Over the past few years, more marketers have started to embrace content marketing as a viable strategy to rank higher in search engines and gain popularity among Internet users. Big brands like Coca-Cola and Mint are already knee deep in content marketing campaigns, because they see the benefit in creating unique and inspiring content for the masses to consume.
Content that educates, informs, and entertains can drive traffic and most importantly, creates long-lasting and loyal viewers who will (fingers crossed) develop into customers over time. According to the infographic*, 60% of B2B marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in 2012 and 90% are already doing some form of content marketing. That same research shows that 79% of B2B marketers are involved in article posting as a means of content marketing.
Before we can get into the nitty gritty of content marketing, we must first clearly define it, so you understand WHAT you should do, not just WHY you should do it.
What Is Content Marketing?
In “The Five Pillars of Content Marketing,” Joe Pulizzi defines Content Marketing as…
- “Editorial-based (or long-form) content. It must tell a relevant, valuable story. Must be informative, educational or entertaining.
- Marketing-backed. The content has underlying marketing and sales objectives that a corporation, association or institution is trying to accomplish.
- Behavior-driven. Seeks out to maintain or alter the recipient’s behavior.
- Multi-platform. (print, digital, audio, video, events). It can be, does not have to be, integrated.
- Targeted toward a specific audience. If you can’t name the audience, it’s not content marketing.”
What Makes a Good Content Marketing Strategy?
We found an amazing infographic* that describes the make-up of a good content marketing strategy for businesses. According to the infographic, a good content strategy is quality, shareable content.
Coca-Cola’s Content 20/20 Campaign is a perfect example of how business can create a good and "liquid" content marketing strategy.
What are the Most Used Content Marketing Tactics?
As content marketing is a form of marketing, it must be aligned with measurable goals that are accomplished through tactics. The Content Marketing Institute released “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends,” a report on their findings related to content marketing. In it, they identify article posting (79%), social media (74%), blogs (65%), eNewsletter (63%), case studies (58%), and in-person events (56%) as the most effective content marketing tactics used by B2B marketers.
What are the LEAST Used Content Marketing Tactics?
One or two of the tactics that made the 'least used' list were a bit surprising. They are: Ebooks (16%), podcasts (16%), mobile content (15%), digital magazines (14%), and virtual conferences (10%). Ebooks and virtual conferences ranked surprisingly low. However, there are many B2B marketers who have success with these two tactics. As a B2B marketer, I find loads of value in ebooks and virtural conferences, but to be quite honest, it is not a tactic for the inexperienced. So, leave that to the pros who have mass appeal.
Content Marketing Take-Away
To conclude a long story, content marketing is the way of the future for B2B marketers. The best thing you can do is figure out which content marketing tactics will work for your business and come up with application methods. If you are unsure about how to move forward with your new content strategy, give us a ring and we can help you brainstorm ways to get the ball rolling.
Is Content Marketing the Hot New Trend? – Infographic*http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/02/10/is-content-marketing-the-hot-new-trend-infographic/
Posted by
Ron Medlin on Thu, Feb 16, 2012 @ 08:44 AM
If you are at all interested in having your website be found by people online, you need to devote some time and attention to optimizing your site for the search engines. There are five main on-page elements that your site needs in order to be search friendly: Indexable Content, Crawlable Link Structures, Targeted Keywords, Title Tags and Meta Tag Descriptions.
Indexable Content
If you have decided to have a website designed that includes lots of Flash, Java code, images, video, etc. One of the drawbacks to having this type of content dominate the site is that the search engines simply can’t read what’s going on. To the human eye, this stuff looks great, but it literally makes your site’s content invisible to search spiders. Therefore, to correct this, you need to add a significant amount of HTML friendly content that is able to be deciphered.
Crawlable Link Structures
When the search spiders come to your online neighborhood and spot your site, they will latch onto the index page and crawl its content. This is a necessary step that allows your content to be scooped up and added into the search index database. Once it is done crawling that page, it will seek out links on the page that lead to other pages. A link is like leaving a door open for the spider to enter and explore the next room.
