Tag Archives: Digital Marketing Managers

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Content Marketing Weekly Topic: Repurpose Your Content to Extend Your Reach in Your Target Audience

Repurpose your Content into different forms of content Source - http://www.boom-online.co.uk/2014-new-years-resolutions-of-an-internet-marketer/#axzz2urapa82wCreating original content everyday is difficult, but to help Content Marketers and Digital Marketing Managers, you can repurpose your current/story content into other forms and expand your reach within your target audience.

People consume many different forms of content, but we all have our favorite forms of content.

Below is a table on the form of content I prefer based on the topics.

Topic My Preferred Form of Content
Friend Updates Social Media
“How-To” or “Tips” Article or Blog Post
Deploying a Marketing Process Checklist
New Product/Service White Paper or Webinar
Product or Service Update Social Media or Email for a heads up that leads me to an article or blog post
Marketing Process eBook, webinar, or Infographic of Process

As you can see, I prefer different forms of content depending on the topic.

However, someone else may prefer to see the same topic in another form than me.

Therefore, when you are writing about a single topic, make sure you prepare different forms of content about the same topic.

In other words, you want to repurpose a single topic into different forms of content, which will help extend your reach within your target audience.

This reminds me of an analogy that I learned during a Jason Miller
presentation, and Jason Miller learned about this analogy from Rebecca Lieb.
Different forms of content for the same topic Source - http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/leftover-turkey-a-content-marketers-dream/
“I use a Thanksgiving analogy. You cook up this giant bird to serve up on one glorious occasion and then proceed to slice and dice this thing for weeks on end. If you are like most families you are going to be repurposing this bird as leftovers for quite some time creating everything from sandwiches, to soups, and more. Your content marketing strategy can be thought of in the same way.” – Rebecca Lieb

So for every topic you write about, think about how you can produce additional forms of content about a single topic.  For example, if you have an eBook, you can create a webinar, video, and a series of blog posts.

By creating different forms of content a single topic, you are delivering information to your target audience in the form that they want. So, listen to your target audience and find out what forms of content they prefer.

25 Forms of Content at Your Disposal

  1. Blog post or Article
  2. Lists of different blog posts/articles about the same topic
  3. How To Guide
  4. Customer Opinion/Testimonials
  5. Tips
  6. Survey/Quiz
  7. Images
  8. Competitions
  9. Social Media posts – one example is live tweets of a webinar or conference
  10. Interview with thought leaders or guest blog from industry influencer
  11. Google+ Hangout
  12. Whitepaper
  13. Case Studies
  14. Video
  15. Webinar
  16. eBook
  17. Infographic
  18. Checklists/Tip Sheets
  19. Podcasts
  20. Thought Map
  21. Visual Note-Taking
  22. Slideshows
  23. Show Example of what not to do
  24. Create a Timeline
  25. Q&A or FAQ Web Pages

Enjoy creating multiple forms of content about the topics you recently released to maximize your reach in your target audience.

Keep in mind, create forms of content about a single subject that make sense.  For example, it does not make sense to create a podcast for a list of tips, but it does make sense to create a podcast for an eBook.

Call to Action in Repurposing your Content to Extend Your Reach within Your Target Audience

  • Choose a current piece of content (preferably a white paper or eBook)
  • Think about the different forms of content you can create using the same information
  • Create new forms of content with the same information and deliver it to your target audience
  • Check out next week’s content marketing discussion that will describe the different forms of content listed above
  • The next blog post will discuss SEO

Sources

Additional Content Marketing News and Resources

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What is Content Marketing? See the Top Content Marketing Influencers Answers

How would you answer “What is Content Marketing?”

What is Content Marketing thought bubble Source:http://www.docstoc.com/article/163249665/What-Is-Content-Marketing
After reading this post, please share your thoughts in a comment.

As I scour the internet for information on how to improve digital marketing skills including content marketing, I try to provide information to help Digital Marketing Managers meet their objectives efficiently and effectively as well as provide information on how to create superior experiences for their target audiences.

Before my search, I already knew CONTENT IS KING!

BUT

What is Content Marketing?

Before this post, I had a basic understanding, but the goal in this post is to create a definition of Content Marketing for all marketing professionals to use.

