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Looking for some new apps and tools to add to your social media marketing toolbox?
Wondering which graphics, analytics, and productivity tools can help streamline your workflow?
In this article, you’ll discover 23 tools and apps shared in the Social Media Marketing podcast’s Discovery of the Week....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Michael Stelzner shares 23 cool social marketing tools and a few will be new to you I'm sure. 
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The most successful inbound marketers learn skills and create habits in their first 100 days in this new role. To make sure your trajectory is set correctly, we've catalogued much of what you'll need to succeed in inbound marketing.
Don't be scared by the length -- remember, this document is one to use over the course of three months. Still, it's not intended to be a complete list of every little thing you need to know -- rather, it’s a fairly comprehensive collection of the fundamentals. Your company's own plan can be tailored based on the goals you need to achieve, but this outline is a good guide to begin with....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Hubspot's Lindsay Kolowich uncovers the best practices for your first 100 days as an inbound marketer. Highly recommended if you're new and need a place to start. 9/10
Jeff Domansky's curator insight,
March 2, 2017 11:39 AM
Hubspot's Lindsay Kolowich uncovers the best practices for your first 100 days as an inbound marketer. Highly recommended if you're new and need a place to start. 9/10
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Visual content curation isn’t easy. When your main objective is to be omnipresent, you have to find clever ways to make visual content work for you and your brand. You can start by integrating more visual content into your marketing strategy to see what works for your brand and what doesn’t but that’s not enough.
One of the first things you can try is experiment with different types of visual content by converting your ideas into images. The benefits are many, and you get to keep it fun and exciting for your audience. Consider the following formats and how you can use them to improve your own strategy, generate more traffic, encourage shares and perhaps even acquire new clients....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Mix up your visuals for maximum impact.
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Perhaps you noticed that there was a screwup at the Oscars last night. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced that “La La Land” had won the Academy Award for Best Picture . . . and then had to backtrack, because there was a mistake. “Moonlight” was the actual winner.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
PwC mistake taints the Oscars evening. Josh Bernoff says PwC made a "model apology" but the fact remains, it was a monumental screwup.
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Jeff Domansky's insight:
It's all about the visuals if you want maximum impact. HubSpot shares visual content tips.
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With the caveat in the section above–that we’re often doing a little of both–and some informal polling of many esteemed marketers I know, here is where I’ve landed on social marketing vs. content marketing.
Social marketing is a channel where we find potential customers by listening to earned conversations and analyzing our owned accounts. We then interact with those people to move them through the customer journey.
You can use various tactics to make that movement happen. Content marketing is a tactic. It’s a method of marketing that allows companies to add value for potential customers by creating and distributing (sometimes through social) collateral like blog posts, videos, and web pages.
These pieces of collateral entertain and educate your target audience about topics related to your product. They’re intended to generate interest in your offering by reinforcing relevant problems, challenges, misconceptions, and, finally, solutions....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
What's the difference between content marketing and social marketing? Is it that content marketing focuses on content production and creative thought, while social media marketing handles distribution? Depends!
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We are a visual culture. People respond better to visual content and even process information more efficiently when presented in a visual way. With so many performance advantages, it’s clear how design can elevate written content.
With the convincing out of the way, let’s talk about specific ways to introduce design and visual storytelling into your content marketing strategy.
We all know that blog posts need images but are you using enough?
One of the best ways to increase the reach of your content is with the right amount of images. BuzzSumo did the math for us, and found that the right amount of images is one every 75-100 words:
“In a study of over one million articles, BuzzSumo looked at how many blog posts with images were shared. Then they looked at how many images, per how many words, got the best results. What they found was articles with an image once every 75-100 words got double the amount of shares of articles with fewer images.”...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Nick Bowersox says plan your content marketing strategy, and use design and visual storytelling to differentiate your content from the competition.
Eileen Burick's curator insight,
March 21, 2017 10:11 PM
Consistent use of good design and visual storytelling will differentiate your brand, help you communicate more efficiently, and ultimately put your content in front of more potential customers.
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Sure, we’re still interested in tactics … but there is so much more to consider now. Content marketing has grown into a complex business discipline composed of many distinct areas — content creation, strategy, distribution, paid promotion, and measurement, to name a few.
