Category: Content Marketing

“Let’s meet again for a coffee.”
“Yeah, sure. Great idea!”
“Friday night, then?”
“Sure, let’s keep it on Friday.”

Does this conversation seem like taken from one of your last meetings? If yes, the person is already interested in you and wants to take it ahead. Well, the world works like that. You meet people, you share your views, some of them like your opinions and some don’t. Some of them become a part of life, for a long time to come. Because most of the businesses run in a real-world scenario, the same is true for the businesses.

The success of every business does not only depend on the quality of your work but also how well do you communicate your ideas, make a good content strategy.This makes having a good content strategy one of several content marketing challenges.

Communication becomes even more of a crucial factor in content marketing because here all you have to do is convey your idea in the most useful form to the reader. The reader is already looking for a solution, and if you could convince him/her that the solution you are offering is exactly what he/she needs, the game is on.

Content strategists do always take the buyer’s persona into account while creating a content strategy. However, next time when you are working on your content strategy, ask yourself a question- do you really understand your target audience?Does your content strategy convert visitors to customers?

Image Source: aidenmarketing.com

I am requesting you to ask this question to yourself because the personalized content is the soul of the content marketing and if you don’t understand your target audience, you won’t be able to design the content accordingly. In the end, it’ll be generic in nature, without providing the relevant information to the relevant set of people.
Again, I ask you a question – Does your content strategy really differentiate a new reader from a returning visitor, does your content strategy convert visitors to customers? If not, probably you are also creating generic content irrelevant to everybody.
As harsh as it sounds, you are doing no good to anyone.

How to Generate Traffic by Differentiating between a Visitor and a Customer?

At the most fundamental level, both are looking for information. Information that can solve certain problems of theirs or that can add value to the way they work. The difference between both kinds of readers is what they want from the information.

What does a First-Time Reader want?

Your first-time readers come from the search engine results or the shared social media content. They aren’t very familiar with the kind of work you do, and most of the time they aren’t even interested in knowing you. They simply want the information and get themselves out of it. However, that is not true for every first-time reader. Some of them become genuinely interested in your work and want to bookmark you, and would like to visit you again for more information.

First-Time Reader
1. Comes across your content usually by a search engine or a social media post share
2. Usually looking for basic and fundamental industry information
3. May or may not bookmark your content based on the quality of your content and his/her approach towards the industry
4. 95% of the first time readers will never return to your website.

What does the Second-Time Visitor want?

The second time visitor is already familiar with your content and is on the way of taking you as a credible source of information. However, the visitor is looking for more in-depth analysis, trends, industry relevant information and thought leadership based content. In simple terms, the second time visitor is asking you for more “commitment”. A comparison between a first-time reader and a second-time visitor would make it even clearer:-

Second-Time Visitor
1. Comes across your content by newsletter or your website for more in-depth information
2. Looking for in-depth analysis, trends and tools
3. Has already bookmarked your content and on the way of considering you a credible source of information
4. 96 % of the visitors are not ready to buy your product.

The key to conversion from a first-time reader to a second-time visitor and ultimately to the buyer is to provide a genuine, useful information to them and establishing yourself as a credible source. This will work only if you have a very strong content strategy In doing that, personalization is the key. However, no matter how informative and well organized your content is, it is not going to be read completely by everyone. That’s a harsh reality. Well, let’s talk about it in a bit details and also how to deal with it.

How Much Time a does Reader give to your Content Piece?

• Majority of the readers leave your website in less than 8 seconds
• If you are not able to engage the readers in 59 seconds, they are not going to read your content any further
• 70% of the Facebook users make comments solely based on the headline of the post.

Harsh. Isn’t it? But that’s the reality. Life is fast-paced and not everyone is going to read your whole content, but you have to make it work for those who read it completely. The approach towards your content and the time dedicated to your content is different in your loyal and non-loyal readers. This is clear with this chart:-

Image Source: s3.amazonaws.com

If anything that is clear with this graph is that you need to establish a sense of credibility in your readers to get their valuable attention. Then only, you get to talk.Make your content strategy convert visitors to customers.
But, the real question of how to do that? So, let’s talk about it:-

How to Convert Website visitors into Customers with your Content Strategy?

