Content Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 6

How To Get Started With Social Audio For Your Business On Anchor

For consumers to get excited about something, for a potential customer to be compelled by something it comes down to attention. Attention, not impressions. So while some companies focus around getting as many impressions as possible on their banner ads, great marketers focus on attention.

Your leads, your customers they need to consume your content.

Over the last couple of years, there have only been two places that have gotten the attention of consumers. The first one is mobile, and all the social networks that are built on that mobile experience. The second one is content marketing.

After all, content marketing is just solving the same problems that your product solves through media you create and promote. You’re helping your customers making their life better by handing them solutions so they can empower themselves.

Within content marketing, you can see a trend moving towards more visual content. Businesses are moving towards Snapchat and building brands on Instagram. According to Cisco in 2019 video will even present 90% of all internet traffic.

The second big trend in content marketing is audio. Edison Research created a report with fascinating statistics about this trend. And while it is not only about podcasts, but also about online radio, streaming, social media and beyond, this post will focus mostly on the podcasting part.

Some number to give you an impression though:

Podcast Listening Grew 23% Between 2015 and 2016
21% of Americans ages 12 and up have listened to a podcast in the past month (13% of the USA listens to Spotify monthly, and 21% of the country uses Twitter.)
64% of podcasts are being listened to on a smartphone or tablet.
Weekly podcast listeners consume five shows per week on average

So how can you and your company take the most out of this growing trend? That’s where Anchor.FM comes into play.

For those who don’t know what Anchor yet is, it’s maybe best to let them describe themselves:

The new Anchor lets you broadcast your voice, clip external sound bites, mix in full-length tracks from Apple Music and Spotify, take call-ins from your listeners, and add interludes created by world class sound designers and musicians, all from your phone. Plus, everything on the new Anchor can be heard on iOS, Android, Amazon Echo, Google Home, web, and in your car via Bluetooth.

Using Instagram For Your (Small) Businesses, A Complete Guide

In the previous post on our site, we talked about Snapchat, and how you can make use of this great social media platform to drive sales for your company. Nowadays, however, it seems you can’t talk about Snapchat and not use Instagram in the same sentence.

Indeed, even generally speaking, when creating a social media strategy for your business, Instagram is a force to be reckoned with.

According to a 2014 study by Forrester Research, Instagram even has the highest engagement rate for brands among all social networks. The engagement they see happening on Instagram (4.21 percent) compared to Facebook (0.07percent) and Twitter (0.03%) is staggering.

In other words, Instagram engagement is 58 times higher per follower than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter!

User interactions with brands' post as a percentage of brands' fans or followers

Instagram has the highest engagement rate for brands according to Forrester Research in 2014

And with the power of Facebook behind Instagram, it means that sending great targeted advertising, etc. is easy. Instagram is an easy to use, free platform, and the only thing it requires is a smartphone to set up an account and start using it.

Still not convinced? Research done by MDG Advertising shows that 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to be very important and carry even more weight than the product information, full description, and customer ratings. This makes Instagram a unique opportunity for your (small) business to reach your clients and visually tell your brand story.

If you think indeed, Instagram is a platform you would like to invest your time in, download the app (if you aren’t using it already on your phone) and let’s dive straight into how you can use Instagram for your company.

SEO Copywriting: How To Write Content That Both Google And Your Visitors Will Love

Building an audience for your company can be achieved in a couple of different ways. In the old days, you would buy ads in your (local) newspaper; you did radio ads, tv ads or any other ad you could afford with your marketing budget.

Then came the internet and the same old advertising model moved along to the web.

But people are getting blinder every day for these types of companies trying to scream for attention. In a recent piece on Medium Jeremy Ettinghausen even called it “Why Does Digital Advertising Suck?”

He states:

The reason most digital advertising isn’t very good is that most people in advertising don’t really get the internet.

So unless you’re creative and have the potential budget to act upon it, how can you and your small business still generate business online?

That’s where Content Marketing came in over the last couple of years. After all, you know your market in which you’re operating best, right? So why can’t you help your potential customer solve their problems in the same way your product helps them only through media you are creating and promoting?

Posted in Content Marketing | 12 responses

Why Embracing User Generated Content Is Crucial For Your Content Marketing

In a previous blogpost, we talked about curating content to make the life of your content marketing a lot easier. Not all content should be created by yourself (unless you have an enormous budget and can afford the time and money to spend on creating all content yourself).

So what other ways are there to leverage the content of other to help you grow your online presence and help increase your visibility online?

Try looking into User Generated Content.

Putting your customers in control of creating content can be a bit scary for a lot of brands, but it also will help you to grow your content offering significantly, develop and strengthen the relationship you have with your users and all that content linking back to your brand can increase your SEO significantly as well.

The final reason is best described by Aaron Orendorff:

You are not your company’s best salesperson.

In fact – no matter how effective your training, incentive or marketing programs may be — nobody within your business is as good at selling as your customers. This is why brands are taking advantage of user-generated content (UGC).

So how can you tap into this world and make User Generated Content work for your company?

Posted in Content Marketing | 19 responses

How To Curate Content: The Secret Sauce To Getting Noticed, Becoming An Influencer, And Growing Your Audience

Here at Inbound Rocket, we love ourselves a good bunch of content marketing. We’re trying to publish at least one article per week, and in the meantime, we’d like to stay active on various social media channels to you the reader informed about relevant items in the industry.

However, if you’re always creating new content, it can turn out to be one of the most time-consuming things in your schedule.

Especially as a startup or small business with a limited budget, this can run your bank account dry within no-time.

An excellent way to publish more content though, without spending lots of time and budget, is to recycle the content you already have and that of other credible sources in your industry.

