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Mobile content: traffic doesn't mean conversion

5/24/2014

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When it comes to content for your mobile site, it seems there is not a lot of correlation between traffic and conversion.

That's according to research from Adobe and Econsultancy that suggests we need as content marketers need to take a different approach when writing content for mobile sites.
Mobile content needs to be optimised for the task

They found businesses reported that 31 per cent of their web traffic comes via mobile. However, most of the firms (71 per cent) in the survey said they achieve less than one-fifth of overall e-commerce revenue through mobile devices.

In other words, you can draw in people with your mobile content but it's harder to produce something meaty enough to get them to buy.

Or you could look at it another way; optimise your mobile site with content that is all about catching people's attention, rather than stuff that's designed to produce the sale.

So should be thinking about top fives, short snappy blogs or even just a few lines to make people click through to the main website.

Leave the white papers and in-depth features and case studies to your main website or even your social media campaigns.
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Marketing to be dominated by content writing

6/10/2013

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Where does content writing fit into your business's marketing strategy? Wherever it is, brands will have to pay increasing amounts of attention to the area, according to new research.

A European survey of 2,000 marketing students reveals over 80% think stand alone social media and digital marketing agencies will disappear within ten years as the channel becomes a discipline for all marketers.


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Seven in ten believe marketing landscape will be dominated by content marketing or PR thinking. As we have said before in this column, a step-change is taking place as brands realise they have to create a conversation with consumers through content, not just preach at them and tell them to buy stuff with adverts.

Matt Neale, president of Golin Harris, said: "These predictions are not surprising. In fact ten years may be too generous. Today we're seeing digital specialists folded into PR and advertising agencies at a rapid pace. The agency of the future will operate across all media channels, in real time.

"I'd advise independent social agencies to find a partner quickly as clients want agency depth."

What do content marketing specialists think of the findings? We turn to Clare Hill, managing director of the Content Marketing Association (CMA).

She said: "Content marketing is one of the fastest growing media channels and the future looks bright for this discipline with 70% of respondents identifying that the landscape will be dominated by content marketing. Asking the youth market what they think is indicative of the way the relationship between consumer and brands is moving. It is now a far more conversational approach, interactive with a two way dialogue.

"Content marketing is changing the marketing eco system because content is channel neutral, is multi-platform and it needs to be 'Always on'."

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NYSE joins content marketing trend

6/5/2013

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Content marketing is now being used by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to reach out and engage with the public.

It has launched a standalone website called The Big Stage, a photo-heavy site that is more about imagery than a great deal of high class content writing or journalism.

The site boasts an range of content designed to appeal, from 'featured stories' and its 'news desk' to a 'company watch' section and 'innovation in action' page.


There is also a lot of video content, Q&As with a range of NYSE-listed company bosses and a strong social media presence.
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Marisa Ricciardi, chief marketing officer, describes the site as NYSE's "first entree into brand journalism".

"It helps us engage in conversations with our audience and not just market to them," she told Adweek. "I think marketing is best served when it doesn't feel like marketing."

And while there are similarities with the mainstream news media, the aim is not to compete.

"We are not a news site," added Ricciardi. "This is telling brand stories…offering behind-the-scenes access you might not see elsewhere."

It is a clear example of how brands can reach out in new ways through content marketing, engaging with previously untapped audiences and finding innovative methods to communicate with customers.

Image Credit: By The Web President via Wikimedia Commons

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Content marketing extends reach as ad execs tune into benefits

5/29/2013

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Content marketing is growing all the time as interruption advertising falls by the wayside in favour of brands creating a conversation with followers.

Indeed, an April 2013 survey of US marketing and advertising executives by MailOnline reveals 70% of brands and 77% of agencies used content marketing for advertising purposes during the previous year.

According to eMarketer, executives are sourcing the content for their marketing from a variety of angles.


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By Ingridarcher Ingrid Archer (Own work made by spotonvision)
Over half (58%) of agencies obtained branded content from the publishers from whom they purchased media.

Clients were the second most popular origin for content, at 49%, followed by third-party content creators (37%) – that's us!

And agencies are branching out, finally realising that content writing services don't just need to pigeon holed for web copy.

Seven in ten distributed content in digital media other than email or the brand's own website – content marketing is more than just a few words on a company's site.


Why are businesses turning to content marketing providers?

Clearly there is a major change going on as we move away from brands aggressively filling users' space without their consent to a more democratic approach.

Content marketing by its very nature simply helps brands and organisations reach the people they want, while allowing those same people to find them easily.

Put simply, content marketing is a way of putting people with needs in contact with the organisations or individuals who can fulfil those needs.

A recent blog post explained some of the key ideas.

As well as rolling out the old word-of-mouth exposure angle (social media shares) and the (still vital) search engine ranking boost benefits, the author, 
Phil Lauterjung, highlighted this growing trend away from interruption-based ads.

"The focus of your web content must be to educate people so they will get to know you and trust you enough to buy from you. E-mail and direct mail campaigns should be focused on providing a steady stream of information to convince prospects that your products or services offer the best solution for their situation
," he says . 


"Drip e-mail campaigns can even be put on autopilot with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Just remember, an overzealous sales pitch will turn visitors off and direct them toward your competition.

"The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell. You must develop useful content that will help your target audience solve a problem or answer an important question. Your informative content should achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve. If you could watch TV at night and fast-forward through the hemorrhoid cream commercials, would you? Your website visitors feel the same way."


Billy Connolly would approve!

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UK content marketing benchmark survey: findings

3/11/2013

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Content marketing budgets are set to rise in the UK.
Businesses in the UK not harnessing content marketing are fast becoming the minority, a major new report claims.

Virtually all marketers in the UK are utilising content marketing to engage consumers, boost website rankings and improve SEO.

Nine in ten (94 per cent) of UK marketers have adopted content marketing, with the figure rising to 97 per cent among B2C marketers, according to the — Content Marketing in the UK: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — conducted by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and the Direct Marketing Association UK (DMA).


On average, 27 per cent of marketing budgets in the UK are allocated to content marketing and if anything this figure will only rise.

Two-thirds (64 per cent) say they will increase the amount they allocate to content marketing over the next 12 months.

On average, UK marketers use 13 content marketing tactics, whilst their North American and Australian peers use 12. 

The most popular tactics are “articles on your website,” “social media (other than blogs),” and “eNewsletters.”

Improving SEO and site ranking is key, with marketers in the UK, Australia and the US consistently ranking website traffic as their top metric.

The biggest challenge for marketers is producing enough content and creating engaging content strategies.


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Content marketing 'at the heart of ecommerce'

1/18/2013

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"The continued importance of social media in ecommerce has also fuelled the desire for companies to use content to attract and retain customers" - James Gurd, owner of Digital Juggler
Website content is "at the heart" of ecommerce and is integral to digital marketing.

That's according to Digital Juggler owner James Gurd, who told Econsultancy that content marketing is a component part of all online activity.

He believes this is being driven by the increased consumption of online media and the variety of content formats available - blogs, video, images, reviews, social discussions and the rest.
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When you look at the value of the ecommerce market in the UK, it becomes obvious that companies need to tune into the benefits of content writing services.

According to IMRG, the UK online retail market in 2013 is estimated to be worth £87 billion. Within that mobile commerce is growing at a rate of 300% a year (see previous article on importance of mobile content).

Gurd goes on to note that with social media in the picture as well, web content has multiple uses. "It's not just a one-channel entity," he says.

However, he cautioned businesses about pinning all their hopes on content marketing, explaining that "content is not by itself the saviour". 

"For content marketing to work, the inputs need to be good," he said. Indeed one thing we can see happening already is that with so many companies taking a stab at content marketing, there are a lot of poor efforts.

"Content has to serve a purpose and provide a value to the end-user. I personally think there is too much content being produced at the expense of a focus on quality," adds Gurd.

Instead of just "throwing up" blogs, articles and buying guides on to a website, there should be a "coherent" content marketing strategy.
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Online marketing leads ad spend growth

1/17/2013

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"Internet advertising attracted the biggest increase, with a positive net 5.6 per cent of marketing executives saying they had upped their online marketing spending over the final quarter of 2012."
The latest Bellwether survey by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) reveals a small rise in marketing budgets, led by the online sector.

In the final three months of 2012 marketers were confident their businesses would do well, despite being pessimistic about the health of the economy this year.
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Internet advertising attracted the biggest increase, with a positive net 5.6 per cent of marketing executives saying they had upped their online marketing spending over the final quarter of 2012.

Meanwhile, 2013 could also be the year that online marketing loses its preface and becomes simply 'marketing'.

In its 'Trends for the B2C CMO to watch in 2013' report, global researchers Forrester claimed that digital channels are mounting assaults on even the most established traditional media.

It cites the example of YouTube's rise against the advertising bastion of television.

The report argues that ‘digital marketing’ will simply become known as 'marketing' as the various barriers are broken down and the sector becomes more mainstream.

Forrester expects the online sector to be worth around 20 per cent of the total marketing industry, valued globally at £31 billion.

What does it mean for businesses?

Companies will need to think about integrating channels and coming up with a content strategy that applies across various outlets, from websites and blogs, to social media, press and television.

Forrester CMO Corinne Munchbach, told Marketing Week: "Consumers switch from in-store to online, to mobile – sometimes all at once.

"Having separate budgets for each is counterintuitive to what customers are actually experiencing. Logical brands will be able to join this together in a functional way to deliver the experiences customers expect from them."

Find out more about how content writing services and content marketing consulting can help your business.

