This article delves into the evolution and psychology of the growth of social media, and includes a fascinating gif that demonstrates its explosive growth
Via janlgordon, Judi Singleton, MiniTool Software
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This article delves into the evolution and psychology of the growth of social media, and includes a fascinating gif that demonstrates its explosive growth
While 2016 is shaping up to be the year virtual reality and the Internet of Things went mainstream, it could also go down in history as the year email’s much-touted demise cranked into overdrive. At least, if this week’s events are anything to go by.
Death of email has been a buzzword in the last decade, but it kept beating all odds, how far email will go?
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Content marketing is everything. It's nothing. It's substantial like rock. It's fleeting like the wind. It's both sides of the brain in perfect harmony. It's the brand story. It's the value proposition shown, not told. In other words, it's a tactic with an identity crisis.
Teeehe Content Marketing Institute itself is proud to stack up no fewer than 21 explanations of this burgeoning field, plus six more definitions on another page on its site. I say this not to ridicule, but to highlight the confusion in the marketplace about content marketing. There's not a broadly agreed-upon definition of the field....
Don't you love my great title?
Ok, it's confusing but trust me, this article is not and makes a good job at explaining a simple but often misunderstood truth on content marketing: the intent is important.
Publishing content randomly won't help your brand or company at all. It's publishing content that adds value to your audience and brings it close to your brand or a buying decision.
So not all content is created equal.
Content marketing has an identity crisis. Here's why (and how to resolve it).
Don't you love my great title?
Ok, it's confusing but trust me, this article is not and makes a good job at explaining a simple but often misunderstood truth on content marketing: the intent is important.
Publishing content randomly won't help your brand or company at all. It's publishing content that adds value to your audience and brings it close to your brand or a buying decision.
So not all content is created equal.
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With 22,000+ views SEO for Web Designers blew up thanks to a defined tribal audiences, advocates and luck. Discover tips on how to blow your content up too.
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consuming.
Do you often wake up in the middle of the night saying to yourself that it’s not worth the time and effort. We all do.
Blogs take time to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks meed to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slowly persisting. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint.
One way of thinking about great content marketing is that you are building an audience before you need them. Content builds credibility, trust and followers over time. This earns you the right to then sell them something down the track.
When content marketing and social media emerged there were no tools. Today we have so many technology tools that it’s overwhelming.
But what is great with marketing tools is that you can scale your efforts. It was something I realized with Twitter early on. A few years ago I implemented one software platform that saved me 120 hours a month and it still does.
So what are some content marketing mistakes that many amateurs new to the game are making.
Great Scoop by @Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com. Loved the 10 Item List of mistakes "amateurs" make.
1. Not automating
2. Not optimizing for search engines
3. Not hustling your content
4. Not working on your headline
5. Not experimenting
6. Poor quality content
7. Email List Is Money
8. Not thinking like a publisher
9. Not learning from the innovators
We can even agree with #1 since they are "automating" things like social search and, to some lesser extent, publication. We shortened #7 based on their implication - email is money. So True.
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Hero Marketing: Compete with Amazon shares passion, customer focus, exponential thinking & need to create movements not promotions needed to win online and how SMBs can compete with Amazon.
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Content curation is key for Small To Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) online success & Scoop.it's new Content Director makes curation a marketing reality.
thought provoking, the Content Shock is worth further studying. Hard to argue about how production is far exceeding supply
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There is a new ecommerce creating new "best practices" such as: easy free shipping, new him, her, kids merchandising, social shopping & UGC conversations.
Malcolm Gladwell’s classic book, Tipping Point, identifies three unique kinds of people who make social movements possible: connectors, mavens and salesmen.
Brand advocates blend the strengths of a connector and a maven,
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Can subscriptions help your online marketing smote the invisible SEO giant? Like Curagami subscriptions create immediate engagement with real customers.
Another intriguing piece of ever-changing marketing. The car renting app is a case-in-point in online subscription magic. But you can't go without deeply looking at the "Creating Ambassadors" bullet, details are still building the big picture
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There is a new invisible giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is getting harder and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts and minds online.
