'Net Features : content marketing

Content Marketing Analytics Available at Informly

Allison Howen — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:47:00 GMT

A new analytics service from Informly is helping small business owners and bloggers optimize their content production.

The Content Marketing Analytics service expands on Informly’s analytics dashboard that was launched last year for small businesses. The service aims to help users build their audience and create content that generates leads.

“A lot of our customers are embracing content marketing and producing regular blog posts on their sites. They all use Google Analytics but it doesn’t really give them the actionable information they need,” said Dan Norris, founder of Informly. “For example they are trying to build and engage an audience but Analytics doesn’t tell them who their audience is. Informly tells them exactly who is converting on their site, what content they consumed and lists their site, Klout score and social profiles to enable them to connect further."

In addition to the people-tracking features, Informly connects to users’ blogs, brings in all of their posts and displays key stats such as views, tweets, likes, backlinks, conversions and more. Users can also sort by any of these metrics to find the posts that are having the most impact. However, Norris notes that onsite analytics is not Informly’s only offering.

“We built Informly originally as an aggregator that showed customers stats from a whole bunch of different places such as MailChimp, Xero etc,” said Norris. “These features are still available so content marketers and bloggers can get their onsite stats right alongside other charts like financial metrics, rank tracking and more. They can even get a daily HTML email that includes all of the charts directly in their emails with no attachments.”

4 Writing Resources for Content Marketers

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:02:00 GMT

Not all of us our Web Hemingways, and not all of us try to be either. But when we’re responsible for our company’s marketing initiatives, we must not only put together coherent sentences, but we must also drive consumers/users/readers to take action (e.g. click through, sign up, read more, etc.).

With that in mind, let’s review a handful of resources on writing and style that can help turn a perpetually blank page into content marketing at its finest.

The Associated Press Stylebook

Considered the journalist’s Bible, the AP Stylebook is handy for any digital enterprise, because it can create the consistency most marketing departments desire. It can also serve as the final voice of authority between coworkers, because it contains resolution to many disputed words, rules, abbreviations, etc. While it’s not much for inspiration, the AP Stylebook, often referred to as just AP Style or AP Style Guide, is an essential reference for writers to create a uniformed content marketing campaign. While this editor, prefers the traditional hard-copy book (with even a preference toward the spiral bound book, instead of the flat binding), the AP Stylebook is also available on the Web and multiple users can be added to a company’s account.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Think tools, not rules for this book by one of America’s most influential writing teachers, Roy Peter Clark. His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. It’s a book any content writer will want to keep on their book, open any page and read again, because the information is valuable and easy to consume.

The Writer’s Idea Book:
How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Screenplays

Thanks to the SEO impact of on-site blogging and links from contributed articles, the Web has made writers out of, well, people whose calling shouldn’t have ever included a byline. Luckily, there are guides like The Writer’s Idea Book that contains more than 400 prompts and exercises to help aspiring writers to generate intriguing ideas and turn them into quality content for company blogs or guest posts.

The Everything Guide to Writing Copy:
From Ads and Press Release to On-Air and Online Promos

This step-by-step guide to writing effective copy for a variety of media including print, Web, radio, trade journals, and much more is packed with tips and tricks used by the pros. The Everything Guide to Writing Copy is basic and more informational than example driven, but it’s a perfect starting point for those newly interested in creating copy that sells.

Check Out these Other Writing Resources:

Blogging Basics: Fighting Writer's Block and Learning SEO

Blogging for Success: Weekend Warrior

Persona-Driven Data In Focus

Administrator — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:42:00 GMT

As part of their upcoming webinar hosted in partnership with Experian Marketing Services, we had the chance to sit down with iAcquire, a digital brand strategy and marketing services agency that offers SEO, reputation management, content marketing, digital PR and social media marketing services.

Here, a team of marketing and strategy practitioners discusses the importance of persona-driven research cross-functionally within digital marketing. Read on to get insight into market research, content, social media and SEO -- and how all of these channels can be driven by persona data:

Market Research

Norris Rowley, Jr., Market Research Manager at iAcquire -- and seven-year veteran at The Nielsen Company -- shares the value research can bring to a business' overall marketing ROI:

Why is market research an important element to the marketing mix?

Marketing is an essential action that incorporates the entire business and is vitally important to the health of any business. Market research views the entire business from the customer's viewpoint, taking into account every aspect of the client marketing mix - from the website (product), distribution channels and engagement tactics.
What areas of marketing can benefit from persona research and how can they benefit?

All forms marketing can benefit from persona research, from on-page SEO to traditional marketing. While some areas of marketing can use persona research in an instant actionable way (i.e. audience targeting and precise messaging) other forms of marketing can use persona research as a pure market research tool to build a strategy upon.

For example, I use persona research as a base for a client's social campaign, mobile marketing and organic search to detail for a client exactly who their audience is and how to engage them correctly. However when I use persona research for brand development or traditional marketing I use persona research to help shape a client's messaging and how they should target the brand to a particular segment.

How can persona data help customers' needs be met?

The persona data provides our clients with a behind-the-curtain look at who their audience is made up of, and how those demographics relate to their products. With that data, clients can better tailor their messaging to target that particular segment of the audience.

SEO

iAcquire's resident SEO, Tom Harari shares insight into organic search driven by persona research:

What, in essence, is persona-driven SEO?

