How brands and content marketers can build an audience on YouTube

According to Campaign magazine, brands still account for fewer than 100 of the 5000 top-ranking channels on YouTube.

In the video below – produced by Campaignlive.co.uk – Charlotte Morton, head of creative agency partnerships at Google, explains how brands and agencies can build an audience on YouTube.

She suggests a three-step approach which she calls “The 3Cs”:

–  Campaigning (advertising on YouTube)

–  Channelling (building a brand’s own presence on YouTube)

–  Collaboration (partnering with leading YouTube stars to reach new audiences).

_________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s top predictions for 2014

In a rare interview, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, has given Bloomberg his top predictions for 2014.

In the interview, Schmidt concedes that consumers are now buying tablets and smartphones rather than PCs to fulfil their computing needs – a trend that is likely to drive content marketers further toward content that is specifically created and designed for mobile viewing (and then upscaled for PCs). Historically, most content has been designed for PCs and laptops and then downscaled for tablets and smartphones.

Schmidt also told Bloomberg that he took personal responsibility for Google “missing” the “social networking phenomenon”, saying the company should have acted sooner.

Here are the key trends that the Google boss expects to see in 2014:

(Source: Bloomberg)

# # # #

____________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Businesses with a content marketing strategy see a measurable impact, new study finds

by Brian Oliver

More than 90% of organisations that implement a content marketing strategy see a significant business impact through increased web traffic and sales leads. That’s according to a new report by integrated communications agency Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.

The study, Content Marketing: Puncturing the Hype and Getting Practical, examined the perceptions of content marketing and the potential impact it can have on a company’s growth.

The report’s key findings include:

• The majority (85%) of communication professionals currently using a content marketing strategy do so to promote awareness of their brand, closely followed by increasing engagement with customers (79%) and generating sales leads (77%).

• 70% of marketers understand that content marketing helps drive sales leads more effectively, but 18% still have no plans to implement a strategy and over one third (38%) still question whether it can deliver measurable return on investment.

• A lack of staff resources was identified as the number one challenge in implementing an effective content marketing strategy (63%), closely followed by lack of budget (48%) and lack of content creation expertise (41%).

• 79% believe a strong content marketing strategy will help them use social media more effectively, followed by video and animation (70%) and news articles (62%).

The report also reveals that businesses are setting metrics to track success and prove the value of good content. Over three quarters (83%) measure the effectiveness of content through web traffic, while 67% measure through media coverage and just over half (56%) through click analysis.

Chris Talago, executive vice president and general manager EMEA at Waggener Edstrom, believes content marketing enables organisations to engage with audiences and prove their worth as a trusted source of information.

“It has had a transformative effect on the way brands reach and retain their customers,” says Talago. “But with so many voices, getting to grips with content marketing best practice is not easy.”

He adds: “Our research suggests that businesses are starting to understand the potential ROI content marketing can generate, but before this impact is fully realised, factors including budget and staffing need to be addressed.”

Ricardo Adame, corporate vice president of global communications at AVG Technologies, says measurement has always been key to demonstrating the success of his company’s marketing programmes. However, he believes content marketing provides an opportunity to be even more accurate.

“By defining our metrics carefully and building in additional measures to provide context,” says Adame, “a detailed picture is created that enables us to measure the ROI after a campaign has completed and adjust our approach during its lifespan to achieve maximum impact.”

The Content Marketing: Puncturing the Hype and Getting Practical report is based on a survey of more than 160 marketing and communication professionals with decision-making responsibilities across the UK, France, Germany and South Africa. The full results can be found at: www.waggeneredstrom.com.

# # # #

About the author: 

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

____________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

The History of #Hashtags

Only six years ago, a hashtag was regarded as a simple symbol most commonly used in front of a number. Today, hashtags have become one of the most valuable content marketing tools. They now even appear in many leading brands’ TV commercials.

And it doesn’t stop there. Hashtags have become an integral part of people’s everyday lives – from a teenager’s Instagram photo to a marketing director’s tweets.

For marketing professionals, the hashtag’s short but rich history proves its unique ability to attract attention and help build conversations around a marketing message.

In the splendid infographic below, social marketing specialist Offerpop has compiled some key moments in the history of the hashtag to show how, in under a decade, this commonplace sign has turned into a global icon.

(click on the image to enlarge)

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

# # # #

Consumers resent favourite brands bombarding them with email marketing campaigns

With more than half of online marketers said to be giving email marketing greater priority than building their social media communities, a new YouGov survey – commissioned by Emailvision – warns that poor email marketing communications can negatively affect consumer sentiment toward a company or brand.