Why New SEO So Hard To See
* Google Float & Filter Bubbles.
* Social Media Marketing's Disappearing Act.
* Friends of Friends Marketing.
* Multi-channel Marketing.
* Web's "Fabric" Like Space/Time.
Adding a Curatti blog post at midnight tonight too.
Thought provoking on many fronts. The notion of need of predictive models (and other tools) to link content with visitors.
(From the article): Content Marketing is a tricky idea. You need to create authoritative content, but just enough that community is forming comfortably. Talk to much, in the wrong voice or at the wrong time sand you kill your fledgling community (easy to do).
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Bunch O Balloons Featured on TODAY Show This morning!
Bunch O Balloons, an easy to use time saving water balloon invention, may make $1M on Kickstsarter thanks to great crowdfunding marketing and the new SEO. Team Curagami is in Charlotte at the Search Exchange Conference.
This Curatti post combines a fascinating new tool set capable of making "Editors of Chaos" come true and the story of how a crowdfunding project goes "mega-viral".
Curagami helps form the “Ambassador Layer” every website and brand needs these days. Ambassadors, people who’ve “bought in” to a brand’s mission and want to help, need to be given contextually appropriate “jobs”.
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Content Curation is the "new marketing" & this post shares 6 reasons curating content should be your online marketing's elephant:
6 Reasons Content Curation Should Be Your Elephant
* Easy to curate content for any receiving device (great for mobile / social web).
* Encourages Sharing.
* More Reach Faster.
* Content Curation Great & Subtle Value Add.
* Great way to test.
* Protects valuable modeled digital assets.
How about you? Is content curation your digital marketing elephant? This post helps define content curation and shares 6 reasons why you will be curating more content next year than this:
http://www.curagami.com/featured/6-reasons-curation-becomes-elephant/
Post mentions Scoopiteer @Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
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[Content Marketing, Must Read] Great slides by Rand Fishkin on what makes an effective content marketing strategy. He outlines 5 reasons why your strategy might fail: You believed the biggest myth content marketing ever told the world You made content without a community You invested in content creation, but not in it's amplification You ignored content's most powerful channel: SEO You gave up too fast
How content marketing works?
Get ready for the long, entertaining and highly informative trip. I like the section about "content without a community", a real eye opener.
Excellent and exhaustive punch to the gut of the many "content marketing" myths that exist. I would've added a section on Mark Schaefer's Content Shock, but that 1,000 word post is for another time. Between then (when I write the rejoinder) and now read Rand Fishkin's riff on why "inbound marketing" fails and see if you recognize some of your myths, urban legends and untruths about content marketing.
Love the almost RANDOM case view (see the beard slides) since that journey is so accurate to how journeys start, are sustained and end up in a purchase or subscription.
Also discusses visual marketing tend in a cool way (nope, nope, yes on Google).
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@Jaana Nyström is a great curator and she just beat me to the punch :). When she shared her EPIC journey of using G+ to move from "nobody" to "somebody" I planned to blog about her amazing journey. The content and message was too good to be trapped in comments.
Read this post CAREFULLY as you may recognize where you are on Jaana's timeline of personal brand development. There are several "inside baseball" tips to pay particular attention to including:
* Don't worry about perfection, start publishing.
* G+ is an AMAZING and vastly under used tool (start there add more social nets later).
* No matter what, keep turning the crank (keep going) since the only sin you and your personal band can't recover from is NOT PLAYING.
Great stuff from an amazing curator. What lessons did you learn from Jaana Nystrom? What similar lessons have you learned as you create a meaningful personal brand?
I usually don't envy people, but I do envy @Jaana Nyström a bit for her energy & passion.
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Read on to find out generalist woes, specialist advantages, and 4 benefits to a defined marketing niche..
