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User Generated Content Preferred Over TV By Millennials

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(Posted on Mar 17, 2014 at 03:50PM )

According to Crowdtap, partnered with Ipsos Media surveying 839 millennial men and women online, millennials reported spending roughly 18 hours of their day engaged with media, often viewing multiple devices simultaneously. Whether it’s called peer-created content, consumer content or user generated content (UGC), the research found that millennials spend 30% of their media consumption time with content that is created by their peers.

This exceeds television consumption and is rivaled only by the time spent with all traditional media types (TV, print, radio), a combined 33%. Millennials are also committed to engaging with social media on a daily basis above all other media types.

Millennials spend more time with User Generated Content than with TV

Share of Daily Media (All Media Types;17.8 hours)

% of Time Spent

Media

20%

Browse the internet / go online

13%

Watch TV (live)

10%

Watch TV (pre-recorded)

10%

Play computer or video games

7%

Go to the movies

7%

Listen to the radio

3%

Read print magazines / newspapers

 

Share of Daily Media Time (UGC; 5.4 hours)

% of Time Spent

Media  

18%

Social networking & content (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn)

6%

Use e-mail, text, chat, texting apps

6%

Talk with others about news / products /brands

Source: Ipsos MediaCT/Crowdtap Jan 2014


Millennials prioritize social networking above other media:

Daily Use of Media Types

Peer Generated

 

Format

Use Daily

Social Networking (eg. FB, LinkedIn, Inst...)

71%

E-mail, text, chat, texting apps

49%

Talk about products/brands

39%

Watch video clips (eg. YouTube)

35%

Read peer reviews (eg. epinions)

18%

Blog online, post to bulletin boards, etc.

15%

 

Other Media

 

Watch TV (live)

60%

Listen to Radio (broadcast/streaming)

53%

Retrieve news, weather, scores

47%

Watch TV (pre-recorded)

46%

Visit news media sites

37%

Read blogs, bulletin boards, etc.

29%

Read print magazines or newspapers

18%

Get product info/buy from a company

17%

Read professional reviews (CNET, etc.)

15%

Banner ad

12%

Source: Ipsos MediaCT/Crowdtap Jan 2014

Given millennials’ advertising savvy and skepticism around media, it is important to deliver a message through trusted sources, says the report. Millennials report that information they receive through UGC is highly trustworthy and trusted 40% more than information they get from traditional media sources (TV, print & radio), including newspapers and magazines.

Specifically, conversations with friends and family are the most trusted UGC format, followed by peer reviews. Conversations with friends and family are trusted 2:1 over TV and radio and almost 4:1 over banner ads. Brands looking for consumers to trust their marketing can no longer rely on tradi­tional media to communicate their messages to consumers. In today’s landscape, it’s peer-created content, or “consumer to consumer marketing,” that drives trust.

The correlation between trust and influence is revealed in the 2013 Annual Edelman Trust Barometer Study, says the report, which finds that trust leads to influence. The more trusted the source of a message, the more likely it will have a positive impact.

Media Trustworthiness (UGC 59%)

Format

% Most Trusted

Product/brand conversations with friends/family

74%

Peer reviews (e.g., epinions)

68%

E-mail, text, chat with friends/family

56%

Social networking & content (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn)

50%

Blogs, bulletin boards, forums, etc.

48%

 

Other media 39%

 

Professional/industry reviews (CNET, etc.)

64%

Product info/buy products from a co. website

49%

Print magazines or newspapers

44%

Online magazines or newspapers

40%

Radio

37%

On TV

34%

At the movies

28%

Banner ads

19%

Source: Ipsos MediaCT/Crowdtap Jan 2014

With 18 hours of media consumption a day, across multiple screens, with channel flipping, tabbing and page turning, it’s a wonder anything stands out and makes a lasting impression, notes the report. Marketers rely on creative to break through the clutter, but often it’s a combination of creative and the right delivery channel. For millennials, user generated content is more memorable than non-user gener­ated content, with peer-created content, including conversations with friends/family and peer reviews standing out the most.

Percent Finding Media Type Memorable

UCG  50%

 

Media Type

% Finding Memorable

Professional/industry reviews (CNET, etc.)

47%

On TV

47%

Product info/buy products from a co. website

42%

Print magazines or newspapers

38%

At the movies

37%

Radio

33%

Online magazines or newspapers

32%

Banner ads

26%

 

Other Media 37%

 

Product/brand conversations with friends/family

67%

Peer reviews (eg., epinions)

53%

Social networking & content (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn)

50%

E-mail, text, chat with friends/family

46%

Blogs, bulletin boards, forums, etc.

40%

Source: Ipsos MediaCT/Crowdtap Jan 2014

UGC uniquely provides marketers greater access to millennials’ time, a trusted channel to deliver brand messages and a memorable experience. The combination to deliver all three makes UGC more influential on millennials’ product choices and purchase decisions than traditional media.

Percent of millennials who say media type has influence on purchase decision:

  • User Generated Content   53%
  • Traditional Media   44%
  • Banner Ads   23%

Concluding, the report says that professional influencers have the reach and resources to create and share quality content. Consumer influencers have personal relationships that enable their recommendations to carry weight. Together, this combination can drive both reach and powerful influence. As brands continue to aggregate types of influencers and refine their strengths, these programs will likely become a fundamental component of most marketing strategies.

By Jack Loechner,
Center for media Research

According to a 2012 study by AOL and Nielsen, 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared every day. By now, the mantra of “content is king” has been relentlessly drilled into our collective heads – but more isn’t always necessarily better.

Quality is important – but how do you know if you’re really producing content that’s engaging your audience? Perhaps even more importantly, how are you measuring the results?

If you write and share it – will they come?

Let’s take a look at several new findings made as a result of a joint study between the Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs and Brightcove and what they could mean for next year’s content marketing trends.

Current Trend: Social Media, Newsletters and Blogs Head the Content Marketing Pack

content marketing uses

Social media leads the way with 87% of B2B content marketers leveraging one or more platforms.

