7 Smoking Hot Changes Coming to Content Marketing

You get it.

Content marketing is a great way to develop customer relationships, increase brand awareness and target your audience with precision.

You’ve given it a go for a while, with some decent results.

Now what?

You know by now that content marketing isn’t static. Things are always changing.

How will you stay ahead of those changes?

You must learn how to predict upcoming changes by recognizing the events that initiate them.

So, here are 7 changes in content marketing that will impact your business in the next year, along with the reasons why these changes are taking place.

1. Mobile users will become your priority

By now, we assume that you’ve done the work to make sure your content can be consumed by web users. Make sure you remember to adopt the content for mobile devices as well.

However, this isn’t about what you should have done. It’s about what you need to be doing in the future, and that is producing your content with mobile users and their devices as your primary concern.

Why should you focus on mobile users?

Look on this chart from com score - mobile users are surpassing desktop users.

To begin, it is mostly a matter of numbers. The percentage of users who are using mobile devices to access content is increasing. The number of desktop units and laptops that are being sold is decreasing. Isn’t it clear where your focus should be?

So, how should you design for mobile devices?

The answer is easy. Think touch screens, and then design accordingly. If you are intimidated by this, try breaking things down into actions that can be easily done on a mobile device with a touch screen interface.

Some of these include:

• Taking pictures and videos and uploading them
• Liking and sharing posts
• Consuming visual based content
• Reading abbreviated content
• Interacting with content by swiping rather than clicking or scrolling

You can always find guidelines for designing for mobiles from google and also check your current mobile friendly status.

 2. Visual content will be more important than ever

Just as is the case with the increasing use of mobile devices, visual content is important because it is what customers want.

The clicks prove it. If you want to stay on top of content marketing in the next 12 months, you will need to include videos, pictures, graphics, and other visual based content on your website and in your blogs.

Ideally, at least some of that content will be interactive.

 3. Content will be personalized

Many website owners and bloggers report that they receive the most positive feedback from customers after they publish content that is specifically written for them.

What does this mean?

This could mean changing your focus from utilizing generic content, to writing content that specifically addresses the interests and concerns of your customers.

If your content has mostly consisted of shared content from other sources, it might be time to consider producing some of your own. Who knows, with a little bit of knowledge and a few viral content creation tips, it could be your content that makes the rounds!

How do you begin personalizing content?

If you know what your customers are seeking from you in terms of the product or service you offer, you’re more than halfway there.

For example, if you own a chiropractic clinic, you may wish to produce content that focuses on spine health and the ways that your customers can help increase their mobility, rather than publishing generic content on ‘well-being’.

Coca-Cola is a big brand that do their best to personalize content for their target audience.

If you need further help, try and search the internet for content marketing examples. These will give you an idea of how to format original content, and where the content should be used on your website.

4. Collaborative marketing will get popular

Not every industry lends itself to collaborative marketing, but when it does it works beautifully.

What is collaborative marketing?

Collaborative marketing is when two or more separate entities work together on a marketing campaign.

In most cases, this happens when the entities involved have similar target audiences, but don’t have competing interests.

How does it work?

Collaborative content marketing requires cooperation, coordination and communication between all parties.

You must identify the business with which collaboration makes the most sense, get them on board, and then create content based on that partnership.

This can be as complex as investing in an ongoing marketing campaign, or as simple as featuring giveaway of each other’s product in a blog post.

A recent example is JackDaniels Barstories.

5. Companies will drop more money into content marketing

When content marketing was an unproven concept, the only reason that companies were willing to take a chance on it was that it was something they could try out for little or no cost.

So, businesses began creating Facebook accounts, they became active on Twitter, and they began publishing blogs. They initiated email marketing campaigns, and started online newsletters.

It worked!

Now, in order to sustain these efforts, businesses are going to put more money into what is now a proven concept.

 6. Content will be more condensed, clickable, and interactive

We’ve already discussed the influence the use of mobile devices is going to have on future content marketing efforts.

But even desktop users are drawn to clickable and interactive content that doesn’t need them to read a ‘wall of text’ before they find the information they need.