You need to ask these questions while drafting your content.

• Is your content credible and original?
• Does the article have spelling, grammar, or factual errors?
• Have you written it for users or the search engines?
• Have you edited?
• How do you see your article – story, essay, or mere encyclopedic representation of facts?
• Does the article work as a great resource with external links to good articles?

Image Source: blog.theenginuity.com

And as you have the answer to all these questions, you need to:-.

• Keep all visuals (photographs, graphics, and video) clean and professional. Do not use the images which are out of context. It distracts the reader.
• Keep it error free. There should not be any grammatical error, spelling mistake or any typing error. It doesn’t only raise the question mark on your credibility and authority of the field, it acts as a great distraction for the reader.
• Draft your article, like you are really talking to someone and helping them solve their problem.
• Make use of content marketing resources.

Image Source: i.pinimg.com

Voila! Now, your content is ready to fetch you the readers, traffic and the buyers. However, you will need some patience to get there. Content is the most effective tool for marketing, but it can take some time to show its effect. After an appropriate amount of time,check your ROI and ask yourself again-Does my content strategy convert visitors to customers? How much time, you ask? Well, why don’t you take a look at this article for your questions – How long do I need to do content marketing before I see results?

Technology evolves and so does the content marketing industry. Content marketers around the globe are working hard on creating unique content every year. According to the 2017 benchmarks and trends report from CMI, more than 60% of the B2B marketers reported that their content marketing strategies are more effective than the previous year.  In this blog we want to talk about the content marketing trends of 2018 that we think will surpass the previous years.

Some of the major content marketing trends of 2018 are:-

1. Video Content will supersede all other formats

Video seems to be the future of content marketing. Content marketing through video has been growing by leaps and bounds. This, in fact, is a very powerful tool for you marketers to get connected to your audience and is also revenue generating. According to Wyzowl statistics, 63% of businesses have started using video marketing in 2018.

Out of those 82% of businesses feel video marketing is an important part of their strategy. Video content marketing is progressing rapidly and will reach new heights sooner than we think. This trend is fueled by 83% of businesses believing that video marketing gives them a good ROI To put an emphasis, we will share across more reasons that will convince you of the effectiveness of video marketing.

Check out our blog on The Rise of Video Marketing in 2018

a) A video guides the audiences comprehensively through their customer journey.

Targeted video content marketing helps the audiences at different stages to connect with the brand better, right from when they are aware of the product to the time when they actually consider buying it. You will get a clearer understanding by looking below at our videos on Volvo.

b) Video content marketing is solely based on the needs and wants of audience

Video content marketing is super successful because it understands the problems of audience and solves it too.

c) It is engaging, educational, fun and also inspires people.

When it comes to providing true value to the audience, video content marketing is a pro at it. It provides valuable information that helps people out rather than just focusing on the brand’s agenda.

You will get a better understanding by looking at what Volvo offered.
Volvo truck’s popular featuring Van Damme and Enya soundtrack has been loved by many for the incredible stints and overwhelming music.

Now we will talk about how Volvo has smartly designed a video marketing funnel so as to effectively reach out to all its audiences. This is exactly where we will explain how video content marketing touches different phases of the customer journey.

So the first video is at the very top of the funnel, basically to make the audience aware of it.
Here, Volvo is not trying to sell their product/s, but rather they are trying to get their audience engaged with the brand. The Epic Split is one example, as is The Hamster Stunt, which features a hamster driving a truck through a dangerous quarry. This ad generated millions of views through organic and paid search on social media because people have been simply amused and amazed at the wonderful concept. Have a look at it yourself.