Marty Note
This post includes 4 benefits of "Niche Marketing" or focusing your business on a segment or persona group that may have emerged "organically". Here are their 4 benefits:
1. Increased Profits
2. Reduced Marketing Costs
3. Greater Trust and Credibility
4. Reduced Competition
Here are 4 more benefits of finding your niche:
5. Content Marketing Is An Option.
6. Easier To Become An Authority.
7. Winning Hearts & Minds More Likely.
8. Coherent Multi-Channel Possible & Cheaper.
No one can effectively content market to more than about 3 things. The fewer things you want to become an authority on, from Google's perspective, the easier it is to understand you.
Google's "spider" deals in math. If your "math" is consistently about X then you stand a chance of becoming an authority on X. Authority status is earned not created. By narrowing your content marketing to a niche or even a niche of a niche you may WIN where you had no chance of winning further up the food chain.
Today’s marketing demands people love you with the expression of that love being their willingness to use their personal brand in your favor. The trap is the more you want to be loved the less likely you are to be loved,
so narrowing your niche and being true to your expertise, passion and love makes it more likely those values will be returned by customers.
Coherence is an overlooked benefit of narrowing your focus.
Coherence in this crazy multi-channel world is a challenge. Your marketing needs to live on a website, social networks, email marketing and video marketing to name just a few of the “channels” a contemporary business demands. Coherence of message and channel is easier when your narrowcast.
Coherence is a flashy word.
Let's remember the fact that for each digital marketing solution you must come with specific data collection JavaScript tag language, then define terms differently as to what constitutes a visitor, a page, an event, a conversion, shopping cart activity, or transactions
No wonder Marty points here to the huge advantage of niche marketing in this coherence dilemma.
"Companies that try to be "all things to all people" have significantly higher costs, never really establish a strong customer base from which to grow, and often disappear before achieving profitable growth. If you're like most people, though, it's really hard to walk away from any potential business. Yet closing the door on some opportunities truly opens far more doors for you in others."
Here´s a good post about the Benefits of Niche Marketing http://buff.ly/1bvuC5A by #kristamoon
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This post shares a story, a story of a piece of content written for @ janlgordon curatti.com. How did Startup Trends 2014 II go from being a laggard at social shares to outshining its brother post (Startup Trends 2014 I)?
Ongoing curation and GPlus provide the answers and proving why we are all content curators now. The piece also shares some "down the SEO rabbit hole" content curation and creation perspective.
Promise to write more "down the SEO rabbit hole" content soon.
Rescooped by malek from AtDotCom Social media |
Most Important Social Media
Friend asked a great question but in the wrong way. Social Media isn't important to me in and of itself, but each social media channel can help communicate marketing messages and thus become valuable and important.
Key is "matching the hatch" to borrow a fly fishing term.
Matching the hatch puts the right kind of content, what Gary Vaynerchuk calls "native content', on each social net when THAT information is important to communicating a marketing message. Here is how I answered:
Depends on what I'm trying to accomplish.
If I want comments and discussion GPlus.
If I want feedback from friends Facebook.
If I want to generally test Scoop.it.
If I want a "set it and forget it" content solution Paper.li.
If I have something happening now or want to newsjack Twitter.
To raise money on creative or gaming projects Kickstarter.
If I want to share videos YouTube.
If I want to serialize stories Storify.
If I want to test an infographic Pinterest.
If I want to do something with audio then SmartCloud.
If I want to create sustainable and potentially "evergreen" content then I use WP blogs. Content becomes "evergreen" based on how it performs (views, shares, conversions).
If I want to sell something ecom then Shopify.
Match the hatch to get the most from your content, your growing social media tribe, your time and content marketing and curation efforts.
It's the singer, not the song. Thrilling article about match the hatch for your content
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What is content curation and how can it help SEO? This post shares how content curation creates more reach faster and protects your Internet marketing.
Content Curation = Most Important IM Tactic
Content Curation can help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when created with care, a sense of the new rules of SEO and commitment. This post, a response to another post, explains what content curation is and isn't, why greate rcontent rearch and testing is possible with content curation and how to add the most important Internet marketing tactic to your 2014 strategy - content curation.