If you aren’t sure how to approach this, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• The same elements that attract people to entertainment or social websites also attract them to business websites
• Pictures, bullet points, and the ability to click to the next bit of content will keep customers’ attention
• You can use tools such as Survey Monkey to allow customers to provide feedback in a way that is user friendly for them

Learn more about improving your call to action elements here.

 7. Analytics will be hot – literally!

What’s the deal?

Heat maps are visual based analytical tools that you can use to determine which areas of your website are ‘hot’.

In other words, where are your customers are clicking and reading. Plus what they are ignoring.

How does it work?

Unlike other analytics tools, heat mapping software creates a real time overlay on top of your website that you can view.

As the software works to analyze customer behavior on your website, the graphics overlay changes. The more popular areas of your website become darker, while the areas that are largely ignored remain lighter.

How can you use it to your benefit?

When you use heat mapping, you have the benefit of a real time analysis of the way that your customers are really using your website.

Analytical information such as how many visitors come to a page or which links are clicked on most are valuable, but they don’t provide as much information as a graphical representation.

Here is what a heat map can show you

• Where your customers are clicking – even spots that aren’t links
• Which blog posts customers are actually looking at for an extended amount of time
• Scrolling habits of your visitors
• Which headings, titles, and sub-titles are getting the most attention
• Which ads are being clicked and which are being ignored
• Some software even presents video based content indication where your customer’s mouse travels as they navigate your website!

Once you have this information, you can make the adjustments you need.

This could include altering the type of content you are featuring, rewriting your titles and headings, moving ads, or changing pages from infinite scrolling to a click to progress format.

Guest Author: Andy Preisler is an inspired content strategist, marketer and writer for Grab My Essay. Andy  loves experimenting with content creation and  trying new marketing techniques. Feel free to contact him on Twitter.

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10 SEO Tactics Still Rockin’ it in 2015

The sound of a hummingbird still drums in our ears.

Google’s now famous ‘Hummingbird’ algorithm update spelt the beginning of the end for traditional SEO tactics.

And that was 2 years ago.

The good news is it’s actually made SEO so much easier.

In this article, with the help of SEO professional Alex Miller, I will show you 10 SEO tactics you need to embrace going forward in 2015.

Keep reading to find out more!

1. Kill off meta keywords

Meta fields were designed to help provide Google with an overview of your website.

Unfortunately, few people used them correctly. It became a field where people would throw as many keywords as possible.

These days they even act as a spam signal to the search engines.

Google has completely clamped down on meta keywords, so stop using them.

It’s not just Google, either. Even Bing have cautioned against using meta keywords.

2. Forget about keyword stuffing

Keyword density is no longer important.

Nothing says spam to a visitor like a website filled with awkwardly positioned keywords. It’s blatantly obvious where they are.

These days the mention of one or two keywords is enough to fill your necessary quota.

Here are some smart tips for going about creating targeted content (rather than keyword stuffing):

• Choose a subject people want to hear about.
• Use a natural search phrase once or twice. It should automatically fit in without you thinking about it.
• Create quality content. Google will understand it through the quality of writing.

3. Stop ignoring meta descriptions

Meta descriptions have fallen quickly over the years because they stopped being a factor in ranking algorithms.

Nothing has changed about that, but what they do is impact the conversion factors.

Countless studies have demonstrated Meta descriptions influence click-through rates, and click-through rates do contribute to search rankings.

So stop ignoring them and create a customized description for every page you visit.

 4. Markup pages with microdata

You’ll notice that major companies have more information visible in Google’s search results. This is micro data.

Microdata may contain a phone number, a logo, or an address. These sites have been setup in such a way as to provide more information to Google’s crawlers.

Use a program like Scheme to help build your Microdata.

Studies show that there’s a 25% higher click-through rate on search results that have this information visible.

5. Keep URLs short and descriptive

Your URL is one of the first things a search crawler will see, make sure it is easy to crawl and categorize.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is using the standard title of the page as their URL. While this works most of the time, it can be too long.

Long URLs make it difficult to categorize your website properly. It may mean your site appears under searches you never intended it to.

