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Amplified Content Marketing

by Michael Stuart

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The Death of Microsoft’s LinkedIn’s SlideShare

Curated December 17, 2018 by Staff Editor

In 2016, SlideShare had over 70 million unique visitors per day, and it was listed by Alexa as one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world. At its peak, it was such a powerhouse that Obama used the network to post his birth certificate. It also stood for years as a premier B2B social channel: In 2015, author and marketing expert Jay Baer referred to it as “content marketing’s secret weapon.”

 
 
Power users have been dropping the SlideShare channel.
 
  • Top content creator and SlideShare investor Dave McLure hasn’t posted to the channel in over 11 months.
  • HubSpot, the content marketing powerhouse that posted over 60 presentations in 2017 and reached over 500,000 users, has posted only once in 2018, reaching a total of just over 1,000 users.
  • So what has caused this exodus of power users and decline in social-media prominence? A perfect storm of shifting parent-company priorities, insufficient revenues, and a user base largely outside of the US.
 
Despite SlideShare’s massive fan base, loyal users, and billions of impressions, a once-powerful channel is all but dead, and here’s why.
 
The Loss of Human Touch
The rapid growth of SlideShare from a small startup to a top website began in 2009, in a tiny room in India, when Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle saw the need for a “YouTube for presentations.” Within a few years, they had built a network of 38 million registered users by providing a desperately needed tool—and a new social channel for presentations.  But the key to their success wasn’t the tool, it was the human touch it added to the presentations.
 
SlideShare didn’t have a marketing team fueling its rapid growth. It relied on loyal fans. Its fans were the content creators, and to ensure the best content was featured, the team at SlideShare would manually curate the site each day, ensuring that the best presentations were prominently featured.
  • Kit Seeborg, author of Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business, was responsible for most of the content curation the users loved, she stressed how important human curation was to SlideShare.
  • The curated content was a huge hit. It was also one of the drivers of SlideShare’s email list, which, at the time of LinkedIn’s acquisition of SlideShare in 2012, was growing by 250,000 new subscribers each week. After the sale to LinkedIn, the curation process remained a critical part of community-building, until 2016, when the program was ended. Since then, the homepage has changed very little, which was a major clue to marketing insiders that LinkedIn was giving up on SlideShare.
  • During 2016, the team of editors who had been curators for SlideShare were moved off the product to support other LinkedIn projects, such as Pulse. The SlideShare company page on LinkedIn is now blank, with only a few remaining engineers listed as employees.
 
Some alternatives to SlideShare:
  1. Host your own content. There are new plugins for websites which allow you to host your slides on your own website and allow easy sharing and embedding. 
  2. Microsoft may create a social PowerPoint for 365. That is speculation, but now that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, and with the recent move to put Office in the Cloud, we could potentially see a new social aspect of PowerPoint in the future. 
  3. Use Prezi. It’s an alternative to SlideShare, but it does require you create content in Prezi’s own software rather than in PowerPoint; that requirement can be a pain for some.
  4. Use Google or Dropbox or ISSUU document sharing with their built-in presentation handling.
As we are continually bombarded with new marketing channels, tactics, and tools, one thing is clear: Slides are not going away. Events seem to give brands the personal touch the digital world just can’t, and slides are usually the No.1 content type at events.
 
The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.
 
The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today
 
  1. First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure not all of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks that are found on Slideshare. 
  2. Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.
  3. Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation.
 
Slideshare’s coming passing comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and Scribd, among others.
 
 
 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ads, API, blog, brand, business, content, content curation, content marketing, creation, curation, Digital Marketing, Email, events, Facebook, google, influencers, linkedin, loyalty, marketing, mobile, people, pr, price, publishing, Social Media, story, success, top, website, Websites

Best Social Media Automation Tools to Boost Traffic

Curated December 13, 2018 by Staff Editor

What are the Best Social Media Automation Tools to Better Reach My Audience?