Not surprisingly, most marketers are promoting their content via social networks. Considering that clicks from shared sites are as much as five times more likely to be shared – it’s easy to see why. But at the same time, social media can seem like you’re marketing in an echo chamber. According to a MarketingLand survey, only 25% of marketers measure the ROI of their efforts down to the actual piece of content.

Most just seem to measure activity (likes/comments) if they measure anything at all – and that’s not giving them the raw data they need to know what’s real discussion, and what’s just background noise.

social content survey

While nearly 50% of marketers surveyed had a content marketing plan – only 25% could accurately measure results down to the individual pieces of content.

What’s more, are people truly getting anything of value from the share itself (other than recognition from their friends/colleagues), or do they simply click and forget?

The Prediction:

I believe that in 2014, other content marketing avenues will overtake social media – including live events, case studies and (if companies can afford it), branded content tools. These things deliver much more value, brand awareness, backlinks and discussion than a simple social share – and in a marketing channel that’s already overcrowded, these tools present a chance for opportunistic businesses to approach customers from a newer, more helpful angle.

In addition, I predict that 2014 will see the rise of better measurement tools that don’t just track clicks and likes, but actual engagement in the form of discussion, shares across multiple platforms/channels, and actions as a result of those shares. Currently, it’s too cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming for a marketing team to micromanage the analytics for every single piece of content to see how it performed – so companies simply don’t invest in it.

Current Trend: How Brands Measure Success

content marketing metrics

According to the Content Marketing Institute study, most B2B companies measure success by the oldest internet metric in existence – traffic. But sheer numbers alone will only provide you with so much. Fortunately, sales lead quality ranks behind second, although it lags by almost 10%.

It’s difficult to measure intangible things like quality, but taking steps toward that goal, like creating personas for your target audience members, and matching those up with proper list segmentation can go a long way to putting a “face” with an interaction.

The Prediction:

This coming year, there will still be an emphasis on getting traffic, but many floundering websites are finally starting to wake up and smell the conversion coffee. Success will be measured according to the metrics that matter for that particular industry – whether it’s number of downloads, order volume, quality leads or a combination of those criteria.

Current Trend: What Type of Content is Created Most?

content marketing content

Industry Trends lead the way, with leadership profiles not far behind.

According to the chart above, content marketing focusing on industry trends are leading the way, with lesser degrees focusing on leadership profiles, company details, or even going so far as to try and play catch-up with competitors’ content. Industry trends could include breaking news, just-released software reviews, better practices or upcoming changes in the law or other facets of the business. Decision maker profiles could give readers a glimpse behind the scenes of the people who are leading the way in the aforementioned industry trends.

But if you look carefully at this chart – you’ll see that a lot of emphasis is placed on the company itself, industry methods, and people within the company.

STOP IT.

This is why most content marketing efforts are essentially spinning their wheels in the mud. Not a single one of these has anything to do with the real reason why people and businesses are consuming content:

Relevancy.

Keeping a finger on the pulse of news, learning about industry leaders and the companies they lead are all well and good – but none of these things get to the heard of what’s on every company and customer’s mind – What can this do for me?

The Prediction

In 2014, I’d expect to see this graph radically changed. Content needs to be tailored to fit the needs and unanswered questions of the target audience. Specifically:

  • Shift from industry news and trends to “Here’s how you can use these trends to grow your own business – and how our company can help.”
  • Exchange profiles of decision makers to focus on customer/company success stories – detailed case studies that show a marked, measurable result.
  • In place of company characteristics, ask “Why should I trust you? What can you offer me that no one else can?”

Tailoring content to where customers are in the buying cycle is a tried-and-true sales method, and I believe more and more marketing teams will take the time to properly engage their customers based on not only their place in the sales funnel, but their individual needs and expectations.

Again, we’re measuring many intangible, potentially unquantifiable things here – and it’s hard to pin down personalization and results into something as concrete as an analytical tool, but there’s no clearer route to earning a customer’s business, loyalty and trust.

At the same time, looking to a competitor’s content to see what steps to take is like the blind leading the blind. Do your own tests and use that data to understand what truly works for your website and your business.

Getting Ready for the Year Ahead

With all this information, how can you best prepare yourself for the year ahead?

  • Create your own Case Study – Not only is it a terrific resource for backlinks, but it also propels you on to becoming a recognized authority in your field.
  • Or Host a Live Event in Your Area – This is a great way to reach out to local businesses and entrepreneurs while sharing ideas and resources.
  • Look for Ways to Measure the Impact of Your Content Marketing – Not just in terms of raw numbers, but in the actions that occurred after the fact.
  • Refocus Content on the Consumer – Most content marketing is more marketing than content. How can consumers benefit from what you’re sharing? Why should they pay attention to it?

No One is Right Every Time

We may be completely blindsided by a new technology that brings us even closer to that marketing sweet-spot of connecting with buyers and persuading them to act. Until then, however, content marketing is one of the best ways to encourage engagement and interaction. We’ll look back at this article this time next year and see how right (or wrong) these predictions turned out to be!

Share Your Content Marketing Predictions for 2014!

Where do you think content marketing is headed? Share your own predictions in the comments!

By Sherice Jacob

Combine “web” with “log” and you get “blog.” It’s a funny word, but serious business.

Of course, there are millions of blogs that aren’t about business. Music, fashion, travel, food and beauty top the long list (according to this research). This post isn’t about them.

This post is about blogging for business—with a purpose. We have a lot to cover, so we’ll knock it out as efficiently as possible with a series of lists.

We’ll get right to it.

Who should read this post?

  • Non-blogger—You’ve never had a blog and you need to fix that now.
  • Unfulfilled blogger—You blogged for a bit. Magic never struck.
  • Beginning blogger—You blog, but don’t really know what you’re doing.
  • Regular blogger—You’ll pick up tips from a fellow blogger.
  • Expert blogger—You could steal the good stuff for your blog.
  • None of the above—You have nothing better to do, but to read about blogging.

21 benefits of blogging with purpose.