Persona driven SEO is just that - optimizing your content, both on and off site with your audience segments in mind. Are you optimizing for keywords, or for customers? If the answer is the latter, how can you know for sure that you're speaking to your audience's needs and pain points without first understanding who your audience is.

What are five things enterprise brands can do to engage persona-driven SEO?

1. Incorporate SEO into the wider marketing strategy at the beginning, not the end.

2. Challenge your SEO team to compare their audience findings with that of the strategy team - do they align?

3. Forgot antiquated concepts of SEO like meta keywords and keyword density. Instead, look for content that resonates with the personas.

4. Use principles of Latent Semantic Indexing to incorporate semantically related words that support pages' topical themes.

5. Always be testing. Audience research and personas are just the first step. It doesn't end there -- constantly look to test assumptions validate which personas convert better. A/B tests and multivariate testing are crucial to accomplish this.

How can brands use consumer insights to identify link building prospects at scale?

Consumer insights help the marketing team understand where their target audience spends their time online, which in turn means your team knows which publications and influencers are needed to establish relationships with.

Can you use persona data for on-page SEO? If so, how?

Persona data touches almost all aspects of on-page SEO - from informing information architecture decisions, to copy, sites that are built for users to engage with and come back to will do well in organic search.

Content Strategy

Devin Asaro, Content Strategist at iAcquire shares the importance of persona research in the enterprise content game:

Why does the "one-size-fits-all" approach to on-page content not work?

Different clients have different goals for their content, and all websites are different - especially when it comes to the way they engage their audience. A site targeting primarily older users will utilize an entirely different strategy than one trying to engage a younger audience.

How many personas should be targeted when creating web copy? How do you diversify content to fulfill multiple buyer personas?

There isn't a definite rule here. Some companies who offer a wide range of products -Target, for instance - are going to have way more relevant personas than a company like Venus, which has a much narrower target audience. You should target as many personas as are relevant to your audience -but there is a tipping point.

Some personas are in direct conflict with one another when it comes to the content they respond to. Targeting too many personas at once can lead to lackluster, middle-ground content. Go after your big fish.

When in the process should you lean on persona-driven research in the content cycle? What is the first step a business should take?

If you're going to do it right, persona driven research will factor into every strategic decision you make with "enterprise content". Integrated keyword and persona research should be the first step in the content cycle - that comes in the content strategy cycle, way before content creation starts. If you're creating content that isn't informed by that data -either because you don't have it or because you're not consulting it -then you're not really doing persona-driven content strategy.

What type of data is the most important in persona-driven on-page content on an enterprise's website?

Need states are incredibly important, because they should be the inverse of your offerings. If client needs "A", you need to align your messaging so that it reflects the fact that you offer. Figuring out what customers want, and what they need, is essential to persona-driven research.

Do you craft your content with behavior-based assumptions in mind? If so, how do you do this?

You design your site and its content based on how you think the user is going to behave. Luckily, UX is a well-developed field with a lot of research informing what we know about online behavior, so I certainly wouldn't call them assumptions (because you know what those do).

We make research-based assessments for all of our content and UI/UX decisions at iAcquire - and then we test them to see if we were right. If we weren't (or we see places where we can improve) we make adjustments. It starts as an art but it becomes a science. Within our agency, we use tools such as Experian Market Research and Nielsen data to really deep dive into our agency's and client's persona research.

How do you tailor specific calls to action to each persona?

You look for the divisions within that persona that make it complex. Personas aren't individuals - they're types. Look for issues inconsistencies or circumstances that divide the various subgroups within your target persona, and address your call to action there. If, for instance, you know that your persona comprises higher income people of both major political parties, and you're writing a blog post, a question regarding taxes is likely to spark engagement. It doesn't need to be controversial, but it does need to address users in a complex way, or they simply won't care.

If your call to action isn't focused on sharing or engagement, but rather driving action within your site -say, to get someone to sign up for a newsletter, the call to action should offer a benefit specific to that persona's need states. This isn't a difficult thing to figure out if you've done your persona research.

Social Media

Megan Brown, Social Media Strategist at iAcquire unveils the link between persona-driven research and social media:

How do you use persona research for social media?

I seek out data that details the online behavior of personas - what blogs they visit, how much time they may spend on a social network, what they click on and more - which helps brands tailor both messaging and placement in order to guarantee a higher engagement rate. The behavioral and demographic data also helps me decide which social influencers can drive action from these personas, and I create relationships with these influencers to serve as brand ambassadors.

How does digital engagement shift from persona to persona on social networks?

Engagement shifts from network to network rather than persona to persona. Social networks are not one size fits all. This means that certain networks are better for certain tactics brands, organizations or influencers use to engage. For example, Pinterest is visual based -therefore, it is a great platform to engage with your customers through images, infographics and video content. Twitter is better for delivering short, to the point messaging designed to catch a reader's attention - and brands still must leave room for users to add their own thoughts so they will re-share it with their friends. So, networks themselves inherently attract a certain type of persona - however, the demographic or details of these personas may be very different, even if their online behavior or way they consume messaging is similar.

So, networks themselves inherently attract a certain type of persona - however, the demographic or details of these personas may be very different, even if their online behavior or way they consume messaging is similar.

Does an archetypical social persona exist? If so what do they look like and how do they engage digitally?

No, there is no archetypical social persona. Social networks are always changing -- that means how personas use and consume their content is changing as well. Certain alterations may bring in new personas to use social, other changes might turn some personas off to specific social networks or even social as a whole. That's why it is so important to continue to monitor and measure audience behavior and use social listening to your advantage to retain certain personas or capture new personas entering the social sphere.
Why does social media research need to come before execution?

If you don't know who your audience is, what they like, how they consume messaging, where they live online, what types of messaging they prefer, how they access social networks, who they have conversations with on these networks, who on these networks drives action from them.... You're basically throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. Guess and check is a waste of money, time, and energy - especially when there are tools to access and analyze the research needed to create a successful campaign.

Want more information on persona research and digital strategy? Tune into Experian Marketing Services and iAcquire's complimentary webinar, Persona-driven search strategy drives better results on Thursday, March 14 at 2:00 p.m. EST. This webinar will help determine the best ways to build a campaign strategy, ultimately leading to a better customer experience and increased traffic.

Content Marketing Plans Made Simple

Administrator — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:45:00 GMT

Across the World Wide Web, the digerati are absolutely and completely fascinated by the concept of content marketing. But despite a seemingly endless supply of blogs and websites flooding the 'Net with advice, as well as numerous agencies and consultancy groups ready and willing to handle it on behalf of their clients, many are still left awash in buzzword philosophy that just isn't grounded in actual practice.

Website Magazine has put together a resource for those considering a content marketing initiative, containing details on the best course of action for planning the content marketing experience - from audience research to content production and analysis. Let's dig into the details.

Read: Content Marketing Plans Made Simple

Casse-Y Study in Digital Best Practices

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:00:00 GMT

From email marketing and social media to e-commerce and video, self-made fitness sensation and online personality Cassey Ho knows a few things about building an online business.

In fact, using her own handheld cameras and editing skills, Ho uploads her daily workout videos to her growing YouTube fan base of 340,000 subscribers. Her use of digital best practices has increased her online following to more than 35 million total video views and growing 4 million-plus each month. The 26-year-old is considered to be one of the Top Online Fitness Influencers, second only to Biggest Loser’s Jillian Michaels.

With her credentials out of the way, we caught up with the blogilates.com owner and operator to see what other Web workers can learn from her success.

How do you leverage social media to acquire new visitors and keep current ones engaged?

CH: I make sure to post new content as often as possible, and I am always looking to try new types of workouts and exercises.

How do you use email marketing to engage users?

CH: Never try to sell anything! A newsletter should be personal, as if you’re writing a note to a friend. Just keep it genuine and full of good information that people need.

What were some challenges launching the e-commerce side of Blogilates.com and how did you overcome them?

CH: Creating a product line takes lots of development time and testing along with tons of trust. You can’t rely on yourself anymore – there are just too many pieces of the project to go at it alone, so you have to bring people in for help. I had to learn how to manage people and delegate tasks in order to focus on the overall picture. This was definitely a challenge because I am used to doing everything myself.

Editor's Note: Blogilates' checkout is powered by highwire.

In terms of content marketing, do you follow an editorial calendar? How do you strategically place content on the site?

CH: I try hard to stay organized, and I definitely plan the content ahead of time. I have a calendar for YouTube video uploads so that fans can expect to see a video on a certain day. For the blog, I just try to write as often as I can which is about every other day.

How has the use of video grown your business and what advice do you have for other digital companies to leverage its power?

CH: I actually started with video, so I totally recommend to other businesses to try it out and use it. To me, video is the most personal way to connect with users, so I always try to have a new video posted every few days.

How has the use of contests/giveaways grown your business? How do you conceive these and execute them?

CH: People love free stuff! It’s a great way to get fans excited and talking. If there’s a product I love or maybe even something new I design, I’ll announce a fun task for the fans to do and at random, I will pick a winner. People get really into it, and this actually helps build the community as well!

What can we expect from you and the site in the future?

CH: Get ready for a very special fitness community site that will connect hundreds of thousands of workout buddies from all over the world.

Content Mapping for Digital Marketing Success

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:30:00 GMT

Digital marketing agency iCrossing has released a "visual mapping" tool that aims to help to marketers unite a brand's messaging across consumer touchpoints.

iCrossing's Content Map solution helps marketers create consistent messaging and eliminate inefficient content by providing a visual snapshot of a brand's entire content publishing landscape, ranging from a brand's home page to its social media channels. The iCrossing Content Map aligns a brand's messaging to each stage of the customer decision funnel so that brands deliver consumers timely and relevant information. With all the current buzz around content marketing, agencies that develop their own proprietary tools to manage content development and distribution in the digital ecosystem are those that will likely stand the test of time.

"In the era of Pinterest and the age of infographic, brands can use data visualization to become better content publishers," said Karen Pate, Ph.D., vice president of content strategy at iCrossing. "Often the information and tone on a brand's Facebook page don't align with the messaging in its TV ads or email outreach. The iCrossing Content Map aligns organizations under one content strategy plan so that the brand's voice is consistent across all touchpoints and communicates with consumers in effective and meaningful ways."

Pate added that the Content Map identifies content publishing redundancies and opportunities to update stale content.

The iCrossing Content Map is derived from iCrossing's proprietary Insights Platform, which analyzes data from linguistic profiles, market research and audience groups from across Hearst's various properties to provide key behavioral insights. iCrossing uses the Content Map as it devises and implements content publishing strategies for clients across all industries.

Bring Content Marketing Functionality to Your Blog

Michael Garrity — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:40:00 GMT

When blogging first became a thing, it was primarily utilized by online content publishers and bored teenagers. It wasn’t really until years later that their usefulness as a content marketing tool really became evident.

Unfortunately for marketers, blogs were not traditionally built with them in mind, and modern online content marketing often requires greater flexibility in blog creation and management.

Because of this, the all-in-one marketing platform Genoo has released a new blog management tool for marketers and business owners that provides them with a suite of tools for content management, search engine optimization, lead nurturing and social integration.

This blog management tool lets users post and connects relevant content to their blogs, other posts within the blog and relevant landing pages on their websites. Moreover, Genoo’s blogging tool makes it possible for marketers to feature new sidebar content on every blog post, rather than simply putting up static sidebar content on each page, which can include links to other posts, contact forms or other various calls-to-action. Users can even turn all of the content of a single post into different sections with a table of contents that links all of the sections together.

Each blog post can be directly connected with Google Authorship qualifications, which adds information about the author’s Google+ presence, bio and a photo to their blog posts when they appear in Google’s SERPs.

In updating its blog content management tools, Genoo has also integrated lead management capabilities, which allow bloggers to track their visitors, subscribers and commenters and place them into a lead nurturing process.

Beyond Shares; Content Analytics in Focus

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:06:00 GMT

Glam Media, a "vertical" social media company focused on lifestyle, has partnered with SaaS analytics company Moat to measure content engagement and effectiveness behyond common measures such as page views and social shares.

With all the current chatter about content marketing, you would think there would be a virtual flood of solutions to help marketers understand how content is performing - but, alas, there really is not.

Glam Content Analytics however, which is powered by Moat, will help digital enterprises determine just how much attention a user is paying to a particular piece of branded content and how that attention benchmarks against other campaigns. As more and more marketers start leveraging content marketing, and distributing brand assets far and wide through the virtual world, content performance is definitely going to receive more attention.

In the case of Glam's new content analytics offering, the user's attention is examined through focus-related attributes such as whether the user is actively scrolling through the content and how much time is spent with the content in the user’s active browser window, among other factors. All in all, I think you'll probably see just how important this will be to those investing anything in the tactic.

“The industry has galvanized momentum around the notion of content marketing— be it creation, curation, syndication, etc. — as an effective means to enhance consumer connection to brands,” said Luke Kigel, SVP and Managing Partner, Universal McCann.

“The ability to understand the effectiveness of the content itself is paramount, what works and what doesn’t, and what ‘working’ even means in content. There needs to be a mechanism to prove out the power and added benefits of content marketing to drive a client’s business. Glam Content Analytics offers something that has never existed in this form and is sorely needed.”

Content Marketing from a CMS Perspective

Administrator — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:30:00 GMT

If any industry vertical stands to gain from the current content marketing and content development craze, it is the providers of content management software and solutions.

Content marketing has dramatically changed the digital marketing department yet many enterprises simply aren't prepared.

Website Magazine interviewed Ian Truscott, VP of Product Marketing at SDL Content Technologies Division, on the popularity of content marketing among brands, how content helps these brands build trust with consumers, and how marketers can add some sizzle and splash to their digital content strategy.

WM: Why has content marketing become so popular among brands? Haven't digital marketers been using content to drive website traffic and conversions since the 'Net's inception?

IT: I agree, but I think as we see our use of the Internet mature as a business platform and move away from a technical, task based function, we are seeing distinct business disciplines and best practices being defined. Web Governance, Content Strategy and Content Marketing are all examples of things that people have been doing that are now coalescing into these new professions.

WM: What is it about content that helps build trust with a brand? Is there any direct evidence that content marketing results in increased revenue?

IT: That’s an interesting question after your point that “digital marketers been using content to drive website traffic and conversions since the 'Net's inception?” The answer to your question about revenue is a very firm yes – it’s just we haven’t always called in Content Marketing.

I recently read a very nicely written blog post by Theresa Regli at the Real Story Group where she suggested that content sets the scene and the expectations for the brand before people experience it. She writes very eloquently about how she had an expectation about Provence, the sights and the smells, well before she travelled there. This is the role content marketing plays in projecting who you are, and the quality of your service and products.

The fact that we are now recognizing Content Marketing as a business discipline (and have far more tools and data available) means we are also measuring our content marketing success – not just through revenue uplift or website clicks – but through brand sentiment and brand metrics that the big data of social enables us to tap into and are essential as we engage with our consumers across multiple channels.

WM: How should a brand approach content marketing? What should be the primary objective and what's the best way to measure success or failure?

IT: I am a big fan of Robert Rose who writes on the subject of Content Marketing and I strongly recommend his book. I follow his view that the primary approach is to define and then tell your distinct and differentiated story or stories. When doing this, organizations need to take an outside-in approach and put their audience at the center of that story. You then need to figure out the best way to get that story across, based on where your audience is - on a Facebook page, Twitter, your website, an email or a combination of these.

The objective and measurement metric should be no different to whatever reason you are doing any digital marketing – content marketing is not separated from that, it’s a defined tactic that is part of the overall marketing mix. One thing I would say on that though is that those metrics should be considered very carefully as they can be divisive and drive skewed behavior not in-line with the broader business objectives. If for example you measure website hits, then why not just publish a video of a cat playing the piano on your homepage? Because that’s not necessarily going to drive sales of widgets or raise brand awareness of you being a serious law firm.

WM: How does a marketer create "sizzle, flash, and the occasional splash?" in the content marketing efforts? Any best practice guidance you could share from your own or your clients experience?

IT: HA! I like that “sizzle, flash and the occasional splash” - sounds like a great title for a blog post. If I can turn your question around slightly, I think perhaps you need to ask whether your audience wants “sizzle and flash.”

In our own experience we sell Enterprise software through a B2B channel to two primary IT and marketing buyer audiences. The influencers in our market are looking for different qualities in us like dependability, trust and a level of thought leadership that results in a business partnership with us that will remain contemporary and relevant to their challenges in engaging their audience.

Therefore the primary tactic for an organization such as ours is to establish credibility. And we do this through recognition by industry analysts and trade publications; by building commercial credibility with customer case studies/references and technical credibility and by building a community that makes developing on our software becomes an aspiration. And then sharing these stories.

WM: Tell Website Magazine readers about how SDL supports brand's content marketing initiative.

IT: SDL has a range of products that touch the customer journey at various points that we describe as Global Customer Experience Management; from managing and publishing content through our SDL Tridion product, to content translation through our translations services and technology, to our FredHopper content recommendation engine, to gaining insight through social intelligence technology (SM2) and managing the whole campaign and analytics.

Blogging for E-Commerce (Never Too Late) – Part One

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:00:00 GMT

With less than 50 days remaining in 2012's online shopping season, Internet retailers will need to dig deep into their virtual bag of tricks to make a positive impact on sales. While you could increase your advertising budget, accelerate your email sends, and ramp up your social media participation, another way is to start blogging. I know what you’re thinking – isn’t it a little late to start blogging now? No way, in fact, now may be the perfect time to put that keyboard to use in creative retail ways.

The reason? Well, you’ll have something to advertise, you’ll have something relevant to include in those emails you’re about to send (anyway) and you’ll have something to share on the social networks (more on that in part two). But what do you actually blog about and when? That, fortunatel,y is our focus in Website Magazine's two-part Guide to Blogging for E-Commerce.

First, Segment/Expand your Niche

Most retailers we encounter either don’t really think about their buyer at all, or think of them in a very “restrictive” fashion. For example, you don’t just sell roller skates. Rather, you sell equipment for sports enthusiasts, you sell modes of transportation for the environmentally conscious and you sell toys for kids.

OK, you sell roller skates, but the point is that merchants often think of their product as serving only one need or purpose, when in reality, it can serve many (and many at once) – particularly when it comes to blogging. By segmenting and expanding the definition of the product’s potential audience, you’ll not only find new opportunities to sell a product, but also reach out to a far larger audience in the process with content – an audience that in the next few weeks is going to be looking for some creative gifts to give.

It might seem silly at the time, but you’ll be amazed at all of the possibilities to promote a product that emerge when you brainstorm. To brainstorm effectively, you must first know the two rules of the process – all ideas get written down (good or bad) and no discussion takes place. Once you have a starter list, a discussion will be imminent. But spend that time choosing those suggestions you are confident will produce results or are worth exploring more fully in the future.

Second, Prioritize Ideas Based on Value

There will be instances, once the initial research is concluded, of course, that you’ll need and want to know just which of those ideas have legs enough to warrant putting the digital ink to virtual paper at your e-commerce weblog (you can’t do all the ideas, but you do want to create those which will resonate most and drive the most attention/conversions). There are a few ways to do this – and one way not to do it.

Your instincts are important to lots of things – like survival – but never (or rarely) are they accurate when it comes to understanding the mysteries of human behavior (past, present or future). That’s the beauty of the Web. You can understand without question the degree of the Web’s interest in the brainstormed ideas you came up with, the products you are selling and the degree of interest in them (as a category), and finally, how your content ideas and your available products can be used in a content marketing campaign together. Only by accumulating and combining this information can you make this (or any) research matter.

This may seem elementary to most, but you would be surprised to learn just how few merchants actually do the research about their audience, their previous year’s sales winners, and the content marketing that is being employed by their competitors, that is required in today’s competitive Web retail landscape. But why not start with proven winners? Using numerous sources of available data isn’t cheating – it’s just good blogging (er, business). There are some terrific ways to do this and you are likely familiar with them (if not all, then at least some). First, fire up the keyword research machine and determine if there is any related search volume. If there is not, there is little incentive to keep the brainstormed idea or to invest resources in marketing content that will inevitably generate little in the way of sales. If there is a respectable level of search volume, prioritize the idea (and all ideas) based on how much attention might be generated (e.g. number of local queries per month).

There will be content ideas that receive lots in the way of search volume but may not be a great fit for your weblog and content marketing efforts. That’s OK though, because with a little organizational muscle we can start taking these creative ideas to the bank.

Third, Work Smart not Just Hard

There’s no replacement for creativity (and lots of it), and no replacement for taking the time to understand what is going to resonate most with your audience and lead to the most sales. Once you know what ideas (and products) will be promoted and which are most important to the blogging campaigns’ success, you can finally start executing – but not without a plan. Before you start clicking that keyboard to create the next epic blog post about those roller skates of yours, it’s necessary to execute – but not the post itself. The next phase/step is to craft an editorial plan for your e-commerce blog. Lame? Not really. You have a very limited amount of time (and likely limited resources to make it happen), which is why prioritizing content ideas is so crucial.

Working “smart” in your e-commerce blogging campaign starts with developing an editorial calendar. Say for example that you have 50 days remaining in the holiday shopping season (as we do). Your editorial calendar would contain a few of your “heavy-hitting” content ideas in the first few weeks (to make sure that enough product will be in the inventory), and trailing off to include items/products that are cheaper and faster to ship for those last-minute shoppers.

There are literally dozens of ways to create an editorial calendar but working smart by at least considering how interest levels, available products and remaining time play into your strategy, is truly working smarter than harder.

There’s More to Come

Keep in mind that expanding your niche, prioritizing content ideas for your blogging campaign and developing blogging calendars for your editorial team, will serve your business well, but executing the campaign is where a lot of the work comes into play. Website Magazine will publish part two of this article in an upcoming edition of E-Commerce Express. It will focus on actually creating blog posts for Internet retailers and promotional methods for merchant content marketing through blogging.

Content Marketing Amplification with Outbrain

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Content discovery platform Outbrain has launched a self-service offering for marketers looking to drive more traffic to their content assets.

Outbrain's platform essentially offers a pay-per-click model for content distribution. With a daily campaign minimum of just $10, the platform should prove sufficiently accessible to those looking to ramp up their content marketing efforts.

Once a business submits its content (via an RSS reader or individual links), the content appears as an editorial recommendation ("Suggestions for Further Reading" or "More From Around the Web") on publisher sites including CNN and MSNBC. The number of times links are shown depends on a variety of elements including the campaign budget. Outbrain's algorithms ensure that the content is placed only on contextually relevant publisher sites. Customers (publishers) are then able to monitor results via the service's analytics dashboard and manage specific campaign efforts, including their budget.

"Businesses large and small understand the importance of content marketing. Whether it's a Fortune 500 publishing a white paper, or a restaurant framing a great review from a local newspaper and hanging it in their window," said Yaron Galai, Outbrain cofounder and CEO. "Outbrain Amplify enables marketers to realize the full value of their content by exposing it to captivate audiences on some of the top publishers in the world."

Better SEO Through Content Marketing

Administrator — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:35:00 GMT

By Scott Fasser, Director of Customer Experience at Optify

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing are two critical components of inbound marketing and have moved beyond siloed visibility tactics to an integrated strategy to drive high quality visitors and prospects to your website. These are critical components of a company’s core messaging and dramatically affect how these messages are portrayed to bring the right visitors with the highest chance of becoming customers.

Your content marketing strategy will provide the biggest boost to your organic search visibility if you follow these four rules:

1) Know your key personas - intimately
2) Write to all stages of the buy cycle
3) Talk outside-in vs. inside-out
4) Write in the same direction

Know Your Key Personas – Intimately

We all know how important it is to know your customers, core audience and key personas. This insight influences product development, customer service, sales close rates and marketing. This applies directly to the content you create – especially for B2B companies – who usually have a limited content creation budget (time or dollars). The clearer the picture of your personas are, the more targeted your content creation will be resulting in higher quality visitors that are closer to your ideal prospect.

In order to make the persona work actionable for your keyword and content strategy, we answer the following questions for each persona:

• What are the main types of business problems the persona typically needs to solve?
• How does your product or service provide solutions to these problems?
• What are some specific tasks the searcher wants to accomplish?
• What are some sample search queries the persona might use?
• What can the site provide that will cause the searcher to accomplish this task?
• What is your business goal for the visitor? Lead gen? Newsletter sign-up? Demo?
• How will the searcher be motivated to complete this business goal? i.e., what’s the offer or incentive? What is the call-to-action?

With this intimate knowledge of your audience in hand, you can craft more relevant keyword and content topics. The following is an example of the matrix we build for each key persona to help develop keyword and content strategies:

Write to All Stages of the Buy Cycle

A lot of B2B websites build content around their brand and products/services. Obviously, this is super important when people discover your brand to move prospects towards a lead and sale. However, this focus leaves out the much larger potential audience (your Key Personas) of those who don’t know your brand and are looking to solve a problem, looking for companies that are in a category or are comparing other brands for consideration.

Here are the four main stages of the buy cycle to build content for and the appropriate types of format for each:

Today’s B2B websites must get out of the role of simply a glorified brochure for the company’s products and into the role as the authority in your industry. This is the best way to achieve organic visibility success. Writing to all stages of the buy cycle helps you achieve this.

Talk Outside-In vs. Inside-Out

How you talk about yourself and market yourself, dramatically impacts how well you are found via organic channels – especially SEO. If your website is driven by a brand perspective that creates new phrases to describe what you do that is unique to your communication, you are not creating a true differentiation in your product, but new words to describe something that prospects don’t understand. If you have a large marketing budget to create searches for these new words, great. But most companies – especially smaller companies – don’t have this luxury.

We see examples of this tension between what the brand marketers tend to want – unique concepts to describe their positioning – versus what the direct marketers tend to want – clear language the speaks to the category and specific solutions that are high traffic search terms – at all types and sizes of companies. Here are two examples:

A major marketing automation company has positioned themselves as a provider of “Revenue Performance Management” software. This term could mean many different things to different functional perspectives, but the core term for this category of service is marketing automation. “Revenue performance management” has about 590 searches in Google in North America per month while “marketing automation” has 14,800. This tells us that marketing automation is a better known term and more people are looking for this type of solution than “revenue performance management.”

Another recent example is an agency that describes their custom content management system as a “publishing strategy” capability. They rank very well for the phrase “publishing strategy” but have had zero visits from the phrase because very few people are searching for it whereas content marketing is a very hot topic right now, has a much higher number of searches and fits the agencies core capabilities very well.

The lesson here it to review your current and future messaging from the point of view of a persona that does not know about your brand, focus on true differentiation/value proposition and create content that they will understand without needing an explanation. Finding that balance between pushing new concepts and terms vs. serving the market where it exists today is an important input into your content marketing planning.

Write in the Same Direction

Content creation and SEO is no longer limited to the marketing department and copywriters. Blogs, social media, press releases, video, podcasting, etc. has created a plethora of ways to easily publish content to your company and other industry related sites. Profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SlideShare, Pinterest, Google + mean that there are MORE places to fill with content. All of this communication impacts your brand and visibility – positively or negatively.

One of the most important things you can do to amplify your content strategy is to get as many people in your organization to understand how their work can impact the SEO program and what they should to contribute. By giving them the education and the game plan for what key messaging and keywords are reinforces the central promise of your business.

Here is the approach we have found successful:

• Get executive sponsorship to back your SEO/Content initiative. Without a strong top-level executive supporting this process, you will run into major barriers. Assign someone in marketing as the leader of the effort.

• Assemble a tiger team of people from different parts of the organization including: Marketing, Editors, Web Development, Social, PR, Sales and Executive. Include them in the persona development, keyword recommendations and content strategy development process.

• Build a list of blog, article, whitepaper and webinar topics that align with the keyword strategy. Create an editorial calendar that aligns the proposed topics with keywords. The team leader should manage this list.

• Open up the opportunity to become an official company blogger to the greater company. There are many people in your organization who are currently writing or would like to write and boost their own profile. Each one of these individuals also has their own social network that they can publish to when they write.

• Baseline metrics around organic visits, engagement, leads/business goals by source, size of social networks, track individual story syndication, etc. This topic alone is an entire whitepaper!

• Meet with the greater blog team monthly, review results and celebrate those who have seen the most engagement and syndication (we give out Amazon gift certificates). • Rinse, lather and repeat. Organic visibility through content and SEO must become part of your company DNA to be successful – it is NOT a one and done project.

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Changing the core messaging and approach to content creation is not easy. The larger the organization, the more challenging it is to get approval and buy-in to build a sustainable content marketing program that will significantly move the needle in SEO. However, once the process is defined and rolling and you start to see the results, this type of marketing will be the foundation for sustaining and growing your business for years to come.

About the Author: Scott Fasser, VP of Customer Experience at Optify has over 20 years of experience in launching products in diverse industries such as online marketing, digital media, e-commerce, and electronic entertainment at companies such as Optify, RealNetworks, Domain Strategies, Amazon, Avenue A, and Sierra On-Line.

Content Marketing Your Way

Linc Wonham — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT

You have a strong, well-defined brand identity that suits your company’s values and serves the image you wish to portray. Your products and services are valuable, well-researched and carefully aimed at a specific audience.

You have all the pieces in place to succeed in your business venture, so there is no better time to begin a successful content marketing campaign to attract a potential client base to your company, your brand and your products.

What is Content Marketing
The Content Marketing Institute has put together a fantastic definition that I will borrow here: To engage in content marketing is to create and distribute “relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

In other words, content marketing is the act of communicating with your target audience in a way that does not involve selling to them directly. Rather than pitching your audience on your products and services, you are providing them with informative content that allows them to decide for themselves that your products and services are exactly what they are looking for. Content marketing represents an invaluable opportunity to educate and inform your potential client and customer base, allowing for a more engaged and intelligent interaction with your brand.

Forms of Content Marketing
Content marketing is composed of many aspects, and in a successful content marketing campaign, these various parts of the campaign work together to engage your target audience. Content marketing can take the form of blogs, social media strategies, e-books, whitepapers, case studies, newsletters, reports, custom publications, podcasts, videos, webinars and infographics.

The most successful content marketing campaigns involve several of these forms, all working together in tandem to communicate a consistent message to your audience. Members of your target audience will each engage with your brand in a variety of different arenas, so using several different forms and techniques ensures that your content marketing strategy reaches the widest possible audience.

It is also advised to tailor your content and corporate message subtly, depending on the form that the message is being delivered, to more successfully and accurately target the needs of certain constituents of your audience. For example, you may find that you fine-tune your blog content slightly to appeal to a specific online community, such as mommy bloggers, whereas the content you present via social media may be designed for younger, single professionals.

Effective Content Marketing
The key to an effective content marketing strategy is to make sure that the content you produce will engage your audience, will be valuable to them and will ultimately increase their ability to intelligently interact with your brand and the products and services that you offer through it. The content that you offer should be easy to read, relevant to the interests of your audience, and provide them with valuable information that they are actively looking for. Well-written, thoughtful and well-placed content is essential to the success of your content marketing campaign.

Content Marketing as a Call to Action
Content marketing is essentially about ideas. Your brand, your company and the products and services that you offer are essentially extensions of that idea.

The content that you create and offer to your target audience should engage with the ideas that fuel your company's mandate and products. Always keep in mind that the end goal of any content marketing is to spur your target audience to action.

You have a unique opportunity through content marketing to communicate your company's vision to your target audience. The more that your audience learns about the concepts behind your products and services, the ideas that inform your corporate mandate, they should be all the more inspired to engage with those ideas.