The internet is chalk full of tools that are useful in this arena. Many sites exist to make your life easier by taking some of the burdensome work off of your shoulders. We’ve compiled a list of the nine best social media automation tools (in no particular order) to help you make a decision as to which tool is ideal for your needs. We asked the following two questions:
  • What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
  • What should I be concerned about?
Here are the nine best social media automation tools:
1 – dlvr.it
dlvr.it offers many options to automate posting to social media. From automating your blog within minutes of publishing – to scheduling posting – to repeating posts automatically, dlvr.it has a full arsenal of tools to make your life easier.
dlvr.it blog screenshot 2What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
dlvr.it offers the ability to post multiple posts per day from an RSS Feed to Socials. On the basic plan, users have the option to post to three different socials from different platforms. Free users can also use content filters to exclude any posts that do not meet criteria automatically. dlvr.it also offers Instagram integration as an input, as well as Twitter and Pinterest. This platform integrates into many different social media platforms. dlvr.it also offers the ability to either schedule posts, or post automatically.
The Pro plan is reasonably priced for most users. At $9.99 per month, users can expect to be able to use up to 10 social media accounts and up to 50 sources of input. The price tag of the Pro plan also provides access to the Echo feature. This power packed feature allows automated reposting of content from your input source up to two additional times without you having to do any further scheduling. dlvr.it also offers a free trial, which does not require additional credit card information.
What should I be concerned about?
Analytics for dlvr.it offer just click stats and follower stats. However, you can add Google analytics tags with additional parameters attached to your social media accounts. dlvr.it also does not provide in-depth demographics of followers.
2 – Hootsuite
Hootsuite has built a platform that is attractive to marketers because of its built-in analytics.
best social media automation tools hootsuite
What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Hootsuite’s software packs a punch using Analytics. Hootsuite provides in-depth, detailed analytics that can help you to determine your audience engagement, metric performance, and real-time feedback. Hootsuite offers basic analytics for their free users, as well as enhanced analytics for its Pro users. For its free users, RSS integrations are free and unlimited. Upgrade to their Pro plan, and you can schedule bulk messages. Hootsuite also offers its users support through free social media classes.
What should I be concerned about?
Hootsuite does offer all of these features but prevents its free users from using more than three profiles. Hootsuite also does not allow image posting for its free users. Their analytics provide a lot of power, but for the novice user, this can be very confusing and difficult to understand. The front dashboard can be a bit confusing if you are not used to looking at so much information.
3 – Buffer
Buffer is a tool that works with input sources and social media accounts to publish your content quickly and easily.