This is why it’s very important that you make sure that your site has a properly set up link structure that makes it easy for spiders to find all of the pages on your site. If there is no page link available, the spider will not be able to crawl additional pages.
Targeted Keywords
While site content should be friendly and easy-to-read for your site visitors, another thing it must contain that is important to search are keywords. Keywords are a combination of word phrases that the typical online web surfer uses to find information of high interest. You need to conduct some research into what types of keywords your potential customers are regularly using and make a list.
After you have gathered up your list of targeted keywords, you want to have them inserted seamlessly into the pages of your website. This can be done by a skilled website content writer that is familiar with SEO keyword copy. One thing to be aware of is that you don’t want your keywords to be too general. For instance, someone searching for blue copy paper is looking for a very specific type of paper. If you sell paper and do not include this long-tail keyword, but stick with the general term “paper,” your site will not attract the most optimal customers for your business.
Title Tags
Every page of your site should include a strong title tag that explains to visitors (and search engines) exactly what your page content is about. Title tags normally appear at the very top of an Internet browser, regardless of which browser is used. These tags show up in search results, so wording is important. Keywords can enhance title tags and should always be added at the front for best results. Keeping this all in mind you still want people to click your link, so make you title tags interesting to the searcher so that they visit your site instead of your competitors.
Meta Tag Descriptions
Meta tag descriptions are not used to assist a site’s ranking in search engines. However, they do play an important role in search listings. The content includes a brief description of your website and can be useful for enticing people to visit your website. When someone does a search, they will usually read your Title Tag and Meta Description first.
Many social media marketers have little to say in the way of B2B social media marketing. Some will even say it cannot be done. Well, SearchDog Marketing is here to tell you that social media success can be achieved for B2B companies! Be aware that social media strategies for B2B companies require a slightly different approach than B2C, for obvious reasons, but it is totally doable.
The first thing B2B social media marketers must start doing is…
Quality OVER Quantity
Instead of worrying about how many followers you have, focus on gaining a QUALITY following. How do you get quality followers, you ask? By targeting certain businesses that you want to engage. What good will 1,000 low quality followers do for your brand? Little. Examine your competitors follower lists and follow those companies too.
Please keep in mind that this strategy is more than snatch and grab. You must find the other businesses that you want to target and engage them. The average, everyday citizen, fan or follower may not do you any good, so think about your bottom line.
Share Content with Complementary Businesses
Not too long ago, we started something called Friday Local Business Spotlight on Facebook. It is just what it sounds like – every Friday we feature a new Atlanta business that we fancy for whatever reason. The concept is simple enough – we shine some light on a complementary, local business in hopes of…. what exactly? In hopes of making a connection and expanding our social media reach. How much ROI have we gained from it? It depends on what you (we) call success. Success, for us, in this sense, is making a social connection on and offline with the business. We’re using social media as a tool, a means to an end.
Not only do we spotlight businesses, we also share their share-worthy content with our followers and fans. Everything is not all about us and we not only understand that, we embrace it. Social media is about two-way communication, sharing ideas, inspiration, and information. In essence, be social with other businesses and they will likely return the favor.
Integrate Social Media Intro Traditional Marketing Mix
Social media is only a piece of the marketing mix that keeps your business reach growing systematically over time. Although social media management can be rather taxing and time-consuming, it is important not to forget to keep up with what you are already doing and integrate the new with the old. Some things are obsolete and no longer necessary. Technology and the Internet has allowed businesses to cut corners and save costs on things that were once big financial burdens. Social media, for instance, is a free (primarily) tool that you can use to your advantage.
Different businesses use social media for different marketing functions. Some use it as event promotion, customer service, public relations, or advertising. Some use it for all of that and more. No matter what your reason is for using social media for B2B marketing, remember not to put all your eggs in the social media basket. Doing so is just as risky in social media as it is in life and business.