  1. Connect with customers—A blog is a practical and powerful way to share useful, relevant information with customers.
  2. Connect with partners—Blogging allows you to connect and team up with influencers and leaders who can be instrumental in building your business.
  3. Generate traffic—A strategically planned blog, with carefully chosen keywords in play, will show up in search and drive traffic to your landing pages.
  4. Establish authority—Your business blog is the hub of your content marketing efforts where you share your expertise.
  5. Win business—60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers, says HubSpot. They offer a ton of statistical insights in their research.
  6. Inspire your social media—If you’re using social media effectively, you’re sharing your blog posts regularly and taking advantage of the magical amplification of social networks.
  7. Increase reach—Your blog will be shared and find new eyeballs daily.
  8. Grow your email database—Your blog should inspire people to opt into your email newsletter list. Also, your email feeds traffic to your blog.
  9. Give your company a voice—A blog is your pulpit, your publication, your journal—the place where you talk about whatever you choose, however you choose.
  10. Humanize your company—That voice needs personality. Great bloggers are genuine. Your personality comes into play, that is, if you aim to make real connections.
  11. Exchange ideas—Blogs obliterate the wall that once stood between a company and its customers. You encourage interaction, comments and feedback. You create a conversation.
  12. Get (and stay) customer focused—By blogging, you’ll learn how to speak in your customers’ terms, perpetually improve this vital skill and grow more in touch with your audience’s wants and needs.
  13. Inspires content and productivity—Blogging is hard work. You need processes. Commitment. Consistency. You’ll need to step up—and you’ll be rewarded for doing so.
  14. Increase focus—A subtle addendum to the point above, blogging consistently forces you to define who you are trying to reach and why.
  15. Generate publicity—As I mentioned, business bloggers establish authority. Stick with it and demonstrate you know your niche and you’ll get asked for interviews frequently.
  16. Invite outsiders in—While business blogger should refrain from being relentlessly promotional, the blog is an appropriate forum for delivering insight into your company, its values, and people.
  17. Get strategic—You’ll get in the habit of closely examining the site’s analytics and gather all kinds of insights about what does and doesn’t appeal to your audience. Your marketing will get more strategic by day.
  18. Learn—We’ll get a bit warm and fuzzy now, but there’s no denying you are going to learn a lot about yourself and the world around you. It comes with being a writer.
  19. Get inspired—The research, the conversation, the experience… it’s inspiring. Trust me on this: a switch gets turned on and it’s impossible to turn off.
  20. Have fun—Perhaps not everyone will agree blogging is fun, but I believe every great blogger gets into it and enjoys the ride.
  21. Make millions—Maybe, maybe not. However, business blogging with purpose works. Every post is a long-term asset. Learn how to blog and you’ll lower your marketing costs and increase sales.

Let’s look at how to do it.

22 tips for blogging with purpose.

I have to give a shout out here to my man, mentor, friend, Marcus Sheridan, a.k.a. The Sales Lion. No one understands and teaches the practice of blogging quite like Marcus. I won’t be replicating his great post, “50 Qualities of the Best Business Blogs in the World” here, but I did draw these ideas from it (and encourage you to check it out).

  1. Answer questions—Listen closely to questions prospects and customers ask and answer every one of them in your posts.
  2. Teach, don’t preach—Avoid making your blog a heavy handed attempt to advertise your products. Adopt an educator’s mentality and you’ll win your reader’s trust.
  3. Converse—Ask questions of your readers, encourage feedback, counterpoints and criticism. Respond to comments as promptly as possible in an effort to exchange ideas.
  4. Create a blogging culture—Invite everyone in your company and its constituents to contribute ideas and participate in the blog.
  5. Use images—Take advantage of the appeal of photos, illustrations, charts and infographics to increase your stopping power and make the posts more attractive.
  6. Make it easy on the eyes—Use short paragraphs, line breaks, white space, subheads and lists to make your posts look inviting.
  7. Be transparent—Write with uncompromising integrity and don’t be afraid to address real issues, problems, challenges, and yes, prices. Don’t avoid the tough questions. Tackle them.
  8. Remove internal barriers—There’s no place in blogging for corporate red tape. Get permission in advance to write openly and honestly.
  9. Don’t back down—Some readers (or co-workers) don’t love what you have to say? Say it anyway. It’s not a popularity contest.
  10. Be consistent—The number one reasons blogs fail is they are neglected. Set a schedule and stick to it. Make the time to post often. No excuses.
  11. Nix the fluff—Your posts can be short or long. Just don’t babble your way through them. Serve meat and go easy on the gravy.
  12. Recognize others—Congratulate, write about and recognize customers, employees, partners, industry influencers and even competitors. Being generous will only help. You’ll enjoy reciprocity.
  13. Optimize—Research and use the keyword phrases that will increase your search engine rankings. Install plugins to assist you with SEO.
  14. Write passionately—Make your passion pulse through your prose. Tap into your reader’s emotions.
  15. Tell stories—Learn how to become a master storyteller. Observe how the best bloggers unravel plots and develop characters.
  16. Include customers—Drop the secrecy and anonymity. Cite real customers, real challenges and real solutions.
  17. Invest seriously—Blogging only burns time and money when it’s a low priority. Invest in the tools you need and put the best writers and designers on your blog.
  18. Market and sell—Don’t write ads and press releases disguised as blog posts, but do include a call to action and guide your readers along the path to discovering your solutions.
  19. Stay tuned—Follow your industry daily and stay on top of what your peers are saying.
  20. Encourage sharing—Don’t forget to offer social media buttons to make it easy for readers to share and email your content.
  21. Promote your blog—Promoting a post can (and probably should) take more time than writing it. Write teasers for your content and promote it across social networks and all potential touch points.
  22. Have fun—Never be stiff, formal, or jam useless jargon into your posts. You have the stage. Relax. Be entertaining. Allow yourself to have fun with the writing

Business blogs are a major challenge.

Blogs are the hardest channel for business to keep updated—and to really nail.

Passle, makers of a blogging shortcut service of sorts, recently studied 525 businesses and reviewed their performance across blogs, company news pages, Twitter and Facebook. Their study, “The State of Business Blogging 2013,” reported:

  • 75% of companies don’t update their websites in any way.
  • Only 20% have a blog and over one-third of them are inactive.
  • 1 in 8 companies have an active blog.

