Content marketing has received a lot of attention of late – it’s really coming to the fore for marketers, who are increasingly paying attention to its true value. I want to share with you this lovely infographic from Demand Metric, which highlights some interesting statistics relating to content marketing – illustrating the increased understanding and importance that is being placed on the practice.

To kick off, it states that 90% of organisations are already marketing with content – a very encouraging statistic. In fact, with marketers spending an average of 25% of their budgets on content marketing, and 80% stating they think that custom content needs to be central to marketing activity, the future of content marketing looks bright.

It’s also encouraging to note that the difference in B2B and B2C marketers who are championing content marketing is relatively minimal (91% vs 86%). B2B marketers were perhaps quicker off the mark initially in realising the opportunities offered by marketing through content, but it seems that B2C marketers are now also paying attention.

The challenge posed by content marketing is the resource that it demands; time is an essential requisite to the creation of quality, engaging content and with marketers already juggling a million and one things, it can be tricky. That’s why I’m not surprised to see that 62% of companies are outsourcing for support.

So why is content marketing so important?

With traditional advertising and marketing methods becoming increasingly ineffective in our digital age, content marketing provides an alternative means for marketers to engage their customers and prospects (in a way that isn’t so blatant or overly promotional). Successful content marketing activity must be backed up by a concrete strategy; marketers need to define their objectives, and think about how they are going to offer something unique, before embarking on the creation of content. To be engaging content needs to add value – so marketers need to work harder to retain the attention of the modern consumer.

As a final thought, before you peruse the infographic, I want to finish up with a nod to measurement and ROI. Marketers need to be clear about what they are trying to achieve through their content marketing activitiy from the outset – is it engagement, click-throughs or simply increased reach and eyeballs on branded content?

Let me know what you think, and enjoy!

Infographic courtesy of Demand Metric.

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With the popularity of LinkedIn Groups growing alongside the other conversation platforms, such as LinkedIn Today and company pages, it has become a considerable challenge to identify the most relevant groups to join.

Let’s say you are an IT professional looking to network with your peers… How do you go about choosing the right group? For the IT industry alone, there are over 5,000 groups to choose from!

There are advanced, systematic ways to identify the optimum LinkedIn Group that suits your aims and content marketing strategy. This requires extensive, in-depth quantitative analysis of content, demographics and activity of the groups within the industry.

That said, if you don’t have the time or resources, it is worth simply having a browse through the most popular discussions as well as familiarising yourself with the basic statistics of the group in question. I’ve had a look and chosen the following 3 groups, and each stands out for their very own reason…

• 524,029 members
• Comments per discussion: 0.16 
• Majority function: Marketing (18%)

Reason for attention: Half a million members!

E-Marketing Association, founded in 2007, has acquired over half a million members within the space of 6 years! This is a truly impressive achievement, and the ripple effect of membership growth is worth having a look at…

The graph above shows the number of new members per week – the more members joined the group, the higher the reach and awareness of other potential members to join the group grew in turn. Over the first year there were around 20-100 new members per week, until July 2008, when the ripple effect came into full force, generating over a thousand new members per week! Long-term persistence paid off. Truly impressive.

• 93,013 members
• Comments per discussion: 0.34
• Majority function: Marketing (13%)

Reason for attention: 280 discussions a week!

E-Commerce Network is a similar LinkedIn mega-group… It stands out with an impressive 280 discussions per week. Even though only every third discussion generates a comment, it still indicates that the volume of information being shared on LinkedIn is enormous!

The most popular recent discussion provoked 50 comments. It has a slightly controversial title, thought-provoking content, and a simple yes/no question… All the ingredients necessary for an explosive discussion!

• 25,762 members
• Comments per discussion: 4.1
• Majority function: Finance (15%)

Reason for attention: high quality discussions

It must be really challenging to administer a mega group like the two I looked at above. Spam and irrelevant posts invariably creep in unless a stringent monitoring process is set in place. Microsoft Excel Users group have maintained an impressively high quality of discussions whilst enabling the membership to grow to over 25,000. It is a difficult balance to keep. Either the group is small but of high quality, or vice-versa. However, Microsoft Excel Users have achieved both.

Ultimately, each individual LinkedIn Group has its own mini-world and culture. Choosing the right group to join is a difficult, but not impossible, task. As long as you analyse both quality and quantity of discussions as well as the demographics, your content marketing efforts should soon bear fruit!

You can also learn How to provoke good LinkedIn discussions from us.

Images courtesy of LinkedIn

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A content inventory is a bit like a labyrinth. You could find yourself deviating down many paths with little sight of the exit.

And even if you are lucky enough to find the exit before being savaged by a Minotaur, there’s always a chance that you might come out the other end with very little in the form of useable content.

Any content strategist will agree that a content audit is a valuable and vital starting point for avoiding duplicated efforts and streamlining budgets at the beginning of a content marketing campaign.

However, the content audit doesn’t necessarily acknowledge that marketing has taken a fundamental shift. In the past content was broadcast to consumers in a one-way stream of sales messaging, peppered with product benefits and key messages.

That just won’t wash with today’s channel-hopping consumer. A brand will only reach today’s consumer if it does so on that consumer’s terms. Brands need to understand how consumers want to consume their content, where they want to consume their content and what would motivate them to consume that content in the first place.

And that means producing content that will engage with rather than broadcast at consumers. And it means dropping the sales messaging and delivering something which really speaks to the passions and pains of those consumers.

So before investing time and resource into auditing a potential labyrinth of outdated and irrelevant content, consider the following:

Three tips for smarter content auditing:

1) Streamline. Focus in on content categories that have the biggest potential to convert into social objects. If branded video content has always veered heavily in the sales direction consider conducting an audit exclusively around old case studies that could be revisited and refreshed to deliver practical advice rather than heavy hard-sell.

2) Score. Avoid ending up with an endless list of indistinguishable content by evaluating from the offset.  The ROT score assesses whether content is Redundant, Outdated or Trivial on a scale of 1-10. Additional scoring factors might also include the social robustness of content (whether it engages more than it broadcasts) as well as its relevancy to the audience.

3) Record. A glaringly obvious point but ensure every content inventory captures sources and live links to avoid any unnecessary future searches for recorded content.

Econsultancy has a handy Content Audit Template to get things started.

Image courtesy of sviestas under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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LinkedIn has become the corporate equivalent of Facebook. It is difficult to find a major brand that still has not activated its presence on the platform. And yet, being on LinkedIn is not the same as using it to its full potential. Everything Everywhere ticked at least 3 boxes of successful LinkedIn usage. Let’s explore how…

1. Content

It may be obvious but nevertheless worth highlighting: customers follow brands that regularly produce thought-provoking content. Plus, the more often a firm updates its page, the greater the aggregate number of people who’ve been exposed to the brand’s messaging. In other words, regularity increases reach. EE update their page regularly, and there is a variety of content topics: recruitment announcements, product reviews and Q&As for business customers.

2. Community

LinkedIn makes it easy for businesses to grow thriving industry-specific communities around their brand name. Undoubtedly, groups are one of the strongest lead generation and nurturing elements of LinkedIn, providing firms with non-intrusive opportunities to listen and engage with their target audience. EE are building a thriving community around the brand not only by having a separate LinkedIn group, but also by linking to it from the company page.

The group has attracted a diverse and growing community:

3. Thought leadership

Finally, LinkedIn provides opportunities for industry-specific thought leadership. An increasing number of firms are realising the potential of authentic messaging that can be communicated by individuals from the “Influencers” section. Customers are sceptical of corporate, impersonal messaging, and increasingly value authenticity. EE’s CEO Olaf Swantee has attracted more than 30,000 followers. He posts regularly on such topics as advertising, connectivity and innovation, producing content that is in line with other EE’s activities such as the Future Thinking group.

To conclude, LinkedIn is much more than a mere recruitment platform. It has a powerful potential to attract, engage, convert and keep customers, business partners and employees. The tool is there, but are you using it to its full potential?

Read more: 3 benefits of using LinkedIn for B2B lead generation

Images courtesy of LinkedIn

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“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”

Kennedy’s inauguration speech was as relevant to the American people in 1961 as it is to the content marketer in 2013.

Why? Substitute the word ‘country’ with ‘audience’ and you’ll see.

Because a successful content strategy isn’t self-centric. And it doesn’t start by asking what the audience can do for the brand. It starts with the audience and it asks what that audience wants and needs. And then it delivers.

Take a look at your content. How much of what you produce is about your brand, your news, reviews, products and promotions. And how much of your content caters to your customers’ wants and needs?

If your content focuses more on your brand than your audience then your strategy needs a rebalance.

Paul Chaney at Practical Ecommerce recommends adopting a 70/20/10 ratio:

• 70 percent of content should address customer interests and needs. These can be delivered in the form of top tips, how-to’s, Q&As, content curation and useful resources.

• 20 percent of content should be user-generated (UGC), allowing your audience to contribute content elements such as videos, images and graphics and giving a sense of ownership back to the community.

• 10 percent of content should be self-centric and focused around news, product and sales messaging. Your community will soon disperse or disengage if they are bombarded with over-promotion.

By adopting an audience-centric content strategy that starts with building a relationship, giving guidance and providing information relevant to audience needs, there is a greater likelihood of ending with acquisitions and sales. Or, as Ted Rubin calls it in this nifty infographic, Return on Relationship.

Image courtesy of Jeff Dean - then a student at Lawrence College, Appleton, Wisconsin, under a  Wikimedia Commons license.

Infographic courtesy of Smarter Commerce Blog.

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Slideshare is a great and often overlooked platform. Claiming 60 million monthly visitors, it allows users to upload visual presentations and easily share them. Over time Slideshare has evolved into a thriving social media site in itself. Users are keen to ‘like’, download and share presentations and, similarly to YouTube, the site is somewhat addictive. Once you’ve seen one presentation, you won’t leave without seeing three more!

So what makes a good Slideshare presentation good? I decided to find it out by having a look at top 5 all time favourite slide decks on the subject of Technology.

As I browsed through these excellent presentations, I recognised at least three common patterns that any aspiring Slideshare presenter should take into account.

1. Provide in-depth insight

It may sound cliché but content does matter. All top 5 Slideshare presentations provide useful, insightful statistics. Ask yourself: “Would I really want to share this presentation with my friends or colleagues? Would they find it useful?” People love insightful and up-to-date statistics. Depending on industry, it can take merely a couple of months for statistics to become outdated. There is a great demand for fresh insights and you can tap into this demand by doing original research and sharing it on Slideshare.

2. Design eye-catching experience

Having great content is not the end of the story though. Slideshare is a visual site, and, similarly to Pinterest, the platform rewards original design. Ask yourself:

• Brevity: Are my points concise and to the point?
• Simplicity: Are there more than 3 sentences per slide? Is there too much text?
• Accessibility: Is the font size big enough?
• Fascination: How captivating are your illustrations? Do they grab one’s attention?

3. Tell a great story

However, what distinguishes excellent Slideshare presentations from mediocre ones is the author’s ability to tell a good story. Insightful data with great, dazzling visuals will help a lot but they are of no use if there is no story. What is the main point of your presentation? How does each slide contribute towards your big point? I’ll leave you with this simple and yet captivating deck that tells one simple story (and has attracted 1.7 million views). Enjoy!

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Content marketing is on the lips of most Marketing Managers as we head into 2013. The growth of platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram are proof of the way that people are consuming content – shifting to rich engaging visual content.