This can hurt your ability to hit your target audience.

Try to keep your URL to roughly five words or less. There’s little need to have anything longer than that.

6. Use title tags effectively

Title tags tell search engines what a page is all about. You’ll find it at the top of a browser.

Remember that Google limits title tags to between 50 and 60 characters. It’s generally recommended that you should keep them below 55 characters.

Your copy must drive people to click on the site. Try to use a common keyword term at the front of your title, but only if it fits.

This should be easy because it is the category of your website.

7. Use header tags in the right way

Header tags come in the form of <H1>, <H2>, and <H3>; they go all the way down to <H6>.

These determine the order of importance of each header. We should mention that crawlers will look at these tags before anything else.

It’s how headers are identified and how sites are categorized. Use them to enhance your SEO.

Furthermore, you should aim to avoid generic tags, such as ‘Products’. Instead you should try to make them as unique as possible for better results.

8. Optimize image alt text

Image alt text is the text that appears if a user has images disabled. It also helps to tell search engines exactly what an image is.

Remember, they can’t read images directly. They don’t see what a human sees. All they can do is look at the file name, the description, and the alt text.

Yet this is a part people often forget. They assume everyone can already see the images so they don’t need to worry. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Make an effort to create alt text. All this is is a basic phrase that defines the image. For example, if you had a picture of a sleeping cat you might call it ‘sleeping cat image’.

9. Make inbound links natural

The link neighbourhoods were amongst the first entities to fall when Google started to implement Panda and Penguin. And for good reason. They were toxic and it meant search engine results were full of spam.

Inbound links continue to matter, and you shouldn’t discount them, but there’s a twist.

Monitor where any inbound links come from and ensure they are coming from quality websites. They should be entirely natural and come from websites that are relevant to your industry.

In this sense, they do still matter.

10. Boost site speed

Since 2011 it’s been clear that the speed of a website matters.

If a page takes longer than five seconds to load, Google is going to penalize your site. This is because site speed is a marker of quality. Google doesn’t want poor quality websites ranking high.

First, you need to test the speed of your site. Google already provides a free tool you can use for this, but there are a range of third-party tools that accomplish the same thing.

If it takes longer than five seconds to load, you may well need to upgrade your server to make it run faster. Alternatively, you can reduce the number of heavy files on your site. For example, you could remove some videos or images.

SEO in 2015 is about quality

What this article should show you is that SEO in 2015 is about a focus on quality. You don’t have to edge towards grey hat or black hat SEO techniques in order to succeed. By improving the quality of the content on your website, there’s no reason why you can’t get the results you’re searching for.

Follow these tips today and be amazed!

Guest Author: Alesia Hsiao wrote this article for you today based off of information that she received during a recent interview with SEO expert Alex Miller.

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How to Promote Your Business with Brand Ambassadors Using Visual Content Marketing

Passionate brand advocates can provide marketing on steroids.

On a social web they boost sharing, enable crowd sourced marketing and they do it for free.

They are your online tribe of brand ambassadors….

Brand ambassadors are people, customer advocates and fans who represent and talk about your brand with passion. If they are also passionate about your brand then that can provide powerful crowd sourced marketing that can amplify brand awareness.

Because they love your products and services…

You should make sure that they have conversations in front of as many potential customers as possible.

Bigger can be better.

Those conversations can be offline and online. The social web has made the online role more powerful and sometimes even viral.

When you need an authentic promotional boost, you need to recognize and leverage your brand ambassadors. This can be done with visual content marketing that includes incentives, tools and technology that can multiply your brand awareness.

People like to buy from people

In the past, businesses have enlisted logos, symbols, key colours and slogans to build their brand awareness. However, with the instant gratification demands of Gen Y and the “always on” expectations of Gen Z, there is so much more to successful brand marketing than a catchy jingle.

User-generated content, which predominantly includes photos, videos and tweets, is the most powerful tool you can use to harness and maximize the influence of your brand ambassadors. By leveraging the wealth of visual content your brand ambassadors are generating, you can transform a simple hashtag into a digital “call to arms”.

Traditional brand ambassadors

Until recently, brand ambassadors have largely been celebrities who were paid to endorse a brand. The formula is simple- get someone with a public profile to wear, be photographed with or mention your product, and a spike in sales should follow.

Celebrities like Kate Middleton and Emma Watson can send retail sites into overdrive as the masses scout for certain covetable items. The Dutchess’ $50 (USD) black-and-white spotted maternity dress sold out on ASOS’s site only minutes after she was published wearing it.

Emma Watson increased the scarf sales of Crumpet, a British knitwear company, by 62 percent in just three weeks after being snapped wearing one of their designs.

But what about if you are a smaller business, who cannot afford to shell out for royalty, or even C-grade celeb?

Image Source         

Without blowing the whole year’s marketing budget on a five minute celebrity endorsement, you can transform your consumers into powerful and relatable brand ambassadors through the influence of visual content.

Fans love talking about brands they love

Becoming a brand ambassador is often an accidental outcome for many consumers in today’s digital era, whose natural instinct it is to collect, curate and share their experiences. It is up to you to decide how to market your business with your brand ambassadors’ visual content.

Brand ambassadors espouse the brand value you guarantee to deliver to your customers. Your job is to then help them find others like them, offering them a platform where their needs are placed front and centre. With today’s consumers more inclined than ever to collaborate, you cannot afford to not have their voice designed into every phase of your business’ functions. 

Let them sell your products

Do you remember Avon?

The direct-selling cosmetic brand Avon operates almost entirely on the basis of brand ambassadors. To buy their products or even gain access to them, you need to know a brand representative.

While many companies are unlikely to adopt this exact business model, we can learn a great deal from this style of marketing.This type of marketing is incredibly effective because the sales message does not come from a corporation, it comes from family, friends or co-workers; people we trust.

According to a recent Nielsen survey, 84 percent of those surveyed ‘always’ or ‘sometimes’ take action based on personal recommendations. Further still, 70 percent said they took action because they followed someone’s recommendation online.

A candid endorsement from people who do not directly represent or work for your brand is truly valuable among your potential consumers and future fans. A genuine recommendation from a friend instills not only confidence is your brand but confidence in the consumer’s decision to pick your brand over one of your competitors.

In today’s noisy and overcrowded marketplace, you need to be nimble and responsive to consumers’ needs. You need to motivate your consumers to design not only your product but your brand’s message with you.

Rather than seeing your advertising strategy as a one-way street, create an environment where your consumers want to talk to you, and even better still, want to talk to others about you. What better way to get the conversation started than by leveraging your brand ambassador’s visual content. Remember, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Excite your ambassadors

According to VisionCritical, 43 percent of social media users have purchased a product after ‘Sharing’ or ‘Favoriting’ it on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Whether it is the trend-setters or trend-buckers who characterize your target market, visual content is a hard to ignore medium through which your advocates are already spreading your brand’s message.

In order to excite your potential brand ambassadors, you need to create a campaign which will drive their desire to share with friends, followers and onlookers.

Campaigns can start with simply ‘Liking’ or ‘Following’, usually in exchange for new product updates and competition announcements. You can then prompt your consumers to share photos, statuses and videos associated with a your brand’s keywords or hashtags through a ‘call to action’, prize incentives or instant rewards.  Further still, have your customers upload a photo of them redeeming their prize or enjoying their discount across their social networks while tagging your company or using your official hashtag.

With user-generated visual content becoming more authentic and more trusted than any corporate content, it is time to place your brand in the background and your consumers’ real-time experiences in the foreground.

3 practical tips on how to market with visual content

1. Offer Discounts and Prizes

MarketForce reports that 79 per cent of people say their primary reason for ‘Liking’ a company’s Facebook page is to receive discounts, with a further 81 percent saying they are influenced by what their friends share on social media.

By routinely offering discounts and promotions on your social media channels in exchange for ‘Liking’, ‘Sharing’ or uploading, your brand will grow its reach ten-fold via a series of mouse clicks.

Make it easy for your consumers to share their involvement with others – both online and offline. Promote relevant hashtags and reach out to thank those that participate in the contest will transform your consumers’ entries into unique, memorable brand engagements. 

Gatorade’s ‘G Challenges’ 

The ‘G Challenges’ campaign run by Gatorade generated impressive results. With an AFL grand final weekend for four up for grabs, the campaign gained significant traction within the first few hours of launching. Gatorade asked their customers to film, tag and share a series of AFL footy challenges over the course of six weeks. Entries came in thick and fast.

A selection of these entries were then republished by Gatorade across their social media channels and rewarded with weekly prize packs, sparking positive consumer conversations across Facebook and Instagram. By employing a simple marketing strategy, Gatorade were able to transform the AFL amateur on the local playing field into an online brand ambassador via one simple upload.

2.  Reward Them With Recognition

Developing a close relationship with your brand ambassadors is a vital ingredient to a winning marketing strategy. Today’s consumers crave self-validation and it is your job to leverage this need.

Identifying key influencers and “shoulder tapping” them with recognition will inspire others to follow suit. If they ‘Share’ a photo, thank them for it. If they leave a comment, reply to it. Develop a fun and reciprocal relationship between your brand and your consumers.

If you validate their efforts, you’ll encourage consistent invaluable user-generated content which can then be republished and repurposed to grow your reach and increase your engagement. 

Superette’s #Superstyle

The #superstyle campaign run by New Zealand fashion retailer Superette is a great example of identifying, recognizing and leveraging keen brand ambassadors. Superette’s followers used the hashtag #Superstyle on Instagram to see their photo added to an online gallery and social community on the company’s website.

The beauty of this campaign is in the simplicity and impact of user-generated content. Superette runs the social hubas an ‘always on’ activity, constantly collecting up-to-date and visually stunning content. They launched the social hub with a contest, with the winners announced on Superette’s blog.

Recognizing and rewarding your contestants’ active participation is a key step to maximizing reach. Help them to help you. Upgrade your consumers into brand ambassadors with incentives, such as being showcased on your site’s social hub, and they will spread the gospel of your brand in real time, to real people, to give you real reach.

3. Provide a Platform to Connect

With the organic reach of Facebook decreasing, it is imperative for businesses today to find alternative ways to engage with their consumers.

Providing an attractive and user-friendly platform, which looks and feels like part of your website, is a no-brainer. Forget static images and staged brand advertising, with the right tools you can build your own media channel using user-generated content. In turn, you’ll attract more visitors to your website, have them stay longer, increase your conversion rate and grow your email database.

Again, it is a no-brainer.
JUCY World

One business that is choosing to bring their content home is Jucy Rentals. A car hire and rental specialist with locations across the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Jucy have chosen to own the relationship they have with their customers.

Collecting content from promotional hashtags and direct upload, Jucy’s dedicated social hub has become a place for globetrotters and intrepid travellers alike to share their inspirations and be inspired. Priceless images of Jucy campervans parked up next to world landmarks and against breathtaking vistas are uploaded every single day to the platform.

By repurposing this content across their official channels and e-commerce pages, Jucy have developed a fantastic strategy for encouraging brand ambassadorship by placing themselves at the centre of their customers’ conversations.

The media landscape has changed and there is a huge opportunity to grasp. With the right tools and technology, you can empower your consumers to not just speak about but become the voice of your brand.

Author: Paul Bingham, COO ShuttleRock.com 

 

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3 Content Marketing Tactics to Turn Traffic Into Sales Leads

Content.

We can’t escape it.

Even that little communication device we store in our pocket, or the big one on our desk.

They’re swarming with it.

No longer are the latest headlines constrained to the local news stand – they are there to be consumed, anywhere we go.

For us as marketers, this means more opportunity to find potential customers and show off what we’ve got.

But how can we effectively measure the impact this is having on our bottom line?

According to recent research by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 83% of marketers have a content marketing strategy.

The point of all of this?

To get more leads.

The challenge then becomes finding a way to measure ROI within the context of lead generation.

Finding a way to determine content ROI can be a long and arduous process.

The shortest path to figuring this all out is to measure the impact your content has on your audience – then focusing on maximising lead conversions from that content.