Ouch. Please understand…

Business blogs should/can/will grow your business.

  • 57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from their blog.
  • 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.
  • Blogs attract repeat visitors who continue to come back to the website for fresh content.
  • ­Blogging allows you to team up with people who already have an audience, which is an instantaneous way to attract readers.

The figures above are conservative. Blogging gets more important everyday. Start now.

Are you digging the stats?

Feast on this great infographic and I’ll see in the comments section, I hope. Ask questions if you have them. I’m happy to answer them and help set you on the path to enjoying the benefits of business blogging.

By Barry Feldman, founder of Feldman Creative


Curation is sometimes confusing. Everyone has a different definition and it’s used in many different ways as part of content and marketing strategies.

I asked 11 of my favorite curation experts for their best tips, tools, their favorite curator and suggestions on innovative uses of curation. Each is a curator on Scoop.it, my favorite curation tool and channel. New and experienced curators are going to learn from their advice.

For those of you who haven’t tried Scoop.it yet, check out the ways these experts use it to find, curate, publish and share valuable information. In addition to their tips and curation tool suggestions, you’ll find links to learn from the best.

Just a heads up. Today, you’ll find a brand new, freshly relaunched Scoop.it with a tasty new design, terrific tools, new interest channels and improved search capacity. I’ve previewed it and I guarantee it’s going to make curation and finding expert content faster, smarter and easier. More on Scoop.it and on Twitter at #curatethecurators.

10 Experts Share Best Curation Tips

I value each of them for their deep expertise in their areas of interest. Even more so, these curators have an obvious love of curation and a delight that comes from discovery and sharing great content. Most of all, they are very approachable and generous with their advice. Enjoy their insights.

Robin Good

Robin GoodScoop.it Profile (1.1 million views): Robin Good is the global go-to guy when it comes to content curation. His pages on Scoop.it recently passed one million views and there’s a reason. If you’re new to curation, Good is a shining example of how to add value as a curator as well as a source of superb tips, tools and trends. You’ll soon have him on your daily content curation radar like me and many other curators.

Best curation tip:
“What I recommend to anyone approaching new content curation for the first time is to think of it as the art of introducing and illustrating something that is highly relevant to a specific audience. In my view, it’s not about sharing, it’s not about personal expression and it’s not about marketing. It’s about helping your audience discover and understand the relevance (for them) of things of value (people, issues, events, products) that they would have otherwise missed.”

Favorite curation tool: My preferred content discovery app is a toolset made up of Prismatic, Topsy and Tweetdeck.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: Ana Cristina Pratas. She is a treasure trove of useful resources and her talent is in finding lots of potentially good stuff. She doesn’t really curate any of these, but as a source of stuff that can be extremely useful, in the area of learning, publishing, presentation and tools; she is the best I know on Scoop.it. I would like to list Baiba Svenca and Nik Peachey as two good alternative resources.

Interesting curation: Brain Pickings by Maria Popova is such an example. She has such talent in finding and unearthing interesting stuff of all kinds and in publishing them in a format that is highly readable. I this she is definitely unique, creative and very, very knowledgeable person.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Website, Home: Rome, Italy

Ana Cristina Pratas

Ana Cristina PratasScoop.it Profile (937.8K views): Eclectic hardly seems adequate to describe her curation. An educator and “learner”, Ana Cristina Pratas is literally a delightful curator to follow. She shares her “Digital Delights” on learning and developing creativity, contemporary digital tribes and avatars, virtual worlds and gamification. But don’t hold her to those topics alone. She’ll surprise and delight you every day and you will be glad to follow her.

Best curation tip:

“Curate with your heart and head – in other words, select what is significant to you, what will be useful to you. With time, these selections will become your online library where you can return to when necessary and even revise by either deleting them or keeping them as a relevant article for the moment they were curated. Hopefully they will be of interest to others who share the same interests or profession. There are also moments when, rushed for time, I will include an article so that I may later go back and read it more calmly. Curating with Scoop.it! has become valuable to me because I can regularly return to points of references when necessary. ”

Favorite curation tool: I sometimes may use suggestions which appear on Scoop.it! though often it is articles I read or come across online. I tend to read certain blogs and when there is a post which I find of particular interest, I will add it to the curation so that I may find it again easily. 

Favorite Scoop.it resource: Very difficult question as there are such excellent curators! For education, I will certainly turn to Nik Peachey, Ann Foreman and David Mainwood, to name just a few. Angela Dunn is another curator who I follow and always has an interesting selection on Creativity and Innovation.

Interesting curation: There are some excellent sites which curate art and photography (and which I sometimes include in my Digital Delights – Images). Maria Popova’s excellent Brain Pickings Weekly also offers wonderful posts which I sometimes include in Voices in the Feminine – Digital Delights. 

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog Home: United Arab Emirates

Brian Yanish

Brian YanishScoop.it Profile (304.5K views): Brian Yanish is a nerd. He says so himself. And he’s one great nerd to follow. He curates on the marketing revolution, website design, content curation, Scoop.it marketing, mobile web design and his latest project — an outdoor kitchen.

Best curation tip:

“They say “Content is King.” In the curation world your sources become the Queen. Scoop.it allows you to manage content sources where your potential (suggestions) scoops may come from. Making sure you refine your sources is key to helping you find great content to curate. “

Favorite curation tool: My number one content finding tool is my defined Scoop.it managed sources for each topic I curate. Next would be the people I follow on Twitter who share great content. I’ve setup private Twitter subject lists where I place specific Twitter users, and then I watch the content they are tweeting so I can scoop it into one of my topics.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: I follow so many great curators includingMarty Smith, Robin Good, Karen Dietz and Jesus Hernandez. One of my favorite Scoop.it pages is the main page where I can see the scoops from people I follow. Which in turn helps me find great content to rescoop into my topics.

Interesting curation: One of the most unique uses of Scoop.it is by Marty Smith and how he uses the power and  community within Scoop.it to build a community of friends and followers for his Cure Cancer Starter support team. 