Rescooped by malek from Must Market |
I'm all about Infographics these days, so I decided to break down my new book into some fun stats. Take a look!
Marty Note
Gary Vaynerchuk's latest book is excellent. Gary describes the Thank You Economy as a great "jab" book. He wanted to right a great "right hook" book too, a book about conversion and how to finish the social marketing fight we are all in.
He is aware, via his consulting work, that many view social media as a fad. He wishes them well as they fade off into obscurity (lol). I love his 3 characteristics of a great "right hook":
* Easy to understand (and present) Call-to-Action (CTA).
* Crafted agnostic and beautiful on any receiving device.
* Respects the nuances of the social network for which you make the content.
That last bullet should be the eye opening moment for many Internet marketers. Marketers who have one-sided conversations that don't respect the subtle and not so subtle nuance of platforms they use to communicate their stories will be treated like the spammers they are.
It is not enough, Vaynerchuk explains, to have awesome content. Content must be massaged to the medium. Where once the medium was the message now the medium influences the shape, form, tone and syntax of our stories. To be heard your marketing must speak the right language at the right time.
Will be writing a more extensive review, but BRAVO and KUDOS to Gary for creating writing another groundbreaking book a true "right hook".
Looks interesting. Infographic is a visual leap, add some fun and you have a great resource to read and SHARE
What we need to know as Internet Marketers
Where once the medium was the message now the medium influences the shape, form, tone and syntax of our stories.
To be heard your marketing must speak the right language at the right time.
What are your Top Performing Social Media Profiles?
Gary is keeping us up on the latest trends in the marketplace. You can always learn something from his books and blogs. Great use of infographics and his ways of explaining was we need to know for our businesses about social media.
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5 Internet Marketing Secrets
Some of these 2014 "secrets" such as ecommerce and social media may not feel very secret, but there is still plenty of "blue ocean" in them still. Ecommerce creates great content marketing support for less and less effort (to create the story) so every website should have a store now even if all they sell is their logo merchandise.
Social media is ubiquitous but not embraced. Our recent Ecommies Study of social media for top online retailers (http://bit.ly/1gATp9p ) proved many have social media accounts but few are "social businesses".
5 Secrets Blog Post on ScentTrail Marketing
http://bit.ly/IYZIo8
5 Secrets Haiku Deck
http://bit.ly/1k6uJFu
Interesting is the notion of crowdfunding as a new marketing channel
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Are you reading this on your mobile device? The probability is likely, considering there are currently 6 billion (and growing!) active mobile devices in the world, and companies continue to tailor their marketing to the small screen of your iPhone.
Great mobile / social Tips Scooped by Brian Yanish (@MarketingHits) including:
* Resize your Facebook posts No bigger than 620 x 320
* Choose Facebook Ads wisely
* Make it visual
* Turn up the content
* Get smart about couponing
* Take advantage of Twitter
* Upload to Instagram
* Utilize Email Marketing
My favorite is getting smart about couponing as that tip can make a real difference to your bottom line especially at this time of year.
Be careful not to have "battling coupons" where one deal wipes out another an check coupon websites like Retail Me Not to make sure they are up to date and don't have old coupon codes that don't work anymore since there is nothing more frustrating than trying to get a deal that is dead.
The first phase of the trend towards mobile is in full swing, and it is time to adapt your marketing strategies for it. Resizing facebook ads, making it more visual and so on are the obvious things to think about, but there is also a second revoultion wrapped in the first: The move to (mobile) content marketing.
To oversimplify: Consumers watch big screens, but they touch small ones!
So the marketing communications you put on consumers' phone screens needs to be much more content oriented, something your consumers will voluntarily seek out. Being a service star in getting consumers the right coupon is a first thing to do, but also add levels of engagement and play. Coke did a great example during the London Olympic Games (on Marketing in Motion, use the Find buttom) for which they created a music DJ/mixing app that allowed consumers to build their own soundtrack to the games and send it to their friends.