What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Buffer has a wealth of tools that help their users stay connected to social media wherever they are. They employ the use of a mobile app to make it quick and easy to schedule a post from anywhere. Buffer has also created a system that will work to find the best times to post your content. Possibly the most attractive feature that Buffer offers is the option to create infographics inside the tool. Buffer offers a tool called “Pablo” that allows you to create graphics within the app and will allow scheduling of this post also within the app. With access to the Pro plan, you will gain access to use RSS feeds as inputs as well as the Calendar feature.
What should I be concerned about?
Buffer offers some Instagram integration, but this integration is a tad misleading. Buffer reminds users to log into Instagram to post content. Essentially, the only automated function of these reminders is the reminder itself. Also, if you are a basic plan user, Buffer significantly limits the functionality of their app. For their basic users, they will only allow one social media account per platform, and will only allow you to schedule ten posts at a time. There is also a significant limit for their next step plan. This plan allows you to schedule 100 posts for ten profiles.
4 – Social Oomph
Social Oomph offers management of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
best social media automation tools social oomph
What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Social Oomph integrates with a few different platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. The most powerful feature that Social Oomph provides is to track Twitter followers and keywords. These platform analytics provide quite a bit of information about your audience so that you can tailor your content to your audience. Social Oomph also allows your employees to submit content via email, which will allow you to avoid needing to add team members to your account. You will instead be able to review and approve content from your own login information.
What should I be concerned about?
Social Oomph severely limits its free users, only allowing connection with Twitter at the basic level. Complete automation only occurs at the professional plan level, which is a higher price point than many on this list. The professional plan runs $17.97 every two weeks.
5 – IFTTT
IFTTT is a platform that allows you to set up a number of triggers. The acronym stands for If This Then That. This means if a certain condition is met, then an action is performed.
best social media automation tools ifttt
Why is it one of the best social media automation tools?
IFTTT works on the formula of recipes. You set a trigger, whether it be a YouTube video published, a Tweet sent, or a new blog post on WordPress, and then set a result. The result indicates where this content moves. IFTTT has a huge variety of triggers and resulting actions. Recipes on IFTTT are extremely varied, and possibilities are endless with the trigger options.
What should I be concerned about?
Costs can start to get steep with this platform. There are only two levels of the plan, which start at about $1,200/year and do include unlimited triggers and actions. The only other option is to pay around $6,000 per year to customize your plan.
6 – Sprout Social
Sprout Social helps business users manage and analyze social media impacts across platforms.
best social media automation tools sprout social
Why is this one of the best social media automation tools?
Sprout Social follows the analytics protocol, providing its users with many different types of analytics and interactions. Google Analytics are an essential feature of what Sprout provides. They integrate this into their dashboard so that you don’t have to run to Google to find out why your traffic may have dropped. Team members may also be added to all plan levels. They also have options to automate your social media content via a Social Content Calendar. Sprout also can decide the optimal times to deliver your content if you have trouble deciding when to publish.
What should I be concerned about?
Sprout is one of those platforms that is on the more expensive side. While they do offer a 30-day free trial, they also start their pricing at $99 per user per month for their most basic plan without adding additional users. Sprout also lacks Pinterest, Instagram, and multiple Google+ page interfaces. These features may be available on one of the other tools mentioned previously.
7 – CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a more robust platform that allows for posting and scheduling in a drag and drop calendar format.
best social media marketing tools coschedule
Why is this one of the best tools for social media automation?
CoSchedule offers a drag and drop format calendar that allows you to categorize your posting. This tool also allows you to select evergreen content, which can be posted indefinitely. The tool will also select the most popular posts in your history and repost them for you. CoSchedule also has integration options with Buffer.
Why should I be concerned?
CoSchedule is similar to Sprout Social in that there is no option for a Free plan. The lowest cost plan offered by CoSchedule is $30 per month for 10 Social Profiles and one user account. In our experience, CoSchedule does require a lot of initial setup. There is a significant time investment up front in setting up the account and calendar. However, once set up, only minor alterations are required.



Should I be using Third Party content?
  • First, third party content is not content that you have to write yourself. You may be pressed for time in coming up with original content, but want to make sure that you are maintaining a consistent social media presence. That’s where third- party content comes in. Well curated third party content can reinforce your messages in your original content. B2B Marketing Solutions suggests that you make this a part of your marketing strategy because you want to be a trusted source of valuable information. Not all of this information has to come from content that you generate.
  • Second, third party content can add valuable information to your social media walls without you needing to write it. Social-tribe suggests that third party content can add value as long as it holds relevance to your target audience. Sharing someone else’s article can help you publish this valuable information for your readers, increase your credibility and also increase your followers.
  • Third, this falls into the category of making sure that your content isn’t just bombarding your followers with sales pitches. Neil Patel recommends that when sharing content to your social media accounts, 80% should be social, rather than sales.
  • The social content draws in your audience and makes sure that they’re not exhausted by a constant sales pitch, leading you to see more audience attrition.

Source: blog.dlvrit.com

Filed Under: News Tagged With: blog, business, calendar, content, Email, events, Facebook, generate, google, linkedin, marketing, mobile, pr, price, publishing, Social Media, story, strategy