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Website Home: Drumheller, Alberta

Guillaume Decugis

Guillaume DecugisScoop.it Profile (225.2K views): As CEO of Scoop.it, you’d expect Guillaume Decugis to be a passionate curator. But it’s not his shared business curation that gets your attention – curation and the future of publishing, Scoop.it on the web and the Scoop.it team. He curates on a bunch of fun, personal topics too, including online gaming, astronomy, freeride skiing, andgadgets I lust for.

Best curation tip:

“The most helpful to me was to realize that reading was 80% of the work. If I thoroughly read an article or watched a video (meaning I finish it instead of giving up half way), it’s probably a sign I should also share it with some insights on it. Instead of wondering what my blog should be about or lacking inspiration writing, I discovered I could have an impact by curating and sharing the content I already was consuming anyway on the same 4/5 topics. This transformed my content problem into an opportunity. And I believe many professionals are in the same situation: they already read a lot of content on their areas of expertise.”

Favorite curation tool: Well I’m biased but I’ll say Scoop.it ;-) In several ways actually: through the content suggestions of course but now more and more from the Scoop.it curators themselves by following topics that I find relevant, by searching or by using the new interest feature on the iPad or the Web version.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: It’s hard to choose because there are so many amazing curators on Scoop.it but I’d say Entrepreneurship, Innovation by Marylene Delbourg-Delphis who’s an amazing woman (the first to become CEO of a major Silicon Valley company).

Interesting curation: I just love what the team at cancercommons.org do through their Cancer Commons pages on Scoop.it, using cancer research news & knowledge curation to improve the survival chances of patients. On such an important cause, we can all realize how sharing important knowledge better and to the right people really can make a difference – just like it did for Marty Tenenbaum who founded Cancer Commons and survived cancer after having personally gathered a lot of information on his particular cancer, something that proved critical in making the educated guess that saved his life.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Website Home: San Francisco

Giuseppe Mauriello

Giuseppe MaurielloScoop.it Profile (190.3K views): Giuseppe Mauriello is a social media, marketing and sales consultant. He curates news, trends and new tools about content curation, social media and marketing. He’s another great example of how the curator adds value with additional insight and commentary to the articles that he filters and shares.

Best curation tip:

“Filter great stuff, and new people will listen to you. Publish great content, and your listeners will share your story for you! More than ever before: Excellent content is your competitive advantage. Context is king! Curation Time” © Giuseppe Mauriello.”

Favorite curation tool:  My favorite content news discovery tool is Prismatic. In addition, I also use Topsy and Feedly and in the past sometimes I’ve used Trap!t and Bottlenose.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: The master curator is Robin Good on Scoop.it; IMHO, he also one of the best in the world.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter Home: Naples, Italy

Ally Greer

Ally GreerScoop.it Profile (142.9K views): You’d think that working at the leading curation platform in the world wouldn’t leave much time for being a talented curator. That’s not the case when it comes to Scoop.it Community Manager Ally Greer. Her own curation topics include lots of topics related to her work including curation and the future of publishing, Scoop.it on the web, the Scoop.it team, lean content and social marketing. Her personal topics are fun as well: the best of Buzzfeed, personal branding, resources for professional women, healthy corporate chicks, Green homes, sounds and much more. She shows you just the right approach to mixing curation business and pleasure.

Best curation tip:

“My favorite curation quote comes from Clay Shirky, an NYU Professor and author of Here Comes Everybody. He said, “It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.” I completely agree with this statement, as I hold the opinion that there isn’t really such a thing as having too much information. If I have a large amount of useful information, it just means that I can continue reading and learning. However, it’s when this information is buried among useless or redundant content that that overwhelming feeling manifests itself. The point of curation isn’t to reduce the amount of information out there; it’s to help the quality information surface. Naturally, it’s not possible for robots to do this on their own, which is why the human touch that curation entails has become so important.”

Favorite curation tool: Of course, I love the Scoop.it Suggestion Engine. I feed it with all of my RSS feeds and searches and find content in the place where I want to publish it. Aside from that, I use social networks to find content – I’m very careful with who I follow and tailor my streams to be filled with content that I think I would be interested in finding.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: My favorite Scoop.it topic page is Ideas for Entrepreneurs by Guillaume Decugis  (and not just because he’s my boss!). Coming from a family of entrepreneurs and working at a startup, I’m extremely interested in the world of entrepreneurship and hearing the different stories of how awesome companies have come to be is super inspiring to me.

Interesting curation: Some of the most creative uses of Scoop.it I’ve seen are Karen Dietz and Brian Yanish (and I’m sure some others) putting email subscription forms on their pages to generate leads – who would’ve thought?! – and Seth Dixon creating a custom textbook for his college class.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Website Home: San Francisco

Marty Smith

Marty SmithScoop.it Profile (100.6K views): Marty Smith is marketing director at Atlantic BT. His background includes traditional brand marketing, several business startups and he is a cancer survivor. He curates on digital and traditional marketing, technology, startups, e-commerce, personal branding, collaboration and cool stuff.

Best curation tip:

“Don’t get stuck in a curation rut. Be open to new sources of information and use meta-search engines like Topsy or, if you can afford it, Radian6. Watch YOUR brands closest, competitor’s brands next and be sure to regularly watch, read and curate industry experts. Don’t be afraid to curate competitive content if it is great, but never snub anyone’s content. Your authority GOES UP when you act less proprietary and more universal.”

Favorite curation tool: Topsy, Flipboard and Zite are my favorite “BIG NET” tools. Twitter, Gplus and Scoop.it are my favorite “SMALL NET” tools.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: Robin Good for tools, Jan Gordon for analysis of latest cool Scoops and Jeff Domansky for PR. Also Brian Yanish is smart and gets it.

Interesting curation: I use Scoop.it as a fast feedback loop. I believe we should curate 90% and create 10%. Curation has more reach and lower cost per unit of work, so it is the “content radar” and this blog post is a perfect example. I got the idea for this post from the receptionhttp://sco.lt/6Kym0X on Scoop.it received. I knew, from that reception, 1,000 words on our Atlantic BT blog would do well (and it did).