Google+
Posted by
Ron Medlin on Mon, Feb 13, 2012 @ 11:04 AM
A business website is more than just a collection of pages in cyberspace that highlights your products and services. It’s also a promotional tool that works to gain attention for your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is the easiest online contact that a person searching for what you offer is going to have with your company. Maybe you have spent good money having your website designed and it looks spiffy. However, you have noticed that it isn’t producing the kind of visitors you thought it would.
Why not?
Well, the usual answer is that many people simply cannot find your site. As you learned earlier, each website page is assigned a specific ranking by the search engines. First page rankings are the most desired, because they attract the majority of surf traffic. But, unfortunately, most websites are not going to be able to claim one of those coveted spots on their own. Your website pages may be lingering way back in the crowd on page 10 or 27 or 52. If this is the case, there is no way that it will attract the kind of premium traffic filled with buyers who are ready to spend their money.
2 Major SEO Mistakes
There are two major reasons why your site is receiving such bad rankings: Poor Indexing and Lack of Targeted Content.
Poor Indexing
As you have learned, search engine spiders will visit your website and crawl its pages looking for relevant information. Due to the fact that this is an automated process, there are things that can literally trip up a spider and cause it to not be able to pull the information it needs from a page to determine what your website is actually about in order to produce a suitable ranking.
For instance, website pages containing popular elements such as Flash, Java applets, Frames, as well as photos, images, audio or video that aren’t keyword optimized contain content that cannot be processed by search engine spiders, and therefore make determining the theme of your pages very difficult. Be sure to optimize all image “alt tags” with your target keywords, use Flash sparingly only as added effect, and give a keyword rich text description for any audio or video on the page.
Inadequate linking is another problem. Your indexed pages may have links to a few inner pages, but may have skipped linking to a large portion of your site. When a spider visits a particular page, it is also crawling any pages that are linked to that page. This type of “deep internal linking” is essential in order to make sure that all of your site pages can be found online. A good way to tackle this issue is to have your webmaster create an xml-sitemap that has links to all of your pages and place it in the footer of all the pages on your website. Also create a Google webmaster tools account to monitor how search engine spiders are indexing your content.
Lack of Targeted Content
The average person is going to type in the search phrase that is most important to them. They only want to look at sites that are most targeted to their search query. If the content on your pages is not specifically optimized for the keyword being searched for or is too general in nature, the search engines may deem your site as not important enough for a top ranking. Be sure to create separate pages for the terms you want to rank for and optimize your tags and content specifically for those phrases.
SEO Marketing to the Rescue
A well thought out SEO marketing strategy can help you map out necessary changes to your site pages that instantly makes them more attractive to search engines. This includes making sure your website has a good internal linking structure in place and including an xml-sitemap in your footer.
It also includes doing a thorough evaluation of your site content, and sprucing up any weak spots by creating content that includes popular terms being searched for by your ideal customer.
In last Thursday’s blog, we identified simple ways to beef up your social media presence. One way was to visually engage your followers with cool images by using Instagram, a hot, new application. Brands are already joining the fun and yours should too.
Before I jump right into the good stuff, let me warn you that Instagram is not a tool that will work for every brand under the sun. You must have a visual component to your business and it must be interesting. This works best for B2C brands that have products and services that lend themselves to photography.
Here are 3 Instagram Best Practices for Brands:
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Create a Hashtag Theme – The great way to organize your photos is by coming up with a way to categorize your own photos that your followers can also use. For example, if you own a coffee shop, your hashtag theme could be #cupofjoe or something else that is general enough to be broadly applied.
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Interesting & Consistent Posts Only – The worst thing you could do as a brand is to make random, uninteresting posts on Instagram. The same way you see people using Instagram is NOT the way brands should use it. Whether you choose to post in the morning, lunchtime, evening or night, make sure you stick to consistent time frame and number of photos. Posting 15 photos at once has the potential to overwhelm your followers just as boring, unrelated photos can produce negative comments or unfollows.
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Create a Contest – getting your customers involved through a contest is a great way to generate buzz about your business. Creating a contest using Instagram is pretty simple. Just have your followers submit photos that correspond to a themed hashtag, choose a winner, and feature their photo. It’s that simple.
Does Instagram Hold Value for Businesses?
