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Small-business owners were searching for information. American Express had the expertise, but first it had to listen to what its customers wanted to know.
It's an alarming statistic, hinting at shattered dreams and financial ruin for hardworking moms and pops all over the U.S.: Nearly 60 percent of small businesses fail within four years.
American Express wanted to reduce that number, says Carrie Parker, director of American Express Open Forum, a content marketing website dedicated to small-business education.
What the company figured out was this: Small-business owners excel in the area of their expertise. If they build widgets, they know those darn widgets inside and out.
What they tend to lack, however, is the knowhow to run a business: finding real estate, setting up payroll, and hiring temporary support. "They are desperate for content," Parker says....
Via Jeff Domansky
How do you get news and ideas into the hands of already-well-informed opinion leaders in public office? And how do you add substantively to the public discourse while avoiding the trap of becoming "just more noise"?
These were some of the challenges General Electric faced in designing its ground-breaking #Pressing campaign. Linda Boff, GE's Executive Director, Global Brand Marketing, sat down with us to discuss the campaign and how partnering with RebelMouse provided her team with the end-to-end platform they needed to deliver high-quality curated content to their audience...
Via Jeff Domansky
Since I created the slide deck as part of a blog post that had yet to go live, we gave it zero promotion. And yet, when we happened upon our SlideShare page the following day, it had earned over 3,000 views. The presentation got picked up as a featured slideshare on SlideShare’s social media page. Our 10 minutes of quality time to build it resulted in over 5,000 views in one weekend.
What did we learn from this? - SlideShare is worth our time.
- SlideShare users are eager for quality content.
- SlideShare has huge potential for businesses and brands looking for a new audience.
Of course, it all starts with the slides.
Via Jeff Domansky
RebelMouse, the social-aggregation platform founded by Paul Berry — the former chief technology officer at Huffington Post — is relaunching as a full-fledged publishing system designed for media companies who want to control the social ecosystem around their content
Via Jeff Domansky
Are you optimizing your blog posts for social shares?
Using your blog, Pinterest and Facebook together can amplify your social media signal tenfold.
In this article I’ll show you how pin-worthy images and an enhanced Facebook update can increase your repins and blog traffic.
If you want to bump up your shares and repins, you need four things: useful content; a headline that grabs people’s attention; an attractive, pinnable image; and a cross-posting plan....
Via Jeff Domansky
Ideal content length is something with which B2B and B2C marketers across industries constantly struggle. Unfortunately, the most common answer to content-length questions is the often-dreaded, extremely-ambiguous response that is the reply to many of marketing’s toughest questions: “It depends.”
And though ideal content length really does hinge on a variety of factors including industry norms and audience engagement, “it depends” isn’t very helpful for marketers looking for actionable advice.
However, though there aren’t any hard and fast rules when it comes to content length, there are general guidelines that can be applied when creating content, despite the industry or audience it is intended for.
So, how long should your content be? Here are some general content-length guidelines, organized by content type:...
Via Jeff Domansky
A look at the data around use of visuals by public relations professionals tells a few different stories. On the one hand, use of visuals in press releases has increased steadily over the last few years, and the majority of communicators (76%, to be exact) surveyed about multimedia use in PR indicated they plan to increase usage.
That said, the great majority of press releases issued by PRNewswire are text-only, with no visual elements...
Via Jeff Domansky
Online content is ridiculously powerful. High quality content can communicate that you’re a bonafide expert, turn you into a member of the Twitterati, and make people fall in love with your brand.
Online content is the Internet’s version of a Bosch power tool!
However, just like any power tool, you’ve got to use it carefully. You would never use a power saw for the first time without reading the directions first, right? Well, the same goes for content marketing. If you don’t want to injure yourself (metaphorically speaking), you need to do a little prep work before you start publishing your brand’s content in every corner of the Web.
Instead of reading an instruction manual, though, all you need to do is follow these six tips....
Via Jeff Domansky
This week in SMToolbox, we review Steady Demand Pro, a good example of a tool that goes beyond data monitoring to provide practical insights and constant prompts to help you improve your performance on Google Plus.
Data is great, but insights that allow you to improve your performance are much more valuable. In my view, successful tools have to give you more than simple data. This week in SMToolbox, we review Steady Demand Pro, a good example of a tool that goes beyond data monitoring to provide practical insights and constant prompts to help you improve your performance on Google Plus....
Via Jeff Domansky
The business-focused social network opens its publishing platform to its members, raising lots of questions.
Ryan Roslansky, head of content products for the company, strenuously rejects LinkedIn's media ambitions. Or at least he refuses to address them head on. "We are not approaching this from a publishing or media-company perspective," he told me last week.
The "this" in question is LinkedIn's announcement that it is opening its "publishing platform" to all its 277 million members, beginning with a test group of 25,000. The move essentially means providing a juiced-up blogging tool to LinkedIn users, but with a twist. Blogging sites like Tumblr (owned by Yahoo) or even Medium, the new site run by Twitter (and Blogger) founder Evan Williams, are relative free-for-alls. Post your blog, tell other people about it using social media, and hope someone will see it.
A post on LinkedIn is targeted at the people already in your professional network. "Your LinkedIn identity is your professional profile of record," Roslansky says. Adding the ability to post long-form professional information, he says, "helps to ensure someone can stand out and look better in their career."...
Via Jeff Domansky
Twitter is changing, become public and is verging on visual. Here are 11 rules for powerful Twitter marketing to increase brand awareness, leads and sales.
I remember when I joined in 2008, that the rules of engagement were just about fun and frivolity. It was a playground for social media enthusiasts that were exploring and pushing the boundaries. It was about having conversations with people all over the world. That still happens.
There were only 4 million people on the platform when I began and using it for marketing was not considered. We were all just playing. Today with mass media embracing it for TV, real time breaking news, distributing content and viral marketing the bird has muscled up.
With its increased maturity the rules have become clearer and its marketing power obvious. Here are some essential rules for Powerful twitter marketing to increase brand awareness, leads and sales....
Via Jeff Domansky
How do you market your business? Do you produce engaging content as part of your strategy? According to a recent study, 78% of businesses in 2013 (that responded) do engage in content marketing.
If you have a blog or produce content on social networks, videos or white papers then you are engaging in content marketing! So what is the future of content marketing? How will things change?... Take a look.…
Via Jeff Domansky
These are the chattiest brands on Snapchat, demonstrating that time-sensitive images can actually be a strength in brand marketing.Mobile apps such as Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Snapchat are turning traditional media marketing upside down, challenging brands in increasingly new ways. Human interactions are key to brand loyalty and building a strong consumer base, and these mobile apps allow for two-way conversations.
Snapchat, which launched in the iTunes App Store in September 2011, is popular with a much younger demographic than some marketing execs are used to, but it takes little or no cost to interact with customers by way of snaps. Compare that to other pricey forms of old-school advertising, and that’s a major plus...
Via Jeff Domansky
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The big surprise this month is at the very top of the table. For the first time since November 2013, the Huffington Post are back on top of the Facebook charts.
The Huff Po achieved their highest number of total interactions in a long time, breaking the 30m total interactions mark.
Their most popular stories last month included a piece on gluten free diets ( 480,000+ interactions), a piece titled ‘This Woman Wants To Change How All Of Us See Our Bodies‘ (455,000+ interactions), and a blog on parenting (430,000 interactions).
Interestingly, much of the Huffington Post’s most popular pieces seem to be long form opinion pieces. They do have very popular viral videos too, but for the most part, interesting blogs with socially optimised headlines seem to be the big successes....
Via Jeff Domansky
One of the great panels at Demand Success 2014 featured a robust discussion on the state of content marketing. Tenacity5 Media’s Geoff Livingstonmoderated a panel consisting of Nichole Kelly from Social Media Explorer, Christopher Penn from Shift Communications, Job Webster from SmartBrief and Richard Binhammer from Binhammer Social Business & Communication Consulting.
The group shared some great information, and below is a brief rundown of some of the key takeaways. You can apply their expertise to strategies for marketing your business....
Via Jeff Domansky
... We often talk a lot about calls-to-action (CTAs) and how they help us in marketing. They're a critical component of your website's lead generation process -- especially on your blog. Without CTAs, people visiting your blog will have a hard time converting on your landing pages unless they happen to stumble upon them at a later date.
So if you're trying to get more conversions from your blog, you'd think the more CTAs the better, right? Not always. To increase conversions on your blog, don't just go for volume. Make sure you have several different types of CTAs, in different formats, addressing different parts of your marketing funnel.
Before you hit the "Publish" button on your next blog post, think about how your readers can take the next step to learn more about your company. Which CTAs will help get them to take the next step in their buying journey? Below are eight ideas to get you started. You may not use all of the types of CTAs in every post you publish, but they should definitely be considered....
Via Jeff Domansky
LinkedIn Showcase Pages are are here! Learn how you can make the best of them and how to make sure you bring in more customers with your products.
Via Jeff Domansky
Have you ever tried to explain what Content Marketing is to a small business owner?
Ever been to a meeting where social media comes up and you’re greeted with blank stares and a “let’s please move on” gaze?
And what about the following …“I like the idea, but not right now.”
“We just don’t have time.”“I don’t write … ”
I could go on, but you get the picture (or like me, you’ve experienced this push-back)....
Via Jeff Domansky
The CMI team took time recently to brainstorm some outside-the-box ideas for strengthening content marketing strategy and business overall with a concept called the "10 Percent." An often-overlooked part of this strategy was the 10 Percent.
The 10 Percent was something we at CMI have talked about for years but never executed… until now. While we were in San Francisco this week for our Executive Forum conference, the CMI team held a staff meeting where we set aside time to discuss our own 10 Percent initiatives.
What is this 10 Percent? It’s spending one-tenth of our time and resources on the wild, the crazy, the seemingly unrealistic ideas we have, and making them part of our content marketing strategy. When we asked Jonathan about this, both Robert and I assumed that the 10 Percent is where the costly creative programs come from. Not so, according to Jonathan. Actually, these are the least expensive programs. For the most part, Jonathan said, these programs actually were not time-intensive in relation to the other content marketing they were creating and distributing....
Via Jeff Domansky
Lana Khavinson, Small Business Segment Marketing Lead at LinkedIn, says most people who come to LinkedIn already have a professional mindset, and they are looking for all kinds of content--from articles and blog posts to infographics and charts--that will help them with their current role or that will help them further their career.
So it’s important to consider what information you can provide that will help them with their current or future endeavors and will keep you at the top of their minds when they are at a point of need. This can include content like best practices, tips, trends, and industry thought leadership pieces.
But it's not enough to simply create great content. To get potential customers to notice you, you need to promote it the right way. Here are four insider tips to bring your content to the masses....
Via Jeff Domansky
Do you want more people to visit your site and consume the content for longer? Stop distracting them and making them click away from your main goal. Simplicity is not only beautiful and elegant but it is also effective. It helps you tweak and perfect the user experience. It leads to decluttering of your site, makes it faster to load and more focused on your targets. Following are the simple methods you can use optimize and fine-tune your site to make it more strategically effective....
Via Jeff Domansky
As you know, landing pages are the perfect tool for getting a segment of targeted traffic to focus on one action. But most websites are severely underusing landing pages as a tool to convert everyday traffic into leads, followers, fans, and (even more engaged) customers.
Here’s the problem:Most websites have “leaks”, or areas where the most obvious next move for a visitor is to leave your website. This is not the best outcome for you, because most of the time there is still an opportunity to engage that visitor further.
The solution to this problem is a dedicated landing page for every type of traffic you generate. These landing pages will talk directly to each kind of visitor you get – whether they are coming from social media, Google, a product page, a blog post, or something else – and offer them a customized next step that will keep them engaged with your website and business....
Via Jeff Domansky
Late last week Klout announced its intent to empower its users with the ability to view and share curated content that is custom-tailored according to the social graph of the user and the user’s audience. This is a throwback to early last year when LinkedIn actually did something similar — when its content was still useful. However, since curation is based on an individual user’s social graph and what actually resonates with their audience, this looks to be potentially better.
Klout describes it this way: “The ‘Create’ tab helps you find great articles and posts worth sharing with your audience. Unlike most apps that suggest content for your personal consumption, Klout intelligently recommends content that will strike a chord with your unique set of friends, fans and followers. Helpful tags highlight fresh content that is starting to trend as well as items that closely match the interests of your audience members and are likely to resonate with them.”
Via Jeff Domansky
...As you work to develop a content strategy, keep in mind that your content should aim to do a number of things. These include: - Serve the needs of your customers and prospects - Support your brand’s value proposition - Show the “human” side of your brand - Complement your SEO efforts - Lead to conversions
Notice what sits at the top of that list? Not content that touts your capabilities and success stories, but content that serves the needs of your customers and prospects. If you take away nothing else from this post, let it be that. Here are some tips to help you along the way:
Via Jeff Domansky
The complete guide to all the social media branding graphic sizes and formats. Text descriptions, graphics and infographics for all social dimensions.
Social media branding is important in order to distinguish your accounts from the many millions of others and enable followers to instantly recognise and relate to your profile. With so many social platforms, it can be hard to remember all the dimensions and sizing of each banner or background image.
Are you searching through Google every time you want to design or upload new social media branding? Then luckily, the complete list for social media branding has been assembled here for you....
Via Jeff Domansky
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![The Changing State of Content Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC] | #SeriouslySocial | e-commerce & social media | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/XVN-Kn9fWtT6Vc8ZSPAmlzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Lots of lessons from AMEX's content marketing success story.