This process is called content curation, and in this post, we will be looking into how a successful content curation strategy can help your business produce more content in less time.

But before we dive into the how, let’s first have a better understanding of what content curation is.

Posted in Content Marketing | 2 responses

Is Your Content Marketing Successful? 14 Actionable Metrics To Tell You It Is

We all know the importance of Content Marketing. We know that when executed well it can help you attract your right target audience and that it can help them turn into leads as a result of your engaging content. But how do you know that you’re on the right track?

Content Marketing Metrics is all about measuring your content and the impact it has on your organisation. It is about measuring the results and taking actions based upon it.

As more and more businesses are getting on board the Content Marketing train and spending ever greater portions of their budget on creating content, they must know that their investments are aligned with their goals with their KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). This is the only way for them to keep their budget secure.

They need to measure what matters, not just what’s easy to track.

In an earlier post, we already talked about getting started with defining your Content Marketing KPI’s. And as you might remember, it starts with determining your business and marketing goals. Based on those you can select the metrics that will be the most effective for you to track your progress towards achieving these goals.

Over the last couple of years, there has been an explosion of metrics and analytics tools, and a lot of these tools might scare off the average Joe a bit. However, as these tools mature and become easier to understand, it’s becoming easier than ever for everyone in your organisation to look into and understand how agile, metrics-focused marketing works.

Below we’ve compiled a list of the essential tools, tactics, and items to measure, so you too can understand better how your content is performing and if not, what to do about it. We’ve grouped them together in the four most important pillars for you to track:

Consumption Metrics
Sharing Metrics
Lead Generation Metrics
Sales Metrics

Posted in Content Marketing | one respons

9 Tips For Creating A Strong Content Marketing Strategy

It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of having a performant social media marketing strategy.

The statistics, of which there are many, all confirm that social media leads to an increased audience, better returns, and better conversion rates, providing a boost to your SEO and increasing a trust-based following that will stay loyal to your brand.

Plus, while the huge numbers of people who are a member of social networks seem so large they’re anonymous, the beauty of content marketing is the fact that you can target specific audiences, and engage with your core consumer market, in ways you would have previously been unable to reach them. You can build real relationships, open two-way channels of communication, monitor your competitors, and most importantly your sales will increase.

All of these benefits are available for an incredibly low cost when you have a sound social media strategy, and the following tips help you maximize the potential of your profile across all platforms.

Posted in Content Marketing | no responses

Why Your Content Marketing Leads Arent Converting (And What To Do About It)

Inbound Marketing is going mainstream. More and more companies are convinced about the value it can bring to their organisation, and as a result, you probably start to produce high volumes of content.

Significant amounts of Content Marketing material that lead to high volumes of leads. Maybe the open, click and response on your campaigns are a little bit above average as well. Feels great, doesn’t it? However, if at the end of the day this all does not translate into good quality leads or even better opportunities that convert to revenue, your efforts and investments are wasted.

Having a week-over-week growth on your website and email list is is all great to see, but are also a bunch of Vanity Metrics that might look shiny but it is not going to make a difference to your bottom-line.

For you to maximise your ROI on the content that you’re creating, you need to convert these leads into something tangible. Something that you can assign a dollar value too.

If you’re not at this point yourself yet, don’t worry you’re not alone. According to a 2013 research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 93% of marketers are using content marketing, but only 9% of them thinks it is “very effective”.

So how can you move your leads to the next level and start seeing the benefits to the bottom line of your company? In this post will be looking at different ways why your leads are not converting and what you can do about it.

Posted in Lead Conversion, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing | 3 responses

How to Growth Hack Your Content Marketing

We’re living in a revolutionary time. The world is getting smaller and smaller every day. Email, social networks, blogs, videos, audio, and all sorts of other media are bringing us closer together every day.

As a result every person now can start a company from the comfort of their couch and become successful. But this also means because the playing field is leveled more and more people are taking the plunge and want to start their company.

Everything and everyone is getting connected. And because of all of this, there are also more and more advertising and marketing messages flooding into our lives.

To stay relevant in this overly connected world, content became the key to attracting and engaging your potential audience. It is the driver of attention. For a consumer to get excited about something, to be compelled by something, it comes down to attention.

Attention, not impressions. They need to consume it. That is the game.

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Attention is the glue that sticks everything together and keeps the funnel moving. But while every business tries to find its niche in this connected world. While everyone is trying to create their content marketing strategy, the lower barrier of entry makes the grabbing of your ideal consumer’s attention more difficult than ever.

On a different side of the marketing spectrum, another trend emerged over the last couple of years. The idea of “growth hacking”. And although it might have a negative sound to it, it doesn’t involve any sharp-edged tools, only a handful of sharp-edged tactics that could prove to be extremely beneficial for your business.

After all, it is about bringing in more traffic, putting more users at the top of the conversion funnel, and turning them into a customer.

This does sound familiar to everyone doing content marketing for their job, right? With each piece of content, you hope to secure more visitors and gain more traction for whatever it is that you’re selling. You want to see results, and both growth hacking and content marketing are about getting results.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to dive into Growth Hacking and see how this can help you step up your Content Marketing game. But before we start, let’s first have a deeper look into Growth Hacking.

Posted in Content Marketing | 4 responses

SEO Copywriting: How To Write Content That Both Google And Your Visitors Will Love

Why Embracing User Generated Content Is Crucial For Your Content Marketing

Is Your Content Marketing Successful? 14 Actionable Metrics To Tell You It Is

9 Tips For Creating A Strong Content Marketing Strategy

Why Your Content Marketing Leads Arent Converting (And What To Do About It)

How to Growth Hack Your Content Marketing

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