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Home: Durham, NC

Karen Dietz

Karen DietzScoop.it Profile (101.8K views): Karen Dietz is a business consultant and professionally trained storyteller and the only Phd Folklorist I know. Fortunately, she’s not only a heckuva business storytelling trainer, she’s a wonderful curator on storytelling and personality types @ work. If you’re looking for a good story, you’ll want to start following her.

Best curation tip:

“Write reviews! Let your voice be heard. Help your readers sift through the mountains of information out there, tell them why you selected the article, and what they should pay attention to when reading it. Don’t write a dissertation, just a few sentences. This provides value to your reader, and makes your valuable. If you curate as part of a business/marketing strategy, this builds your business.”

Favorite curation tool: I love Prismatic!

Favorite Scoop.it resource: Robin Good — because I learn so much about curation from him.And I’m fans of Gimli Goose’s (Kim Zinke) on How To Find and Tell Your Story, as well as Gregg Morris‘ Story and Narrative.Baiba Svenca keeps me straight about presentations. And Susan Bainbridge is my go-to gal on Transformational Leadership. Then Marty Smith and Brian Yanish‘s curations help me with marketing and social media along with Jan Gordon.

Interesting curation: Hmmmm – I love street art and really enjoy Kuniko‘s curation World of Street an Outdoor Arts. I also thoroughly enjoy Jane Dunnewold‘s curation on Creative Civilization.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Website Home: San Diego

Gregg Morris

Gregg MorrisScoop.it Profile (64.7K views): Gregg Morris calls himself “a Renaissance man in a niche world.” He curates on narrative, storytelling, writing, customer experience, marketing, PR, sales. The real story to his curation is his skill at finding great storytelling material to share.

Best curation tip:  

“We’re filters for our readers. Always put yourself in their shoes and think about what they will enjoy/learn from most.”

Favorite curation tool:  Still Twitter for me but I am liking Prismatic more and more.

Favorite Scoop.it resource: Karen Dietz for storytelling.

Interesting curation: I don’t know if this falls into one of those buckets butAlly Greer uses Scoop.it as creatively as anyone I’ve seen or read.

Connections: Scoop.it, Twitter, Blog, Home: Chapel Hill, NC

Continued Here 

 

Sara Callahan recently posted a great piece entitled “Don’t Be afraid of Content” On Automotive Digital Marketing. She said that Content is life which is true.  If you think about it content originates through us and content defines us. Our social interactions and life experiences create the content that makes up and defines the society we live in. How we work, play and interact is all creating content which is how we learn and how we are influenced.

Content is the byproduct of all these diverse societal interactions and has been with us since the beginning. Content originally communicated through storing telling evolved to include written language. Fast forward into the electronic age from which emerged radio and TV; to the computer and internet as a means to collectively store, make available, and disseminate content efficiently to the masses.

Today Business refines this content into, what I’ll refer to here, as “niche content” and uses it to influence people to buy its goods and services based on trends and societal moods. Business takes into account cultural diversity and emotions such as fear, desire and vanity to influence our buying decisions.

The internet has made it possible for companies to use Digital Marketing to get closer to its market and develop niche content to influence people on a much more personal level. 

Looking at it in this context, content is and has always been intended to be shared and used to inform and educate us as a society and as consumers. Most writers that publish their work on the internet encourage others to share their work with others. These writers understand that content is meant to be shared to educate and inform.

It is a compliment to the writer that someone thought enough of the content contained in their writing to pass it on and share it with others. Also, there is the conception that posting someone else’s work may in some way work against you.

I have personally and have seen others who have had first page rankings sharing and commenting on the work of others. Therefore relevance and interaction must be how search engines make their determination.  I write blogs but I also share posts written by others.

Sarah’s points of writing about personal and professional experiences are by far the best form of content sharing. This original content or storytelling in a traditional sort of way captures ones attention and also projects the human side of the business and lets people know that you are concerned about your customer’s experience. 

If the content is good and the message is clear, a few grammatical mistakes are not going to annoy most people. It is also true that a lot of writers use punctuation and structure that is not grammatically correct to highlight something or to make points.

In addition to Google Search, another resource is Google alerts. Google alerts is a great tool to search for content. You can create different searches based on a particular subject and Alerts will send you results on a daily basis directly to your inbox. How convenient is that?

Other great resources include subscribing to newsletters and joining groups. These provide a steady stream of updated and industry specific information to draw from. Then there is always the option of buying quality content from professionals.

Content in all its forms is king in media marketing and blogging helps to identify and personalize you as more than just another business but as a contributing part of your local community and a customer centric company.

“Don’t be afraid of content is so true” because we are content and content defines us- and content lives everywhere.

By William Cosgrove

Organic SEO and Paid Search- How Are You Marketing?

Tags:
(Posted on Sep 16, 2013 at 02:21PM )
You have a Digital Marketing initiative in place and you're measuring its effectiveness. Great. Now I would like point out a couple of tools you can put in your Organic SEO arsenal based on some telling statistics

Paid Search
With the incredible benefits of Organic SEO over Paid Search you might want to take a look at some other options that can be utilized using Organic Search. 

Organic SEO 

The importance of Organic SEO speaks for itself. Also you can see that Blogging is having a big impact. Blogging (Content) which is engaging and drawing visitors creates the type of inbound link that the search engines new algorithms reward and can lead to higher rankings.

Here are some  Statistics on Blogs:

Blog frequency impacts customer acquisition. 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

The global population of blog readers keeps growing and 81% of marketers rated their blog as useful or better.  (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

These other options I mentioned that use Organic SEO  can also play a big role in generating incoming leads. I will also point out that companies like One Big Broadcast, parent company of OBB Auto, (For One) has been in the forefront of Organic SEO Technology and is constantly pioneering technology to take full advantage of Organic SEO Marketing.



Online Classified ADS

Car dealers have been running ads in newspapers since day one and although it is less important today it is still a part of a dealerships marketing plan. One thing that remains constant is that in many cases the vehicle information is often outdated when the ad hits the street with no way to update. 

