping out, if they re-watched any sections or if they skipped entire parts.
Rather than watching views, you need to be measuring a much broader set of metrics.
If, like most people, you choose to host your video via YouTube, the metrics you need to consider lie deep within the analytics section of YouTube.
YouTube Analytics options
YouTube Analytics offers in-depth video data which is much more than just views.
One of the first places to start is the Traffic Source. Find out where your viewers have come from and how long they spend…
Are you at risk of social spamming?
It's well over 10 years since Facebook launched. The behavioural patterns of user groups are now well understood, the advertising platforms are highly developed and the business world across the planet has increasingly become 'social'. Yet the ways in which so many businesses have adopted social media and how they use it for ongoing communication with their customers, is often, in my experience, fundamentally flawed.
While as a marketing community we have learnt so much about social media, when it comes to applying that learning into practice, only comparatively rarely do businesses appear to demonstrate real understanding and consideration of their audience’s requirements.
It is time we re-evaluated our approach as the foundations on which these strategies were built have become eroded. In the following paragraphs, I will pose a few searching questions and outline what I regard as key…
Email marketing best practice - 4 Smart techniques to resend to your non-openers for your email campaigns
If at first you don’t succeed – try and try again. It’s a message that’s been drilled into us since childhood, but how well does it stack up against improving your email marketing?
For a long time it has been argued that resending emails to recipients that didn’t open the first time around could do more harm than good, but there is also a lot of evidence to suggest it can be an effective way to re-engage with your subscribers so long as you proceed with caution. Here are 4 simple, practical techniques that we have found effective.
1. Only resend the most important email campaigns
Suppose that every time a subscriber left one of your emails unopened, you resent it. Imagine how annoyed your subscriber would get. It probably wouldn’t be too long until they unsubscribed from all of your…
... and how to deliver on the potential of your blog
The potential benefits for a small business that blogs are vast. Along with building brand identify and improving reputations, it can also help build a loyal base of customers, increase search engine visibility in a fiercely competitive environment and lower the overall cost of marketing goods or services.
However, it's common for businesses to fail to reap the rewards they were looking for when they start blogging - I've identified five below. There are some common reasons for these failings, that I've seen when working with clients, which if acknowledged can be used to turn the blog around to deliver on the benefits originally sought.
1. Lack of skills and resources
Perhaps the biggest reason why a small business blog fails is down to a lack of skills and resources. Even though the author may have extensive knowledge…
What are your recommended Email Marketing techniques?
That’s the question we posed in our recent email marketing tips competition. Thanks if you contributed a tip or shared the suggestions!
We had lots of great suggestions, so it’s a pity we don’t have a prize for all, but we have now selected 3 winners and there are 3 “highly commended” tips.
I asked our judges Chad White who offered up 3 copies of his new book Email Marketing Rules and Tim Watson, Email consultant at Zettasphere and regular Expert commentator on Smart Insights to each choose 3 tips and explain why they liked them. I then decided on a winning three based on the depth of the contributor’s insight and those who gave a specific example of a test.
Three winning Email marketing tips
Here are the “lucky winners”:
1. Alan Moir on Personalisation.
In one…
Introducing the 7 principles of engagement marketing
Just a few generations ago, the world of doing business was driven by face-to-face relationships. Many of us have heard stories from grandparents who talked about their butcher or baker as if they were old friends. These unique and intimate relationships were powerful, built strong relationships with customers and ultimately drove customer loyalty.
This concept was one of the main casualties of the digital revolution – as buying moved into online channels and a plethora of new tools and channels became available to marketers to help them to communicate with customers in a digital world. Databases were blasted, demand was generated and victory was achieved – in the short-term at least.
But in today’s digital world, buyers are more becoming ever more empowered. Steadily, buyers have acquired the power to define their own buying process so the days…
The 7 traits of an effective Social Media Marketing Manager
The Social Media Marketing Manager role is now an established role in many large businesses. It's featured as one of the main digital marketing roles in the Smart Insights top 12 digital job descriptions template.
In smaller businesses, social media will be one marketing approach of many that a digital marketing manager will be working on, or social media may be a combined responsibility with SEO and content marketing. But in all cases, as social media continues to evolve, so does the role of the Social Media Manager.
Whilst the first Social Media Managers were mainly responsible for setting up and running a Facebook presence or answering customer service queries on Twitter, their roles now encompass many more skills and attributes. Of course, a Social Media Manager's scope of responsibility will be influenced by…