Good marketing nowadays revolves around inbound marketing. And the good news is

Curated December 5, 2018 by Staff Editor

Good marketing nowadays revolves around inbound marketing. And the good news is that if you have a blog, you are already on your way toward creating a great inbound marketing strategy.
Iinternet marketing gameplan by http://www.1stonlinetech.com
Checklist for Launching an Inbound Marketing Plan in WordPress
1) Attract: Get to know your ideal target audience and create content that speaks directly to them by solving their biggest pain points and uses a language they can relate to.
  • Create valuable content that inspires, educates, and helps them solve their problemsTools: Jetpack Related Posts, Contextual Related Posts
  • Utilize SEO. Research relevant keywords and focus on building content around them making sure to include your pages as well as images.Tools: SmartCrawl, All In One SEO, WP Smush, Media File Renamer
  • Get social. Use social media to spread your message and to put a human face behind your brand, monitor and participate in conversations.
2) Convert: Convert your visitors into leads by capturing their contact information
  • Include forms on your site where visitors can submit their information such as their name and email address.Tools: PopUp Pro, LeadIn, SideOffer
  • Include calls-to-action which will encourage visitors to take action such as share your content on social media, sign up for your free offer or download a free resource.Tools: MaxButtons, Inbound Now
  • Create dedicated landing pages where you can expand on your offer and describe all the benefits. Include a form where users submit their information.Tools: Unbounce Landing Pages, WordPress Landing Pages
3) Close: Convert leads into actual customers.
  • Use CRM software to keep track of all the important details and interactions with your contacts.Tools: HubSpot CRM
  • Analyze. Use analytics software such as Google Analytics or Crazy Egg to understand how visitors are interacting with your website and how well your sales team is doing.Tools: Google Analytics, CrazyEgg, KISSMetrics
  • Automate. Use email and marketing automation to further build trust with contacts who aren’t ready to buy yet and to target the right message that relates to the needs and the lifecycle stage of each lead.Tools: MailChimp, Active Campaign, ConvertKit
4) Delight: Continue to engage with your customers by creating new offers and gradually transform them into your loyal fans which will act as your promoters.
  • Use surveys . Ask for feedback to ensure you are giving your customers what they want.Tools: PollDaddy, SurveyMonkey
  • Use smart calls to action and smart content. Make sure your calls to action and your content is geared towards your ideal content based on their interests and their lifecycle stage.
  • Social Monitoring. Keep track of social conversations and reach out with relevant content when your customers ask a question.Tools: Hootsuite, Cyfe, Simply Measured


