FIVE RULES FOR CONTENT MARKETERS IN 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: 2016 planning. With the New Year around the corner, we know content marketers are looking for insights and trends that will shape the year ahead and help their content stand out.

This morning, we released findings from one of the industry’s largest and broadest global surveys of consumer views on digital content. We surveyed more than 12,000 consumers across six countries to get a deeper understanding of evolving consumer expectations and how they are fueling marketers’ challenge. The report, titled “State of Content: Rules of Engagement for 2016” sheds light on five rules for content marketers to follow in optimizing engagement with their target audiences.

Design for the Multiscreen Reality

Consumers report using five different devices and, on average, 83 percent use 2.23 devices at the same time. While the majority of consumers report feeling good about it (81 percent entertained, 80 percent connected, 76 percent productive), nearly half (47 percent) say they are distracted. As attention spans shrink, good design and optimization are paramount. Consumers ranked display (65 percent) as the most important aspect when it comes to content experience in their personal life, and 54 percent listed overall good design, such as appealing layout and photography as important. Content marketers can’t attempt to “get away with” a one-size-fits all approach to content distribution: content must be well-designed and optimized for each viewing device.

Don’t Fall Victim to #TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)

Consumers report lower patience for sub-par content experiences – with length a key factor. Nearly 9 out of 10 digital device users would switch devices or stop viewing content altogether if it fails to meet their quality, length and formatting expectations. Sixty seven percent of consumers would stop engaging if content is too long, and 79 percent would do the same if the content doesn’t display well on their device. Marketers need to deliver content in the right format, get to the point and optimize or consumers might say #unsubscribe.

Humor Makes Brands More Relatable

Seventy percent of global consumers agree that humor makes companies more relatable, but just 14 percent rate company-created content as entertaining. Globally, “making people laugh” was identified as the top personal motivator for sharing content. Content marketers should work to create authentic activations that entertain to help drive brand engagement.

In Our Relationships We Trust

In an era of high skepticism, authenticity and trust are critical. Consumers are more likely to engage with content they trust, but many are highly skeptical of most content they view online: 50 percent of consumers question whether negative comments or reviews have been removed, 49 percent wonder if an author was paid or incented to write a positive review, and 48 percent question whether a news article is biased. However, consumer trust in content increases as their relationship with the source grows stronger. Only 23 percent of consumers trust content from companies whose products they don’t buy, but if the source is a company from whom they do purchase products and have a relationship, that number nearly doubles to 43 percent. Brands need to work on building trusted relationships with their audience, which includes disclosing any endorsements, sponsorships and affiliations.

Don’t Show Up Uninvited

The majority of consumers understand the value of predictive recommendations, with 73 percent noting they are willing to share at least one piece of information about themselves and 71 percent reporting they are open to predictive recommendations from brands based on past behavior. Among consumers not willing to share their information, 40 percent believe companies could do something to ease their concern and 25 percent suggested “asking permission to access data” would make them more comfortable. This maps back to trust; consumers are most comfortable sharing information with brands they trust.

In addition to these insights shaping content marketing in 2016, the study also unveiled interesting findings about online engagement and behavior. For instance, there’s a rising fear of digital footprints. Twenty-six percent of U.S. consumers have cleared their browser history to hide content they viewed from a friend or loved one, and 17 percent have hid or embellished the truth about the content they regularly consume.

Source : http://adobe.ly/1OYCQGA

5 Ways to Start Investing in Social Media Marketing the Right Way

Do you have a business? Is your business on social media? If not, then you’d lower the probability of ending up to where you want to be. So, how are you going to start investing in social media marketing?

Social media is a key factor to succeed in your business. Even big companies now have social media accounts to market their products and increase awareness. Unfortunately, for starters, they don’t know how to manage their accounts.

If you’re not sure how to get started on investing in social media marketing, you may check out some suggestions below.

1. Start with a free account

Since you don’t know yet how to market your products on social media, you should take advantage of SM’s free trials. Those free accounts will help you learn the ropes. You can also experiment with various apps and software.

But you must track your ROI before you even begin to make a budget on SMM as a business expense.

You can start using Content Marketer to promote and reach out to influencers. Buffer is a great tool in scheduling your social media updates. Canva is a useful tool to create blog and social media images.

After you’ve learned how to use social media for your marketing campaign, it might be time for you to spend a small amount of money with different avenues so you can build better social media presence.

2. Go slowly

It’s easy to get excited about social media marketing. But you must only go slowly. Remember that you’re still at the early stage of investing in social media marketing so you shouldn’t spend a lot of your money in it yet. Ensure that your returns are actually growing as you increase your expenses on SMM.

3. Avoid overspending

As mentioned earlier, it’s easy to get excited on SMM. As a result, you might overspend. That is if you don’t have discipline. For that reason, it’s best that you have a budget set and you should always stick to it, no matter what. Even if you didn’t reach your target audience, you should call it a day when your budget has been used up for that day.

4. Choose the right tools

This will help you stretch your budget. As a beginner, you need to get the most of your time and money when you choose the right social media tool. That said, you must check out the various options on the market and know which platform offers you the biggest bang for your buck.

When you’re certain that such tool can indeed help you get a good ROI, don’t be afraid to buy it.

5. Begin now

It takes time to learn the ropes of SMM. That said, if you don’t start investing in social media marketing, you’ll miss a lot of opportunities. Just like other personal finances, you shouldn’t wait until you’re already left behind the curve.

You should start to build a solid strategy to help you in making a proper budget and approach while you’re leveraging the benefits of social media.

Source : http://bit.ly/1QjcmiF

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9 Ways To Stay Scrappy In Business

Your company is getting bigger, things are moving more slowly, and it’s taking longer to get things done. 

These are the most important lessons 

1. Commit to a result. If you are a superhero, there is no grey area. If you almost save the girl from the burning house, you still failed to save her. Being scrappy means committing to a result at all costs, and doing whatever it takes to get that result. There is no reward for checking off a list of menial tasks that you have accomplished. There is only a reward for getting a big, meaningful result.
2. We can all do more with more. Some of us can even do less with more. The real trick is, can you move mountains without the resources, tools andbudget that other people have?
3. Disregard data. A lot of times we get into paralysis by analysis. We spend so much time trying to figure something out, even though there is very little data that can really help us make our decision. In order to stay scrappy, take the little piece of data that helps you make the decision and just move forward; speed is more important than perfection.
4. Go down one-way streets. You can’t do what everybody else does and expect different meaningful results. The people that break out of the pack are those that are willing to do something meaningfully different than everyone else. If all the cars are coming one way and you are going the other way, you will get dramatically different results.
5. Negotiate everything. When my dad goes to the drug store, he tries to negotiate the price of his prescription drugs and you know what? Sometimes he gets a discount on them. You will be surprised what you can negotiate down to a lower price when you commit to negotiating everything possible.
6. Ask for favors. A lot of times the smartest folks feel like we can do this all on our own, and maybe we can— but by asking favors of lots of people, you will get things done more quickly. You may be surprised how much people will be willing to help you.
7. Exploit your competition’s weakness. If you are playing a game of tennis or basketball, you don’t only play up your own skills, you play your opponent’s weaknesses. You can often beat people much better than you by exploiting the areas they are bad at. It is the same in business. If you have a much bigger target you are competing against, don’t work against your own set of resources, figure out what their Achilles’ heel is and keep attacking it until you chip away at that armor.
8. Work more. It’s trendy to talk about how you can work less and get more done, but sometimes more is just more. If you work an eight hour day and I work a fourteen hour day, guess what? I’m going to beat you. All things being equal, I will beat you every single time.
9. You need a sense of urgency. If I told you that somewhere in your office there is a golden ticket, and if you find it in the next hour I’ll give you a million dollars—how much urgency would you feel to find that ticket? And what if I told you if you don’t find it in the next hour you are going to lose your job, your house and your spouse? What kind of sense of urgency would you have around finding that result? That is the same kind of urgency you must have in business.

Source : http://onforb.es/1j7f6RH

The 3 Leadership Lessons Entrepreneurs Should Learn from Musicians

As a general rule, entrepreneurs are always looking to improve themselves and their business ventures. With that being said, business-owners can be a little single-minded when it comes to evaluating their commercial model and output, as they think within narrow lines and the context of their existing market sector.

This can be detrimental, however, as inspiration can in fact be sourced from a number of alternative markets and industries. So long as you are able to think laterally and apply individual lessons to your specific market, it is possible to drive commercial growth and become an infinitely better leader.

3 key leadership lessons that can be learned from musicians

The competitive nature of the music industry and the individualistic mind-set of artists provide the ideal combination for determined leadership. Business owners and entrepreneurs can therefore learn a great deal from the music industry, regardless of which industry they work within. Consider the following: – 

1/ Support is integral to good leadership

By its very definition, leadership describes the effective organisation and motivation of others. This means that leaders are often isolated in their position, although this creates a dangerous scenario where it is difficult to succeed.

The best leaders recognise that it is crucial to rely on the support of others, while musicians are particularly in tune with this due to their relationship with fans.

In this respect, entrepreneurs must follow musicians by building a support network that is built on trust, care and a desire to add value. This can empower customers as part of your success, rather than a resource that drives turnover and high sales volumes. The result of this is also greater levels of engagement and the type of loyalty that brands covet.

2/ The importance of adaptability and informed improvisation

Musicians, particularly those with a penchant for performing live, are highly skilled in the art of informed improvisation. This relies on an innate understanding of their craft, which enables them to change and adapt their act without significant preparation or damaging the quality of their performance.

The same principle applies to successful artists in the music industry as a whole, as a recent case study by ticketbis.net revealed that music sales have dropped considerably since 1999 amid the proliferation of digital downloads and the rise of video streaming.

These examples underline the adaptability of musicians, whether they are using their knowledge and instinct to implement change or simply reacting to industry revolution. Such lessons are central to contemporary leadership, who must create models that are flexible and capable of being diversified as and when required.  Alongside the analysis of real-time trends, this can drive informed decision making and increasingly successful ventures.

3/ Leaders collaborate and promote the work of others 

Throughout generations of musical history, the best artists have always being willing to collaborate with their peers and promote the work of others. Established musicians have certainly worked tirelessly to mentor new artists within their genre, as the relationship between hip-hop legend Dr. Dre and his protégée Eminem proves.

There also remains a huge number of artists that collaborate on a regular basis, combining their unique skills and marketing appeal to establish more commercially successful music.

This is a crucial lesson for business owners to heed, as they look to develop the skill-set of their employees and mentor them to achieve their full potential. After all, good leaders are secure in his abilities and look to surround themselves with capable individuals that can challenge them on a regular basis.

By providing support to those around them, leaders can create strong and independently minded teams that are loyal and highly talented.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Lh9fov

13 Social Media Marketing Mistakes Many Beginners Make

There are endless social media marketing mistakes you can make, but some seem to be more common than others specially for beginners. And most of the mistakes are made with good intentions. Still, these mistakes hurt your success. And more: The lack of achieving the necessary results lets many young entrepreneurs turn away from social media marketing to try their luck in other marketing channels.

That is not necessary. Most of these frustrated entrepreneurs could easily get on the road to success. Often the mistakes are not huge and not expensive to correct. Some simple changes in attitude, activity or a simple refocus may just change everything from no results at all to a growing and lasting audience via social media.
Here are some of the most common social media marketing mistakes we encountered when talking to entrepreneurs and watching their activity in social media – and some ideas how to easily fix the problem.

1. Trying everything at once

I have seen this mistake often: People, who are new to social media and know not much to nothing about the different networks start being active in each and every network they can find. They try using every content format they ever heard of and think they have to hop on every fancy sounding new marketing train. The results are meager if you can see any. And in their despair and frustration they get the feeling they are not using enough networks, not doing enough or not trying hard enough.

And all the time one single network could easily give them more and better results than all the combined effort they make in all the different networks.

Social Media marketing is not simply signing up and starting to be active in social networks. Apart from the fact that most people, who are starting out have no relevant audience to speak of in any network, you also need to figure out the basics for each network before you can see results.

Getting social media right takes time – not only measured until you can see success, but also time in working hours. Sure, once you know what you are doing processes will get more efficient, you can add tools and automation to your daily routine to save time, which you then can use on a new network. But in the beginning you will have to think twice about almost every step in every network you want to use. Starting with everything at once will simply result in not getting anything right. Results will not show and frustration is certain.