Honestly, it’s still too early in the game to decide whether or not Instagram has true value for businesses outside of social media engagement. Below are 3 businesses who are doing a tremendously good job of engaging followers by posting awesome content. Study their strategy and follow suit.
Sharpie
General Electric
Goincase
The only real way to know what value Instagram could hold for you is to try it yourself. If you're still miffed by social media marketing as a whole, we're here to help you navigate the unknown.
Google+
Posted by
Ron Medlin on Tue, Feb 07, 2012 @ 02:13 PM
Without the search engines, the Internet would be just a jumble of sites with no rhyme or reason. The average person uses search engines to quickly find information about a particular topic or product. Because of the vastness of the web, search engines are a convenience to the average web surfer. When a keyword term is typed into the browser, up pops a row of neatly organized websites that feature a brief description of what you can expect to find on the page.
By now, you’ve probably heard that its important to have your site appear on the first page of Google, or any other search engine, for that matter. However, Google, in particular, is the giant when it comes to providing real time site visitors. A 2009 study done by EightFoldLogic found the following traffic facts:
Number of Visitors Sending Traffic to Websites Per Major Search Engine
Google accounts for 78.43% of traffic
Yahoo! accounts for 9.73% of traffic
Bing accounts for 7.86% of traffic
The graph below shows a more recent picture of search market share as of 2011.
As you can see, this brief snapshot shows you that Google is by far the most popular search engine with people who surf online. This is why SEO firms are most often focused on helping business websites rank highly in Google search first. It only makes sense that you need to be in front of the largest crowd. According to a study done by comScore in April of 2010, Americans alone conducted 15.5 billion searches online. Obtaining higher search rankings through SEO should be a major part of any long-term business marketing strategy.
Consumers are Looking Online to Buy Stuff Offline
One of the most fascinating (and exciting) search facts for businesses is the number of people who first do their product research online, then go to a brick and mortar location to make a purchase. In 2007, a Yahoo! study found that online advertising leads to an actual offline purchase by a 6 to 1 margin. For every $1 spent online, there were $16 spent buying products offline. This means that many consumers are visiting your website to take notes and compare the merits of what your business has to offer against your competitor. They then make a determination of how to spend their dollars.
Google has done some really interesting research on this stuff themselves in an ebook called, "The Zero Moment Of Truth".
Therefore, you really need to think about what exactly each potential customer is seeing when they visit each page of your website.
Are they seeing boring, lackluster copy? Or, snappy writing that specifically targets their interests?
Are they seeing tacky graphics that belong in another decade gone by? Or, are they seeing modern graphics and photos that show your products in the best light?
These are things you need to consider, especially if you are interested in attracting local customers. Regardless of whatever other advertising you use, ignoring your website, or taking it for granted could be costing you lots of money.
You see, the majority of people living in your community are searching for local products and services via search engines. In fact, in 2007, Webvisible and Nielsen conducted a survey that found:
86% of people said they use the Internet to find a local business
80% said they research products and services online before making an offline purchase
In order to attract as many of these potential customers as possible, you must make sure that your website is highly targeted to their immediate needs and interests.
Google+
Posted by
Ron Medlin on Fri, Feb 03, 2012 @ 01:30 PM
Over the next few days, we're going to be breaking down how search engines like Google and Bing actually work and teach you the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this 10 part series we're going to show you SEO best practices that will help you outrank 90% of your competitors on the web. We hope you enjoy!
Everyone who surfs the Internet is familiar with search engines. Google being the biggest and most popular search engine out there, commands both fear and respect among anyone who chooses to put up a website. On the surface, a search engine is the portal to finding specific information about a variety of topics online. However, if you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that there is much more to them than meets the eye.
Basically, search engines have four major functions: Crawling the Web, Building an Index, Determining Relevancy and Rankings and Displaying Results. Each one of these steps is essential for sorting out information among an enormous number of website pages, and assigning each page a specific ranking based on an accumulation of many factors.
Crawling the Web
As of February 2012 the number of indexed websites online is around 8.52 billion. Imagine having the job of searching all of those to figure out what people really want to know. When a website is brand new, it does not automatically get found online. First, the website must be “crawled” by what is commonly called search engine “spiders” or “robots.” Each day, these automated spiders are roaming the web looking for fresh information. Once the spider discovers the new site, it will then crawl it and index all of the information. This can take days or weeks, depending on the type of SEO activity being done for the site.
As for existing website pages. They are also crawled on a regular basis. However, those sites that continue to update their pages with fresh information will be crawled more often than stagnant sites. This is why it’s possible to move a site up the rankings even if it is far back in the pack. A website is not stuck with a low ranking, unless no effort is made to improve results.
Building an Index
One of the main jobs of a search engine is to place each website into its index. This makes it easy for surfers to find information that they need quickly. It is similar to filing a book onto a library shelf. If all of the books were scattered about, you’d never find anything of value. However, once each book has been placed on the appropriate shelf space, you can then quickly locate it under the right category.
Determining Relevancy and Rankings
Okay. Now that your website is indexed, that’s not the end of the story. The search engine then must determine where your site fits in with all of the other competing sites with very similar information. This is where the real battle for search engine dominance is waged. Relevancy means that the content on your site pages provides lots of specific information on a niche topic that is highly valuable to people searching on this topic. For instance, if you are searching for “ergonomic office chair” you don’t want to see a bunch of sites that talk about home furniture.
The search engine will make a determination as to how much relevancy your site content offers surfers and assign it a specific page ranking. By the way, each page of your site can have its own ranking.
Displaying Results
Once your website has been indexed and pages have rankings, they will show up as results when someone types in specific keywords. If you have done a good job of SEO on your site, you may be among the fortunate ones that have a site ranking in the top 10 results. These are the most coveted spots on the Internet.
Google+
Yesterday, news media reported that Facebook filed paperwork for its initial public offering. The paperwork provided the first peek at the social media giant's finances since its launch 8 years ago.
Facebook seeks to raise $5 million from investors by selling a small percentage of its shares to the public in its IPO. This would be the largest offering ever made by a technology company and easily surpasses the $1.9 million raised by Google Inc. in 2004.
The excitement among investors and the general public is mounting since yesterday's announcement. Going public will likely have little to no effect on the average user, unless they plan to purchase shares. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook's largest individual shareholder and controls 57 percent of the voting shares, according to the SEO filing.
Although no official date is currently set for trading to begin, Facebook wil probably make its debut on the market in three to four months. The Palo Alto, California based company hopes to list its stock under the ticket symbol, "FB," although it is unknown whether they will be on the Nasdaq Stock Market or the New York Stock Exchange.
We'll keep you posted as this story unfolds.
Google+
Does your social media presence need a content facelift? Do you consistently find yourself feeling as though your updates are stale in comparison to what your peers and competitors post? Have no fear, because you are not alone. This is a common problem for B2C social media.
The truth is, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to master social media, you just have to understand it. The problem for many business owners is finding the time and energy to come up with engaging content while managing to keep their business afloat. The simple solution would be to outsource your internet marketing and social media marketing to a reliable and experienced company (insert shameless plug here). The quick and easy solution is to read and implement the 5 simple ways to beef up your social media content, which are located below.
1) Embrace Your Funny Bone – Social media is not the proper arena for the uptight or easily offended crowd. Part of the attraction to sites like Facebook and Twitter is the sheer lack of censorship and prevalence of free speech. Twitter’s recent decision to block tweets and accounts comes as a disappointment, but other than that these are pretty much free speech zones. Use your freedom of speech to show the lighter, funnier side of your business. No one has ordered you take a serious approach to social media content. Your customers would enjoy it and they are more inclined to like a post that’s humorous. Besides, who doesn’t love a good laugh ever so often?