There are five core ideas behind inbound marketing:
  • Content Creation and Distribution. Creating content that is bound to attract your ideal clients by solving their immediate problems, concerns, and needs then sharing that content far and wide
  • Lifecycle Marketing. Ideally, you want your targeted leads to become your biggest fans who will go on to spread the word about you. However, they don’t just appear out of nowhere. Each lead you attract through inbound marketing will start off as a stranger. The goal is to transform each of those leads into a repeat visitor, who will become your customer and then promoter.
  • Personalization. We established that your content needs to speak to your ideal customer. As time progresses, you will learn more and more about their specific needs and then you can utilize that knowledge to further refine your content.
  • Multi-channel. Inbound marketing is not tied to one specific platform, rather it approaches people where they are, on the platform in which they feel most comfortable interacting with you.
  • Integration. Creating content, sharing the content across different channels and analyzing how well that content is doing – all that integrates together to allow you to put your focus on publishing the right content in the right place at the right time.
By focusing your efforts on inbound marketing, you are no longer a noise they’ve learned to tune out. Instead, your message becomes something they want to hear, something they want to learn more about, and that’s hard to ignore.
How Does it Work?
When it comes to inbound marketing, there are 4 key actions you need to take to capitalize on your marketing strategy.
Attract Even though you might think you want to be found by as many people as possible that is not the right course of action. You want to be found by people who are most likely to become leads and ultimately, your ideal customers.
Some of the most important tools to attract them to your site include:
  • Blogging. If you already have a blog, then you have an excellent start. Blogging is one of the easiest methods to create content that speaks and educates your target audience.
  • SEO. In today’s day and age, each and every one of your customers will begin their search online — either to find out how to solve a particular problem, compare products and services, or to find out more about a particular product. As a website owner, you should focus your efforts on selecting the right keywords and then create content, build links, and optimize pages around those terms.
  • Pages. In correlation to blogging and SEO, the static pages on your website should be optimized for your target audience as well. Rather than simply stating what you offer in dry corporate–speak, you need to speak directly to your target audience by explaining how you can help solve their needs in a language that they can relate to.
  • Social Publishing. Social media should be a natural extension of your blog. This is where they get to see the face behind the brand so do your best to represent your website in the best light. Aside from sharing relevant and valuable content, share content you know your audience would benefit from and don’t forget to engage in the conversation. This means responding to any questions you might get on social media as well as encouraging and being a part of the conversation.
Convert Now that you have their attention, it’s time to convert those visitors into leads. This involves gathering their contact information. Ideally, you will have their full name, address, and email. At the very least, you can get by with just their email address.
When it comes to converting visitors to leads, the best assets include:
  • Forms. These are usually email signup forms where you ask for their email (most often their name, too) in exchange for a download. A good place to feature a signup form is below a blog post or in your sidebar, and to repeat it again in the footer of your website. As with anything, your forms should be easy to fill out and stand out from the rest of your content.
  • Calls-to-Action. Calls-to-Action or CTAs are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action with words such as “Download my Checklist to Complete XYZ” or “Sign up for a live workshop.” Sometimes they include a form, and often they lead to a separate form where visitors can submit their information.
  • Landing Pages. Landing pages serve a specific purpose–and that is to convert visitors to leads. This is where you expand on the offer in the call-to-action and where you include another form where the user can submit their information. The information submitted on the landing page can be as simple as a form including a name and an email field, or it can be somewhat longer including more specific information that can be used by your sales team. Landing pages should not include anything else other than your offer and the form so distractions are minimized.
Once your visitors have filled out the form on your site, they become contacts. It’s your responsibility to keep track of those leads in one place by using a custom marketing database. Make sure that every interaction you’ve had with your contacts is documented and that it makes sense for you. In the long run, that information can be used to optimize your future interactions with leads and visitors.
Close The next step in inbound marketing strategy is to convert your contacts into actual customers. This can be achieved through various marketing tools which include:
  • CRM Software. Customer Relationship Management software allows you to keep track of all the important details about all your contacts, companies, and deals in your sales pipeline. Above all, it makes it easy to get in touch with your ideal audience at the right time.
  • Closed-loop Reporting. This allows you to analyze your marketing efforts and see which one of those methods works best to bring in new leads, how well your sales team is doing to convert those leads into customers, and much more. When you integrate this with your CRM software you can have a snapshot of your marketing strategy at a glance at all times.
  • Email. If your visitors aren’t ready to become clients yet, email can be an effective tool to build trust and ease their decision to make a purchase.
  • Marketing Automation. This includes creating a series of automated email messages that relate to the needs and the lifecycle stage of each lead. The content of the messages will be different depending on where and when a visitor actually converted into a lead and that’s one of the biggest benefits of inbound marketing.
Delight At this stage of your inbound marketing plan, your tools should include:
  • Surveys. Asking your current customers for feedback is the best way to ensure you are providing them with what they are looking for instead of randomly guessing and hoping to hit the target.
  • Smart calls-to-action. By smart, I mean calls-to-action that are specific to your ideal customer depending on the lifecycle stage.
  • Smart content. Content that is geared towards your ideal customers’ interests and challenges written in a language that’s familiar to them.
  • Social Monitoring. This is also sometimes called Social Listening, which refers to actively keeping track of social conversations that matter to you, listening to customers’ questions and comments, and then reaching out to them with relevant content.
What Goes Into an Inbound Marketing Plan?
Creating remarkable content Long gone are the days when it was enough to churn out content filled with keywords. The competition is tough and you need to make sure your content stands out from the rest. This comes by creating content that is targeted to your ideal buyer persona – content that inspires, entertains, provokes, and educates.
Using the power of visuals In the age of short attention spans, images really do speak more than words. A number of studies have shown that the average attention span is just 8 seconds so make sure those 8 seconds count. Creating highly engaging visual content that begs to be shared is a good way to get the attention of your target audience. This includes not only photos but infographics, slideshows, videos – anything that will make you stand out from your competition.
Mastering CTA Your Calls-to-Action shouldn’t be ignored. Spend as much time on crafting compelling CTAs as you do on creating your content and your visuals. The last thing you want is to spend hours on an epic blog post and infographic only to have people leave your site because your CTA wasn’t clear, or worse, weak.
Utilizing the power of analytics You won’t know how it works unless you gather and measure data. It’s important to know which pages on your site brought in the most leads, where they clicked, and where they dropped off. Similarly, you want to know how many of your contacts actually turned into customers, at which point on your site they converted, and where they were when they left. You won’t know any of that without analytics software. Google Analytics is great for tracking your website and more sophisticated tools like CrazyEgg can show you exactly where your visitors are clicking.
Implement testing After you have results gathered from analytics, you can start testing different variations of your marketing strategy. This is often referred to as A/B testing and you can set up tests for almost anything, your headlines, your CTAs, content, the color of buttons, and so forth. This is a valuable part of any marketing plan because it lets you tweak until you get that perfect solution that is guaranteed to convert.
Getting the right people on your team As a website owner, you already wear many hats and not all of us are born marketers. Knowing when to bring people on your team to help with your marketing efforts is a smart decision. However, you should be careful to hire those whose skill set not only matches your strategy, but also those whose vision and value align with yours. They should also be ready to continually learn and improve so you can update your marketing plan as your goals grow.
SEO The best way to attract visitors to your site is by optimizing your SEO efforts. By that, I mean researching your keywords and then planning your content around them. However, your SEO efforts should be boosted by using a plugin such as our own SmartCrawl SEO plugin or All In One SEO.
Content Structure Another important factor when it comes to SEO is your content structure. This means setting up a customized permalink structure for your blog as well as creating categories for your content. You can then include categories in your permalinks since URLs are important factors in search rankings. By doing this you inform not only the search engines but your visitors as well how a particular blog post relates to other content on your site.
Image Optimization When it comes to image optimization for inbound marketing you need to make sure that your images are compressed and load fast and that their names include words that can help you get found online. It’s one of the most overlooked aspects of proper inbound marketing and yet the way you handle images matters for several reasons:
  • Image size affects page load time which in turn affects search engine results.
  • Properly named and tagged images can show up in image search results where there is often less competition.
  • Images increase engagement. According to a study done by MarketMeSuite content with images attracted 94% more pageviews than content without images.
  • Enter Media File Renamer. Media File Renamer is a plugin that automatically renames your media filenames depending on their titles. When files are renamed, the references to it such as posts, pages, custom types, and their metadata are also updated.
Social Media Integration Finally, no inbound marketing strategy would be complete without integrating social media. After all, you want your content not only to be found, but also shared on social media so your message can reach even more targeted leads.
  • For the last step, your WordPress website should include social media sharing buttons which make sure your content appears correctly no matter which social network your content gets shared on.
  • For a complete list of the best social media sharing plugins check out our ultimate collection of social media sharing plugins.
source: premium.wpmudev.org/blog/inbound-marketing-checklist/

