Written by Chris Horton.

This post was born out of a fascinating and revealing conversation our CEO recently had with a business executive of a prominent Minneapolis-area car dealership who absolutely refused to entertain the idea of social media marketing in general, and Twitter in particular.

A marketing director, she was convinced that her fairly expensive ad spend on a local radio station was all their brand needed to reach its target demographic, 18 to 45 year-old men.

Incredulous, our fearless leader tried to explain that such a group was one of the sweet-spots for social media/Twitter marketing (in fact, 70% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-45; of these, just under half are men). The marketing exec seemed agitated. She would have none of it, and quickly changed the subject.

This experience is not an isolated one. I’ve had numerous conversations with business leaders in the over-30 crowd whose opinion of social media ranges from that of novelty item to utter abomination casting a blight over their well-ordered business universe.

Why does the mere mention of social marketing upset so many executives and business owners, anyway?

Read the full article on socialmediatoday.com

Written by Robert Bruce.

Google’s been pissing people off lately. Panda, Penguin, Parakeet (okay, I made that last one up), who knows what’s next …

Then there are the social networking evangelists whose entire fortunes are deep in Zuckerberg’s asset.
And finally, the faithful content producers, who labor slowly and quietly to build their businesses one thousand words at a time.
It can all seem a bit much to keep up with. SEO isn’t bad. Social networking sites aren’t evil. Content marketing isn’t impossible. But it can feel like it sometimes.
To clear some of this confusion and frustration up for us, I’ve asked Lee Odden to jump on the show and tell us how the smart, systematic integration of search, social, and content can attract an audience … and keep businesses — both large and small — sanely profitable.

In this episode we discuss:

• The 3 phases of a holistic customer attraction plan
• What the changes in search algorithms really mean for online publishers
• How to intelligently plan a content strategy that works
• Why it’s now essential that you become a “holistic” content producer
• 5 content optimization audits you need to perform
• 3 steps to implementing your systematic content plan
• How to scale your content efforts on a limited budget

Listen to what Lee has to say about integrating content, social, and search on www.copyblogger.com

Dragon Dictate and Dragon Naturally Speaking Deliver Awesome Results for Users. Their eNewsletter. Not So Much.

In perhaps the ultimate  irony, I am using Dragon Dictate from Nuance to write this blog post which criticizes their eNewsletters.  I use Dragon Dictate to compose 80 to 90% of everything that I write from blog posts to book content.   So, it does pain me a bit to brand their eNewsletter as mediocre.

Oddly, even though their eNewsletter is a major missed content marketing opportunity, Nuance has a tremendous amount of content available. As an example, they have a wonderful series of YouTube videos that teach you how to get the most out of Dragon  Naturally Speaking, the PC version of their software.  That’s compelling because, although dictation is the most critical component of their software, you can also use Dragon to  search the web, give application commands, find documents, etc.  In addition to the YouTube content, their website actually provides very useful and well organized training tools to get you started and to turn you into an advanced user.

In other words, they have a ton of raw material that could make for an incredibly useful and compelling E-news letter that would be must reading whenever it arrived in your inbox.  Alas, hardly any of that content found its way into their May 2012 eNewsletter.

5 Ways Their Newsletter Misses the Content Marketing Boat

1.  Their email header gives you no information about the content of the eNewsletter itself. For those of us who receive tons of e-mails every day, we need a headline that hits us on the head about why we have to open this e-mail right now.
2.  The eNewsletter itself has no headline that clues us into compelling content to follow. Headlines! We need headlines!
3. 2 of the 3 lead stories are really all about Nuance. The 1st story urges us to buy a Dragon product for our mom if she happens to be a PC user (of course, this newsletters aimed at Mac users).  I’m not sure that moms, generally speaking are the ideal target for Nuance products.The 2nd story asks us to ‘Like’ them on Facebook.  Why?  Well, so they can “keep you up to date on all the latest happening, special deals and offers, and much more.”   Why not offer to tell us how to use our Dragon product more effectively?Finally, the 3rd story is a great case study about a gentleman with Parkinson’s disease who uses Dragon Dictate to stay productive in spite of his illness. This is terrific and inspirational.
4. The newsletter is chock-full of words–more than 800 of them–but  essentially bereft of useful tips on how to use the product.  In fact, the only tip offered is a minor process point that even a casual user would certainly know.  And, that comes three quarters of the way down the newsletter page.
5.  Although the newsletter refers to a number  of useful resources, the reader is forced to click on a link to their website without knowing exactly what help will be available at the end of that link.  In fact, there is great stuff on the Dragon website. But, that’s not obvious from the content of the newsletter.   The newsletter could and should have been chock-full of tips that, in turn, linked to their website, to YouTube, to Facebook, etc.

 Deliver Great Content That’s All About Your Customers

Unlike Lynda Foster’s helpful and inspirational Monday morning newsletter, the Dragon folks make us work way too hard to find nuggets of useful information. Moreover, whereas Lynda’s newsletter is all about her customers and colleagues, the Dragon newsletter is mostly about Dragon.  The good news for entrepreneurs, who are also content marketers, is that you can clobber even large companies by delivering great information that reflects the needs of your target customers.

 Nuance has terrific products that I love and use every day.  If they would create a monthly eNewsletter that’s just as terrific and targeted to the needs of their customers, they would directly benefit both their customers and themselves.

In every generation, there are game-changing advancements that redefine business. From the automobile and television, to the VCR and Internet, the evolution of technology drives our consumptive habits. Today, there are arguably fewer more engrossing, time-consuming habits than that of the world’s current phenomenon, Facebook.While more than 900 million people worldwide have active accounts, few businesses take full advantage of this enormous marketplace. For most, this is not due to a lack of desire—it stems from a lack of knowledge. When industry stalwarts such as Anthony Robbins and Frank Kern sought to leverage Facebook’s tremendous reach and recognized their limited ability for effectively making this happen, they turned to Jennifer Sheahan. Jennifer has cracked the Facebook code and created powerful strategies that are neither complex nor expensive. To affect a veritable Facebook frenzy and drive this powerful, captive audience towards your products and services, of her many strategies, Jennifer recommends beginning with these two.

See on socialmediatoday.com

Pay  Careful Attention to the Upper Right hand Corner of Google Search Results

If you have recently checked your category’s Google search results, you may well have been as surprised as was when I recently checked  our first page placement in the  ‘content marketing’  topic.

In weeks and months past, text ads would have appeared in the upper right-hand corner. Those ads still appear, but they have been bumped down by a gigantic Google+ area that features 2 content marketing gurus,  Joe Pulizzi and Brian Clark.

Interestingly, the Google+ content has exactly the same prominence as the major sponsored search results that appear above the organic search results. I cannot imagine that advertisers are overly pleased by that.

Happily, Content Marketing Today still appears on the 1st page of search results. Of course, that’s a direct result of picking the right website name early on, having been around since 2007, and posting lots and lots of content about content marketing.  But, our organic search results and those of many other organizations may soon seem less important than any company or individual who is featured in that upper right-hand corner Google+ sweet spot. 

Even worse, Google also encourages you to click through to a follow-up page that shows more individuals and organizations who are active Google+ users. Fortunately, we show up there, too. But, because we haven’t taken Google+ all that seriously, our presence lacks punch and pizazz.

The bottom line seems to be that Google+ must become a key part of our collective content marketing efforts. That’s not necessarily because of its intrinsic merits, but because of the way Google is leveraging its omnipotent control of upper right-hand corner of the search results page. Your search terms may not yet show that upper right-hand Google+ content, but I’m guessing that we’ll soon find it everywhere.
Yikes!

Written by Nick Bilton on the NYT Bits Blog.

Google and Facebook are being left behind in the shift toward mobile, and the amenities available to their employees might offer some explanation for a slow transition.

Google and Facebook, young and successful companies that they are, risk being left behind as technology shifts from PCs and Web browsers to mobile devices.

This month, when Google showcased a new design for Google Plus, the company’s social network, it was as if mobile phones and tablets were still a glimmer in some future inventor’s eye. The made-over Web site was beautifully designed, but the smartphone app and mobile site were completely ignored. During the site’s redesign, a Google spokeswoman told me, “Today, the mobile experience will not change.”

Facebook is also struggling with mobile, as evidenced by its recent $1 billion acquisition of Instagram. Its mobile app, which is sometimes painfully slow, was updated only after the Web site was redesigned for Timeline.

I have a theory on why they both have been slow to capitalize on the shift to mobile.

It’s that working at these companies is like going to work on an all-inclusive cruise ship. The analogy is apt in terms of the luxury — and the isolation.

See on bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Content Marketing is about the most effective way to harness content’s ubiquity and power. Individual pieces of content work to attract and engage web users, but when the pieces are combined, the effect can be dramatic.

Just as gold must be sourced, mined, processed, shaped and hallmarked to become desirable pieces, so too must high-quality content.

Search-optimised articles, blogs and social media posts can combine to produce a dazzling effect on brand awareness, customer engagement and SEO. But time, care and expertise are needed to ensure your content is solid gold, and not simply gold plated.

The NewsReach infographic explores the processes involved in creating quality content and supports our latest White Paper – The True Value of Content Marketing – which will be released in the coming days.

Read the NewsReach blog to learn more about their infographic.

See on www.newsreach.co.uk

Great Video from AT&T Illustrating the Contents of Their New Research

As the study indicates, inexpensive, modern grassroots marketing techniques — both online and offline — have grown to be among the most popular for small businesses in the past several years likely due to ease of use and general affordability.

According to the 2012 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll, nearly 60% of small businesses surveyed plan on spending as much or more in 2012 as they did in 2011 on online marketing efforts. For more information, please visit AT&T for more info on the research.

Via www.youtube.com

Written by Amanda Maksymiw

I am always on the lookout for new killer examples of content marketing at work, especially in a B2B setting.

A couple of weeks ago I heard that my friend Michael Brenner has been working full throttle to release a content site from SAP. Business Innovation at SAP features informational and thought leadership content on various technology including mobility, analytics, and cloud computing.

The site will combine content from SAP employees, thought leaders in the industry, customers, and partners in addition to curated content from the likes of Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and IDC. I am really excited for Michael and SAP because it is fun to see more and more companies adopt a true content marketing strategy. The site formally launches on March 27th however Michael and his team have been busy. They already have 50 contributors lined up and over 200 pieces of content! That is impressive!

Read more @OpenView Partners

Via www.businessinsider.com

Amanda Maksymiw of OpenView Venture Partners shares her inspiration and advice on content marketing.

In 2009, the Boston-based venture capital firm OpenView Venture Partners was not satisfied with its branding. Rather than hiring a marketing firm, OpenView founder Scott Maxwell found his solution in a book called Get Content Get Customers.(co-authored by Newt Barrett) 

He was so inspired by the potential of content marketing, he brought in co-author Joe Pulizzi to lead a workshop, which in turn sparked OpenView’s marketing and content strategist Amanda Maksymiw to use content as a means of establishing the firm as a thought leader and build a solid brand.

Since launching OpenView Labs—the company’s content hub, featuring blogs, a podcast, videos, and more—website visits have increased by 600 percent. Newsletter subscriptions have risen from 200 to 11,000. And on March 16, OpenView was heralded as a Top 10 VC Brand by Heardable.

Maksymiw, who helps support a content creation team of 25 staff writers and a dozen freelance contributors, recently took some time to talk with us about her favorite tools, the importance of sticking with your core mission, dodging bandwagons, and more.

Via marketeer.kapost.com