The Top 25 Content Marketing Influencers Thanks for our friends at Onalytica, they did some research and collected many responses to develop a list of the Top 25 Content Marketing Influences located at Slideshare.

Who better to answer “What is Content Marketing?” then the top influencers of content marketing?

Here are the Top Content Marketers Thoughts on “What is Content Marketing?”

Juo Pulizzi Image Source:http://contently.com/strategist/2012/02/06/joe-pulizzi-content-marketer-of-the-year/ According to Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is owning, as opposed to renting, media. It’s a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance consumer behavior.

Jeff Bullas Image Source:https://twitter.com/jeffbullas In his The One Best Thing Some of the Best Content Marketers Forgot, Jeff Bullas refers to content marketing as the result of the successful intersection of search engines, social media, email, content and blogging. Done well it is a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge of making your content as visible to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger, corporate marketer or a small business.

Michael Brenner Image Source:http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/about From Michael Brenner’s 9 Questions On Content Marketing Q&A, he states that the most effective content is that which best meets the needs of the audience. List posts and “How to” articles go a long way to building this kind of credibility but they aren’t enough. This kind of content needs to be balanced with deeper thought leadership that also inspires our customers to think differently about the challenges they face. He goes on to say the golden rule of content marketing is that it has to put the needs of the customers first and then the business results will be earned through trust and value already provided.

Doug Kessler Image Source:http://info.tracepoint.co.uk/blog/bid/188163/How-to-get-started-with-inbound-marketing-from-the-coalface-IMUK13-speakers During an interview, Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners explains what makes up great content. A brand creates great content from a variety of media that contains a point of view on it’s market. The content takes on issues that it’s audience cares about and puts a new spin on it, the brand puts some effort into producing special content. Great content is ambitious and confidant.  As a content producer you need to find your sweet spot which is the overlap between what a content producer is an expert at and what the audience cares most about.

Ann Handley Image Source:http://www.annhandley.com/about/ Ann Handley is “waging a war on writing mediocrity in 2014.” In her New Year, New You: 3 Things Every Marketer Should Be Doing in 2014 article, Ann stats ” I’m not talking about adhering to the rules of grammar; I’m talking about upping the importance you place on what you say, and how you say it. As a cornerstone of good writing (along with other things!), voice and tone are hugely undervalued in content and social media. Together, they constitute the secret sauce of great content, and I expect that more companies will pay attention to both in 2014.

Brian Clark Image Source:http://www.copyblogger.com/its-all-my-fault/According to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you are educating people, so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Conclusion

After looking at what the top influencers think about Content Marketing, the common elements are producing authoritative pieces that educates their target audience and meets their needs.

SO

When you prepare a piece of content marketing, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Does it show that I am an authority or expert on the subject?
  2. Is it creative?
  3. Does it inspire OR is it motivational?
  4. Does it answer my target audiences questions OR does it fulfill my target audiences need?

If you answer YES to all of these questions, you have a piece of great content marketing.

Please leave comments with your answers to “What is Content Marketing?”

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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Take 7 Steps to Start Building Relationships at the Moment an Email Subscriber Gives You their Email Address

Building Relationships that leads to successfull Email Marketing Source: http://www.infogroup.com/resources/blog/inbox-success-3-things-to-keep-in-mind-for-your-next-email-campaignFor Digital Marketing Managers, building your email subscription list is one of several email marketing goals within your overall digital marketing objectives, but keeping a high percentage of your email subscribers engaged with you is another subject. To increase your email subscribers engagement with you and prevent an unsubscribes, you need to start building relationships at the moment an email subscriber gives you their email address.

From the beginning of an email subscribers relationship with your brand, take these 7 steps to start building relationships:

  1. Answer “What’s in it for Me?”
  2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send
  3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails
  4. Reinforce their Privacy
  5. Inform them about their Welcome Email
  6. Send the Welcome Email
  7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center

1. Answer “What’s in it for Me” – Tell them right up front how you will meet their needs if they give you their email address.  Make sure your potential email subscribers can answer the “What’s it for me?” before they give you their email address.  This will decrease the number of unsubscribes on the welcome email because they know you can fulfill their needs.

2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send – Inform your subscribers what type of information will appear in their emails.  Will you send product updates, general information, coupons, etc? You may even want to show a thumbnail email example. If they know what to expect, you can increase your chances of them opening your emails.

3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails – Indicate how many emails they should receive from you in a week or in a month.

4. Reinforce their Privacy – Let your subscribers become comfortable and build trust in you.  Reinforce that their information is safe with you, and you will not share their data with anyone.

5. Inform them about their Welcome Email – When subscribers first give Welcome Email Example Source:http://sendsmarter.co/13-examples-of-beautiful-welcome-emails/
you their email address tell them that they should receive a Welcome Email. This is a good time to monitor delivery of your Welcome emails.

6. Welcome Email – You should include the following:

  • Thank You
  • Remind them about what they should expect from you and when to expect it
  • Ask them to whitelist your email address
  • Link to the Subscription Center where they control their subscription

7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center – When Example of an Email Subscriptions Center Source: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/1804/new-feature-let-your-subscribe/subscribers are logged into your website, give them access to a Subscription Center where they can edit their information, control what emails you send them, and control how frequently they receive emails from you.

By telling email subscribers what they should expect from you, they will start to build trust with you.  By allowing them to tell you what messages you send them and how often they receive your email messages, you give them control over your interaction with them.  Through these steps, you are starting a relationship at the very beginning. By creating a relationship, you create trust and can start conversations, and then, your email subscribers can start engaging with the emails you send and engage with your brands.

Experian Marketing Services just released it’s 2013 Email Marketing Study. Of the marketers included in the study, For Customer preferences, 60% of the companies do not give their customers an option in the types of emails they receive. If you start asking your customers what type of email they want to receive from you, you can separate yourself from everyone else and be unique.

Responses to the “Can your customers select the types of emails they want to receive?” from Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study.

Answers to Can your customers select the types of emails they want to receive? from Experians's 2013 email marketing study Source: http://marketingland.com/study-70-brands-personalizing-emails-missing-higher-transaction-rates-revenue-73241?goback=%2Egde_41352_member_5838131257690595331

If you establish a relationship in the beginning, you can increase your chances of engagement with your email subscribers and decrease the chance of unsubscribes.

Source:

Marketo‘s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing

Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study

Additional Email Marketing Information

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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SEO Monday: Earning Links with High Quality Content to Increase Search Rankings instead of Relying on Link Building Strategies

Don't Build Links Earn Them! Source:http://www.seo.com/blog/earning-links-vs-building-links/In reaction to Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team, announcement about guest blogging not being a good link building strategy, I felt there was a need to discuss link building, and how to deploy positive SEO tactics.  Also, recently, Google has made several announcements about poor link building strategies that will begin to affect your rankings, and Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Managers are struggling to find replacement SEO tactics to assist them in ranking high on search engine result pages.

Before we continue, the heart of the matter is that you need awesome content with an authoritative voice in order for any SEO tactic to generate results.

You need to become a thought leader as well as create awesome content that does one of the following:

Content is King Source:http://techtwisted.com/good-quality-content-can-beat-google-updates/

  • Offers a solution to your target audience’s problem
  • Answers a question
  • Teaches the audience
  • Consistently provides valuable information when needed
  • Content is shared and liked on social media networks
  • Consumed by your audience

Once you become a thought leader with your target audience and create content that meets one or more of the above criteria, you can start deploying SEO tactics to increase your rank on search engine result pages.

One of those SEO tactics will be Earning Links. Per Marcela De Vivo, we need to change the terminology. Instead to referring to Link Building Strategies, we should start using the term Earning Link Strategies.

Now, let’s take a look at different ways to Earn Links and get working on your SEO tactics for 2014:

  • Build an Engaged Target Audience on Relevant Social Media Networks – Create a community that possess the characteristics of your target audience, and then, amplify your posts to expand your reach to increase your followers.
  • Share your Content on Social Media Networks – Post your content on the Social Media Networks where your brand and target audience are located.  Any of your social media followers that Like, Retweet, +1, or shares your content on their pages, will signal Google to give you credit, and these signals will be taken into account in your site’s ranking in search.
  • Guest Blogging in Places with your Target Audience – If you find relevant and useful websites whose audience match your target audience, guest blogging/posting is appropriate, and Google will not reprimand you. Google’s new guidelines just restricts guest blogging on websites that aren’t relevant. Therefore, find websites with the same target audience as you, and do some guest blogging/posting with links back to your brand to help increase your exposure, branding, and reach. This will help your audience see you as a thought leader.
  • Create Offline Relationships with Industry Influencers, Journalists, and Bloggers – you can host an event or mail a four color post card to introduce them to your brand and content. The event and post card will start conversations about them linking to you and creating partnerships.  Also, you can urge industry journalists and bloggers to quote you in their articles to demonstrate your authoritative voice.
  • Lastly, if you have awesome content, you will earn links naturally, so it pays to produce great content.

Sources:

Additional Resource: I came a across a really great Infographic to help you and your organizations SEO strategies for 2014.  Given all of Google’s changes last year, SEO has changed, and this Infographic will help you reorganize your SEO strategies. For each old SEO tactic, the Infographic tells you the new SEO tactic.  I highly encourage you to look at this Infographic to help put your SEO worries aside and start deploying on tactics to increase your search ranking. SEO Evolution 2014: Quick Tips on How to Optimize Website in 2014

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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Social Media Wednesday: 3 Social Media Techniques to Coordinate with your Email Marketing

As a follow up to yesterday’s Email Marketing Tuesday, today we’ll explore how Digital Marketing Managers can use social media to compliment and enhance their email marketing efforts.

Social Media IconsSince people interact with your company in a multitude of channels (social media and email), messages in the different channels need to flow seamlessly.  Therefore, you can use your social media to continue the conversation that started in an email marketing effort. Another goal of coordinating social media and email is to extend your reach beyond your email list.

Social media and email marketing can work together to create engaging experiences for your target audiences by implementing the following 3 social media techniques.

  1. Social Connecting – you can use your email list to increase your social media followers by including social media icons and links in your email efforts.  You can also give your email recipients a reason to follow you on your social networks.
  2. Social Sharing – entice your email recipients to share your email content on their personal social networks for their Facebook friends and Twitter followers to see. There are 3 ways to conduct social sharing. First, you can use “share with your network” and “forward to a friend” in you emails. Second, use hashtags or “tweet this!” in your emails. Third, create a social sharing contest.

Example of Social Sharing:  In this example, it is an article that includes “Tweet the stat!” after each statistic list in the article.

  1. Social Promoting – you can use social media to entice new people to give you their email address. Just include links to your website’s email sign-up page in your posts or tweets. Then, amplify those posts with the links to your website’s sign-up page. Next, build an email opt-in app that lives on your Facebook page. Finally, use social media to reconnect with follows who are on your email list but haven’t responded to your emails.

Other social media techniques you can use to enhance other digital marketing efforts:

  • Look for potential keyword phrases that you can try using for your SEO
  • See who your followers follow and look for their interest to learn more about them

With the social media techniques mentioned today, you can see how social media and email marketing cross-over and work together.  Have fun using one or more of these techniques to increase your social media following and get you closer to achieving your digital marketing objectives.

Source: The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing by Marketo

Additional Articles for Social Media Networks:

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Email Marketing Tuesday: 5 Attributes to Achieve Engaging Email Marketing

Welcome back to Email Marketing Tuesdays, I have been on a quest to discover best practices for email marketing, and I want to share my findings with you.

What is engaging email? One of the many things I have read includes Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing, and the guide covers 5 attributes that makes email marketing engaging, and the 5 attributes include:

  1. Trusted
  2. Always Relevant
  3. Conversational
  4. Coordinated Across Channels
  5. Strategic

However, before going into details about the 5 attributes that makes email marketing engaging, let’s define engagement.  According to Brian Solis author of  What’s the Future of Business? Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences, “engagement is defined as the interactions between a brand and a consumer, but it is in how it’s measured that counts.”

Now, as you read the details about the different attributes involved in engaging email marketing, think about the actions your brands and your consumers need to take, and then, think about how these actions can be measured.