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ads, API, blog, brand, content, creation, CTA, Email, google, landing page, Landing Pages, leads, marketing, marketing plan, people, pr, publishing, SEO, Social Media, strategy, Visual, website

BLOGGING IS ALIVE AND WELL

Curated December 3, 2018 by Staff Editor

Some pundits have suggested that the blog is dead, but it’s not.
Blogging has simply evolved from a consumer activity into a sophisticated marketing tactic.

The best marketers have figured out that if you’re going to have long-term success in this content marketing evolution, investment in owned digital properties is mandatory. 71% of marketers are increasing their spend on content marketing this year. More specifically, 80% of marketers use blogging as a part of their content marketing mix, as reported by CMI and MarketingProfs in a recent benchmark study.

To identify best practices blogs with 10,000 or more page views a month are analyzed, called the “10K Business Blogging Club.”
This group not only has high traffic, but they also get high referral rates from their blog to their corporate web site, and they see higher impact of their blog activities on key marketing metrics including quantity and quality of sales opportunities.

content marketing supply chain



Perhaps the most interesting statistic we found is that although 44% of 10K Club members have blogged for 5+ years, 56% of all bloggers who have blogged for 5+ years did not make it into this club. This suggests that an established online presence does not automatically lead to success. Instead, we must look deeper into the specific tactics of the 10K Club, starting with strategy.

Strategy – Invest in Your Owned Media

When looking at overall content marketing strategy, the best bloggers understand that their blog is just one piece of the owned media puzzle. The members of the 10K Club are focusing on building up their website, microsites and social communities as well.

  • 10K Club members plan to invest in their blog(s): 56% of these bloggers have plans to hire additional resources dedicated to their blog(s) in the next 6-12 months.

Establish An Excellence Team

In addition to hiring resources for blogging, these marketers understand the importance of a governance team or center of excellence (CoE) within their organization.

80% of the 10K Club members have some type of team that is responsible for overall content strategy and oversee areas such as:
  • Engagement guidelines
  • Blogging code of conduct
  • Training
  • Software applications
  • Editorial staff
  • Design staff
  • Writing staff
  • Best practices
  • Framework
  • Content ideas

Production – Frequency & Length Matter

Although content quality is more important than quantity, publishing blog posts on a consistent basis is still essential. 90.5% of the 10K Club publish blog posts weekly or more often.
However, publishing a lot of short posts just to increase frequency will not lead to success.

  • The length of blog posts is also important. 10K Club members said that more than 50% of their posts have 500+ words.

Publishing – The majority of bloggers we surveyed use the same tool for publishing content (a resounding 66% of respondents use WordPress over tools like Drupal or HubSpot.) What sets apart the 10K Club bloggers is their ability to promote content in new and innovative ways.

All bloggers depend upon many teams and channels to promote their content: But, the 10K Club stands out from the rest of the blogging pack in several ways.
These bloggers:
  • Align with their social media team.
  • Involve blog writers in the promotion process.
  • Leverage the power of paid media.
  • Send newsletters and send them often.

Analytics – 10K Club members are highly methodical and “cutting edge” users of technology to measure the impact of their blog.
By looking at the first column (Site/Blog), you can see there are a number of different metrics to use on a blog, ranging from page views to leads touched. When we asked respondents how they measure blog posts, we found the following:

The greatest difference between the 10K Club and the rest of the pack is the sophistication of measurement. The 10K Club members push beyond “soft metrics” like page views and social shares and spend more time measuring and fostering long-term relationships.

  • More specifically, they measure engagement and the effect on marketing and sales pipeline.


source: www.curata.com/blog/business-blogging-secrets-revealed/


Filed Under: News Tagged With: ads, best practices, blog, blogs, business, content, content marketing, content strategy, leads, marketing, pr, publishing, Social Media, strategy, success, website

Content Marketing Adopts a Publisher Mindset

Curated March 17, 2015 by Michael Stuart

What It Means to Adopt a Publisher Mindset and Steps to Making It Happen

bookstats_data_cubeAdopting a publisher mindset means understanding what publishers value, what they look for in content, and then what they feel needs to be done to that content once it’s published.

  • Publishers like strict schedules.

Because publications deal with so much content, they almost always have a strict schedule and stick to it. In the new-age of blogging, sometimes schedules are more flexible, and while this usually isn’t a big deal, it’s important to consider how smoothly publications run because they have regular authors and regular columns. Furthermore, knowing how important this is to publishers can help you get your content accepted.

  • Create regular features and pieces.

Publications are normally incredibly structured, which means they often run feature pieces regularly. Many times there is a certain audience base that comes back just to read a feature piece, and it’s a good way to keep your content in line and offer something unique that your competitors aren’t offering readers.

  • Create content for a specific purpose.

A publishing mindset means focusing on the people that you want to target. It’s all about getting their attention and then making the content attractive and accessible for that audience. While this may be something content marketers should also have at the forefront of their minds, it hasn’t always been that way, but for publishers it has. It’s always been about relevance to a specific audience, and it’s safe to say publishers have found success when they use this focus.

  • Think quantity.

You have to constantly produce enough content to keep a publication up and running, and while quality is a primary concern, quantity cannot be discounted.

Via http://www.inc.com/adam-heitzman/content-marketing-success-means-adopting-the-publisher-mindset.html

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ads, best practices, blog, business, content, content marketing, leads, marketing, pr, publishing, SMO, strategy

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Michael Stuart

Mike’s experience in the technology industry is quite extensive. During his career, he has had the good fortune of serving both as a designer of complex enterprise applications and as a corporate executive. Read More…

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