The Practical Benefits of Content Marketing
Many of the quantifiable, palpable benefits of content marketing are laid out beautifully in this infographic (which is a fine piece of content marketing in itself). First and foremost, content marketing drastically increases your brand's visibility. Having a blog on your company's website will increase your traffic 55 percent. Even more impressive, the number of inbound links you will get will increase by 97 percent.

Your brand, and your brand's message, is also given a much wider reach via content marketing. A blog with regularly updated content will give your site 97-percent more indexed links and a staggering 434-percent more indexed pages, increasing your Google page rank and SEO profile very positively.

Perhaps even more importantly, content marketing campaigns have a tangible impact on the way that your target audience behaves. Sixty percent of Facebook and Twitter users are more likely to recommend a brand that they follow on social media. Sixty-seven percent of Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands that they follow, and blogs are shown to influence purchasing decisions 63 percent more than magazines.

Content marketing is an invaluable tool when it comes to not only influencing the way that your target audience perceives your brand, but also in the way that they then choose to interact with your products and services. With a thoughtful, well-executed content marketing strategy built on high-quality content, your brand and your business will succeed online.

About the author: Matt Goulart is the founder of and lead consultant at Webstar Content, and can be reached at Matt@webstarcontent.com.

nRelate Publisher Network for Content Marketing

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:15:00 GMT

Content marketing and recommendation engine nRelate just announced that it is now servicing over 20,000 publishers.

Nrelate offers widgets which help publishers to showcase content and increase engagement. The platform offers two widgets to showcase related and popular content, a dynamic unit called the nRelate Flyout which displays related posts when a readers get partway through an article, as well as in-text linking features.

As content publishers are always looking for ways to increase pageviews, which nRelate suggests its products can help with at the tune of a 5-12 percent increase, the platform is worth a look. nRelate also offers some monetization solutions for WordPress users, as well as those on Blogger and Tumblr in addition to a standard JavaScript integration

"At nRelate, we define success not only through analytics, but by the contributions we are making to meet the changing needs of online publishers, marketers and consumers," said Neil Mody, founder and CEO of nRelate. "Reaching 20,000 publishers in our network is an important testament to the growing significance of content marketing. This is a win-win for all parties. Brands are increasingly using platforms like ours to keep their customers engaged through content; publishers are looking for new monetization opportunities; and consumers like Internet experiences based on their interests."

Below is an example of nRelate's related content widget:

Drive Higher Engagement with These Content Types

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:00:00 GMT

A Web marketer's job can be made much easier when meaningful and valuable content is available to promote.

There is no shortage of platforms on which to promote content, or channels through which to promote your content, or ways to construct messages about your content.

But where many Web professionals fall short is in the assembling of the content itself. Too often, online workers will recycle dated material, tired messaging and straight-up boring content. On the other hand, when you have content that by its very nature leads to deeper levels of engagement, it will show in the volume of conversions.

So, what types of content drive engagement?

It is likely that they are already at your disposal and, if not, you should start creating it. There's actually quite a bit of content that you as a Web marketer and search engine optimization professional should have in your asset library. Videos, images, interviews, product manuals – just check out WM’s article on knowledge-base optimization. But many content types don’t really lead to high levels of engagement (return visits, more pageviews, additional downloads), so it's important to accurately know the value of your content assets.

Let’s look at a few vital content assets that all marketers should be regularly promoting on social networks and private forums, within email newsletters, on your own website, through display and search-based advertising and, of course, within the Google and Bing natural search results.

Product/Feature Releases: There seems to be a general feeling in our industry that it’s not wise to be overly self-promotional. I agree in some respects but disagree in many others. It’s hard to argue, particularly when it comes to those with an established audience, that there remains a need to notify users of advancements about your business. Case in point – product/feature releases.

Not only are they a powerful way to keep messaging fresh and compelling, it’s also worth mentioning and should be in your lineup of options to promote content when the aim is to drive engagement. People like “new” and recently added features, and products definitely fit the bill. The key to driving engagement with product release-focused content is to carefully select the platforms on which to promote that content. For example, product releases are ideal for social media followers but not great for cold prospects that can be reached elsewhere.

Webinars/White Papers: Marketers jump at the chance to promote a webinar or a white paper. The reason is simple: It’s easy – easier than nearly any other form of content promotion. Production of these content types aside, buyers are naturally drawn to webinars and white papers because they provide information, meaningful/valuable insights that can be immediately used.

That’s one of the things that the three content types featured here all provide – valuable information. Webinars and white papers are perfect for nearly any channel (social media and search) but can be most effectively used in advertising, when the challenge is to educate, entertain and inform in a matter of seconds. When you show up with something as valuable as free information, the likelihood you will generate more clicks than the competition is all but guaranteed.

Feature Articles: The term "content marketing" is poorly defined. With so many opportunities to promote content and so many formats, it’s not uncommon that marketers opt for the fastest solution, and that is rarely the feature article. If you’re staffing a team of writers, or are skilled at producing/publishing content, then it would be a shame not to leverage feature-ready, long-form articles (starting at 800-1,000 words).

Search engines give preferential treatment to long-form content over short-form – at least in my experience – so dedicating yourself to regularly producing information in this manner will serve you well. Long-form, insight-rich content increases the time on site (and even page views) and drives sharing and additional on-site activity, particularly when linking to your own content. With the exception of advertising, features articles can be used within any promotional channel – particularly in search and social media.

Content is king and the level of quality does matter a lot, but marketers can give themselves a leg up by focusing on the types of content that have proved they can deepen engagement and increase conversions.