1. Trusted – To create trust with your target audience, you need to develop and maintain the quality of your list; maintain your reputation to increase deliverability with ISP’s; be consistent in the timing, frequency, marketing messages, who emails are from, and subject lines; and finally, abide by CAN-SPAM regulations.

2. Always Relevant – Say the The crossover between what you what to say in your email message and what your audience wants your email message to say is relevancy
right thing to the right people at the right time.  To accomplish this, you need to segment your target audience and determine what is the most relevant content for each segment within your target audience.  The next Email Marketing Tuesday will talk more about how you can segment your list, so stay tuned!

Two-way communication3. Conversational – the content of your email marketing efforts should spark a two-way conversation between you and your target audience.  You can do this by listening to your audience, adapt to their changing needs, and tell engaging stories.  Segmenting your lists and using dynamic content will help you achieve this attribute.

4. Coordinated Across Channels – According to a recent study by Mckinsey & Company, “E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than Social Media — nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.” However, social media extends your reach beyond your email marketing efforts. Therefore, Digital Marketing Managers need to include both email marketing and social media marking efforts in their digital marketing programs.  Tomorrow’s blog post, Social Media Wednesday, will talk more about social media efforts that you can coordinate with your email marketing efforts.

5. Strategic – First, make strategic marketing decisions that comply with your company’s goals.  Second, with the metrics that you are given, formulate a process to determine your Return on Investment (ROI) for your email marketing program.

Some of the above mentioned attributes are not surprising, but some the details and examples out-lined in Marketo’s guide are helpful.  In my opinion, Marketo put together an excellent guide that contains a majority of what you need to plan and deploy a top notch engaging email marketing program.

Remember: Tomorrow, check out the Digital Marketing Manager blog post, Social Media Wednesday, to find out more about the Coordinated Across Channels attribute mentioned above.

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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SEO Monday: 10 Additional Keyword Research Tools to Help you Define and Redefine your Keyword Phrases

Keyword Research Tools

Just scroll down to see the list of Keyword Research Tools.

Welcome back to SEO Monday! It has been a while since I last posted something for SEO Monday, but the Holiday Season kept me extremely busy.  I hope that you and your families had a wonderful Holiday Season.

Now that 2014 has started, it is time for Digital Marketing Managers to get back to work at driving traffic to websites and generating revenue by deploying SEO strategies.

One of the many digital marketing tactics that keeps Digital Marketing Managers busy in SEO is Keyword Analysis for organic SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaigns.

With Google’s multiple updates to their algorithms in 2013, keyword research will continue to be important for SEO and content marketing strategies.

There are many articles saying that Keywords are dead. However, I believe it is just a different way of thinking. Instead of coming up with a list of just words, Digital Marketing Managers need to develop a list of Key Phrases that current and potential customers will enter as queries into search engines.

So ask yourself,

What key phrases (not keywords) will your target audience enter into a search engine to find you?

After you develop a list of phrases that your target audience could potentially use to find you via search engines, you can use a research tool to help you determine the popularity and competition of your key phrases. Next, refine your key phrases until you have a list of phrases with high popularity and low competition.

Utilizing one of the Keyword Research Tools mentioned in an article called “10 Great Alternatives to the Google Keyword Research Tool” by Pam Dyer, you can determine the popularity and competition of you key phrases. I thought it was important for me to forward Dyer’s article on to you and list some free and paid Keyword Research Tools mentioned in her article.

Free Keyword Research Tools

  1. WordStream Keyword Tools
  2. Wordtracker –
  3. SEO Book Keyword Tool
  4. Ubersuggest
  5. Keyword Eye

Paid Keyword Research Tools

  1. Moz
  2. KeywordSpy
  3. SEMrush
  4. Keyword Discovery
  5. Advanced Web Ranking

Source: 10 Great Alternatives to the Google Keyword Research Tool

Given these Keyword Research Tools, find one that works for you in determining the Key Phrases that your target audience will type into search engines to find your organization.

As you develop your key phrase list, remember that people enter 3 to 4 words when completing a search. So, you might want to consider that your Key Phrases are 3 to 4 words long and use these phrases in your H tags and content.

Additional Resources

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough