Ideas and inspiration for content optimised for social media
From How to Unleash the Power of Content @ jeffbullas.com:
The opportunities [of content marketing] are global and far reaching if you can overcome the challenges.
- It positions you as an expert – Content will position you and your brand over time as a thought leader.
- Networking opportunities – Connecting online will lead to face to face meetings that will make the virtual connection real and strong.
- It has given the introvert a voice – If you feel that you are too quiet to be successful then content and a platform will provide you with an online platform and channel.
- Online asset – Content built up overtime provides opportunity to create our own online asset & IP that you own.
- Monetise your content – By packaging your content online and selling it as an online course, book on Amazon or a paid seminar content can be turned into cash.
How content marketing, social media & SEO work together
From BORING NO MORE: Understanding the Potential of Content Marketing @ marketingadept.com:
The person with the biggest bullhorn no longer gets to own the conversation.Today, the most interesting voice gets the microphone. Content marketing (sometimes called “thought leadership”) is the process which enables you to have a more interesting voice. […] Being interesting helps get you better search rankings, larger audiences, and ultimately, more impressive results.
Click on the image to see the full infographic:
Car brands’ content strategy: focus on Engagement Oriented Posts
From The Race for Social Media Engagement @ visual.ly:
Many auto brands maintain a large number of profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. Some brands have one page for each model, some brands have dedicated support accounts on Twitter, etc.
Where possible, Unmetric has combined all of this data into a single entity. All data gathered from Q4 2012.
Posts about Corporate Social Responsibility, Ad Campaigns and Promotions on Facebook have failed to engage with fans. What does work, are questions to fans, events and photos.
The history of content marketing
The opening video from Content Marketing World on "The Power of Story". The idea of this video is that content marketing has been around for hundreds of years, but just now has it really gained prominent attention, where about 25% of marketing budgets are devoted to content marketing.
A three-minute visual overview of the history of content marketing.
Study: 90% B2C marketers use Facebook
From 2013 B2C Content Marketing Research: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends @ contentmarketinginstitute.com:
On average, B2C marketers use four social media networks to distribute their content, compared to five for B2B. The channel they use most often, by far, is Facebook (90%). The majority of B2C marketers also use Twitter (69%), YouTube (65%) and LinkedIn (51%). B2C marketers use LinkedIn much less frequently than their B2B peers (83%).
More in the slide deck below.
The visual web
From The visual web @ slideshare.net:
A noticeable trend this year is beautiful apps or websites. Its all part of a larger trend that Im calling The Visual Web, meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online.
(Richard McManus, Read Write Web)
Further reading:
Social is gaining share in referrals
From Study Gives Insight Into Content Discovery Trends Across the Web’s Leading Publishers @ blog.outbrain.com:
Currently, search methods [...] send the largest slice of referral traffic to content. Links from publisher sites make up 31% of referral traffic to content pages [...], portal homepages (AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com) account for 17% of traffic, and finally, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Fark.com, reddit, Digg) send 11% of traffic to content pages.
What kind of content do people share online?
This infograph says it all:
Download a high-res PDF of the report: Content Discovery and Engagement Report, Q1 2011 (.pdf)
Most Facebook Pages reach only 3%-7.5% of their fans
Social analytics company PageLever came out with a study last month that proves how content posted on your Facebook Page has to fight its way to its Fans' NewsFeeds.
Some data from the report:
Key take-aways:
- Spend energy on newsfeed content rather than custom tabs. As a page grows from 10,000 to one million fans, pageviews drop 12x faster than impressions.
- Post at least once a day to get more unique impressions per fan.
- The larger you get, the more Facebook promotes your page in NewsFeeds. Facebook ranks Pages with more fans higher in the search results, and features them more often in "Suggestions".
Further reading:
- How we measured that most pages reach only 3%-7.5% of their fans - PageLever
- SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page’s Posts - AllFacebook
- Popular Facebook Pages Have Fewer Unique Page Views Per Fan, Most Engagement is in the News Feed - InsideFacebook
- Report: Only 3% to 7.5% of Fans View Posts From A Facebook Page - SearchEngineLand
- New Study: Only 7.5 Percent of Fans See Your Facebook Page Posts - Marketing Pilgrim
The Content Grid: a framework for the process of Content Marketing
From the (excellent) Social Media ProBook:
The "buying" process begins long before a sales person contacts a prospect. The fuel that drives a prospect from latent interest to active demand is created, curated or procured by a brand, distributed over social channels and measured against business objectives.
Their list of KPIs is particularly interesting:
Awareness:
- traffic / page views / time onsite
- content downloads
- inbound links / page rank
- fans / followers
- mentions / comments / shares
Consideration:
- open / click-through rates
- inquiries / database growth
- form submission rate
- funnel conversion (stage change)
Close:
- qualified / accepted leads
- meeting with sales
- opportunities
- active pipeline / pipeline value
- closed deals
Flickr: a hub for photography enthusiasts
From the (excellent) Social Media ProBook:
Flickr: The popular photo and video sharing site launched out of Vancouver in 2004. Acquired by Yahoo! just one year later, Flickr grew into an online home for more than 51 million users and 5 billion images. But as Facebook and mobile photo services like Twitpic and Yfrog add options to the photo-sharing market, Flickr has seen a decline in their audience over the past two years. The site is far from dead, however, as accounts like The Official White House Photostream continue to drive traffic to Flickr. In some ways, it’s returned to the purest version of itself – that is, a hub for photography enthusiasts. It never became the corporate marketing “outpost” some originally imagined.
A rather unexpected way to explore Flickr is the notorious Flickr Panda.
