Online Marketing Blog

How Public Relations & Communications Can Win the Content Marketing Race

Lee Odden — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:00:19 +0000

In today’s fast moving search and social web, content flows in every direction throughout a variety of platforms, formats and devices.

With a global population of over 7 billion, there are over 2.3 billion internet users. More importantly, there are 6.7 billion mobile subscribers – 91% market penetration (source). Ubiquitous internet access is enabling consumers and brands alike to create, consume, publish, interact and transact – anytime, anywhere.

At the same time, “newsrooms have 30% fewer reporters than in 2000, which corresponds with 31% of US adults that have stopped turning to a news outlet because it no longer provided them with the news they were accustomed to getting.” (Contently)

Brands are answering the call to create more value for customers by publishing news and content marketing. In fact, 86% of BtoC and 91% of BtoB organizations are now using content marketing tactics.

As companies adopt a publisher model of content and media creation, many are beginning to rival the reach and influence of the publications in their industry. Amex OPEN Forum and General Mills’ Tablespoon are great examples of this.

What do these changes mean for Public Relations and Communications professionals? How is PR competitively positioned compared to marketing and advertising in a content centric web? Read on for answers to these questions and more.

By providing news content that traditional sources are not, brands are creating new connections with their communities and customers. While much of content marketing falls under the realm of corporate marketing, the expertise in messaging, content creation and media relations that many Public Relations professionals bring to the table can offer a competitive advantage in 3 key areas:

Storytelling

There’s an old expression that has held true for me over the past 15 years: “Facts tell, stories sell”. Content Marketing is the ability to tell brand stories that consumers and the media will care about. Who better to find and tell those stories than PR and Communications pros?

It is often said that people make decisions based on emotion but justify them with logic. Therein lies the intersection of PR and content marketing. Stories can connect with customers on an emotional level and the architected narrative of content marketing can provide a vehicle for both facts and stories that matter to your customers.

Editorial Based Marketing

Before “content marketing” became the catchphrase, I used to call what our Marketing/PR agency did “editorial based marketing”. PR professionals understand how news organizations work. Businesses are investing in content from planning to production to editorial. Corporate Journalism is on the rise and PR professionals are perfectly capable of fulfilling those functions or supporting them to create compelling brand content. Content designed to engage also inspires action – whether it’s a social share, a purchase, a referral or an inquiry to do a story.

Influencer Marketing

Working with industry and media influencers has been the stock and trade of media relations professionals for years. Numerous tools from Traackr to Klout to Kred can support the need to identify influencers based on their ability to affect action – not just high follower counts. PR professionals are well positioned to identify and engage influencers for a variety of content marketing based outcomes ranging from guest blog posts to co-creation of content with industry thought leaders.

Now more than ever, creating content that influences growth in market awareness and new business requires an integrated approach. While this has been a challenge for many PR professionals as marketing and PR functions converge, the good news is that through a model of Attract, Engage and Convert, organizations can better plan, implement and optimize the performance of their content based PR programs.

At the upcoming PRSA Digital Impact conference in New York (Friday June 28, 3:15pm), I’ll be discussing details of this approach along with tactics and examples in a presentation: ”Attract, Engage and Convert: How PR Can Get Ahead With Content Marketing“. The 3 key areas I’ll be covering include:

See a company successfully integrating digital marketing and public relations.
Get five best practices for 360-degree content marketing and digital public relations.
Find tools for better content planning, management and amplification.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Is your company integrating public relations and communications with content marketing? Are you making investments in corporate journalism and are those efforts working in tandem with both PR and Marketing objectives?

Photo: Shutterstock

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Opening Up Twitter Analytics to All – Smart Marketing Move ala Google

Lee Odden — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:07:53 +0000

Is Twitter the right place for your social media investment?

Whether you have time or ad dollars to spend, this is a question that marketers are visiting and revisiting as the demand for social media performance increases.

According to Twitter, 35% of consumers that follow a brand are more likely to purchase from that brand. Twitter users are also 47% more likely to visit the company’s website and 35% are more likely to retweet content from a business they follow.

Is Twitter right for you? How do you know the performance of your Twitter engagement and marketing activities? Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to Twitter Analytics without having to advertise?

Yes, it would. And now you can.

Last week I caught a tweet from Danny Olson @mrdolson that Twitter Analytics was available to anyone with a Twitter account, not just advertisers.

This story was coved by the tech media, but in case you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s pretty easy to view the Twitter Analytics for any account you have access to: While logged in to the Twitter account you’re curious about, visit the Twitter ads page and click on Analytics in the top navigation.

I think this is a smart move in the way that Google offered Analytics for free was a smart move. Making information more easily available with the option to start advertising just a click away equates to making it easier to spend money with Twitter. According to BuiltWith, there are over 13 million websites, or 16% of all sites on the internet, using Google Analytics. A huge number of those site owners rely on Google for important data to make business decisions about their online marketing.

The trust engendered and the access to new, qualified customers is substantial when making this kind of data available for free. Will the same adoption occur with Twitter? A lot more features than what are currently available will need to be added in order for that to happen I think. That is not to say current Twitter Analytics data isn’t useful, because it is. But a basic timeline of activity and follower trends is not exactly remarkable.

The two views are Timeline Activity and Followers. The Timeline info can be downloaded as a CSV file so you can work your spreadsheet magic on it.

The Timeline Activity tab shows a bar chart of mentions over the past 30 days along with follows and unfollows over the same time period. Putting your cursor over anywhere in the timeline reveals the mentions, follows and unfollows for that day.

A never ending scroll river of news style list of recent activity is displayed as well with a count for Faves, Reweets, and Replies for each. You can also filter the recent tweets list by Best, Good or All to see the top 15% of tweets with the most activity vs. viewing them chronologically.

The Followers tab shows a trendline over the past year of followers. Below are details on the percentages of top 5 “Most unique interests” of your followers, the top 10 interests of your followers, the top countries, U.S. States, and Cities of your followers, a breakdown of Gender and a list of the top 10 Twitter accounts that your followers also follow. Putting your cursor over any of these data points displays the specific counts. The Followers data is not downloadable as CSV but you can easily scrape or copy the page.

What do you think? Will you start using the Analytics option within Twitter or will you continue to use the social media analytics tools you already have in place? Or maybe you’re not using any social media analytics tools at all?

Bird Image: Shutterstock

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Online Marketing News: Digital Agency of the Future, Facebook Hashtags, Google Gets Waze, Apple Money, Amazon Grocery

Mike Yanke — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:00:59 +0000

Image: Detail of Skyword Infographic

The acceleration of social technologies along with continuously evolving consumer behaviors has many agencies in a state of flux and asking: Where to invest resources? Which positions to staff and how to structure the agency to be adaptable and to grow?

For the past few years we’ve been modeling our agency at TopRank Marketing to better adapt and integrate. The holistic approach I talk about here and in Optimize are a reflection of the changes we’ve made to better integrate content, social media and search optimization. With this context, I was happe to see this week Skyword released their Digital Agency of the Future Report. When I shared the accompanying infographic with my business partner, Susan Misukanis, her reply was, “That looks like us!”. Exactly.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Hashtags Are Coming To Facebook!
Finally. Now you can keyword spam, oops. I mean add thematic context to each of your Facebook stories, providing connective tissue for meme development and the potential for greater exposure. Mashable

SMX Advanced Gets Started With Boatload of Information From Cutts
This week marked the launch of SMX Advanced in Seattle, and if you were unable to be their live, you will certainly want to be a virtual audience member for Matt Cutts Q&A session. From structured data, to Panda updates, to the latest site speed penalties, this session was unique in the sheer volume of information Cutts revealed. As Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz commented, “of all my years watching Cutts talk, I have never seen him reveal so many new things in a single hour at a conference.” Search Engine Land

Google Claims It Can Predict Box Office Success With 92% Accuracy
Google is making this startling claim after evaluating search and paid click data for 99 of the top films in 2012. While most of us are excited for Man of Steel, and a good number of us are intrigued by the trivia of this story, look beyond the soft news angle and imagine the power that this type of predictive modeling can bring to your online marketing efforts. Search Engine Land

Google Spends More Than $1 Billion On Traffic Mapping Service Waze
In a move made perhaps solely for defensive reasons, Google has recently finalized its massive purchase of Waze, a Google Maps competitor reliant on real-time user data. This move helps the search giant maintain its dominance in the mapping arena, but also undercuts similar acquisition efforts by Apple and Facebook. The Verge

Apple To Get Into The Money Printing Business – Literally
Late last week, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Organization pushed an application forward for iMoney – Apple’s answer to Amazon Coins – and sly combination of virtual currency and digital wallet technology. Another interesting move for Apple and another swift kick to the Bitcoin. CoinDesk

Because Why Not? AmazonFresh Grocery Delivery Service Launches
In select Los Angeles neighborhoods, Amazon Prime members will soon be able to have fresh groceries delivered same day. Another interesting move for Amazon, another swift kick to going outside for some fresh air. The Verge

Despite The Chatter, Facebook Stock May Not Be A Bad Buy
A handful of catalysts suggest that Facebook’s earnings growth over the next ten years may exceed that of Google’s. I’ve buried this story a bit lower while our team does its own bit of due diligence into this tip. Forbes

For Millenials, It’s About Value & Engagement
Is there anything more frustrating than a demographic with huge purchasing muscle that refuses to flex? If you find yourself going out of your head when targeting millienials online, check out some new metrics that may help you focus on getting into their head. eMarketer

Infographic: How B2B Content Impacts Buying Decisions
Research indicates that more than 87% of B2B buyers say content impacts their buying decision. 87%. As in almost 90%. See what this research indicates as the most liked and disliked characteristics of online content – and then compare against your current content marketing strategy. MarketingProfs

From The Online Marketing Blog Community

For us (at IBM) a key business outcome to drive was social media governance by elevating the best examples of IBMers and IBM brand channels. So we are selective about which people and channels appear in Voices, though they are not all “professional” communicators or marketers (lots of topical subject matter experts in there.)

Moreover, while we continue to innovate on the experience layer (the page you see at www.ibm.com/voices) we are more interested, frankly, in the underlying data stream, the quality of it, the ability to apply it into different experiences such as other web pages, mobile apps etc.
Ethan McCarty – Social Media Hubs for Brands – Best Practices & 9 Examples

Even within a single customer, there are different audiences involved – from technical to economic to political. The content produced must appeal to diverse, audience pain points, concerns and information deficits – all of which are moving over time. I look for brand ubiquity throughout the cycle, which can stretch on for years and touch dozens of people. I want it impossible for anyone to go online without running into the brand.

For example, a presidential election can alter the plans for a large construction firm dramatically, especially if they are heavily involved in environmental programs. The target keywords/SEO content is aimed at this moving target – an audience on a carousel horse. You must predict their motions a turn or two ahead of time and make sure content exists, and can be found to address the information gap and advance your brand.
Scott Clark - Why SEO is Relevant When It Comes to B2B Thought Leadership

Basically good stuff but there is a more serious optimization problem at hand. A really good presentation isn’t dependent upon the slides and thus, the slides really won’t be of much value without the presenter. If it’s necessary to drown the audience in the foam of marketing, put the Twitter handles and quotes on a handout—and the Facebook connections and all the other distractions can go there as well.

All presentations should have:
1. A Goal (Everything else is a sub-piece of this)
B. A Strategy—Often presentations are collections of facts or “points” stabbing at the goal but are not part of a consistent strategy.
C. Story — or stories to add stickiness.

As the website can’t do it all, a presentation can’t and shouldn’t be designed with a purpose and then diluted with broad company marketing.
Chris Reich - 20 Plus Tips on How to Optimize Your Presentations & Public Speaking

Now You Tell Us

What do you think is this week’s biggest story? Or better yet – how will the online marketing stories we’ve shared this week make you a better online marketer next week? Let’s talk below.

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20 Plus Tips on How to Optimize Your Presentations & Public Speaking

Lee Odden — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:01:46 +0000

What does it mean to “optimize” your presentations? Keywords in your speech? Including your Twitter handle on all slides? Repurposing the slide content through Slideshare, Flickr, Visual.ly and on blogs? The answer is yes – all of the above. And more.

More marketing and communications pros are getting on board with the idea that public speaking is fuel for content marketing. The problem is, the focus on creation and promotion centers around individual content objects or presentations.

An optimized presentation strategy means having a narrative or story that includes your brand’s key messages and how the live presentation is connected to other content objects.

A live presentation can be connected to other content objects like a research report which might be connected to a series of blog posts which are connected to individual digital assets like images, polls, influencer interviews, infographics, press releases, podcasts and so on. You get the idea.

Wherever it is that your audience is looking for the answers you are qualified to give, presentation content can help you be the “best answer”.

Optimizing your speaking skills or your presentations is a worthwhile endeavor. Think of all the hours that go into researching, creating and preparing for a presentation that lasts only 15-45 minutes. Plus there’s the time it takes to pitch and the time to promote. It seems a waste not to make sure a presentation is a great experience for all involved.

I’ve given my share of presentations over the past 8 years and have gone from “nervous out of my mind” and blank audience stares to being asked to keynote conferences and paid speaking engagements at Fortune 1,000 companies. Besides those personal benefits, optimized speaking and presentations have been the most efficient, high impact content marketing we’ve ever experienced with our 13 year old agency.

While this post is focused on optimizing presentation reach and performance, the most important lesson is stop selling yourself or your brand, and sell useful information that connects with the audience emotionally and intellectually. Keywords and social media don’t make a great presentation. You do. Once you have a great story, optimization will help elevate the performance of that story and connect with people that are interested.

I know there are many, many subject matter experts and executives at companies that could benefit from optimizing their presentations. Here are a few tips:

Key questions for optimizing public speaking as a content marketing tactic:

1. How does the presentation fit your overall marketing or messaging objective? How does it further your goals?
2. What is the objective of the presentation itself?
3. What is the objective of the audience that will be exposed to the presentation?
4. What is the story? What is the hook? What is the creative angle, metaphor of aesthetic?
(And does that tie back to your overall brand or messaging?)
5. How do you want people to feel after experiencing the presentation? What 2 or 3 key concepts should they associate with you and your brand?

Answering these questions should help you define your approach and how the presentation connects with both brand and audience objectives.

If a presentation isn’t a win for the audience, it isn’t a win for anyone.

The best investment of your time with presentations is in the planning. Make sure your story is solid before you start hunting for clever full screen images and fonts to use.

The style of presentation should match your objectives. Inspirational presentations should connect emotionally with the audience. Instructional presentations need to provide practical, easy to understand examples. No matter what type of presentation you give, it needs to be entertaining or you’ll never connect and keep audience attention.

Presentation Deck Optimization Tips:

Here are a few of the steps I follow when creating optimized presentation decks to improve the presentation experience during the event and boost the search and social exposure afterwards.

Create a presentation template that includes a linkable logo, twitter handle and hashtag as appropriate at bottom middle or bottom top. At minimum, include a twitter handle.
Write a creative title for the presentation. Also write a keyword optimized title for use with a blog post.
Create a structured outline of the entire presentation
Write a paragraph summary of the presentation. One that is 12 – 25 words, and one that is about 50 words long. Focus on what the viewer will get out of the presentation most. Use these with meta description fields, on Slideshare and as an annotation to the embedded presentation in a blog post.
Make a list of “tags” or keywords that represent key concepts. You’ll use these when promoting the deck online.
Write (tell) the story of your presentation in text like a script. This guides your flow and can be repurposed as blog content before/after the event.
Add images or examples that support the idea of each slide. When it comes to text, KISS. Keep it super simple.
Write optimized headlines for each slide (whether viewable or not). This shows up on Slideshare and aids findability.
Cite sources (statistics, quotes, images) Organize these efficiently and you can more easily use them in an infographic later.
Write short descriptions for each slide using the outline and story – put them in the notes of the PPT deck. This will be useful when reposting the deck to Slideshare and related sites. It also reminds you what you’re going to say on that slide.
Include “Tweetable” quotes, statistics throughout the presentation. Check them for length to ensure they are Twitter friendly.
Link images to related content on your blog or website. Not useful during the presentation, but plenty useful to viewers online afterwards.
Include short URLs in the slides where appropriate for downloads, resources and more information.
Identify the images, statistics, quotes and other elements within your presentation and how they can be repurposed in other media and on the social web.
Upload your presentation online before or immediately after you give it. Make it available to all attendees or broadcast a short URL to your networks if you want everyone to see it

Optimization Tips for During the Presentation

I’ll finish this post with a few optimization tips for use right before and during the presentation. Employing these tactics can help you better engage the audience that is present as well as extend the reach of your message to their networks during and long after you’ve left the room.

Promote the presentation in a way that creates anticipation. For example: Ask a compelling question and post it as a tip on Foursquare for the event. Do the same on Twitter and to the event Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
Schedule tweets of your statistics and quotes to publish during your presentation using the conference or event hashtag.
Use graphics and concepts from the presentation in a blog post or guest blog posts to promote the presentation.
Ask 1-2 qualifying questions with the audience to empathize with them – show them you are prepared to give material relevant to them – not just share what your brand wants to sell. Then actually act on the answers they give you – adjust your focus.
Create incentives for social sharing. I like to give away a book for the best livetweeting or for liveblogging my presentations. Last time I spoke, I gave away a copy of Optimize and a box of Voodoo doughnuts. There were over 275 tweets in 45 minutes.
Schedule a tweet sharing the URL of your presentation at the end for viewing later or download – Slideshare is awesome for this.
Offer a slide of tweetable takwaways at the end of your presentation. Make it easy for them to remember (and share) your key concepts.
Offer a link to something that provides next steps – a guide, report, whitepaper, video etc. Also the presentation you put up on Slideshare can include more than what you present live. To see that bonus content, viewers are given the option to provide their contact information.

Events offer many benefits for content marketing and networking. Here are a few other resources that cover optimizing your conference experience as a speaker, moderator and attendee.

Warning: Do Not Read This If You Want to Give Awesome Presentations
How Not to Suck Being a Conference Moderator or Speaker
5 Ways to Optimize the Business Value of Attending Conferences

What are some of your tips for optimizing presentations and content? What creative ways have you discovered to extend the value of your presentation investment?

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Why SEO is Relevant When It Comes to B2B Thought Leadership

Lee Odden — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:51:00 +0000

I’ll start this post off with my point: Dismissing search is ignoring demand from buyers & the media.

A digital marketing exec I follow on Twitter shared a CMI article that posted this weekend: “Why SEO May Be Irrelevant When It Comes to B2B Thought Leadership”. As a long time realist about the role of search in online marketing, I wasn’t sure if this was simply linkbait or a well reasoned, data-informed argument.

It’s a cliche to respond to “SEO is dead” articles because those writers are almost always uninformed or have an agenda unrelated to optimization. However, this post was on CMI, a highly respected site.

The article does offer some great tips on building thought leadership including advice on academic and professional journal publishing, publishing on client-facing media outlets and public speaking opportunities.

After that, it gets interesting starting with this logic: “getting found online is not an important objective in large, strategic B2B sales. And then, “the GTAA president’s job depends, in part, on knowing how to find an answer to the question”.

Ironically, the article is about building thought leadership and credibility. Unfortunately contradictions like the one above doesn’t help the author’s credibility.

The author’s point: “…it’s not about “getting found.” It’s about “looking good” and “looking credible” to clients that are assessing the expertise of potential service providers.”

I understand the value of creating great content relevant to the context of a particular buying experience. But how can you “look good” if no one involved in the buying cycle (or the media for that matter) can find you?

Even in niche B2B scenarios like a category mentioned in the article, “remediation of contaminated soil”, has an audience using search to find information that can benefit companies and thought leaders in that industry.

For example, search Google for “remediation of contaminated soil” and there are over 1 billion search results. The first page is a cornucopia of useful information from scholarly articles to videos to industry press. At the top are companies in the business of providing soil remediation services.

If search visibility is in no way important to establishing credibility with niche B2B industries, then no one would be searching, right?

A quick check of Google’s Keyword tool shows demand for hundreds of variations on “soil remediation and testing” for queries at different stages of the buying cycle:

soil testing 110,000
what is soil remediation 14,800
soil testing companies 1,000
soil remediation companies 200

Even using simple data to identify search demand for niche topics seems a more reliable decision making process than dismissing a tactic out of hand based on – a contradiction.

Another consideration is the effect of search visibility for members of the media doing research. Discovery of subject matter experts and story sources via search is a daily occurrence.

“I begin every day at search engine. It doesn’t matter what story I’m working on, it always starts with a search.” Jason DeRusha, WCCO (CBS) TV News Reporter

Inclusion in industry trade publications is highly credible as suggested by the author in their suggested tips for building thought leadership. Why not make it easy for the media, peers and even bloggers to find thought leadership content? The credibility of being “the best answer” is priceless – especially in combination with visibility in industry publications and public speaking.

In fact, many B2B buyers will read thought leader content in trade publications and then Google people, companies and topics to drill down. Optimized content can play a role in all aspects of where and how niche B2B content is discovered.

Search connects people with information at the moment they need it most. Deciding to ignore that seems perilous.

The article did have some good advice on building thought leadership for niche B2B markets, but why invest in thought leadership content and then dismiss making that content easy to find?

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Online Marketing News: 7 Social Media Sins, Matt Cutts Warns on Links, Rise of Vine

Mike Yanke — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:20:27 +0000

Gluttony, sloth, greed, wrath, lust, envy and pride. Most of us know that committing these sins is wrong. The rest of us were terrified into acknowledging that committing these sins is wrong by Kevin Spacey years ago. So if we know that something is wrong in the real world, why do so many continue to follow the path of the wicked online? Start your Friday off on the path of the righteous by avoiding these seven deadly social media marketing sins, as preached by XPLAIN.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Warning From Matt Cutts: Paid Advertorial Links Are Still Paid Links
Advertorial links, dressed up pretty to look like content, are appearing in greater frequency throughout the web. But just because it feels like content and looks like content, doesn’t mean it smells like content. And if you are considering this tactic, ensure you heed the warning of Matt Cutts in this new video, and avoid the risk of emitting a foul odor to the bots. ClickZ

Twitter Releases Vine For Android Smartphones As It Tops 13M Users
If you are an Android user, and have a short attention span, you are in luck! Correlating with an impressive rise to 13 million users, comes the Vine for Android app. Check it out now. TechCrunch

Google+ Trumps Twitter, Earning Second Place for Total US Social Networkers
Don’t let any lingering perceptions of a lackluster start paint you the fool. Among both women and men, Google+ has leapt into second place in a list encompassing all US social account holders. eMarketer

Study: 76% Of Executives Believe CEOs Should Be Utilizing Social Media Channels
And when we get this number to 100%, we will truly see a business landscape marked by unprecedented success. Marketing Land

Study: 85 percent of US Tweens Are On Facebook Without Any Supervision
And when we get this number back down to 50%, we will see a parenting landscape marked by unprecedented sighs of relief. NBC News

Solving Mystery of Mobile Safari Traffic – Ironically – Does Not Lead To Solution
For months, online publishers have seen mobile Safari traffic coming into their site as direct referrals. Are you shocked to find out that it’s something as simple as a meta referrer tag? Are you equally disappointed to learn that knowing this, unfortunately, does not result in you seeing this traffic? Search Engine Land

Salesforce To Acquire ExactTarget for $2.5 Billion
By far, Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date. All Things D

Are Content Curators The New Editors?
The question is intriguing. This article is absolutely compelling. EContent Magazine

Google AdWords Enhanced With Image Extensions
PPC visual results are expanding beyond simply product ads with the beta for Image Extensions in AdWords. Search Engine Land

[Infographic] How Companies Organize For Content Marketing Success
Content marketing is the go-to marketing priority for 2013. See how this plots out in terms of tasks and ownership. Content Marketing Institute via Visual.ly

TopRank In The News

No trip to the beach this summer is complete without a pair of Ray-Bans, plenty of sunscreen, a frisbee – and of course – Optimize. Just this week, synthesio named Optimize to its 2013 Social Media Summer Reading List.

Need to power up your social media marketing efforts? Look no further than this post on Entrepreneur, summarizing 2013 Social Media Predictions, an eBook created by TopRank Online Marketing for Dell.

Now You Tell Us

What do you think is this week’s biggest story? Or better yet – how will the online marketing stories we’ve shared this week make you a better online marketer next week? Let’s talk below.

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How Personas Guide Meaningful Content Creation & Optimization

Lee Odden — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:34:32 +0000

As marketers accumulate information about customers, it is also important to identify common characteristics and patterns to help guide messaging, engagement and offers.

Behaviors that contribute to your business objectives like, sales, advocacy, sharing, referrals and repeat business might contribute to your understanding of an “ideal” customer that can be characterized as a persona:

Admin Bob – Influences the CEO on software purchases and cares about price, service and speed.

Being able to identify your “best” customers also means there’s another end to the spectrum: patterns that reflect undesirable customer behaviors and an “avoid” persona:

Gatekeeper Jane – Maintains power by filtering information to the CEO about software purchases. Cares about control, recognition and status quo.

Companies that solve different problems in different markets may determine that multiple personas best represent their target audience.

Understanding the pain points, goals and topical preferences of your customers’ personas provides invaluable insight into planning content to guide that customer through the buying cycle. The motivations and context that bring a customer to search or tap into their social network for recommendations can then be translated into tactics.

How do you use personas in online marketing?

Content Planning – Based on the need, pain point or goal for your ideal customer persona, identify if content already exists to meet it. If sufficient content does not exist, incorporate it into the content plan for story creation . Map your customer needs like “How can I back up my computer without having to worry about losing disks or remembering to schedule?” to specific content like an article, how to video or even a product page that will help guide that persona along in the sales cycle.

SEO – Keywords in demand that represent the product or service relevant to the persona’s need should be researched for popularity and competitiveness. Based on the back up example above, research more than the obvious “computer backup” to include phrases that describe situations or scenarios like “computer back up without disks” or “automatic computer back ups”. Keyword optimize existing content and incorporate SEO copywriting into the task list for ongoing creation of content according to the content plan.

Social Media Presence & Engagement – In what social channels does the customer persona participate? Where are they influenced? Based on persona participation, determine if a brand presence exists at all. If so, does it share and engage with content related to the ideal customer persona’s needs and goals? If not, factor that social content opportunity into the brand social media strategy for creating a social presence. What social topics is the persona motivated by? Do threads of discussion already exist in social channels relevant to the customer goals? How can your brand be an authoritative voice on those topics? Incorporate relevant social topics in your community management, social content and engagement approach relevant to the ideal customer persona.

In the assessment of existing web page and social assets, determine how well those search and social media assets perform in terms of ranking and social visibility. Reconcile the difference between current performance and the ideal in order to better attract, engage and inspire the target persona. Add new content, optimization and social engagement tasks accordingly. Also consider what metrics will help you identify whether efforts to connect with your ideal persona are successful or not.

A fragmented effort within search, social media and content marketing helps no one. Not customers and certainly not companies.

Competition for attention within search results and on the social web is only going to increase as more brands become publishers and more customers create and socially share content. The need to create a relevant experience for your target customers in an online world of information overload is more important now than ever.

Smart marketers would do well for themselves and the customers they’re trying to reach by investing in the development of customer personas that reflect the desires, goals and key traits of their best customers. Translating customer insight into quality keyword optimization of web pages, social content and digital assets for specific phrases according to the searcher’s needs in the buying cycle is an important step along with social engagement. As a result, you’ll deliver a more relevant experience for both search engines and for customers that is worth sharing on the social web.

Next steps for leveraging customer personas in your digital marketing mix:

What are the common characteristics of your best and worst customers?
Collect information on common customer data points including: content preferences, search phrases, social networks, and the types of products or services they buy or “like”.
Based on your research and “best customer” characteristics, create and name an “ideal” customer persona
Map the needs and goals of customer personas to your web and social content planning.

Are you leveraging customer segments, profiles and personas to inform your content planning? What about content optimization and social engagement?

Excerpt with permission from Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, published by Wiley. (Affiliate Link)

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Content Promotion Tips for Online Community Managers

Lee Odden — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:56:27 +0000

In a few weeks I’ll be giving a talk at the University of St Thomas in Minneapolis to a class on community management on a topic that I think will interest many of our readers.

Online Community Management is a function that has existed in the digital world for a while now, stretching back to the days of bulletin boards and online forums. Today that role looks a bit different.

Not be confused with a Social Media Manager, a Community Manager is typically the “voice of the brand” on the social web as well as the voice of the community back to the brand. Functionally, this translates to social media listening and engagement but also includes some promotion of brand messaging.

The growth and popularity of social media has exploded the audience and participation of public online communities, so the need for people skilled in the art and science of community management has also increased. Since some of the Community Manager responsibilities cross over into brand content promotion, that’s where this post is focused.

Key Considerations for Community Manager Content Promotion:

Topics – How does the brand want to be known? What is it already know for? What topics represent the value the brand delivers for customers and the broader community? When it comes to being the “best answer” for questions that the community has, what topics or even keywords describe those questions and answers?

Some of the topics can be determined by answering those questions and many more will be revealed during the course of working with the community. The starting point is, “What does your brand stand for?” and “What does your community care about?”. Those topics can be mapped to key objectives for the brand and how involvement with a social media or online community will help the brand reach those goals.

Content Sourcing – Guided by a list of topics that represent the goals of the brand and the community, content promotion sources can be identified and filtered. The Marketing people will be (or should be) feeding Community Managers with information on planned company marketing, PR and communications events. An over Content Marketing Plan and Calendar can do this pretty effectively.

From a tactical perspective, content sourcing for a Community Manger can involves a mix of content types, such as:

Community Content Curation
Industry Content Curation
Brand Message Promotion
Brand Content Curation
Crowdsourcing Community Content

There are many sources to look for these types of content from using search engines (news, image, blog) to industry newsletters, to searching social networks for trending topics. The most basic and effective source of content is the community itself. Create a cycle of asking them questions, aggregating answers and recognizing their participation. Check out this post for multiple creative content sourcing ideas.

Editorial Calendar – Planning social content is a mix of pre-determined topics and content types as well as allowing for dynamic and spontaneous content based on events and opportunities. Here’s a blog content calendar template that includes:

dates
topics
titles
description
target audience
buying cycle
keywords
categories
promotions
repurposing
media types
internal citations
3rd party citations/sources

Hub and Spoke – For many companies, the most practical model for content and social media where a blog serves as the hub and social networks are the spokes. There are other models depending on the social media maturity level of the brand and community, but hub and spoke is an effective starting point.

Social Content Optimization – Search is priceless for connecting brand social content with people who are actively looking. For Community Managers, that means being provided with a keyword glossary from the SEO team. Keyword Glossaries are a tool to help you understand what phrases are high in demand. Armed with a list of keywords mapped to brand content and sorted by popularity, Community Managers can make word choices to improve attraction of search traffic without compromising the message.

Social Content Promotion – The best rule of thumb for social content promotion is to only share what’s worth sharing – whether it’s brand, community or industry content. When a marketing manager ask for some lame thing to be tweeted, plussed and posted to the Facebook Fan page – just say no. And explain what qualifies as “promotable” content that adds value to the community. Social content promotion can be a slippery slope and brands will only reap what they sow. Creating value first, empathizing with the community and being creative with brand promotion are all essential. Here’s a great post on promoting social content that also helps make it more findable.

Social Content Repurposing – On a daily basis, some social content like a Tweet might be reasonably repurposed for sharing on LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook. Some might be duplicates. Some might be longer or more visual representations of the original. What will work for your community might not work for others, so test and observe.

A classic example of repurposing:

Curate industry statistics
Post one statistic every day or once a week to the corporate Twitter account, or LinkedIn, or on an image to Google+ or Facebook
Leverage said statistics in the company newsletter, blog posts and in presentations
Compile statistics into a blog post
Create a PPT using dramatic images with the stats in a clever font – promote on Slideshare, embed on blog
Create an infographic using these statistics – break the infographic down into PPT slides and share on Slideshare
Create a video with statistics illustrated on top of B-roll video clips and promote on YouTube, embed on blog
Conduct short interviews with industry thought leaders where their opinions on the curated statistics drives the questions – publish on blog
And so on and so on…

It is not advisable to repurpose using all of these tactics, as the duplication would alienate your community. But this should give you some ideas on repurposing.
Monitoring & Measurement – Goals drive measurement and there are a variety of performance measures for building and engaging with a community. When it comes to social content promotion, quantitative measures of reach and qualitative measures of engagement are worth tracking at daily, weekly and longer term intervals. Short term tracking reveals opportunities and direct impact. Longer term tracking helps identify overall trends.

I’m going to stop here, because this was supposed to be a quick 500 word post and I see it’s now over 1,000!

I’ll leave you with a question though: To what degree should Community Managers be expected to promote brand social content?

Photo: Shutterstock

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Social Media Hubs for Brands – Best Practices & 9 Examples

Lee Odden — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:51:55 +0000

Social content curation and social content creation are often the core to many brands’ social networking efforts. Curating and sharing useful content associates the topics with the brand and creates an affinity for the brand as what I like to call, “the best answer” for their areas of focus.

Growing social participation is motivating many companies to aggregate content produced and curated by the brand’s own employees. This is a compelling opportunity to harvest the brand’s own collective wisdom. A single destination for curated social content fuels a brand publisher model that supports brand storytelling, content marketing, PR and even SEO objectives.

Additionally, curated and aggregated customer interactions with the brand on the social web can surface advocates and provide customers with a view of how the company is referenced on social networks. Third party endorsements, observations and interactions are the most powerful, so why not curate them into a social hub?

In 2009 I wrote about the now defunct Best Buy Connect social hub. Maybe the idea was ahead of its time, because today many companies are curating brand and customer social content as social media hubs. The growth of social media and the impact of Pinterest design has clearly influenced how many brands employ social hubs. Here are some examples worth studying:

Team Titleist – More than aggregated brand social content, this is a community powered by the Telligent platform. However, it does include social hub features by aggregating the brand’s social content from Titleist blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. The default sort is by what’s trending. Users can make comments on blog posts and perform normal Twitter functions, and Facebook and Instagram offer offsite links. If you want to see all of Titleist social content aggregated in one place, this is it.

O-I Glass is Life – The Owens Illinois social hub is very robust and powered by the Postano Hub platform, which is incredibly fast. Aggregated social networks include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo. Curation is focused on brand published social content on each of these platforms and users can interact and share on any of the aggregated social content, which is a social media optimization best practice.

Intel IQ - Curated by Intel employees, IQ is powered by Intel’s own IQ social content curation platform with the purpose of showcasing the impact of technology on media, life and the planet. The site is broken down into 3 sections: Featured stories created or curated by Intel IQ staff, Top trending stories, each with an “IQ score” and Tweets that use the #IQ hashtag. All stories are “share enabled”.

White House - Social Hubs are no limited to the private sector and in fact, many government organizations use social hubs either as a static aggregation of all the various social media accounts for the institution or as more of a dynamic hub like you’d find in the other examples on this page. The White House social hub offers column formatted streams of social content from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Scribd, Flickr, Slideshare, Google+ and LinkedIn. Users can share Tweets and all other curated White House social content links to their respective platforms.

IBM Voices – Based on an internal social content aggregation platform called Voices, IBM’s social hub aggregates blog posts, Tweets, videos, and photos from an IBM Tumblr blog. There’s a word cloud representing trending topics and the normal sharing options for the Twitter feed items. All others either link offsite or open a pop-up window. There’s also an “embed” feature which is unique from most other social hubs.

USA Rugby Social Hub - This sports team social hub offers another Pinterest style layout with never ending scrolling down and a featured story at the top – front and center. Social content is aggregated from USA Rugby’s Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as from fans that use the #usarugby hashtag. Each story can be shared to Twitter. Otherwise, they link to their respective social platforms.

Dell IT Social Hub- Dell actually includes an explanation of what their social hub is for, which I found useful to understand intent: “A central place to find, share, and comment on all our most current social tidbits and current events from Dell’s public sector and large enterprise segments”.

Social content is aggregated from Dell social accounts at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, StumbleUpon, Delicious (old school!), Digg, Dell Blogs and Community. Users can view content from all or just specific social channels. Content is further segmented by category (Enterprise, Healthcare, Education, etc) and each item can be shared to other social networks via the ShareThis widget.

Nine West Social 9 - Powered by Postano Hub, this social hub with a never ending scroll, aggregates brand social content from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+. Each item is sharable to other social networks.

Social@Cisco - Tech companies were early to the social hub space and this hub from Cisco shows the column format used by many of those early adopters. Cisco content from blogs, communities, YouTube, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are curated here. Sharing at the story level is not enabled but each does link back to the platform where it originated or in the case of videos, opens a pop-up window.

Some of the social media hub tools used be these brands and others include:

For companies using blog or CMS platforms like WordPress, there are plugins that can be used to create similar effects as illustrated by the brand social hubs above. The social hub for our new TopRank Online Marketing website is a good example of this:

If your company has either:
1. An active social presence on multiple social networks and media sites
2. An active consumer or buyer fan base on the social web that frequently mentions your company

Then it makes sense to create a social hub. Start small with just a few sources, such as blog, Twitter and Facebook. Then add as your community grows.

Which brand social media hubs would you add to this list? What social hub curation and publishing platforms would you add?

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Online Marketing News: Google Blimps, Social CEOs, WordPress Turns 10, Future of Internet 2.4 Billion Strong

Lee Odden — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:00:30 +0000

With over 850,000 views on Slideshare in just 2 days, this 2013 Internet Trends report from Mary Meeker & Liang Wu from KPCB is a must read. There are over 2.4 billion internet users world-wide and huge opportunities in store. This report speaks to the state of content (including photos, video and audio) and how it is increasingly findable, shared and tagged. Digital content is created and shared 9 times more now than 5 years ago. Mobile use is expanding at a dramatic rate and implications for smartphones, tablets and even wearable devices are explored.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Google blimps will bring the web to Africa. Search giant Google is intending to build huge wireless networks across Africa and Asia, using high-altitude balloons and blimps. The company is intending to finance, build and help operate networks from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, with the aim of connecting around a billion people to the web. Wired UK.

The Social Imperative for CEOs. A new study from KRC Research has found that 76% of executives think it is a good idea for CEOs to be social. The benefits of the Chief Social Evangelist role has many benefits ranging from boosting company reputation to impacting business performance. (Inlcudes a report, video and infographic). Weber Shandwick.

WordPress Turns 10. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg reflected on the 10th birthday of his baby that now powers over 70 million websites and WordPress has grown to be the largest CMS in the world, powering an astounding 18% of the web. Happy Birthday WordPress! Mashable, WordPress.

Consumers Want A Mobile-Optimized Web. A survey by Kentico Digital reports that 85% of smartphone owners use their phones to compare info before making a purchase. 75% of smartphone and tablet owners say the look and feel of a company’s mobile Web site plays into their purchase decision. When it comes to Web sites that aren’t mobile-optimized, 44% of tablet and smartphone users said they’ll never return to the site. MediaPost.

Twitter bumps lists from 20 to 1,000. Each of those 1,000 accounts can have up to 5,000 Twitter accounts listed. The Next Web.

Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome. According to Danny Sullivan, the conversational search feature demonstrated at the Google I/O conference has natural language, semantic search and more built into it. Search Engine Land.

Only 37% of Marketers Think Their Facebook Advertising Is Effective. Citing the recent 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers surveyed use Facebook in their marketing mix, but less than 40% are satisfied. ClickZ.

Under pressure, Facebook targets sexist hate speech. Under mounting pressure from activists and advertisers, Facebook is ramping up efforts to stamp out hate speech, particularly depictions of violence against women. The move, announced Tuesday, came after a weeklong campaign by women’s groups targeting pages that celebrated or made light of rape, domestic violence and sexual degradation of women. CNN.

Gmail Updates the Inbox with Tabs. Tabs will appear at the top of the Gmail inbox where users can select personalized categories like Social, Promotions, Updates, and Primary. The new inbox is rolling out gradually. The desktop, Android and iOS versions will become available within the next few weeks. Official Gmail Blog.

TopRank Community Comments

Yesterday’s The Truth About Content Marketing & SEO post struck a chord amongst some impressively credible marketers, who took the time to respond:

Robert Rose says: ”Here here…. Excellent post…. This is a constant battle these days as SEO remains so important, yet is changing so fundamentally. As I often tell clients – you can be a content production factory – and your content will do nothing but settle bar bets. Or, you can be remarkable, and perhaps reach fewer people. And as you point out, it’s not a zero sum game – and it’s the balanced approach that will ultimately win. Kudos my friend.”

Bernie Borges says: “Well said Lee….The truth is (as you say) that as content marketing has become mainstream, some brands are flying by the seat of their pants without regard for best practices. If they experience poor results, they’re the first ones to say, it doesn’t work.”

John Ellis says: “One of the biggest myths propagated by the SEO world’s definition of content marketing is that it simply means creating more content. Great statement +Lee Odden. Content without SEO is a waste. More content with out purpose or intent is also a waste. Extremes are typical in this industry. Go after the latest shiny object seo tactic without applying any actual SEO with the tactic. SEO is not a tool, not software, not marketing. It is a process.. plain and simple. A process that is applied to everything we do on the web. The skill that most do not understand is the natural application of the SEO process to our content and engagement around that content. Content Marketing is not a “subset” of SEO either. No it is not. Great article.”

TopRank in the News

Optimize was named one of the “5 Must Read Marketing Books for Small Business” by Intuit along with Content Rules by my friends Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman and The Rules of PR and Marketing by David Meermand Scott. Optimize is in great company!

My long time pal John Jantsch did a podcast interview with me on The Future of SEO (plus a good bit on what content marketing really means) over at the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

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The Truth About Content Marketing & SEO

Lee Odden — Thu, 30 May 2013 14:08:23 +0000

Over the past few years, there’s been a tremendous focus on content creation in the search and overall digital marketing world. Once you get past the hype, there are plenty of well documented case studies showing the ROI of a content marketing approach.

Unfortunately, content marketing campaigns are often guilty of paying little more than cursory attention to the optimization of digital assets for search. There might be a “keywords” or “SEO” check box on a task list, but it’s not anything that takes full advantage of search based discovery. The content might be engaging and inspire action, but good luck finding it on a search engine.

Why is this? It can be a mix of factors ranging from the ambiguity of SEO cause and effect to prioritizing tactics according to the ability to implement and understand how to measure their impact.

The flip side is when SEO and popular keywords drive the entirety of a content creation effort. When the focus is on aligning all assets and tactics for attracting buyers via search – it can be at the expense of content quality and the customer experience.

This debate is not new at all:

What good is great content if no one can find it? How useful is findable content when it doesn’t engage and persuade?

For whatever reason, many marketers tend to gravitate towards extremes: “All SEO All the Time” or “Content: More, More, More”. One of the biggest myths propagated by the SEO world’s definition of content marketing is that it simply means creating more content. This flawed approach has gained momentum due to hyper-promotion by SEO consultants trying to differentiate themselves. Attention and budget are being taken away from core SEO programs, creating more than a little hostility towards the “more” definition of content marketing.

The thing is, most Digital Marketers do not see content marketing as simply creating more content.

Here’s my definition: Content Marketing is the thoughtful creation of content designed for a specific audience to inspire a particular outcome. It is often mapped to the information needs of a target audience segment during the customer journey from Awareness, to Purchase to Advocacy.

Content Marketing is infinitely more than just creating more blog posts, videos and infographics. Content Marketing is not a “subset” of SEO either. A strategic approach integrates content marketing and SEO as appropriate to the audience and objectives, not according to the capabilities of the agency.

For brand marketers that are tasked with month over month increases in web sourced customer acquisition and revenue, prioritization of resources is the reality. It’s not just about the tactics, but about the things that can actually be implemented and move the needle.

Content Marketing Strategy has to factor in all digital channels as well as offline where appropriate because the focus isn’t solely on a search engine. It’s on the customer. Customers don’t just use search for finding solutions. Search is hugely important during the customer journey, of course. But it’s not the only touchpoint.

The only thing worse than no SEO at all, is ALL SEO.

Ignoring the contribution of search for attracting visitors that are actively looking for your information is a huge mistake. At the same time, ignoring content marketing simply defined as “more content” and focusing only on SEO is also a mistake. Search engines don’t buy products, people do. Market to the people!

There’s no arguing that Search Engine Optimization can be a specialist’s game, especially when dealing with technical SEO or issues related to having been delisted and requiring link cleanup and re-inclusion work. Speaking of which, there is no better indictment of the SEO industry and its reputation than having to pay a SEO agency to clean up the consequences of previous SEO work – especially when Google has been pretty clear about webspam and SEO tactics that violate Google guidelines.

I’d like to think those times are past us and that modern SEO is more aligned with a holistic approach to digital marketing than risky shortcuts.

More content isn’t better unless it’s meaningful and findable.

Most companies have minimal content creation in their marketing mix, so creating more content will always be a part of improving their online marketing. SEO can play an important role in content marketing strategy by informing topics, content organization, message and promotion to achieve the findability objective. Of course the broader notion of optimization means furthering the goal to conversions as well – i.e. the performance of the content as a marketing asset.

As competitive and dynamic as the web is today, I can’t imagine how anything but a collaborative and integrated approach to content marketing and search engine optimization can win. That’s the truth.

Image: Shutterstock

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B2B Content Marketing Tactics: Pros, Cons & Best Practices of Case Studies

Lee Odden — Wed, 29 May 2013 11:00:45 +0000

Within the realm of B2B marketing, it’s stories, not “features and benefits” that allow brands to create relevant and engaging connections with prospective customers. Successful digital marketers use a variety of content marketing tactics to tell stories according to the goals of both brand and customer.

Even though 71% of B2B content marketers use case studies, they are often an under optimized form of brand storytelling. Case studies provide a structured problem and solution format that provide context, situation and challenges that the reader can empathize with. Case studies also supply insight into how a problem was solved, paving the way for the solution and measures of success.

As part of our ongoing series on content marketing tactics, this post will share some examples and best practices of organizations leveraging case studies as part of their content marketing mix.

Definition of Case Study:

A”case study” in the context of marketing is an analysis of a project, campaign or company that identifies a situation, recommended solutions, implementation actions and identification of those factors that contributed to failure or success.

Pros & Cons of Case Studies as a Content Marketing Tactic:

Pros

Provides a structured problem and solution format, often including practical insights the reader can apply immediately to their own situation
Demonstrates the solution provider’s approach to problem solving: methodical, creative, out of the box, disruptive
In aggregate, a collection of case studies paints a picture of where the organization excels and what expertise differentiates them from competitors
Keyword optimized case studies can serve as a direct point of entry via search to specific solutions the customer is looking for – shortens sales cycle considerably
Case study content can be multi-purposed in text, image, video and document types: web page, PDF, Word, PPT, Slideshare. Case studies can serve a role in eBooks, white papers, guides & best practices, webinars and conference presentations.

Cons

Case Study content can become outdated and needs to be maintained
Required approval from parties involved can be difficult – not all companies want to explain how their marketing is successful
Over duplication or repurposing of case study content can affect search visibility if not properly optimized (canonicalization and links)
Boring or underwhelming performance cited in case studies can do a better job of turning prospects away than engaging them. Invest in great writing.

What Marketing Experts Say About Case Studies:

“Most case studies are focused on the solution and how great it is to the exclusion of any real “story.” To be effective, case studies need that middle part where the magic happens. Case studies need a beginning, middle and end focused on the customer’s perspective – just like all other content. I advocate for two versions; a 1 pager with the facts for a quick read and a longer “story” version that helps prospects visualize themselves solving the problem.” Ardath Albee, CEO Marketing Interactions, Author.

“Case studies can be a wonderful piece of a B2B marketer’s content marketing strategy except that most of these marketers make the mistake and use it to beat their chests like Tarzan. They have to remember: it isn’t about them, their product or their service. It’s about their customer, their problems and how they got solved.” Bryan Eisenberg, Best Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Consultant.

“Customer case studies in all formats are impactful for both B2B and B2C marketers as a way to tap into the significant power of peer-generated reviews and recommendations. My first choice is shorter, video formats b/c you can use photos, faces voice, movement to convey a proven, real third party endorsement.” Sandra Zoratti, VP Global Marketing at Ricoh, Author.

Case studies are just stories. Too often these days, they’re presented in a formulaic manner, but when thought of as stories, they can be powerful. B2B marketers talk to each other. In fact, more B2B purchasers start their research online than B2C — with peers representing one of their most important resources. As long as it’s relevant and compelling, a story that conveys a solution to a problem in human terms should make for an effective piece of content. Shel Holtz, ABC, Principal of HC+T, Co-Host of For Immediate Release and Author.

Case studies can be a remarkably effective content tool. They seem to be most commonly used deeper in the funnel as a “proof point” or “testimonial” for the B2B sale. But they can also be a great awareness builder and credibility builder for the brand as well. One of the biggest mistakes I see companies making is that B2B marketers assume that they must get a product endorsement in order for a case study to be effective. But I’ve found that a quality interview (or story) of a customer, that makes no mention of your product or service at all — yet highlights the client’s expertise or success — can be a remarkably successful content marketing approach. It’s often the most effective way to get a client that isn’t allowed to give an endorsement to actually speak. The sheer fact that their story appears on YOUR site is almost always all you need to generate value. Robert Rose, Chief Strategist at Content Marketing Institute, Author.

How Are Case Studies Used in B2B Content Marketing?

When you search the phrase “case studies” plus terms that define your industry or situation, there are a wide variety of examples available. A good example is the Killer Content Awards deck embed in this post. Here are a few specific examples of companies successfully using case studies in their content marketing efforts.

MarketingSherpa does a great job of providing details in each of their marketing case studies, which you can find in their Library of resources. As a long time publisher of best practices, industry news and reports, expectations are high with MarketingSherpa. Just visit the Library section of their site and check the “case studies” filter in the left sidebar. Select any other refinements and you’ll get a list of case study articles. Each is written by a professional journalist and includes: Summary, Challenge, Campaign (with specific steps), Results and Creative Samples. The source is always cited as are related resources. What these case studies might lack in terms of visual fanfare, they more than make up for in terms of depth and insight.

Google Think Insights site contains an impressive collection of resources including case studies. As you can imagine, the search function is impressive but there are also a variety of ways to filter based on: Industry, Marketing Objective, Ad Type, Technology, Audience, Region and Type of Content you want to view.

Each case study follows a format of Goals, Approach, Results and may include a PDF download, creative assets or a video of the success story. Related case studies and content are also recommended. Obviously Google has substantial resources to create nearly 700 case studies, but there are lessons to be learned from the case study content and how users find that content. Navigation is based on user self segmentation vs. a simple link to “Case Studies”. This approach gives Google some context to provide more relevant case study content. In terms of the case study content, the combination of summary, web page, PDF and video provides different users with format options to choose from.

HubSpot is another example of a company that has collected a large number of customer stories and case studies. The previews for each case study include summary, bullets, a photo of of the customer with a testimonial, and clickable keyword tags. The actual case study pages vary quite a bit and do not follow a common template. But they do provide problem, solution, performance information. What HubSpot does really well is the ease of navigation, the summaries and calls to action. They are ready to do business.

Pinterest, as you can imagine, provides a more visual experience with their success stories. There are just a handful of case studies, which is something I think a lot of mid market or new companies can relate to. When you don’t have hundreds of case studies, then be sure to make the most of what you’ve got. With so few case studies, there is no categorization but that’s something Pinterest will want to consider as they add more. Each case study page includes stated Goals, and an endorsement/photo from the client. Most importantly, tactics, implementation and results information is provided in a story format using conversational language.

Mini How-To for Creating Great Case Studies:

Stories connect with us emotionally and people act based on emotions. However, they justify those decisions with logic. Effective case studies are stories that connect with the reader on an emotional level and at the same time, provide intellectual justification – data. Here are some key elements of a persuasive case study:

Headline: Who, What, & Results – 10 to 15 words.
Visual: Skip the stock photos and opt for images of real people when appropriate. Company logos and screen shots of results/performance information are handy as are any compelling visual elements that complement the story.
Challenge: Start with the current situation. What is the trouble? Create friction and a sense of urgency that this problem needs to be solved.
Solution: How does solving this problem create a positive business impact? What role did your brand play in the solution? Offer justification for the recommendations through the approach and tactics.
Results: Create points of comparison. Contrast “the trouble” with the solution. Provide KPIs & outcomes. Use raw data points, percentages and general quantifiables as appropriate. Results must be compelling, remarkable, impressive! Align those results with your brand and offer future direction. Include a quote or testimonial from the key person involved with the project. How did this help them and what has this success done for the business?
Close it: Near or alongside the case study, include a call to action appropriate to the case study. Don’t leave the CTA to your website’s “contact us” link or button in the navigation.
Media: In the B2B world, a PDF file is expected. Be sure to offer the case study as a web page and in PDF format at a minimum. But don’t overlook posting to services like Slideshare or repurposing for use in articles, reports, webinars or conference presentations.

What’s your opinion on case studies? Are they tool uncool for B2B marketing school? If you’ve been successful with case studies, what’s your secret sauce?

Image: Shutterstock

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Social Media and The U.S. Military – 3 Lessons for Business

Lee Odden — Mon, 27 May 2013 13:05:42 +0000

U. S. Army Social Media Handbook

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day to remember all the men and women who died serving in the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. While much of the workforce in the U.S. takes today as a holiday and marks it as the start of Summer, it’s important to honor the sacrifices made by these brave individuals in service of our country.

Stories of remembrance during Memorial Day are often told through traditional news media covering parades or honoring the heroic actions of individuals and units. Social Media also plays a big role in military communications.

If you thought creating a social media policy and governance over employee social media activities is tricky, imaging the task of doing so in a military environment. It takes a lot more than a “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” poster to communicate operational security for soldiers, units and other military organizations that maintain Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Remarkably, the U.S. military has made some significant accomplishments with its use of social media and in many ways, has lead the business community. One example of that was in 2008 with the U.S. Air Force publishing their guidelines for responding to blogs. I know at the time, one of the greatest fears companies had of social media revolved around the question, “What if people say bad things about our brand?” and not knowing what to do. That Air Force chart served as a guideline for many companies developing their social media policies.

I think there are other lessons to be learned by the business community from the U.S. Military and their social media efforts. Here are 3 of the most important.

Social Media Guidelines – Each branch of the service publishes and maintains a set of social media guidelines: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard. Probably one of the most important things military organizations can do in their effort to embrace the social web is to create guidelines about overall direction as well as specifics on what to do and not to do. Social Media Handbooks provide leadership and individuals with important guidance ranging from checklists and how to’s to FAQs and resources.

Lesson: While social media policies and guidelines have been around in the business community for a long time, many companies simply haven’t established them yet. Those that have, do not maintain them.

Whether you start with a basic social media policy tool, thoroughly research and create your own, or work with an experienced outside agency to help create one, it’s pretty important to do so. Then allocate the resources to maintain it in conjunction with your organization’s social media best practices used in marketing, PR, corporate communications, HR, legal and customer service.

Social Hub – Many branches maintain a repository of social media profiles and networks in a central location. Others, like the U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force allow submission of social profiles for evaluation and inclusion in the hub. Aggregating social presence either as a list or by curating messaging (filtered of course) provides both internal (service members, families and other units looking for examples) and external audiences (recruits, news media) with a useful resource.

Lesson: Whether your company is small but with a big social footprint, or you have a large enterprise with numerous business units and branch operations, a social hub can provide a central location for internal staff and external audiences to find the right social resources within the organization.

Additionally, curating social messaging produced by your brand or talking about your brand can provide an interesting engagement opportunity for those curious about what people “really think” about your business.

Some good examples of social hubs that in the technology industry that curate brand messaging include: IBM Voices, Cisco, Dell, Intel.

Rich & Meaningful Media – As you can imagine, an all-volunteer military force requires a substantial recruiting effort. Social Media plays a critical part of communicating the stories and key messages of each branch to potential service members. Soldiers don’t get in the military for the money or because it’s a cush job. Each has his or her own reasons and the job of connecting with those diverse reasons is accomplished through images, video and engaging media that is designed for social media sharing.

Lesson: Companies need to understand the interests, needs and goals of those they wish to engage through the social web, whether it’s potential customers and employees, current customers and employees, news media, industry analysts, influencers and investors. When a business can create compelling stories that connect the interests of their target audience with the key messages of the brand, the results can be pretty impressive. As I like to say, facts tell but stories sell. What better medium to tell stories than video?

Video is hot for a reason. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth millions. The magic of video isn’t just the format, it’s the message and the storytelling that matters. Companies would do well to investigate the role that a rich and meaningful media experience can play for attracting, engaging and persuading their target audience.

Without question, social media are a part of the life experience for every individual that participates on the web, whether working for a corporation or in the military. These are just a few examples of best practices worth considering as companies evolve from tactical experimentation to more strategic maturity of the social media operations.

What are some social media best practices you’ve seen in a military context that companies could learn from and use?

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Online Marketing News: Biggr Flickr, Kmart Strikes Again, Yahoo Takes A Tumblr, Twitter Cards, Penguin 2 & SEO FUD

Lee Odden — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:02:47 +0000

Kmart is at it again with a clever follow up to their highly popular video “Ship My Pants” that has had over 17 million views. The play on words this time is “Big Gas Savings” with over 1 million views in 2 days. Like the Old Spice videos that went ballistic, the question remains: They’re very creative and popular, but will these videos get shoppers in stores and buying at Kmart?

Flickr is Biggr. Users now get 1 terabyte of storage. I’ve been a pro Flickr user for many years and during Yahoo’s pre Marissa Mayer days, it had an uncertain future. Now Flickr is adding 1,000 x more storage for users and some new features including full resolution of images and new sharing functionality: “Upload once, send to any device, any screen, any friend, and any follower.”

The user interface has also been updated with the removal of small thumbnails and photos leading the experience, vs. text based navigation. I for one and looking forward to jumping back into using Flickr more often from the desktop, tablet and mobile. Via Flickr, Fast Company.

Arguably the big news in the SEO world this week was the roll out of Penguin 2.0, Google’s algorithmic webspam fighting effort. If your site is engaged in link buying, high volumes of exact match anchor text, or other link focused manipulations to improve search results, there’s a Penguin out to get you. More on Penguin from Matt Cutts, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch and of course, TopRank’s advice on Penguin 2.0 for Content Marketers.

Speaking of SEO and spam:

Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums. Apparently a portion of the Sprint site that was open for users to publish content was cited by Google for spamming. This is not a unique situation as Search Engine Land reports, since the BBC and Mozilla have had similar situations. Initially there was no help from Google outside of the notification but Matt Cutts eventually stepped in. As Barry notes in the SEL article, this is a tough one for brands to monitor, but they must if they expect to retain search positions and traffic form the almighty Google. Google Forum Thread. Thanks to Brian Larson for the heads up on this one.

Oh, How Pinteresting!, Introducing More Useful Pins for food, retail products, and movies. This week the nearly 50 million member strong Pinterest added a new feature directed towards commerce: Rich Pins. The new feature will make additional information available besides an image and description which many anticipate will give users more motivation to click through. Since Pinterest users tend to spend 70% more than buyers referred from non-social sites, there’s plenty of motivation for marketers to take advantage of these new features. Via Pinterest Blog, The Content Standard, Marketing Land.

Twitter announces ‘Lead Generation Cards’ to help brands drive qualified leads. Twitter has upped the ante for lead generation by adding 6 types of Twitter Cards as an advertising option for brands. Twitter cards (Summary, Large Image Summary, Photo, Gallery, App, Player and Product) make it possible for marketers to attach media experiences to Tweets that link to brand content. When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. Via Twitter Advertising Blog, TNW.

Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion for blogging platform and social network Tumblr, which is 6 years old and has 100 million blogs and about 300 million unique monthly visitors.What is Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer getting for all that Yahoo cash? Cats, porn and a lot of opportunity to connect with a very attractive demographic. Via Wall Street Journal.

But wait, there’s more!

Yahoo continued the buying spree and purchased a startup that powers games played on smartphones, tablets, consoles or personal computers called PlayerScale for an undisclosed sum. Via TechCrunch.

In other news about the social web:

According to a new Piper Jaffray study, Teens’ interest in Facebook is dropping but their use of Twitter has grown by 50% in 1 Year. I suspect the growth of teens’ use of Instagram and Snapchat is also on the rise.

Nutella Thanks Its Biggest Fan, Founder of World Nutella Day, by Sending Her a Cease and Desist reports AdWeek. But according to ABC News, they then took it back. When legal acts without social media savvy, it can be a sharp sting that gets them on the right track.

From the TopRank Online Marketing Blog Community:

Empathize to Optimize Your Customer’s Journey on the Search & Social Web – Carrie Morgan says: “A fantastic read on the same topic is Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, A must for every marketer to be familiar with! Nice post, Lee!! Great job story-telling. =)”

7 Steps to SEO at Scale, Patrick McFadden says: “Plan a Multi-Faceted Approach” Yes! The struggle many face with marketing online is a misguided impulse to put various tactics into separate boxes, instead of seeing each as an aspect of one strategic process.To this day, I see people referring to content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) as three different things — as if each is a tactic that can get you there alone. The smart way to treat these things as a holistic strategy.”

What are your thoughts on this week’s online marketing news? Was Tumblr a good call for Yahoo at 1.1 Billion? Do you like the new Flickr? How about Penguin 2.0 – is it doom and gloom or more like, “meh”.

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In Search of Voodoo: Empathize to Optimize Your Customer’s Journey on the Search & Social Web

Lee Odden — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:06:30 +0000

I get to meet a lot of professionals in the marketing, advertising, communications and public relations industries where topics of conversation often revolve around content. Concerns about where to start, what tactics work best, how to plan, produce and promote all come into play right along with staffing, integration with other channels and measurement.

Of course, if you try hard enough you can worry yourself out of a job when it comes to developing a solid approach with content marketing.

On the one hand, there’s a temptation to spend a lot of time and resources developing “the perfect” strategy. On the other hand, you could also just start cranking out content and see what sticks.

Neither of those approaches really work well in a practical way. What does work? There’s one thing that can help answer many of the concerns marketers have about content and that also helps you cut to the chase for practical implementation: Understanding the customer journey.

Google Think Insights has a great post with tools to help marketers better understand how different content and channels affects customers during the buying cycle or customer journey to online purchase. Check it out and then come back.

Welcome back. Google has some of the best content marketing, don’t they?

There’s a saying that goes something like, “Walk a mile in a man’s shoes to really understand where he’s been” that reflects what a lot of companies don’t consider when creating their digital marketing plans.

Understanding the customer experience from awareness to consideration to purchase folds well into the core principle of Optimize – to empathize with your customer and understand how they discover, consume and act on information. By doing so, you can create a practical digital marketing plan that optimizes for attraction, engagement and conversion.

To put that idea of customer empathy in action, I put myself in the position of a customer and documented my journey from curious social browser to a highly motivated searcher.

I started on Facebook, asking my network (as many people do) for recommendations on things to do and see in Portland. Immediatley, Melodie Tao not only made several recommendations including Powell’s Bookstore, Voodoo Doughnuts and Portland City Grill, but she pointed me to a blog post where she had documented her visit to Portland. Pretty awesome right? I received many more suggestions from other friends too.

But is that all I needed to take action? Maybe for some people. But I needed more information, especially about Voodoo Doughnuts. So what do you do when a friend recommends something and you need to get more details? Where do you go to get more facts and information as well as to validate their recommendation?

Yes, that’s right. You Google it.

Lucky for me the search results for “vodoo doughnuts” reveals a cornucopia of useful information including reviews, local information, coverage in local and national press, the business website, map, address and even photos of the product.

That was enough for me. I knew I needed to include Voodoo Doughnuts in my presentation. If for nothing else, to experience the freak of sugary gastronomy that is known as a “Bacon Maple Bar“.

Arriving at the store didn’t disappoint and of course I had to take photos. And what do you do with those photos?

You use them when you check in on Foursquare.

Then share to Instagram and Pinterest of course.

The Takeaway:

Think about the ways in which your target audience discovers, consumes and acts on information so you can give them what they want. Optimizing for the customer journey means bringing in content, social media, search, advertising and even PR to help your brand become the best answer whether customers are asking their friends on Facebook or searching on Google.

It may not be practical to literally put yourself in your customers’ shoes, but maybe there’s an opportunity for a virtual “ride along” by talking to sales and business development staff or product marketing at your company. As much pressure as there is for ROI, don’t solely focus on optimizing for transactions, but optimize for experiences as well.

Is there a proactive effort at your company to map the customer journey? If you have multiple, distinct customer segments, do you identify the sales cycle for each group? What are some of your challenges and successes?

Photo: Shutterstock

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7 Steps to SEO at Scale: How to Ramp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Miranda Miller — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:00:50 +0000

comScore reports that in April 2013 there were over 20 billion search queries and of the 13 billion+ handled by Google, 16% of daily searches have never been seen before. Each of those attempts represents buyers looking for solutions at the moment of need. Online marketers that take advantage of modern, scalable search engine optimization best practices as part of their overall digital marketing mix can gain a significant advantage over competitors to become “the best answer” when it matters most.

Understanding the basics of search engine optimization can be challenging given how often major search engines update and change the rules. However, buyers’ overwhelming use of search to find solutions is too great to ignore its influence on the buying cycle and achieving sales growth goals.

Along with managing the implementation of current SEO best practices, marketers must also take advantage of SEO performance improvement opportunities. In competitive industries, these opportunities come up regularly and without warning. Organic search is very much a race to the top, in that one brand’s loss of positioning is another’s opportunity to move up the ranks.

Of course, ranking well for keywords that customers use when searching for solutions is useless to your business unless that positioning brings inquiries and conversions. The good news is, SEO best practices help achieve better positioning as well as the performance of those rankings. Business growth feeds the online marketing budget; brands dedicate more resources to online marketing tactics like SEO as they show growth in ROI. Marketers able to successfully manage SEO as part of the online marketing mix and demonstrate ROI can scale their SEO programs for even greater success.

But how do you do scale SEO? This post will outline 7 steps towards scaling up your search optimization strategy from benchmarks to conversions so you can create the framework for even more success with organic search.

Get Your Ducks in a Row

Planning for growth first requires an inventory of all existing assets, challenges, and opportunities. This insight helps drive a strategy based on a realistic understanding of where your business sits in the eyes of potential and existing customers – and in comparison to competitors. Some assets can be retooled, while you will realize other areas where new assets would be beneficial. Take stock of your situation and the variety of influencing factors, in order to begin planning from an informed and prepared place.

Make Your Business Case

Scalable SEO requires buy-in from company decision-makers, throughout planning and execution. You don’t need to know exactly what will happen and clearly, you don’t have a crystal ball. However, you should know enough of your business, industry, marketplace and opportunity to make educated projections based on a variety of scenarios and tactics you could employ.

A successful business case will clearly show decision-makers exactly how your proposed strategy and tactics will work and why they are necessary. Marketers need to take care to explain the opportunities (and detriment if action is not taken) in a way those outside of SEO will understand. Tie each facet of your SEO strategy to a business objective to win over those who will make or break your plans with their decisions. Most importantly, give them options. Don’t become married to one way of doing things, because there are always alternatives. Having more than one path in mind to your goal gives you the opportunity to refute rejections with alternate plans of action. It also helps decision-makers feel more involved and invested in the process when they are able to actually make decisions instead of being asked to sign off on the entire plan as a whole.

Have Resources at the Ready

If you’re handling your SEO strategy in-house, prepare training material and documentation to help new team members quickly get up to speed. Taking on new hires during growth can be challenging, as everyone involved is in learning mode.

If you are working with an agency, choose one from the start with the talent and resources to grow with your SEO needs. Remember that your SEO strategy is an investment; the cheapest option may not be the one that can scale with your growing company and its needs.

Plan a Multi-Faceted Approach

If you are responsible for the entire online marketing plan, SEO is just one of your considerations as the company grows and online marketing needs increase. If you are responsible for SEO only, you had better have a good working relationship with those who handle online advertising, public relations, social media and content marketing.

Sustainable growth requires that each component of your online marketing strategy work together. Assets from content marketing are critical to your search strategy. Social media is needed to build community, drive traffic and amplify your messaging. Email marketing can help close the leads earned through search. Integrating all aspects of your online marketing strategy brings a better ROI for each individual component and delivers a better, more personalized experience for customers.

Get Back to Basics and Best Practices

SEO changes rapidly, yet there are underlying best practices and basics that ensure your site and online presence is a good foundation for the actions you will take as your business grows. One client we worked with recently was able to increase their pageviews and conversion simply by getting back to basics, putting their customer journey first, and making on-site changes to bring them in line with SEO best practices.

Plan to Succeed and Avoid Playing Catch-up

At TopRank Online Marketing, we recently worked with a B2B online services provider looking for greater exposure of their company website in search where interested prospects were looking. They were looking to attract a very targeted subset of professionals to use their service and current SEO efforts were not effective. Though a strategic approach that included a series of SEO audits covering the content management system, content, keywords and both internal and externa links, a set of recommendations were made to optimize search visibility and performance of content in search. The result? Nearly 400% YoY increase in organic search traffic with a flat monthly investment. That’s the beauty of well planned SEO implemented over time: cost efficiency and a cumulative effect on performance.

Bringing on an online marketing agency to get their SEO strategy up to speed helped this B2B services company increase visibility where customers were looking when it mattered most. However, since the SEO strategy was not applied universally, the company did not benefit from substantial increases in search traffic for all parts of the business. By demonstrating the value of strategic SEO, TopRank was able to convince the B2B marketer to implement a cohesive optimization program based both on search engine visibility and unique content to answer prospect needs. As a result, the overall quality of traffic and the number of customers driven from search improved significantly. Imagine the results if their SEO strategy had kept pace!

Understand Your Customer Journey and Invest in CRO

If you want to be top of mind in a competitive industry, make your customers and their journey top of mind as you plan and execute your SEO strategy. Search engine optimization has to factor in what people will do, what action they will take, once they actually get to your site. CRO is the logical next step in any SEO plan, but also an important consideration in scalable SEO. Getting the right eyes on your site and helping them fulfill the need that brought them there needs to happen in tandem.

Clearly, preparation is vital to the success of an online marketing strategy that leverages SEO to better attract, engage and convert new business. We need to be able to plan, yet stay agile and able to quickly react to – or even anticipate – changing needs and opportunities based on changes within search engines and the customer dynamic.

What challenges or successes in scaling your SEO strategy to meet demand have you experienced?

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Integrating Digital Marketing & PR – Breaking Down Silos Through Content

Lee Odden — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:11:38 +0000

For a recent presentation at a corporate communications and PR conference, I polled my network of digital marketing and PR pros working client-side about the most pressing questions they’re dealing with when it comes to integrating Marketing and Public Relations.

Since we’ve been working in the digital marketing and PR space at TopRank Marketing for well over 10 years, it was interesting to see the diverse feedback from companies of various sizes and industries. But several themes revealed themselves that I think our readers will relate to.

Thanks to feedback from Digital and Integrated Marketing Communications professionals like Corinne Kovalsky of Ratheon, Susan Beatty of Bremer Financial Corporation, Frank Strong of LexisNexis, Lesly Cardec from Randstad US, Sarah Skerik from PRNewswire and Pam Didner of Intel, it became clear that one of the key questions organizations are facing is the need to break down silos between marketing and PR.

To help answer that question, I think one of the most fundamental things to realize is that we’re all in the content business.

PR and Communications drive a substantial amount of content creation from developing messaging strategy to content for newsrooms. PR content that can be optimized, socialized and publicized include: blog posts, press releases, case studies, social media content, newsletters, contributed articles, white papers, events (online and off). Whether it’s text, image, audio or video, most PR pros are involved in content creation on a regular basis.

Content is the currency for building social relationships that can boost earned media.

Digital Marketing is tasked with demand creation and developing leads, and content plays an instrumental role in those and many other marketing objectives. From content marketing strategy to websites and microsites, content is the basis for effective digital marketing. We’ve covered content marketing tactics here before, but they can include blogs, landing pages, social media content, advertising, webinars, email and all media formats from images to video to audio.

Understanding the role that content plays in reaching both brand awareness and customer acquisition goals, the opportunities for integration between digital marketing and PR become clear pretty fast.

Align Goals

When you look at common Public Relations focused goals, they often include: Boosting Awareness & Exposure, Influence & Positioning, Increase Mindshare, Educate Audiences, Thought Leadership, Reputation, Growing Networks & Engagement and even Increasing Sales.

Often these goals are achieved through a variety of efforts that leverage or result in content. Digital PR tactics can range from media relations to gain editorial coverage in publications to events to working with influencers and social networks. Announcements, publicity, promotions and buzz are all the domain for PR and communications professionals.

Some of the metrics digital marketers are held accountable to include increasing website traffic, leads and sales. Content Marketing goals also include revenue related objectives like order volume, frequency and profitability. Efficiency is also aligned with content marketing performance as measured by shortened sales cycles, referrals bottom line ROI on marketing investment.

Since both marketing and PR both speak “increase sales”, it make sense that PR should be involved with content marketing in its planning stages to identify what’s “really” promotable from a media relations perspective. Building publicity and media relations activities into the content marketing planning process will help marketing extend the reach of it’s message and improve marketing performance.

At the same time PR will have early exposure to promotable brand content to successfully achieve media coverage and network growth vs. trying to make magic happen with last minute requests: “Can you send out a press release and talk to some bloggers about our new product future? It was released this morning”. For both marketing and PR, there can be a measurable effect on sales and we all know revenue is the language everyone understands.

Common Ground:

An extension of aligning goals between marketing and PR is to find the win for those that you would partner with in your organization. Find out how can marketing assets be used to improve the ability for PR to gain media coverage. At the same time, dig into how PR can play a role in content marketing amplification to improve the reach and performance. Recruit volunteers to test cooperative efforts between digital marketing and PR.

Some of the common ground opportunities for digital marketing and public relations include:

Messaging & Story
Content Planning
Coordinated Social and Media Relations with Amplification
Social Listening for Buying Signals
Content Placement
Optimizing Messaging Based on Marketing Performance Data

Coordinating marketing and PR in content marketing efforts can find the common ground needed to execute on shared goals. That alignment of objectives can lead to the development of new ways of working together that create a win for everyone involved.

Build a Business Case

Goal alignment and common ground serve as a framework for building a business case. Find a low hanging fruit opportunity with motivated collaborators to show how digital marketing and PR integration can improve achievement of business goals. Then sell the results with performance metrics that execs can appreciate.

One of the most basic examples of this kind of collaboration is a co-created thought leader ebook. We’ve created quite a few of these and they represent the integration of key maketing and PR in a way that is pretty easy to demonstrate value for both awareness and network growth as well as traffic and sales.

Co-created content builds an incentive for participants to promote the content object. Publicity, content repurposing, targeted ads, email promotions, social promotion and optimization combine with thoughtful messaging to create an integrated marketing and PR asset that provides a tremendous amount of value for PR and marketing goals.

In the digital marketing world, skills acquisition is as competitive as it has ever been with PR high on the list. With more brands publishing content and even competing with publications in their industry, the need for integrated marketing and PR functions within companies is a necessity. The question is, what is your company, large or small, doing about it?

If you would like to learn more about integrating marketing and PR, be sure sign up for the PRSA Digital Impact conference in June where I’ll be presenting ”Attract, Engage and Convert: How PR Can Get Ahead With Content Marketing“. This topic is also covered at both a strategic and tactical level in Optimize as well.

Image: Shutterstock

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Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout

Miranda Miller — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:21 +0000

New Google+ Layout: Hangouts, Photos and Stream Reminiscent of Pinterest

Google announced a major update to their social network this week that changes the way Hangouts, photos and the Google+ stream are viewed by users. The decidedly Pinterest-esque layout was just one of many announcements this week out of Google I/O, the totality of which Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Silva dubbed a “wreck.”

“The end result, we hope, is an app that looks and feels great across a family of devices,” Senior VP Vic Gundotra wrote of the Google+ changes. This is in line with Google’s mantra of late: Technology works best when it gets out of the way, and lets people do what makes them happiest: living, learning and loving.

With the announcements of more interconnection of services, Google Maps as a virtual world, Google All Access music streaming and more, Owyang and Silva remind consumers to expect the tools and products to get better, but to know you’re the product. If brands want to play in Google’s sandbox, they’ll ultimately need to pay, they said in summary.

Visit Web-Strategist.com to see the rest of Owyang and Silva’s commentary on what they called a “patchwork set of announcements from a fragmented company,” live from Google I/O.

Online Marketing News Briefs

It’s no surprise much of this week’s news pertains to Google and their products, given their I/O event and a myriad of changes announced this week. However, Facebook also made headlines through their retail social/mobile partnership with Target, as did insightful reports for online marketers from Google and GlobalWebIndex.

Content Recommendation Engine for Mobile Sites Launched by Google

Google has rolled out a content recommendation engine, which makes content recommendations for users at the bottom of the screen on news sites with the service enabled. Sites need just one snippet of code to add this functionality to their site. See more at TechCrunch.

Over Half of Global Internet Users Signed In to Facebook in Q1 2013

Facebook continues to dominate as the most popular social network on the planet, with just over half the world’s online population logging in on the site in the first quarter of 2013. Google+ came in a distant second, with 26% of global internet users, followed by YouTube, Twitter and Sina Weibo. See further analysis of GlobalWebIndex’s report at eMarketer.com.

Target and Facebook Join Forces in Cartwheel Mobile/Social/Retail Partnership

Cartwheel, a new site from a Target/Facebook partnership, has launched in beta and will begin rolling out their mobile/social program for retailers to a select group of participants shortly. The program allows users to browse exclusive deals and sales, with additional savings for social sharing. Learn more about Cartwheel at MediaPost.

Google+ Launches Auto-Hashtagging

As part of the Google+ design makeover, a new feature enables automatic hashtagging in posts. Google will use data from their social graph and analysis to identify hashtagging opportunities and add them to content. Users can remove hashtags they feel are inappropriate. Read more about this new feature at Fast Company.

Mobile Search an Influencing Factor for 84% of In-Store Shoppers with Smartphones

The majority of consumers shopping in-store are using smartphones to help them make purchasing decisions, according to new research from Google. Of those, the vast majority – 82% – are using mobile search, rather than apps or direct navigation to company websites – to access shopping information. Search Engine Watch has additional insights from Google’s Mobile In-Store Research: How in-store shoppers are using mobile devices report.

New YouTube Trends Map Shows Viral Videos Across the US

People in search of a visual way to see which videos are trending across the United States have a new tool, courtesy of YouTube. The YouTube Trends map displays the most popular videos across the country, with the option to drill down by gender, age, location and type of activity on the video.

This Week in the @TopRank Community

Our community – whether at Online Marketing Blog, on Twitter or elsewhere on the web – is a group of insightful, generous marketers always willing to share their experience with other members!

Check out these great tips, comments and quirky news from the @TopRank community this week:

It is very true that we need to be SHOWN how things work. It always makes me laugh when people tell me “I’m a visual person”, as if having a drawing in front of them is the only way they would see it. What they don’t realise is that EVERYONE is a visual person. On the other hand, if you were truly ‘visual’ you wouldn’t need it shown to you – you could see it in your head anyway. That’s what visual creatives do.”

~ from Suffolk Graphic Designer in response to The Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Visuals in Action on how your audience learns through content.

Stay tuned to the @TopRank Twitter channel this week for the latest online marketing, social and content headlines!

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Online Marketing Blog

How Public Relations & Communications Can Win the Content Marketing Race

Storytelling

Editorial Based Marketing

Influencer Marketing

Top Content Marketing Posts of 2013

Opening Up Twitter Analytics to All – Smart Marketing Move ala Google

Online Marketing News: Digital Agency of the Future, Facebook Hashtags, Google Gets Waze, Apple Money, Amazon Grocery

In Other Online Marketing News…

From The Online Marketing Blog Community

Now You Tell Us

20 Plus Tips on How to Optimize Your Presentations & Public Speaking

If a presentation isn’t a win for the audience, it isn’t a win for anyone.

Why SEO is Relevant When It Comes to B2B Thought Leadership

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TopRank In The News

Now You Tell Us

How Personas Guide Meaningful Content Creation & Optimization

How do you use personas in online marketing?

A fragmented effort within search, social media and content marketing helps no one. Not customers and certainly not companies.

Content Promotion Tips for Online Community Managers

Key Considerations for Community Manager Content Promotion:

Social Media Hubs for Brands – Best Practices & 9 Examples

Online Marketing News: Google Blimps, Social CEOs, WordPress Turns 10, Future of Internet 2.4 Billion Strong

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TopRank Community Comments

TopRank in the News

The Truth About Content Marketing & SEO

What good is great content if no one can find it? How useful is findable content when it doesn’t engage and persuade?

The only thing worse than no SEO at all, is ALL SEO.

More content isn’t better unless it’s meaningful and findable.

B2B Content Marketing Tactics: Pros, Cons & Best Practices of Case Studies

Definition of Case Study:

Pros & Cons of Case Studies as a Content Marketing Tactic:

What Marketing Experts Say About Case Studies:

How Are Case Studies Used in B2B Content Marketing?

Mini How-To for Creating Great Case Studies:

Social Media and The U.S. Military – 3 Lessons for Business

Online Marketing News: Biggr Flickr, Kmart Strikes Again, Yahoo Takes A Tumblr, Twitter Cards, Penguin 2 & SEO FUD

In Search of Voodoo: Empathize to Optimize Your Customer’s Journey on the Search & Social Web

The Takeaway:

7 Steps to SEO at Scale: How to Ramp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Get Your Ducks in a Row

Make Your Business Case

Have Resources at the Ready

Plan a Multi-Faceted Approach

Get Back to Basics and Best Practices

Plan to Succeed and Avoid Playing Catch-up

Understand Your Customer Journey and Invest in CRO

Top 5 Social Media Questions Marketers Want Answered

1. What social tactics are most effective? – 90%

2. What are the best ways to engage my audience with social media? – 88%

3. How do I measure the return on my social media investment? – 87%

4. What are the best social management tools? – 84%

5. How do I create a social strategy? – 83%

Integrating Digital Marketing & PR – Breaking Down Silos Through Content

Content is the currency for building social relationships that can boost earned media.

Align Goals

Common Ground:

Build a Business Case

Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout

New Google+ Layout: Hangouts, Photos and Stream Reminiscent of Pinterest

Online Marketing News Briefs

This Week in the @TopRank Community