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Facebook launches social 'graph search' tool 

1/16/2013

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Facebook has announced a new smart search engine called graph search, but  what will this mean for content marketing?
The field of content marketing took on another dimension today (January 16th) as Facebook unveiled a new smart search engine for users called Graph Search.

It could see brands using content marketing and SEO to improve their presence on the world's biggest social network.

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The feature allows users to make "natural" searches for content shared by friends – which can include 'likes' of brand pages and comments about products and services from companies.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says it is not a web search tool and so is not a challenger to Google.

But the search tool is being integrated with Microsoft's Bing, which will step in when graph search fails to find the answers.

"Graph Search is a completely new way for people to get information on Facebook,"  Zuckerberg told a press conference at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park.

It will initially let users search four categories – people, places, photos, interests – before it gradually expands to cover all content.

"Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer," he said, "not links to other places that might take you to the answer."

What does Graph Search mean for content marketing?

Right away, not a lot. But as the tool gradually expands to encompass the whole of Facebook, it will mean a lot more for website content writing and the field of content marketing in general. For the first time, potentially, SEO search improvement will be directly affected by social media posts and content. 


Social media content will be even more important than before, the content optimised for Google remains the benchmark.

As TechCrunch points out, it's a fairly major change. "What's interesting is that Facebook does not shy away from introducing radical changes to its products," the site said. "As always, it focuses on what's best for the user and will stand behind an innovation if it believes that it will improve the user experience."

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OneSpot launches content into ads platform

12/4/2012

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OneSpot launches new platform for turning content into ads, but what does it mean for website owners?
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OneSpot is launching a new platform to allow businesses to transform all their online content, blog posts and social media updates into adverts.

It can use company-generated content, as well as positive external content like social media, reviews, and news articles to create ads.

After ads are generated, a proprietary algorithm uses big data to determine what ads to display and where to place them across all web traffic sources, says OneSpot.

Will it be useful? Well the argument is that content is relevant and interesting, while ads are not.

According to OneSpot, what it will do is target all this relevant content at consumers in a way to ensures it reaches them.

The idea is that no matter how much great content you produce, you cannot guarantee that the right people will get a chance to read it while it is still relevant.

But after all, isn't the whole point of best practice content marketing about building it up from the bottom with no short-cuts like keyword stuffing or, in this case, turning great content into what OneSpot already says is annoying – ads.

So are you just wasting your content? Probably not, as there is a fair bet it will reach people and be more engaging than an annoying advert.

Whatever way you look at it, content stands tall in all this – you still need to be writing and producing first-class content.

However you plan to share it is up to you, but the content still needs to be great.

"Over $16 billion will be spent on digital content in 2012 – blogs, reviews, videos, how-to tips, whitepaper, webinars, and more," says said Matt Cohen, CEO and Founder of OneSpot.

"For every piece of content your business wants people to see, you should have an associated distribution strategy to drive desired business outcomes: lead generation and nurturing, promoting reviews, or brand awareness.

"No distribution channel is as ubiquitous as online advertising. We see a tremendous opportunity to help businesses monetize all their content using the power, data intelligence, and infrastructure of online advertising to deliver it."

OneSpot’s content advertising platform is live with display ads already, but will shortly support other advertising channels, including social and mobile networks.

Will it take off? That remains to be seen, but it with content marketing so important to businesses, it may well succeed.

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CMI study: 86% of B2C organisations invest in content marketing

11/14/2012

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Almost nine out of ten business-to-consumer (B2C) organisations are using content marketing, a new study shows. 

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, 86% of companies are investing in content, regardless of size or industry.

The data comes from B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, which is the first annual survey from the CMI about content marketing in the B2C space. 

B2C organizations use an average of 12 tactics, the study shows. Most popular among these are social media excluding blogs (84%), articles on a company's website (84%), eNewsletters (78%), and blogs (77%). 

The results are not too dissimilar to those of B2B marketers. In a previous report from the CMI, 87% of B2B marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74% that was reported last year.

However, in the B2C sphere, marketers are using mobile content, mobile apps, print magazines, and print newsletters a lot more.

"It's exciting to be able to benchmark B2C and B2B content marketing efforts and quantify differences by marketing type," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI.

"One interesting difference is how each group uses social media. For B2C marketers, Facebook is the most popular platform by far, with 90% of respondents indicating they use this for content distribution. This differs from B2B, in which LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 83% of respondents using this (compared to 51% of B2C marketers)."

B2B marketers are spending a third of their marketing budgets on content marketing, up from a quarter in 2011. Similarly, B2C marketers are investing heavily in content marketing this year, allocating 28% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Additionally, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.

"Another similarity between B2C and B2C marketers is that both groups lack confidence that they are executing content marketing effectively," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "But B2C marketers cite lack of budget as their biggest challenge (23%), whereas B2B marketers are most challenged with producing enough content (29%)."

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