by Chloe Jeffreys on July 11, 2013 in Coffee with Chloe, GenFabTV, Social Media – VIDEO interview below
Last year at BlogHer I had the chance to meet Ted Rubin, co-author of Return on Relationship
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Building Customer Relationships with Branded Story-Telling
There are some new buzzwords in marketing going around, everything from “Collaborative Marketing” to “Relationship Marketing,” and even “Branded Content.” But what do those phrases really mean and how can today’s businesses take advantage of them?
Well, we all know that consumers are becoming more and more contemptuous of push advertising, which has traditional marketers scrambling to find a magic bullet to replace it. But with what? When social came along and marketers mistakenly tried to force push advertising messages there, the failures were huge.
Using Branded Content In Your Content Marketing Arsenal
Regardless of what mediums are in your content marketing arsenal: mobile marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, direct mail, outdoor, and on and on – “branded content has the ability to create brand differentiating by bridging the gap between TV’s emotive power and digital media’s efficient reach.”
The reason for the quotes is that line comes directly from a recently-released Forrester report entitled How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content.
Penned by Forrester Research Principal Analyst Tracy Stokes, the report is chock-full of valuable insight and while stating, as mentioned previously, that branded content offers brands the opportunity to differentiate themselves – “marketers are struggling to build content at scale — to get the right message to the right consumer at the right time.”
SlideShare: The Quiet Giant Of Content Marketing
Marketers and advertisers the world over are constantly trying to find the “next big thing.” The one thing that will allow them to stand out from the crowd. Back in the day of course it was TV, radio and direct mail or email for example. Then came the digital revolution and mobile marketing and social media marketing took center stage – and rightly so.
Today, it’s content marketing.
While all the aforementioned mediums remain and always will be key players in any integrated marketing communications campaign, clearly content marketing is the next big thing – at least for right now.
And a major tool in the content marketing arsenal may be one that many of you have heard of and visited, but perhaps have not used to date – SlideShare.
Straight Forward Suggestions for Crowdsourcing Content
Every business needs content in order to be found in search, and to differentiate them from the competition. Without quality, helpful content (and lots of it), you’re lost in a school of fish that are all the same color. Who’s going to find you? Who’s going to pick you?
The trouble with content development is that it can be expensive. Website copy, blog articles, e-books, reports—they all take time and effort (and dollars) to produce. However without them, you really can’t do an effective job of marketing your business—especially in the social age. It’s the classic chicken-or-the-egg syndrome. The more social our businesses become, the more we need that variety of content that speaks to our listeners and helps them solve their problems so we can A: get their attention, and B: develop relationships with them.
Establish a Good Content Foundation – Invest in Your Blog
According to a January article by eMarketer, research from the social marketing software firm Awareness, Inc. shows that businesses are thinking about getting back into blogging for 2012, and it’s about time. The survey also indicated that businesses are looking at expanding their social footprint to new platforms, but I think the “getting back to basics” with blogging is a particularly good strategy.
While I truly love the relationship-building of social media, it’s often a moving target responsible for a lot of “shiny new toy” syndrome. After a while, we begin to feel like jugglers spinning plates—sooner or later something’s got to give. However, that something shouldn’t be your blog. A blog is quite simply one of the best ways to enlighten prospects about why they should do business with you, and it should be at the core of your content marketing efforts.
An Open Letter to Media Publishers and other Business Leaders
Dear Publishers and business leaders,
Your business is dying. You know it. Your readers know it. So what are you doing about it?
The belief that the Internet was the death knell of print – and maybe even cable news – was a bit of an exaggeration although your revenue statements clearly show it’s had a major impact.
I’ve seen attempts to move content online via tiered, paid subscription models, which clearly isn’t working to reverse your financial fortunes. I’m thinking you’re all sending Apple Christmas baskets to thank them for the iPad, which – for a time anyway – has enabled the sale of content via Tablet magazines. Still, adoption for paid digital magazines on tablets is a far cry from the heydays of the print publishing industry.
Context, Content and Caring
A recent blog post by Brian Solis calls out a systemic issue we are faced with every day as marketers – the issue of understanding consumers. Brian points to a serious lack of understanding that brands have for the context in which their consumers live.
You see folks, there once was a time when businesses believed that they were in business because they had a product – not necessarily because there was a market for this product. And, there once was a time, only shortly after businesses believed their product was enough, that marketing was called upon to cater to the people who consumed. But, what catering to the consumer meant – at least at that time – was to put pretty pictures and nifty words on a poster and hope it would make people want the product.
The issue with this approach was that brands would broadcast to their consumers all the things they thought their consumers wanted to see and hear.
Now, with the advent of social media platforms and quick adoption rates, marketers, businesses and brands rejoice. There is a direct view to the consumer and more of what “we think they want”. This plethora of information has been taken in and more than one brand is taking the opportunity to talk to their consumer. But that’s the problem, isnt’t it? The dialogue isn’t really dialogue.
I recently gave a presentation at Social Media Masters in Toronto. The premise of my presentation was to share that brands must become human again. We, as marketers and business owners, must allow brands to become human again. Taking notice of the social media chatter is only one part… It empowers us to better understand the context in which our consumers live, but it also gives us the opportunity to see the type of content that genuinely engages them. It is this engagement that gets us one step closer to real dialogue. And real dialogue is the beginning of creating human brands.
Let’s Look Inside the Mysterious Mind of the CMO
I recently had the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at the “Ignite Your Growth” Conference in Atlanta at the new HP Graphic Arts Experience Center. Knowing that the audience would consist of printing professionals interested in growing their businesses, I thought it would be interesting to discuss an individual they probably have on their prospect list – the CMO.
As a B2B marketing agency, CMOs are one of our targets as well, so we do our best to maintain a persona profile of the typical CMO. That is, we try to think like they think so we can create compelling content that will interest them.
Using Twitter for Marketing and PR: Do the Pros Practice What They Preach?
It seems that everyone claims to be a Twitter expert these days. Of course, most are not. But several of the real Twitter pros I know—including those who have written books about using Twitter as an effective marketing and public relations instrument—have figured out how to best leverage the 140-character microblogging tool to promote themselves, their books, their firms, and their clients. And some of them actually follow their own advice!
How Smart Marketing Book Authors Use Twitter
For example, Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing Solutions is the author of the book The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time. He and his firm provide affordable outsourced marketing support to address both short-term sales opportunities and long-term strategic renewal.
Mark uses Twitter to help deliver on that promise for a number of his blue-chip clients, including Nestle, AARP, Anheuser-Busch, Coldwell Banker, Scripps Networks, Keystone Foods, and the U.K. government. He also very effectively promotes himself and his book on Twitter as part of his own marketing, branding, and relationship-development strategy.