What should go into your editorial calendar for blogging + Twitter + Facebook + Google+ + LinkedIn?
In today's digital marketing environment, where demands on businesses to publish engaging content have never been higher, managing the process can be challenging, to say the least.
In our 7 Steps Guide to content marketing, we've advised on how to plan to create a content marketing strategy that drives reach and engagement. But there is still the practical issue of what to publish, when and where? We cover this in our new guide to guide to managing content marketing where James Carson explains approaches for workflow for editorial planning.
Thinking through how to organise multiple pieces of content, on your site, on partner sites and on social outposts is what many marketers have been grappling with for some time. The varying input…
7 ideas to engage through storytelling
"Those who tell stories rule the world" - Plato
Storytelling - the buzz of 2012? I remember so many articles from last year, many great, claiming that 2012 was the year of brand storytelling. The power of those stories central to marketing dialogue.
Let's remember first that storytelling isn't new, using narrative to evoke emotion in people is central to clever advertising creative from decades ago.
It's 'digital' and 'direct' marketing that has only more recently moved marketing too more of a science - and often a very lazy one at that - bypassing all the important learning of what it means to market to, and motivate, real people with unmet needs. It seems though that we’re all catching back on to the effectiveness of building stories through content and connecting with people, our consumers.
When your information is communicated…
A content marketing productivity tool for faster content marketing
[caption id="attachment_23960" align="alignleft" width="257"] Little Bird - a great way to find and learn about key people online fast[/caption]
If you spend time like I do, writing content for special interest groups online, then you probably love to hear about content marketing productivity tools that can help you optimise your time during the different stages of the content marketing continuum, and improve your return on content marketing effort (ROE).
After years working as a publisher, I’ve now got a new job as a startup CEO, managing a content marketing agency, as well as doing the digital marketing for a…
How are companies managing content marketing today?
Lee Odden gave a great webcast on Creative Content marketing for Smart Insights on the 12th April - thanks if you attended and many thanks Lee for your great insights! If you want to catch up on Lee's advice and examples you can review it at the end of this post.
A couple of quotes from Lee to live by in your content marketing that I picked out are:
@leeodden's formula for successful #contentmarketing: "Ask people to share something, then recognise or reward them: ow.ly/k02xK
— Dr Dave Chaffey (@DaveChaffey) April 12, 2013
and
"Successful #contentmarketing is Creative + Social + Optimised" @leeodden of @toprank
— Dr Dave Chaffey (@DaveChaffey) April 12, 2013
I also wanted to share the results of some of the polls that Lee and I devised for the webcast. These Votes are good for increasing the…
Creative Content Marketing with Lee Odden: Connecting Brands with Receptive Consumers
This Friday April 12th 2013, join Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and author of Optimize for a free Smart Insights webcast on Creative Content Marketing - view here. In this post Lee introduces 5 ideas for creative content marketing and will expand on these with examples and more tips in the webcast.
In the webcast Lee will teach webinar participants how to Get Better Results with Creative Content Marketing. It’s a topic he knows well, in practice at his agency and as a marketing thought leader sharing his content framework at major industry events from London, England to New York City.
Alongside conversion rate optimisation, content marketing is this year’s top priority for digital marketers. It’s no wonder; companies are tripping over themselves to be noticed over the deafening din of marketing noise facing an increasingly attention-deficit consumer.
In…
Book review: Optimize - How to attract and engage more customers, by integrating SEO, Social media and content marketing by Lee Odden
We read a lot of new marketing books at Smart Insights since we like our advice to include different perspectives and we enjoy seeing how different writers explain what works and what doesn’t. We have had a few requests that distilled reviews of books would be useful and it would be useful to hear more from the authors. So here we are.
I’ve started our series of reviews with this book by Lee Odden since Lee will be talking at our next webcast on Creative Content content marketing and I thought it would be a good way of introducing Lee if you don’t know his acclaimed TopRank online marketing blog already.
You can register free for the webcast …
A practical guide to setting up categories and tags on your blog or website
For every content project I’ve been involved with, categories and tags have had a role to play. Sometimes, there are clearly defined systems, which make a positive contribution to the user experience. However, it must be said that very often something goes awry. There is no set plan, and users find themselves confused by numerous and options. Over a period of years, this can lead to a sort of digital rabbit warren that can be expensive to sort out. Thus it’s important to have a defined approach to categories and tags to order your content.
Categories and Tags – What’s the Difference?
Any users of Wordpress will be familiar with categories and tags, but a number of sites I’ve worked with have struggled to differentiate between the two. Typically I define the two as follows:
Categories – grouping of content…
A 3 Phased Approach to integrating Content and SEO Audits
In every book about Content Strategy, the recommended process will have an audit as one of the first steps; this is much the same as for Search Engine Optimisation. Granted, there are some specific technical aspects of SEO – particularly regarding server-side issues – that aren't related to content, but SEO audits will also cover onpage issues that need to be forwarded to product or editorial teams. As these disciplines merge, it is useful to get these groups working together, and it saves time to do onpage SEO and content auditing in one go. Thus I suggest combining the audit process as I'll explain here.
Phase One: Gathering Through Crawling
Using Xenu & Excel
Content Strategy books seem slightly wary of using crawlers for content audits. In Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson writes (p.48):
"During the audit process… technology can…
Defining the four pillars of successful content
Many digital marketers are talking about 2013 being the year when Content Marketing becomes a priority. There’s been a lot of focus on tactical elements of content marketing, so in this blog post I will take a look at what I see as the foundations of a sound content strategy.
A comprehensive content strategy project would also involve outlining a plan for content process, such as workflow and maintenance, but in this post we’re going to focus on the foundations of good content. To simplify content marketing to a manageable area you can work on, I see four main areas of a content marketing strategy that need to defined to create content useful for your audience and to give a return on investment to a business.
1. Customers’ goals
Questions to ask include:
Who are you…
Webcasts from the Smart Insights Digital Marketing Priorities 2013 summit
At our recent free summit many viewers asked to share the slide and recordings, so to collect them together we have a short series of posts to point you in the right direction. These is one for each of the topics covering each of Reach, Act and Convert and Engage in the Smart Insights PRACE digital strategy framework:
The full series of posts covering all eight webcasts are:
REACH audiences using SEO, Social media and content marketing
InterACT with audiences on mobile platforms and for B2B audiences.
CONVERT visitors using persuasive design and CRO.
ENGAGE customers through content and email marketing.
You can view all recordings here.
The two webinars focusing on engaging customers and encouraging advocacy were:
1. Content Marketing priorities for 2013 with Dan Bosomworth of Smart Insights and First 10
Dan Bosomworth MD of First 10 discussed…