Managers have to determine the best ways to organize content marketing across the enterprise, how much budget they need, and the mix of roles required to pull it off. There’s always something new to learn.
Here are five key insights based on the responses of 1,102 B2B marketers in North America — representing a wide range of industries, company sizes, and content marketing maturity levels — as reported in B2B Content Marketing 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Discover five key insights from Content Marketing Institute’s B2B research and how you can use them to help your own programs.
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Researching, developing, and writing blog posts is only the first half of content marketer’s jobs. The other half of the day consists of making sure that all of your hard work creating the post doesn’t go to waste. Promoting your blog posts on the right platforms and through the right channels is vital if you want your content to be read. But promotion is a tricky subject. And most of the time, it includes paid social advertising campaigns that are poorly managed and don’t see strong results. With this as the norm, it’s no surprise that some content marketers have started re-posting their blog content on other domains to maximize its visibility.
While this may seem like a good idea and an easy way to broaden your visibility, you can run into some serious trouble with Google here. Whenever you are thinking of re-posting a blog post on another site, remember this bit of expert advice: Google hates twins.
So how can you broaden the visibility of your content to make sure it engages well? How can we all milk each piece of content for every drop of value it has to offer?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Caution ahead. Most approaches to recycling content come with penalties that just aren't worth the risk. Sean Martin shows how to repost and repurpose content safely. Recommended reading. 9/10
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Today, I want to share those important blog actions with you.
I’m not promising you’ll become a blogging sensation if you do these things, but I am promising that your blog will become better, and you’ll feel better about blogging.
Without further ado, here are 5 things that will help you never quit blogging and more importantly blog consistently like me....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's how Neil Patel blogs - his process and his tools.
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If there's something that the early days of social media--circa 1990's and early 2000's with AOL and MySpace followed by the rise of Facebook--taught me, it's that people control the medium while brands merely ride the wave until the next new channel comes along.
Successful brands and influencers find that by building communities of advocates on the platforms where their audiences live, they're able to maintain such relevancy provided that they also evolve with their audience and platforms. However, social media can be a waste of time for you and your business if you're not strategically positioning your marketing efforts around industry trends.
Below are five reasons brand engagement is declining online, and what you can do about it....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Five mistakes to avoid in your social media marketing strategy from Inc.com.
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For the most part, fake news stories are still relatively crude and unsophisticated, with nothing more than text, a photo grabbed off the internet, and hyper-partisan, attention-grabbing headlines to lure clicks and shares.
But fake news creators might begin to include one thing that journalists and researchers already know works to increase engagement: data visualizations.
Readers Believe Data Visualizations The mere inclusion of a simple data visualization, like a chart or map, has shown to significantly increase a story’s believability, whether true or not. Researchers from Cornell University tested readers with two articles on a scientific claim, both identical except in one regard. One included a graph and the other did not. While only 68 percent of readers believed the claim in the article without a graph, nearly all –97 percent– of readers believed the same claim with the graph included.
Similar effects were seen when a chemical formula was included, suggesting that the persuasive effects are based on the association of a graph with what the researchers call the “prestige of science.” The researchers conclude that “graphs signal a scientific basis for claims, which grants them greater credibility.” While their conclusions pertain to science stories in particular, it’s just one step to the applicability to news in general to infuse them with an aura of scientific backing....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This is a powerful post. It shows the power of visuals in content and points to the future risk of fake data visualizations in news, politics and communication. Recommended reading! 10/10
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Instagram continues to move up the social media ladder. From a niche site for amateur photographers and a few filters to one of the top used image-sharing platforms, the advertising opportunities cannot be ignored by marketers looking to expand their audiences. And, as we continue to march toward an app-first online experience, mobile continues to outpace desktop in traffic.
Mobile-first sites such as Instagram will continue to reap the benefits, meaning your ads have greater potential — and create higher ROI if you combine ads with an Instagram landing page.
What is an Instagram landing page? An Instagram landing page is a standalone web page that uses persuasive elements like testimonials, benefit-oriented copy, and videos to convince its visitors to convert on an offer. And, since Instagram is primarily used as an app on mobile devices, it is important to design a mobile-friendly page. Visitors land on the page after clicking a promotional link on Instagram....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Learn how to design a high-converting Instagram landing page based on these 20 example critiques. What did they do well and what could be A/B tested?
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One of the biggest disadvantages of content marketing is finding the time to produce quality content. As an online business owner, there are hundreds of other things that you need to take care of. That said, creative content production is the key to business growth.
Whether you’re new to blogging or are struggling to keep up with your publishing schedule – content curation can help. When used correctly, content curation helps grow your business by bringing your target audience to your brand. In this post, we’ll go over some things you can do to up your content curation game.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
A useful set of basic tips for content curation.
Jeff Domansky's curator insight,
March 2, 2017 12:05 PM
A useful set of basic tips for content curation.
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Fortunately, content marketers don’t have to do it all themselves. Content curation offers a way to repackage and repurpose the work of others to serve the needs of your brand’s audience.
Curation can take a variety of forms: - Weekly “best of” compilations (example: V3*Broadsuite blog) - Expert summary compilations (example: Soulati Media) - Expert interview roundups (example: iDigic)
What’s more, the work of discovering and saving curation-worthy content—and in some cases, even displaying and sharing it—doesn’t have to be (entirely at least) a manual effort.
The 20+ tools showcased here enable you to automatically find, source, search, store, organize, annotate, and/or share content from a wide range of publishers and social sources. Curated content can’t replace your own original creation, of course, but it can certainly supplement your efforts while still engaging your readers, viewers, and followers....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Content marketing? You don't have to do it all yourself. Tom Pick shares tools to help you automatically find, source, search, store, organize, annotate, and share content.
Jeff Domansky's curator insight,
February 28, 2017 3:02 AM
Content marketing? You don't have to do it all yourself. Tom Pick shares tools to help you automatically find, source, search, store, organize, annotate, and share content
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To be successful with your social media marketing efforts you need to provide value on your social accounts. And most of the time, this value comes in the form of shared content – a lot of content. And while your own content should always be at the center of your marketing efforts, you can provide a ton more value when you add great content from other people from your niche to the mix.
Often, finding this great content to share is what is eating up most of the time young marketers spend on building their social media audience.
Here are 7 tools that can make your content curation a lot more efficient – and effective....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Finding content to share on social media takes up a lot of time. Susanna Gebauer shares seven content curation tools to help find the best content to share.
Jeff Domansky's curator insight,
February 28, 2017 2:09 AM
Finding content to share on social media takes up a lot of time. Susanna Gebauer shares seven content curation tools to help find the best content to share.
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News organizations may differ in how much they’re investing in platform-native publishing, but few if any are pulling out entirely.
During election week (November 7–13, 2016), the Tow Center for Digital Journalism followed the platform publishing activity of 15 big publishers and found that the organizations overall generated 12,120 posts on platforms. While there wasn’t a single narrative linking all the efforts, Tow did notice a few trends in platform publishing activity overall. — Instant Articles is still popular, though few organizations are going all-in. Vox, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post are all posting upwards of 80 percent of their content on Instant Articles, while The Wall Street Journal posts less than five percent (and others like Vice and the Chicago Tribune aren’t using it at all)....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Traditional media stick to their standard channels says Tow research.
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![Web Design Trends to Watch in 2017 [Infographic] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/xX0Z-Fsq-XIM10i5TPm_vDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
2016 was the year of UX/UI design innovation. We witnessed the rise of chatbots and growing adoption of IoT solutions. Accessibility advocates once again emphasized the importance of creating mixed-ability website and app use scenarios. The popularity of flat design saw a sharp decline. What are the latest web design trends for 2017 and beyond? R-Style Lab weighs in....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
What's ahead for web design in 2017?
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There is a lot of information out there that can help businesses to set realistic expectations for themselves when they first start content marketing. Unfortunately, most businesses don't take the time to truly learn about what they can expect when they first start publishing content, how long it can potentially take to see positive results, and how much time they can expect to put into the creation of that content.
If you're one of those company's that is venturing into content marketing for the quick payoff, then I'd recommend spending your time on another marketing medium. Tactics like PPC and email marketing are much better at driving immediate results than content marketing. But when done correctly, content marketing can be a game changer.
So, if you are going to venture into the content marketing arena, make sure you don't buy into these common expectations.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
There is a lot of bad information out there when it comes to content marketing. But with the right expectations, you can avoid chasing a dream based on commonly held myths.
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In today’s blog post, I want to share with you my 16 best content marketing tools I have been using and how I think you can also use them to build up a solid content marketing strategy.
Most of them are free to use so you have nothing to lose trying them, I will mention a few that might have some payment required but I’ll keep those to a minimum. Let’s get into it....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
A really simple toolkit for new bloggers with tips to get you oriented.
Jeff Domansky's curator insight,
February 25, 2017 11:52 AM
A really simple toolkit for new bloggers with tips to get you oriented.
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Unless you’ve been living completely off the grid, you’re probably sick of all the drama about fake news.
But here’s the thing. Fake news isn’t new. And it isn’t limited to news. In fact, it has a special affinity for content marketing.
The more we have to compete for eyeballs and dollars, the more likely we are to be tempted to cross the line into…let’s call it “subjective fact,” shall we? Sometimes we do it on purpose, but, more often than not, we just wake up one day and find ourselves writing something that’s total BS. Because “subjective facts” don’t always call attention to themselves with flashing red lights. Sometimes, they’re dull, dented, and scratched — so blah they don’t even attract attention…but they do hold up an argument or claim that would fall apart without them.And that’s a problem.
Whether it’s stretching the truth to make the facts fit the argument you’re trying to support, ignoring contradictory facts, or employing logical fallacies, these things undermine your credibility more than you realize. While people who already passionately support you will be nodding their heads in agreement, the people you’re trying to convince will be thinking, “Now, wait a minute…”...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Smart tips for better marketing in the era of fake news.
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Four years ago, I set out on a journey to build a blog with well-researched and unbiased content related to social media tools and technology. At the time, every social media expert, influencer, and enthusiast had a blog. I needed to find a unique angle to help me stand out in this highly competitive area.
I came from a technology background, so I found my "sweet spot" at the intersection of what I was passionate about: social media, marketing and technology. I am certain that deciding on a specific niche for my blog was one of the initial key factors that led to its quick success. Within just a few months of launching the blog, it became one of the top 10 social media blogs in a global competition run by Social Media Examiner. I managed to keep it in the top 10 for four years in a row, and it certainly wasn't by accident.
Below, I share my tried and true recipe that you can use to grow your blog and become a top industry resource....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Ian Cleary on how to go from zero to destination blog site in just 6 months.
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Social media offers businesses a great platform for improving their brand awareness, boosting their engagement, and getting more traffic, among other benefits. But some of the more overlooked uses for social media for marketing are lead generation, lead nurturing and for boosting your conversion rates.
And Twitter, in my experience, is one of the best platforms for finding leads. In this blog post, I’m going to share my best tips for how you can use Twitter to improve your conversions.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
In this blog post, Lilach Bullock shares her best tips for how you can use Twitter to improve your conversions. Are you doing all of these?
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The sheer amount of Internet content—true or not—is one of the reasons 62 percent of people use social media as a news source, but it’s also part of why more discerning audiences are retreating to the humble email newsletter.
While the post-election surge of interest in reputable journalism led to subscription surges at many major publishers, it also leaves readers with an overabundance of news.
People want real news but need it fast, and newsletters provide the convenience of Facebook with less noise.
Meanwhile, the email newsletters publishers have long relied on to boost engagement and ROI are now being recognized as a means to hold onto these new subscribers. Though derided and routinely declared dead, email remains a favorite of audiences and publishers alike simply by playing to its strengths: delivering easily-digestible content that increases traffic....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The email newsletter may have a new life as a trusted source for "real" news as well as a filter for all the news and social media "noise" around us. Of course, it could also be used for fake news too.
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This chart shows U.S. voters' attitudes towards the trustworthiness of the media and/or the president (in percent)
Never since Richard Nixon was in office more than 40 years ago, has a President had such an antagonistic relationship with the media like Donald Trump has today. He considers himself at war with the media and calls outlets whose reporting he disapproves of “fake news”. There seems to be a corrosion of trust in either the President or the so-called Fourth Estate, depending on your political preferences....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This chart makes it very clear why the divide between Republicans and Democrats in the US is so wide and how the media has a huge challenge reaching out to supporters of Trump. Trump appears to have achieved his goal not only branding media as "fake news" but convincing his supporters of the fact.
Two key questions to ponder:
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Michael Stelzner shares 23 cool social marketing tools and a few will be new to you I'm sure.