The second video is in the middle of the funnel.This basically connects with the audience that is contemplating on taking the product.
The brand offers interesting and educational product videos for each of their truck ranges. These videos give a complete picture of the features, benefits and design aspects of the product. This example, of the Volvo FH series, uses a blend of live action and animation to give viewers a comprehensive understanding of how the trucks look and function.The third video is in the last stage of the funnel. This basically connects with the audience that has decided to take the product.

Volvo’s FAQ videos make it easier for the buyer to differentiate between its products and competitors and simplifies the buying process for the users. These videos are called _One Minute About _that are informational and give details on the automatic traction control of the trucks that it offers. These are handy for customers who have active queries. You can have a look at one of the videos here.

2. Internet of things is taking the audience away from the screen

Customers now no longer have to depend on their computer screens to get content. Internet of things has made content so easily available to us that we can be hands-free while we get useful content.  For example, Amazon’s voice service Alexa is a direct doorway to some fantastic content. Most of the B2B companies use Alexa to build traction and generate leads through content marketing. You will get a better understanding through the examples below.

Marketing School

Neil Patel has smartly used Alexa to give 10 minutes of actionable marketing advice every day. This is easy enough to listen to while you’re getting ready in the morning or for a quick break in the middle of a Netflix binge.

3. Most of the brands will embrace personalization

Every customer is different and so are his/her needs. With evolving businesses, strategies and customers it is important to deliver an experience that is flawless. This experience should be unique and should only cater to the needs of that one individual or a set of individuals with similar needs. Generalization of content is a big no in the content marketing industry.For this most companies use content marketing resources and AI in content marketing.

In a July 2016 research by Forrester Consulting(commisioned by Persado), emphasises the rising significance of personalization in the emerging content marketing sphere. When a group of senior marketing executives were asked about their approach to personalized marketing, 67% said they used behaviour-based data to develop content based insights and emotions, the second-most popular answer.

Most content marketers like you would use content personalization as a significant tool in their marketing options. The key is to not go overboard and craft overly personal messages that might creep out your audience.

Instead, it is to know what are the current and potential challenges that they have, and how can your brand solve the problem and help them to move ahead.

A perfect example of personalization is what the brand Vidyard did. Vidyard’s Kyle Jepsen and his team took personalization to a whole new level. The video that we will share below shows Kyle addressing individual customers with their specific needs. They could have easily generalized the script and just changed the names, but they chose not to.

Have a look at it yourself 🙂

4. Surge of content distribution

In the bigger scheme of things, content creation is just half the battle won. It is content distribution the other half that makes your content strategy an overall success.

Not having a proper content distribution strategy is a big no-no in the content marketing realm. Because there is a lot of content that gets produced every single minute.

This infographic from Domo explains just that.

5. Rise of influencer campaigns

One of the top content marketing trends of 2018 will see many brands aggregating influencers to attain their marketing objectives. These influencer groups have the potential to reach out to a wider set of people.

Content marketers like you will use influencer campaigns for building digital word of mouth. The aim of these influencer campaigns would not be confined to promotion, rather it would focus on building a relationship, trust and experience.

Hence they plan to strengthen the beliefs of their audience through referral programmes, advocacy loyalty.

The influencers can be broadly divided into three groups: mega-influencers (usually celebrities), macro-influencers, and micro-influencers.

The below example explains clearly as to how influencer marketing solidifies a brand’s value and establishes a trust factor in the minds of its audience.

Old Navy
Old Navy, associated with social media influencer Meghan Rienks to appear in a series of promotional posts on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

In the videos, Rienks shows fans how to style outfits for different occasions (e.g., a holiday party, and big date night) using pieces from Old Navy. Rienks is extremely popular for her comedy sketches and lifestyle content. She has a huge follower base on social media, which is equal to a whopping 1.3 million Instagram followers and 2 million subscribers on her YouTube channel.

A post shared by oldnavy (@oldnavy)

Trends are predicted on the basis of data gathered from industry, but trends are not to be worshipped as the holy grail. It is important for you and your brand to do your own research.

You should evaluate if these trends are beneficial for your brand. Therefore don’t just simply follow the herd. Keep an eye on the content marketing trends, data and statistics, and integrate them only you find them useful.

With this, we have come to the end of the blog. Hope you got a good understanding of the upcoming content marketing trends of 2018.

Happy Writing!

Content is king
Content is everything for online marketing and marketers like you and I are looking out to create fantastic content every day. Because we put in so many efforts and so much time, we expect outcomes that make our time and efforts spent worthwhile. That is why most of the marketers including me do not only rely on the traditional content discovery engines. Instead, we have befriended a variety of other content discovery tools.

Keep reading to know about them…

The New-Age Content Discovery Tools

There is a wide array of real-time content discovery tools that help in fetching great content, that can be shared, curated and repurposed. Since these tools have a “social” angle to them, therefore they will be quite handy for marketers like you. You will be able to identify trending content aligned with topics or entities you are tracking. You will be amongst the first few people to share that content and also add to the ongoing conversation. This content will be extremely valuable to both your existing and potential users.

We will talk about some of the best content discovery tools as content marketing resources through this infographic.

While you discover great content using these content discovery tools, make sure that you have a documented content strategy and you stock it properly in an editorial calendar. To know how to make one click on this Editorial Calendar.

Let’s discuss the some of the best ways to use LinkedIn for business and LinkedIn marketing strategies, but a story is always a good starting point for a discussion. Isn’t it?  So let’s first start with the story of how LinkedIn came into existence,  its philosophy and the motive behind its start.

So, here we go…….

Right at the time of inception of the dot-com bubble, when Reid Hoffman pitched the idea of Linkedin venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, he made sure that his idea was not confused with just another social network. His idea was unique in the sense that it targeted the professionals in different industries.

People spend years in building connections in their professional life. However, most of them are lost with the passage of time.

Hoffman realized how important was it to preserve the connections and networks established during work.

After all, businesses are not only about what you do; it’s also about who you know.

With the foundation of Linkedin in 2003, the Linkedin team was clear in its approach to first work on the network rather than the product itself.

In its first year, Linkedin looked something like this.

Image Source: thenextweb.com

Within 2 years, Linkedin crossed the number of 1.7 million subscribers.

At present, there are more than 500 million Linkedin users in 2017 

Why Linked Marketing Solutions should be an Important part of Your Marketing Strategy?

Because Linkedin is the biggest professional network on the earth with 500 million users.There are several  best ways to use LinkedIn for business. It provides you with the opportunity to reach out to the most relevant segment of users for your products.

4 out of every 5 Linkedin subscribers have the ability to influence the decision making of their companies.

That’s huge. It means that you are already dealing with the most prominent targets and well-segregated target audience based on their business requirements.

Linkedin is a tool, used by professionals to get the business insights and learn and adapt to the new solutions to their problems. Keeping that in mind, the chances of reaching your content to the highly specific audience is huge.

Image Source: business.linkedin.com

Different sections of personal and company profile add the reference to the relevance of your target audience. That is the reason, Linkedin is the most used Social Media tool for brand awareness.

What are the Best Ways to use LinkedIn for Business?

1. Content is Important

In any form of content marketing, content is the most important thing to start with.

You should be careful that the information that you share is relevant and useful to your target audience. If not, the chances of your content getting unnoticed are high.

Image Source: content.linkedin.com/

Make sure that the content you share gives away about your company culture.

“People don’t buy what you do, but why you do it”
-Simon Sinek

Also, provide the insight about changes in the industry and how do they affect your target audience. The most important thing to remember in the best ways to use LinkedIn for business is to convey the vision to solve their problems or make things easier.

2. Optimize for Search

Where there is content, there is search optimization. Search optimization today is not only about stuffing keywords in irrelevant contexts.

Search optimization at present is about adding value to your reader.

Provide relevant facts. Add the most useful information.

Describe in detail about the topic; you have decided to describe. It is one of the most important points regarding Linkedin Marketing Strategy.

As the reader of your content on Linkedin media platform is really looking for the insights into the matter. Please use enough contexts, and words to explain your view better.

Also, the shareability of longer content is high on Linkedin.

Image Source: okdork.com

If the content is not worthy enough to the reader and it doesn’t add value to him/her, it is not going to get the expected hits.

Adding the links to the relevant web pages, which can be used as further sources by the readers is not only helpful to him/her but adds the SEO juice to your content.

3. Use Media in Your Content

Content is all about adding value and make it interesting. And, information doesn’t only come in text form.

There are different media sources as well, which can add value to your content.

Adding images, videos, charts, and stats would not only make your content more interesting but useful to the readers at the same time.

4. Know Your Audience

As I’ve already mentioned- Linkedin is highly organized platforms in terms of business people, who you want to target for your content.

The top CEOs of all the top organizations, the industry leaders, the millionaires and the young aspiring professionals- LinkedIn is a network of all of them.

Linkedin is highly diverse in terms of its professionals. At the same time, their approach towards content is different altogether.

Image Source: static3.businessinsider.com

So, while working on LinkedIn Marketing Strategy, make sure that you understand your target audience, and what are they looking for.

The Young and Aspiring professionals are looking for the technical and domain-specific information, which can help them grow as professionals and to add skills.

The Management and Organizing professionals of the companies are looking for new industry trends, data and industry insights which can help them present their case before executives and make their points.

The top executives and Management members of the organization look for the industry-specific information which can help them make decisions to take their businesses to the next level.

Make sure that you are clear in your approach to content creation and distribution as who are you targeting with your content.

There are a number of groups in LinkedIn network with people of different professional backgrounds, positions, and requirements. You can target these groups to reach a larger audience.

5. Paid Marketing Tools

Paid marketing tools are definitely some of the best Linkedin Marketing Solutions.
Dux-Soup – With this Chrome plug-in you can keep track of the profiles you visit, and you can add tags and take notes on any LinkedIn member’s profile.

There is both, paid and free version of the Dux-Soup. The free version allows the automation of viewing profiles, adding tags and taking notes, the paid version allows exporting data from the visited profiles as well.

LinkedProspect – LinkedProspect allows you to send thousands of automated personalized messages. You need to have a message that you want to share and the prospects, LinkedProspect will share your personalized message with the prospects.

Linkedin itself is a great tool for reaching out to a number of industry leaders and decision makers. When it comes to best ways to use LinkedIn for Business, Paid Linkedin services would definitely rank in the list. With the help of these LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, you can share your message with a network spanning over 450 million of its users.

Conclusion

These were some of the best ways to use LinkedIn for business.

It is an important tool at present in establishing your presence in the market.It can help in your content distribution strategy.

Build connections using LinkedIn that help with your content marketing campaign.

Reaching out to the most suitable targets for your products is relatively easy today. The most fundamental of these efforts are providing relevant content with decent frequency.

You should also look forward to sharing the others’ content as well, which adds value to the readers.

That, in turn, will increase your credibility in your readers and the chances of your content being shared go high.

In today’s day, Social media has taken an irreplaceable spot in our lives and is an indispensable element to our marketing. Marketers, entrepreneurs, small startups, media and advertising companies day in and day out employ strategies of social media for business. In this article, we will talk about the top social media marketing myths 2018. Read below to understand better. A research by Snapapp says that 94% of B2B marketers use Linkedin as part of their content strategy. Other widely used platforms include Twitter(87%), Facebook(84%), YouTube(74%) and Google+(62%).

Image Source: i.pinimg.com

But this enormous popularity of social media has a flipside too. Social media has been more hyped and over-used than ever and instead of prioritizing on practical measures, real returns, and limitations of the strategy, many of us have declared social media marketing as a magic wand that gives higher visibility to our brand. The reality is, that social media requires a lot of hard work, research and analysis, and this like any other marketing strategy can’t be learnt in a day’s time. Hence, I would like to start by addressing some common social media marketing myths 2018 that most of us time and again use.