2. Not getting the basics right first

This mistake comes in many varieties. It may be the missing share buttons on the blog, the totally broken blog layout, the missing bio or avatar picture on Twitter, the lack of content and no idea where to get content for social media from…

Social Media success rarely comes disconnected from your other activities and web presences. All online marketing is inter-connected. And especially when you are starting out you need to get the basics right first: The basics are the starting point where you can easily get things right without depending on some results or reactions by people, which might come or might not.

The solution is simple: Before you start hectic activity in every network you can find, get things right on your end first. Fill out the profile in every network you sign up for. Upload an avatar picture, which is recognizable and fits the dimension requirements in the network. Make your content shareable and share worthy. Decide on the content you are going to use in Social Media and where you are going to get it from.

3. Not measuring the right numbers

A while ago I read an article in a German startup magazine. It was a guest post of someone proudly telling the story how his startup generated a few hundred thousand fans for their Facebook Fanpage via advertising. And it was basically the real life story of a startup wasting thousands of Euros on advertising money for crap. Why? Because the fans where badly targeted, mainly inactive and in the end with the Facebook algorithm kicking in, the huge number of inactive fans was hurting their reach on Facebook more than it helped.

Counting Fans or Followers is often the wrong metric to measure marketing success. It may be important at first to watch if you succeed in gathering an audience – but the hard truth is fans and followers are not going to pay your rent. Even traffic does not, although it is much closer to a sale than a fan or follower.

Metrics need to evolve as your marketing matures. If you found out how to get people to follow you, you then have to figure out how to get these followers to your website or to signup for your newsletter – and in the end to buy your product (but there are usually many steps in between).

Do not make the mistake of focusing on a vanity metric like fans or followers for too long and forgetting about where you really want to get. Rather move on to the next step on your marketing journey.

4. Expecting too much in a too short time

This is a very common mistake. Many people expect measurable results in numbers of sales after a few days or weeks. But the hard truth is, while some results in metrics like followers, engagement or traffic should show after a few weeks, the real and huge success of social media is for the persistent with a consistent social media strategy who keeps going for months and years.

If you start out with Social Media Marketing, you may be going for some short term goals. But you need to be clear about one thing: Real Social Media marketing success comes after a long time of continuously good work. It does not help to poke around social media for a few days or weeks and then try something else and poke around there for a short time, just because results did not show fast enough.

5. Not being clear about the short term AND long term goals

Many people start Social Media without a clear goal in mind. That is not helping in any way. How can you decide what actions are going in the right direction, if you do not even know which direction you want to take?

You need to be clear about why you are doing Social Media, what results you expect in what time and how you are going to measure if you are getting any closer to reaching your goals.

There are always many options of what to achieve with social media: Is it mainly more brand recognition? Are you looking for visitors to your website or blog (traffic)? Do you want more subscribers for a newsletter? Or are you actually trying to sell a product?

How do you want Social Media to help you with reaching these goals? What steps may come in between?

Without a clear goal often Social Media activities tend to be uncoordinated and usually will not get you anywhere.

6. Not consider the special requirements and of the networks

This is actually one of the most common mistakes and one of the most crucial to your social media marketing success. It shows in people automatically cross posting between networks and cluttering their Facebook feed with endless Tweets or pinning to Pinterest without considering the image sizes and ending up posting miniature pictures which no one can read/decipher much less repin or like.

You need to follow the special requirements of each network: Pinning without a great image is not worth the effort; tweeting to Facebook usually only makes you annoying to your friends and they will either ignore you or even mute you.

There are best practices for each network. Following them will not guarantee you success – but not following will more or less guarantee you failure.

So, before you start posting to each network you ever heard off, make sure you know how the network works and what best practices are the fundamentals to success for exactly this network.

That includes knowing the right image sizes for each network and the algorithm which decides whether a post is shown to your followers or not for networks like Facebook.

7. Being disappointed/giving up too early

Many first time social media marketers give up far too early. They expect to see huge results after days and when these don’t show they turn to something else like advertising or PR. And all the time the first measurable success may simply be one post or one tweak to your activity or content away.

This mistake gets even more important when young companies cannot afford to hire an expert and the person starting their social media activities has to learn so much first. Social Media marketing takes time – and learning social media marketing may even take more time. If you expect wonders after days – do not go for social media in the first place, your efforts will most likely be wasted.

8. Comparing yourself to pros

Sometimes as a marketing consultant people ask you: “Have you seen that marketing stunt by Apple last week? We want to do something like that, too.”

And you try to explain to the enthusiastic founder that their halfway finished product is not an iPhone, their Twitter account has about 10 followers, their brand is know to themselves, their best friend and mum and their marketing budget is lacking at least 6 figures compared to Apple’s. No way can they pull off a similar marketing strategy than one of the most famous brands worldwide.

It is even the advice of some marketing professionals that is lacking applicability for the companies and startups that are new to the game. It is a difference if you are starting a blog or if you already have numerous great blogposts and some google traffic. I can do completely different things with my Twitter account of over 180k followers than a newbie starting out to collect the first handful of followers.

In some way Social Media is leveling the ground and a small company can have as much success with Social Media marketing as a huge brand. But your activity has to fit the preconditions. In addition advice for large corporations usually is not so helpful for a one-man business trying to do marketing on the side without a budget.

The way out is simple: Look for advice for the small companies and beginners. Some of this advice is rather found on smaller blogs, where people tell how they made their first steps and what you can learn from them.

9. Overthinking everything

Some people who are new to social media are so afraid of doing something wrong, saying something wrong or not having the perfect graphic or article they never get to being active in social media at all.

I have talked to bloggers who work on the perfect post for ages, they can only publish a post once in a while – but in between their social accounts simply keep silent.

Some people are so in awe of others or afraid someone might get them wrong they never talk to anyone in social media – and at the end of the day Social Media actually is about communication and connection

You need to overcome your fear of imperfection. Start interacting and start doing. Nothing is worth than doing nothing.

10. Thinking success will come naturally to the ones with the best product or content

This is a misconception that even some of the influencers preach – and it is going to kill many social media marketing strategies. The best content (or product) will not necessarily rise to the top. If you do not have an audience you can have the best content or product, no one will know it. You need to take an active part in telling people about you and your content. That also means distribution is a must and pushing social media growth is more then legitimate.

You do not have to wait until the world ends for people to notice you, your social accounts and whatever value you provide. Go ahead and make people notice you – just keep in mind that spamming and overly promoting will maybe make people know you but not like you. And if you are telling me now, people do not need to like you as long as they buy: In Social Media most people, who do not like you will not listen long enough to buy from you.

I have had a lot of people telling me it is not ok to push growth in Social Media – let me tell you a secret: Most influencer do push their growth and you can use the same methods to kickstart your social media.

11. Thinking about monetization/selling too early

This is a very common mistake. People read the big success stories of bloggers and social media experts making thousands of dollars from their activity and selling huge numbers of products. They miss the fact that before the money making and the selling usually comes a time of brand, traffic and audience building. And then, only then can you start to think about monetizing your activity.

Starting the wrong way round and trying to sell before you provide value and have an audience is most likely going to fail.

12. Thinking too much about equipment, design, tools and too little about value and content

Especially young tech founders seem to be very focused on up to date technology, design and highly advanced features. Sometimes less is more.

In Social Media marketing it is not the blog with the most professional design and most sophisticated features that is going to have the most success – but the one, which provides the most value to their target group. Especially in the beginning when you are starting out and still testing some of your activities, it is often time and money wasted to focus on getting everything perfect.

(Although you should still focus on being user friendly)

13. Thinking everybody can do Social Media

Sometimes I am still surprised how little value companies assign their social media team. And with the decision to start using social media then does not come the decision to hire someone who knows about Social Media. They simply assign the job to a clueless intern, a secretary or decide that the marketing or PR people should do it on top of their other tasks.

That may work, if they also give these people the necessary time and freedom to learn their new job from ground up. It will never work if they expect results to come from the first time efforts of a naive and unknowing newbie in a profession which is not only enormously diverse but also evolves constantly and fast.

You do not need to hire an expert, we actually had better results with newbies, who were eager and willing to learn than with so called experts, who refused to learn new things and think out of the box.

But the job of social media marketing is a highly complicated profession no one will probably be an expert in every corner of it. It is naive and very frustrating for the people working in it, if their bosses simply think their teenage son could do the same job for half the money – which they most likely could not.

Source : http://bit.ly/1K1AJMq