Classified Applications like OBB allow users to create an identical ad on the web site with the ultimate flexibility. Users choose vehicles by stock number(s) or by clicking on the vehicle image to create their online car ad

Once created each vehicle image is linked to the full inventory detail via the new online classified ad. Users can add a header, footer and any amount of information about the ad. They can change the color of the background and even the background image. Edits can be done via the CMS should further adjustments be required during the campaign. 
You can also create a link for printing in the newspaper and insert a QR coded for mobile access. Leads can also click through to the vehicle detail, chat live with someone  connect via trade in, credit approval, etc.
Once the newspaper campaign is complete the ad lives on your web site as yet another way to connect with local search. 

Social Communities

In our days of information overload, many people are simplifying their lives to focus on their particular interests.
 
Creating a private social networking platform on your website connects your loyal like-minded customer base in a single-focus environment, enabling them to exchange ideas and develop groups and ultimately strengthens your customer base.
 
Companies with private social networks often experience better customer service, reduced customer complaints and even higher brand loyalty due to brand ambassador programs. As your community strengthens, your brand’s momentum becomes energized, resulting in increased word-of-mouth marketing and increased sales.
 
The Platform can allow for customers to manage their own profiles – including create their own content, update their company news and social media – which can all be administered from your end with specified permissions tools. This “conglomerate”-style online network harnesses the power of multiple content writers which acts like a magnet to attract search back to your site.

Although you’re Social brand strategies are important, don’t overlook the potential of harnessing your own community in a niche social network.
 
As always you must find what works best for you but Organic SEO should be a large part of your marketing initiatives. Just keep in mind if you have an outdated website or if you don’t have the proper technology whatever you do is not going to produce the results you could be enjoying.

By William Cosgrove
OBB Auto

A Division of One Big Broadcast

Blogging- Become A Social Media Destination Resort

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(Posted on Aug 14, 2013 at 12:40PM )

If you are not hosting a blog on your website start one. If you are not posting relevant information and blogs to draw in potential customers do it.
 

Bring the traffic to you and become a destination resort for updates and information so you can reap the benefits and attention that this personal form of content marketing is commanding.


Blogging is like having your own newsreel that provides a direct channel of communication between you and your potential customers.

 

When you communicate with and encourage people to get to know you as well as your business (A name and a face they can related to), your relationship with them becomes more personal and makes you more credible.


Since starting the blog on my Company website traffic has shot up over 2800 percent per month and people are spending time there. Also on our Facebook Page for our Foundation, Funlicoma Foundation, by just finding and posting interesting articles on different subjects draws hundreds of readers per week.


This astounding increase led me to do some research on how blogs ranked in terms of overall Content Marketing.


I found that Studies show that over two thirds of consumers will spend the time to read content on a subject they’re interested in. And blogs and articles that contain images get 94% more views.

 

Blog content is one of the benchmarks by which success in Social Media is tracked. Blogging can also improve your search ranking. Based on a Wishpond Infographic put out this year, companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages and see 55% more traffic to their sites.

 

Blogging is a main component of content marketing and provides many benefits– including increased traffic and visibility and SEO optimization. A company blog is also an effective form of inbound marketing.

 

Blogging is highly beneficial when it comes to improving your social presence. In fact, according to Wishbone, interesting content is one of the top three reasons consumers follow brands on social media.

 

Blogging is cost effective with time being the only real cost. Make your Social presence today and become a part of this social phenomenon mainstream and become a Social Media Destination Resort and you will have customers coming to you.

Written by Bill Cosgrove
DealerNet Services

The Often Forgotten Ingredient For Measuring Content Marketing

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(Posted on Jul 31, 2013 at 12:57AM )
 

Content marketing is now a way of life for B2B businesses. It’s one of the primary ways B2B marketers generate and nurture leads, establish thought leadership, build their brands, expand their social following, and engage with and retain customers.

If you’re a B2B marketer, this probably isn’t news. We’ve been reading and hearing about the importance of content marketing for years. But it was still good to see the importance of content marketing confirmed in a recent 2013 study by the Content Marketing Institute, which found that 33% of B2B marketing budgets are now allocated to content marketing, which is up from 26% in 2011.

Content marketing has certainly arrived. But with increased budget comes increased scrutiny from executives and higher-ups. And getting management to buy in to the importance of content marketing – and the necessity of increasing their investment in it – can be a challenge. It’s now no longer good enough to create engaging content, you have to be able to prove its ROI, and that requires the right data and tools.

Proving content marketing needs data

Good marketing teams are able to show how their content is having a positive impact on the following.

  • Web traffic
  • SEO
  • Social media followers
  • Newsletter email lists
  • Blog subscribers
  • Email open and click-through rates
  • Video views

Measuring that data is a good start, but while those numbers are useful in understanding the types of content and topics your audience enjoys, they aren’t going to impress most executives.

Better marketing teams can show how their content is having a direct impact on lead generation. Being able to demonstrate that this eBook or webinar generated X amount of leads usually gets an exec’s attention, but this usually isn’t enough to convince them that your content marketing budget is worth increasing (or, in some cases, justifiable as it already is).

Show me the money

That’s why the best marketing teams are the ones that can prove how those leads from content marketing are impacting revenue. For CEOs, revenue is everything.

They need to see the money.

It’s the key figure that will get them not only to buy in to the value of content marketing, but also to approve an increase in your budget.

Three essential analytics tools

Being able to prove how content marketing is impacting revenue requires three analytics tools. The first two are a marketing automation tool and a CRM system.

1. Marketing automation

Marketing automation tools like Marketo, Eloqua, or Pardot enable you to capture leads from web forms and to tie those leads to the marketing source that referred them. This means that you can create reports on how many leads each of your eBooks, white papers, webinars, and other content generated, as well as the email, web page, social media post, blog, video, PPC ad, SEO term, or other source the lead used to find you.

2. CRM systems

What’s more, when you integrate your marketing automation tools with a CRM system like Salesforce.com or SugarCRM, you can track each of those web leads through the sales cycle. And that means being able to prove to execs that your content marketing has generated X amount of web leads, Y amount of opportunities, and Z amount of revenue.

So what tool is often missing?

The often forgotten analytics tool

The data available from a marketing automation tool integrated with a CRM system can be very powerful, but if that’s all you are using to defend your content marketing, you aren’t doing it justice.

That’s because all you are measuring are the opportunities and revenue from web leads. You aren’t capturing the inbound phone calls your content is also generating, and this is problematic for two big reasons:

  1. You might not be getting credit for a ton of content marketing leads. If someone reads a blog and calls sales, for example, or calls after watching a video, reading collateral from a trade show, or getting a nurturing email, you can’t prove it.
  2. Inbound phone calls are often from leads who are ready to engage with a sales manager, and therefore more likely to become revenue than a web lead. Phone calls are the leads you most need to track back to your content.

That’s why the third analytics tool every B2B marketing team should use is a call tracking tool. Call tracking tools enable you to include unique trackable phone numbers in your downloadable and printed content, videos, trade show presentations, emails, ads, and direct mail blasts to measure the calls they generate. Even if a lead visits your web site before calling you, call tracking tools can still tell you how that caller found your site and the web page or blog posts they called from.

Integration is key

And like marketing automation tools, you can integrate call tracking tools with your CRM system to follow each phone lead through to revenue. By using all three analytics tools together, you can share detailed, accurate reports on the impact your content is having on the business’s bottom line. It’s an extremely compelling defense of content marketing that CEOs can understand. Plus you have the more granular data marketing teams can use to understand what content is working and what isn’t in order to make improvements.

Guest Author: Blair Symes from Ifbyphone. To learn more about call tracking and improving your content marketing ROI, you can download the white paper, “Tracking Phone Leads: The Missing Piece of Marketing Automation.”

 

Learn how to  create contagious content

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” shows you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 170,000.

Read more about it here where you can download and read it .
Written by Blair Symes

DealerNet Services

(Part 3) There Is More To This Content Marketing Than Just Clicking Publish

Tags:
(Posted on Jul 18, 2013 at 01:32PM )
 

Why did this work so well?

When someone is featured on another website, it can have a profound effect on their social following.

It shows that they are more of an authority on a subject because more people value their opinion.

The more times you’re featured and the more times your opinion is validated, the more of an authority that you will be perceived to be in the eyes of your followers.

Also, when you create an extremely valuable resource generally people are more inclined to share it because they know their followers will find value and appreciate the content being shared with them.

When someone is featured in an extremely valuable resource alongside some other big names, especially people that they look up to then they are compelled to share the content with their following and in some cases even go out of their way to share it more than they would with a regular mention.

I must warn you, not every person you include in a post like this will share and you will get varied results depending on the niche or industry that you operate in.

 

What other types of content can you use?

Regular blog posts, interviews, group interviews, industry roundups and infographics all work well.

The rule of thumb here is that generally, the more people you involve in your content, the more potential people that might promote it.

 

#3 – Build and maintain relationships with influencers and industry peers

A lot of people approach this blogging thing like it’s something you can do without any interaction or involving other people at all.

It used to be the case that people would just setup a blog, fire a load of rough content up and blast as many anchor text optimized links at their site as possible to rank in Google and then just sit on a beach somewhere without doing a thing – just sipping back mojitos while their bank account fills up with money.

For a time it worked and people made bank, we’re talking obscene amounts of money – but the problem that they have now is that Google has forced people into making effort, writing good content, building good links and generally treating our business the way it should be treated.

Whether your blogging to earn money, run an offline business or something else – the shortcuts don’t exist anymore.

Well, that’s not exactly true because there are certain verticals that are still dominated by spam, partly due to the fact that Google treats different industries differently, the ranking signals for one industry can differ drastically to another – but those that are still using nasty link building won’t get away with it for much longer.

Google left the door wide open and people saw an opportunity and for a lot of businesses it was a case of either use nasty link building tactics, rank and earn money or don’t use those tactics, don’t rank and don’t earn money.

People weren’t thinking of the big picture and it boils down to this – the user experience, whether it’s a slick site that gives you a great experience or a site that people simply find valuable and learn a lot from.

You need to get social, you need to connect and network.

Business owners have networked for years offline and used it to pass business to each other and generally help each other out – it’s worked great and it works great online too.

 

 

 

And here’s a 5th – if you want to connect with bloggers directly and get a lot more shares on your posts then get involved by joining Triberr and be part of my Tribe.

BY Adam Connell

 

DealerNet Services


(Part 2) There Is More To This Content Marketing Than Just Clicking Publish

Tags:
(Posted on Jul 18, 2013 at 01:19PM )

#2 – Feature or write about industry influencers

When you start any content marketing campaign, one of the first things that you should do is map out the influencers in your industry – think about the type of people that you follow and whose opinion that you value.

I recently published a group interview on my blog where I invited a number of industry experts to talk about how they build reader engagement with their audience. You can view the post here.

I started by inviting a number of influencers within the marketing industry to answer a number of questions on improving reader engagement – something that all of the people I asked did very well.

In the end I managed to publish responses from Seth Godin, Anita Campbell, Neil Patel and 30 other industry experts.

 

What did I do to promote it?

I reached out to everyone that took part using social media sites such as Twitter and Google Plus – sites that would notify them that they’d been mentioned.

This was then followed up with an email to let the participants know that the post was live, where they could find it along with a call to action.

The call to action was to help share the post and vote for the post on BizSugar.

The post was then imported into my Triberr account – If you’ve not come across this before, it’s a platform that allows you to link up your Twitter profile (along with Facebook and Linkedin) and join tribes of like-minded bloggers, marketers or business owners that will see your content and get the opportunity to share it with their followers.

 

What about the results?

In just over a day the post was the 2nd most popular post on BizSugar in June:

BizSugar Group Interview

The post has gained quite a significant amount of traction on social media:

Reader Engagement Interview Shares

The post also earned some good links according to Ahrefs.com (Majestic shows more referring domains, but I prefer the graph in Ahrefs):

Group Interview Referring Domains from Ahrefs

It also helped me get contributor of the week on BizSugar.com:

BizSugar Contributor

You can find the post here.

Continued Part 3:

http://onebigbroadcast.com/autospeakstraighttalk/view/287/_Part_3__There_Is_More_To_This_Content_Marketing_Than_Just_Clicking_Publish.html


http://dealernetservicesonline.biz

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