Our own client analysis shows that 4x more engagement was generated on Facebook when using an image as part of the post compared with any other type of media. Another of our clients has invested in additional resource, bringing the production of assets for their social channels in-house. You only have to look at FMCG brands such as Walkers, Marmite and Kit Kat to see the investment in producing engaging, stimulating image based content. This is particularly important in Facebook where using rich media will help you “play the Edgerank game” and extend the reach of your content. (find out more on Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm)

There are some smart tips nested in this clever infographic below, but here are some Tweetable pullouts for you to share:

Instagram trumps Twitter for daily active mobile users

Tweet

Photos on Facebook generate 53% more likes than the average post

Tweet

Over 80% of pins are repins on Pinterest

Tweet

PicMonkey averages 1.6m visits per day and 4.3m images edited per day

Tweet

Pinterest is the 4th largest driver of traffic worldwide

Tweet

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Facebook has become the ultimate B2C social media marketing platform. It enables businesses to target their audience and create a community of brand ambassadors.

But exactly how should brands go about marketing on Facebook? Jon Loomer has come up with a useful checklist for Facebook marketing in 2013.

Here’s some tips especially worth highlighting:

1. Create a content plan. It will enable you bring about a coherent, comprehensive and convincing long-term image of your brand. A three or six month content plan will also reduce day to day stress of coming up with new content ideas. Instead, you’ll be able to focus to what really matters – engaging with your fans.

2. Create a monthly insights report. A monthly report will help you understand what kind of content your fans love and what is left ignored. Such insight will help optimise your future content and thus engage with your brand ambassadors more effectively.

3. Encourage check-ins. The demand for mobile-optimised content marketing is growing exponentially. If appropriate to your brand, check-ins will help you reach mobile fans who will gladly check-in and tell their friends about their loyalty to your brand.

For more useful tips, see this useful checklist:

Source: http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/12/31/facebook-marketing-checklist/

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With a brand new year stretching ahead of us now is the time to take all those bad digital habits of 2012 out in a big black sack along with the wilted tinsel and scrunched wrapping paper.

And User Experience or UX is the perfect place to start.

In 2012 brands built a clearer picture of the consumer journey and realised that consumers just don’t treat channels as silos. They hop from one to the other and they expect the same consistent experience from start to finish.

Having an excellent in-store service paired with a clumsy, archaic website simply doesn’t cut the mustard anymore.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of those bad User Experience habits to bin; and some good ones to bag for 2013.

1) Ditch the Lorem Ipsum. When developing or redesigning a web page the design should mould to the content and not vice versa. It’s the content, not the design that the user has ultimately come to your site for.

2) Don’t put all your eggs in the homepage basket. Statistics indicate that the percentage of pageviews attributed to the homepage is falling year-on-year, with lower-level articles proving far more popular – indicating greater value spent optimising these templates instead.

3) Don’t stock up on photography. Usability tests have found stock photos that bear little relevance and add no real value to a site can actually frustrate rather than entice users. Better to minimise to only functional and navigational rather than decorative graphics.

4) Forget the fold. Users are now so familiar with scrolling that there’s really no need to squeeze every last bit of content into the upper fold of a web page.

5) Focus on the navigation not the click-throughs. Despite popular belief, the number of clicks a user has to take to reach the required information on a website won’t put them off; it’s more important to ensure the site is easy to navigate with clear signposts along the way.

For more useful UX tips visit UXMyths.com

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Great content requires originality. With 190 million tweets being generated per day, people are looking for genuine insight and overlook bland and overused expressions.

Quite helpfully, LinkedIn have published their analysis of Top 10 Overused Professional Buzzwords in 2012. They include such well-known examples as:

• Creative
• Effective
• Motivated
• Analytical
• Responsible

Compared to their last year’s list, country-specific popularity of buzzwords has changed. Brazil has gone from being “multinational” to “experimental”, Spain – from “managerial” to “specialized” and UK – from “creative” to “motivated”. India has remained “effective”.

When it comes to avoiding buzzwords, here are two useful tips:

1. Find out the buzzwords specific to your industry. Create a list. Check against it any content you create. (Lists like this from D.M.Scott may give you a good start. And if you work in social media, have a read of our blog post on clichés in social media)

2. If no adequate word describes you or your product, why not invent a new one?

Great content requires effort. The explosive potential of social media provides great rewards to effort and originality. Engaging content gets shared, talked about and responded to, raising awareness and helping you achieve your aims.

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