Social Media Marketing Myths

1. Let’s not get personal with Social Media

Agreed that you have a brand to run that must resonate with the thought processes of your audiences, but that does not mean that you can’t publish content that reflects your brand’s persona. You should not hesitate in showcasing your brand’s humour, people that work at your company and links to news content that “you” find interesting. This makes you stand out as a brand and underpins your identity in the eyes of your audience.

Image Source: millwardbrown.com

2. Hashtag it is!

The purpose of hashtags is that they bring together common conversation threads. They have secured a popular spot on most of the social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can use it to get indexed by the social network and it becomes discoverable by other users. But you can’t leverage them to turn your marketing dreams into reality. Including hashtags everywhere spoils the purpose and makes you look too desperate.

3. Social media is just about brand awareness and engagement

Sure, Social Media creates awareness and establishes a good identity for your brand. But it is also capable of doing much more than that. Social media drives customers to your platform and eventually conversions. To convince you, I  have some statistics from Hubspot right here:

• Companies that use Twitter average 2X more leads than those that don’t.
• Companies with 1000+ more Twitter followers get 6X more traffic.
• 45% of marketers note social media has a below average cost-per-lead compared to other channels.
• 62% of companies using LinkedIn for marketing have acquired a customer from it.
• 52% of companies using Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer from it.
• 44 % of companies using Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer from it.

Also, another research by Hubspot says that 61% Marketers in the US rely on Social Media for generation of leads.

Image Source: hubspot.com

4. Scheduled posts will do my job

There are many tools out there that help you in posting on social media. The tools are great as they save time and especially when you have too many tasks at hand or on weekends when you are away from your office. However, you should not use them as a substitute for posting in real-time. It is called social media for a reason. You “need” to socialize with your customers or followers, and for which there has to be a two-way conversation.

5. Good content means good traffic

Good content does attract customers, but only if they know about it. You can’t just create great content and sit in a corner waiting for the customers to visit your website.  The need of the hour is to be more practical here, rather than imagining an ideal scenario. You are not the only “one” producing good content, and even if your content is capable of making you a differentiator, your customers probably don’t know about it. So distributing the content through right media is important as that gives the initial push. Once they come across the great content that you serve, they will automatically press the share button. And then your work is “actually” considered done.

6. Evergreen content is good enough as I don’t have time to produce new content

Social media moves at a great pace. Content is updated every second on the platforms. And this might make you feel that you do not have enough time or resources to produce fresh content every day. You might want to repurpose content or use your “evergreen” content to fight this. This is a good route to take sometimes, but not always. You can’t share the exact same content every time because this would make you lose a substantial chunk of your user base. Fresh content makes your audience stay tuned to your product and they look forward to your upcoming content. You need to figure out time and manage resources to keep your audiences engaged by providing a good balance of fresh, repurposed and curated content.

7. More followers means a successful marketing strategy

Getting likes is an accomplishment for your brand. But it is not the only parameter for measuring the success of your content marketing strategy. It is one of the surface-level metrics that somewhat helps you in assessing the effectiveness of your campaign. Your plan of action should not be to blindly chase your followers. These people might not even care about your brand and would not even end up purchasing anything from you. So, Instead of the above, your plan should be focused on more substantial actions by your followers such as clicks or their on-site behaviour. The quality of your followers can be evaluated through their engagement with your content. Few interested and loyal customers are worth more than 100 indifferent users, so it is important for you to not get lost in the number game.

8. Social Media Marketing Is Free

The social media networks are free of cost when it comes to logging in and this makes them a great tool to use for organic marketing. However, this aspect of social media should not let you take it for granted. Just like any other marketing channel, you need to invest in time and resources to get the best out of this platform. The return of investment matches your expectations and sometimes surpasses them too when you put in the right advertisement efforts. Have a look at the statistic that showcases how effective the social media platforms are in delivering the right ROI’s

With this, I have come to the end of the article. I hope that I have been able to give you have a clearer view on social media marketing myths 2018. Social media marketing is fruitful and worthwhile when you approach it smartly along with a content marketing plan. So do it the right way, guys!