2) Be Visually Stimulating
A picture is worth a thousand words. Cliché, but very true. I’ve been very impressed with the way companies like Starbucks are using Instagram on Twitter. Instagram is a photo application that allows you to create interesting photo effects by adding filters. Yes, it’s another application to learn, but the possibilities are really endless if you can tap into your creative side. There is honestly nothing more boring than visiting a Facebook or Twitter page and seeing a wall with only text status updates. No pictures, no videos, no surveys or polls, just text-based status updates with a few exclamation points to liven it up. This is boring content and no one is reading it. Photos and videos are the name of the game when it comes to social media. Uploading photos to Twitter is a great way to make your profile more dynamic and capture your followers attention using something INSTEAD OF WORDS. If your customers wanted to read your words, they would email you. They’re following you on social media sites because they want to HEAR and SEE what you’re made of. So, show them.
3) Provide Feedback
Social media is a tool for two-way communication, not mass broadcasting. There are a number of opportunities for businesses to engage in two-way communication with their target market, peers, and competitors. By engaging in two-way communication, you’re showing your followers that you care and are interested in the same things they are.
SEO consultants, inbound marketers, and the business community are constantly looking for answers and input on LinkedIn. This is a great opportunity to engage professionals by offering your opinion to the mix. A few weeks of consistent answering and following up will lead to more followers in LinkedIn. This strategy also transfers to Facebook groups and random Twitter posts.
4) Discuss Industry News
Reporting the latest industry news and giving your own perspective is a great way to keep the two-way conversation going. We’ve said this before, but all of your posts should not be directly related to your business. This self-centered use of social media results in a loss of interaction and followers. The next time industry news breaks, sit down at your desk and come up with a blog post. Publish it soon, if not immediately, so that it’s timely (news is nothing if not timely). Your blog subscribers and followers will appreciate your perspective being delivered to their inbox instead of having to go search for it.
5) Poll the People
Social media is filled to the brim with opinions. Everyone has one and they are itching to share it with the world. Come up with poll topics and start polling your followers and fans at least once every two weeks. Be careful not to overdo it. Do not limit your poll topics to your industry. Create polls around social topics, popular television shows and other things that have broad appeal.
Google+
Late last week, Twitter announced plans to use a new tool to censor content in certain parts of the world, while keeping the same content visible in other countries.
This decision comes as a surprise to those who recall that exactly one year ago Twitter published a blog proclaiming their commitment to the freedom of expression.
Prior to last week’s announcement, Twitter only censored content by eliminating it from the site entirely. Some people like Mark Gibbs feel Twitter has committed the ultimate social sin by compromising with government leaders to censor certain content. Others speculate that this is merely a strategic move to ease their global expansion into less than democratic parts of the world.
In “The Tweets Must Flow”, Twitter had this to say,
“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.”
This is a very different tune from the one they were singing last year. They published a blog with the exact same title, except the message was very different.
“At Twitter, we have identified our own responsibilities and limits. There are Tweets that we do remove, such as illegal Tweets and spam. However, we make efforts to keep these exceptions narrow so they may serve to prove a broader and more important rule—we strive not to remove Tweets on the basis of their content.”
One thing is for sure, governments around the world are supportive. Take Thailand for instance, where censorship regulations are already in heavy rotation. The Thai government is the first government to publicly endorse Twitter's censorship rules.
U.S. Senator Joe Liberman has yet to give a public endorsement, but we presume he is especially pleased since he called for Twitter to block the Taliban and affiliated accounts late last year.
Even though Twitter has promised to notify users if and when content is withheld, some users are not comforted and are quite outraged.
On January 28, users planned a worldwide boycott of Twitter using the hashtag #TwitterBlackout. These protests come less than two weeks after Wikipedia and others blackedout their sites in protest of two controversial anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act.
We are honestly hestiant to jump to judgement here. This move toward censorship is not new to social media. It's a simple fact that if Twitter hopes to expand its global reach, it must play ball with governments to a certain degree. But how much is too much? Do you think Twitter will lose its 'street cred' with the younger generation by compromising with the government?
Soon after the news broke, Mashable posed this question and we're curious to know what you think. "Should Twitter make compromises with censoring governments for the sake of global expansion? Let us know if the comments if you think growing with restrictions is the right move for the microblog."
Let us know what you think.
Google+