Below are three content marketing tactics that when integrated with your content strategy, will help you have a bigger impact on your audience and convert more leads:

1. Tap into social media to understand your audience

It doesn’t matter how good your writing staff are.

If your content isn’t seen or shared, you will naturally find it difficult to close deals.

That means we should develop a social media strategy to better understand our audience and get our content found.

While the importance of this kind of exposure may seem obvious, it will take resources and an understanding of how to repurpose content. It helps to look at how other brands have done this well as part of their content marketing efforts.

Uber, one of today’s leading transportation apps, has successfully managed to implement localized and targeted social media campaigns.

They’ve done this based on different country expectations across their many global locations.

For instance, they display country-specific holiday greetings, promotions with relevant images, as well as announce partnerships with local organizations to increase their influence among specific sectors.

Here’s a quick look at how Uber_NYC partnered with a local New York based food rescue nonprofit:

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These types of strategies are successful because they encourage us to focus on our prospective customers, thus attracting valuable views and increasing our reputation.

While you likely already consider social media a significant opportunity to get more leads, it is up to you to truly understand how to leverage the various existing channels.

2. Use calls-to-action (CTAs) with caution

No doubt you are keen on maintaining relationships and contact with current and potential customers.

But with the abundance of competing products and players in the marketplace, the need to find clever ways to engage customers and encourage them to carry on with their purchase is increasingly complex.

Enter CTAs.

While call-to-actions have a variety of purposes, they all aim to attract customers to a specific item or direction within the sales funnel.

Whether your objective is to gather a list of emails or to get your website visitor to complete the checkout experience – CTAs must be used with caution.

This is because CTAs may hinder your ability to convert leads if not used correctly – backfiring and pushing leads away from your product or service.

Therefore, look for tools that will help you better segment customers so that the CTAs you choose to present to customers will help, not hinder lead generation.

3. Use tools to personalize your content

Mastered the first two tactics?

This one is a little more challenging to implement.

We need to personalize content for our target audience. There is no way around it, content performance is often defined as one’s ability to turn engaging content into ROI, and this third strategy requires digging deeper into our customers’ minds.

For enterprises, this can require investing in interactive tools, bringing in branding experts to join the team, or outsourcing this challenge to an external provider.

Below are three tools that are worth noting for their potential to personalize your content and optimize ROI:

As mentioned, your content is only as valuable as your ability to locate the most appropriate audience for your product or service.

Keywee uses data-driven techniques to analyze your contextual text and present relevant paid advertisements across various social media channels to reach your target audience.

This 4-step process sums up how it works:

 

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One of the main difficulties in effective content marketing relates to presenting targeted and relevant displays to specific customers at different parts of the sales funnel. This challenge requires us to consider unique approaches to identifying user behaviour; such things as past browsing history or time spent on a specific webpage.

If we understand the importance of presenting customer-specific messages to convert leads, BrightInfo has developed a content optimization tool that is able to analyze user behavior patterns to facilitate more conversions.

Last but not least, Roojoom is a highly engaging and interactive platform for presenting, optimizing, and measuring your brand’s content performance.

With user-friendly features to display your brand’s content and product offerings, this tool effortlessly creates a customer journey process that incoming user traffic will want to be a part of.

One great feature of this tool is its ability to be uniquely integrated at various online locations according to the client’s preferences. From a company blog, social media channels or newsletters, to a newly launched website pop-up.

For instance, here’s a look at how leading financial player Payoneer utilized Roojoom to power their content:

 

Wrapping it up

Content has evolved from catchy one-liners, to more engaging and targeted text used to generate leads.

This transition means that successful content campaigns will not only require creative teams and writing hustlers, but also the adoption of tools and strategies to measure content performance.

Guest Author: Shirley Ben-Dak is an Inbound Marketing Specialist at Inbound Junction, a fast growing content marketing firm based in Israel. She regularly contributes to leading tech outlets worldwide and helps identify and advise some of today’s up and coming startups. A former chess player and avid traveler, Shirley is interested in how entrepreneurship and innovation can contribute to sustainable development.

 

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