Consumers are just as likely to turn against their favourite brands as other brands if they are bombarded with too many marketing emails, the survey suggests.

It found that three-quarters of UK consumers would dislike a brand after being bombarded with marketing emails, while 71% of consumers said being sent unsolicited messages would also make them resentful of a brand.

Other factors that can make consumers resentful of their favourite brands include listing their name incorrectly in an email (50%) and getting their gender wrong (40%).

The survey also revealed that 40% of respondents would refuse to share any personal information with a brand in exchange for better targeted offers, rising to 49% among the over-50s. The only personal details they would be willing to share are their name (28%), their age (37%), and their gender (38%).

Emailvision director Neil Hamilton said: “When a customer purchases from your in-store business, they give you money in exchange for a product or service. When a visitor interacts with your online business, they are giving you their data in exchange for a relevant experience with your brand.

“If a business doesn’t choose to make use of this data correctly, they are missing out on important knowledge that could positively or negatively impact business for years to come.”

He added: “It’s imperative that a customer never becomes ‘just a number’ even in a database of millions. Technology enables all businesses to treat their customers to a personalised experience across multiple sales channels.”

# # # #

______________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Facebook launches own search engine, Graph Search

by Brian Oliver

Facebook is bringing a social networking element to search with the beta launch of its own search engine, Graph Search.

It will allow users to search for friends or people they have interacted with by using cross-sections of information within their social network. Initially, only photos, people, places and interests will be searchable, but more content will be added in future.

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says “Graph Search is not Web search” and describes the new search feature as the social network’s “third pillar” after its news feed and timeline.

“Graph Search is a completely new way for people to get information on Facebook,” says Zuckerberg. “Graph Search is a really big project. It will take years and years to map the whole index of the graph. Eventually, we want to index all the posts and all of the content on Facebook.

“This is one of the coolest things we’ve done in a while.”

Zuckerberg insists that Graph Search is not intended to be a rival to Google. All searches will be restricted to Facebook. Users with wider search queries will be directed to Bing, through a new partnership with Microsoft.

“We have the social network, now we can truly search it,” says Zuckerberg.

Meanwhile, Bing has announced that its search results will now feature five times more content from users’ Facebook friends, including status updates, shared links and comments.

More information about Graph Search HERE…

# # # #

                       About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of London-based strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

________________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Facebook study shows brand marketers the best way to engage with fans

by Brian Oliver

Internal research by Facebook has found that brand marketers stand a much better chance of engaging with the social network’s 900 million active users if they focus on posting content about generic topics related to their brand, rather than promoting a specific product or service.

The study also found that conversational ‘fun’ posts that have nothing to do with the brand are least likely to attract a response from fans.

In fact, a separate survey by global Software as a Service company ExactTarget recently revealed that chit-chat posts are one reason why people ‘unLike’ brands on Facebook.

In a bid to help content marketers gain a better insight into which posts generate the most ‘shares’, ‘Likes’ and comments, Facebook spent four weeks analysing activity on 23 brand Pages spanning six different industry sectors.

For the study, Facebook’s research team divided social content into three categories:

1. Purely promotional messages (such as the launch of a new product, a new store opening, or a special deal);

2. Messages that tie in with the brand but cover general topics about the sector in which the brand operates (such as recipe ideas from a food brand or holiday tips from a travel company);

3. Posts completely unrelated to the brand (such as chatty posts about current events that have no connection with the brand).

FACEBOOK POSTS MUST RELATE TO THE BRAND

“The topicality of page posts impacts all types of engagement,” explains Elisabeth Diana, corporate communications manager at Facebook. “But the bottom-line result is that posts related to the brand and posts related to a product or service are the ones that are significant predictors of actions.

“The third, unrelated content, is not a significantly predictive page post.”

In other words, posting content on your Facebook page that is not about your brand is the only type of post that does not correlate with engagement.

“Speaking in the voice of the brand, talking directly about your product or service, or a topic related to the brand, is the best way to engage with fans of your page,” she says.

The Facebook study also found that photos and videos are best for generating ‘Shares’, while ‘Likes’ are driven by posts that prompt users to ‘Like’ something, and posts that pose questions are most likely to foster comments.

“You can maximize your success on Facebook by optimising your Page posting strategy for the type of engagement you are trying to drive,” adds Diana.

# # # #

About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

________________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Using content marketing to target today’s ‘connected’ teenagers

Having grown up during the golden age of digital technology, today’s teenagers are the first generation to have no recollection of a world without mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players and the internet.

These so-called ‘digital natives’ are the best-connected group of consumers ever – and their content consumption habits are hugely different from older age groups.

Some 94% of teenagers now possess a mobile phone; 70% have a laptop; and 23% own a tablet. Communicating through technology and social media is part of their DNA, and they are used to obtaining and sharing information online. Only 19% of them speak to each other on landlines!
 
Young consumers are a key target for content marketers who want to promote products such as toys, games, music, fashion labels, and high-tech goods. But a successful content marketing strategy requires a good knowledge and understanding of this audience in order to engage fully with them.

Here’s a new infographic which sets out to offer a detailed look at the tech-savvy world of the ‘Millennial Teenager’…

Courtesy of: Online Schools

# # # #

________________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Email still most common method of sharing content, study finds

But email marketers should segment content to increase relevance and add value to recipients…

by Brian Oliver

Despite the enormous popularity of social media tools such as Facebook and Pinterest, a recent study conducted by StumbleUpon and BuzzFeed found that email is still the most-used method of sharing content.

Trying to make articles or videos ‘go viral’ by hoping to get thousands of followers to click on a single link is unrealistic, the study found.

Instead, people are more likely to spread content that resonates with them by distributing one-on-one email ‘shares’ among smaller and more intimate groups of colleagues, friends and family.

The StumbleUpon/BuzzFeed study looked at how content is shared online by analysing the 50 stories that have received the most Facebook traffic since mid-2007. Findings showed that for every Facebook share only nine people actually visited the story.

This suggests that even the biggest stories on Facebook are propagated by intimate conversations within a single network – for example, by large numbers of individuals sharing personally with a small number of friends, rather than by content being ‘broadcast’ through a few ‘influencers’ sharing a single post or tweet and hundreds of thousands of people clicking on it.

MORE CONTENT SHARED BY EMAIL ‘CONVERSATIONS’

While influential people may be able to reach a wide audience, their impact is short-lived, the StumbleUpon/BuzzFeed study found. Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web via ordinary people sharing with their friends.

“If you think about the course of a day, you spend the most amount of time communicating through email,” says Jack Krawczyk, StumbleUpon’s senior marketing manager. He points out that such ‘intimate sharing’ outnumbers so-called ‘broadcasting’ by 2-to-1 on StumbleUpon.

“People still want to have that intimate conversation,” says Krawczyk, adding that this also applies to young adults who are usually seen as relying on social media tools to communicate. “Those 34 and younger are the ones sharing emails,” he says. “They want that direct line of communications.”
 
EMAIL CONTENT MARKETING MUST BE SEGMENTED

Separate research from cloud-based firm Act-On Software warns that many companies are failing to take full advantage of the continuing importance of email content marketing as a customer acquisition tool.

Although opt-in email marketing is increasingly being integrated with social media platforms, the Act-On study found that many marketers are still making the common mistake of sending a single message to everyone on their mailing list.

Marketers should be segmenting and tailoring their email content to make sure the information that each customer receives is relevant to their needs and adds value.

Email marketers should also make sure their content does not contain any errors, the Act-On study warns. Poor quality writing within email content – with bad grammar, spelling mistakes and factual errors – can have a negative impact on a recipient’s view of the company.  

(Image via Clkr)  

# # # #

About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

________________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

 

How content marketers’ interest in Pinterest is growing almost as fast as the site itself

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, another social media site, Pinterest, is fast emerging as a valuable distribution platform for content marketing – especially if you’re targeting a female audience. More than 87 percent of Pinterest users are women.

Pinterest is a visually-driven social network where users create virtual bulletin boards and fill them with their favourite images from around the web. People share images by ‘pinning’ them on pinboards in a range of categories such as fashion, cooking, and crafts. Other Pinterest users pass them on by ‘repinning’ them to their own pinboards.

Launched in 2010, Pinterest has grown from 1.6 million unique visitors in September 2011 to an amazing 11.7 million users last month. It is now driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent report from content-sharing site Shareaholic.

As the fastest-growing social site, Pinterest is becoming an increasingly important content marketing tool. Many of the images being ‘pinned’ and ‘repinned’ are actually marketing materials for brands.

The ‘pinned’ images allow companies to promote their products and brands in a highly sharable forum. Most importantly, the marketing images retain their source links and can therefore help to drive traffic to brand websites and encourage brand adoption among the fast-growing Pinterest community.

For a closer look at how Pinterest is becoming such a major marketing tool, take a look at this excellent infographic created by MDG Advertising…

Infographic by MDG Advertising

# # # #

________________________________________________________

CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing