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

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

Written by Geoffry James. 

Facebook’s latest $1 billion acquisition smacks of a desperation that LinkedIn consistently manages to avoid.

With all due respect to Facebook, paying $1 billion for Instagram smacks of desperation.

It’s as if CEO Mark Zuckerberg is terrified of becoming irrelevant and is willing to spend insane amounts of money in order for Facebook remain on the forefront of cool.

Read more at Inc.com: Full coverage of the Facebook-Instagram deal
That’s a hopeless quest, though. Facebook may be many things, but it’s not cool any longer. It lost that imprimatur back when it allowed corporate pages (yes, even yours) and advertising.

Where Is the Love?

More importantly, nobody seems to love Facebook any more. People seem mostly tolerate it, because it’s convenient. And that’s why Facebook remains vulnerable.

Consumer-oriented social networking sites are like television networks: People will switch when there’s something better on another channel.

With its awkward design, 1990s-style layouts, weird privacy policies, and intrusive advertising, Facebook is vulnerable to the next best thing. Frankly, I think it’s just one online conversion program away from losing its customer base and becoming the next MySpace.

That’s not true of LinkedIn, though. LinkedIn is all about business and people’s resumes. Because its scope is limited to fundamentally dull information, LinkedIn is simply not vulnerable to something “cooler.”

See the full story on www.inc.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

When Google+ was unveiled last year, a lot of content marketers wondered if they really needed another social media platform to develop and maintain. But, with the more recent introduction of Search Plus Your World, Google+ is getting harder to ignore.

So if you’re still figuring out how to make Google+ part of your content strategy, it might be helpful to take a look at a couple of examples of popular and engaging Google+ pages. I’ve chosen Dell — which has embraced Google+ and is doing some really interesting stuff with its profile — and also “Wired” magazine. Unlike Dell, “Wired” produces content as its core business; but like Dell, it has invested time and resources in its Google+ brand page and has quickly built a large following.

+Dell

Regular updates. One of the first things you’ll notice about Dell’s Google+ page is the regular updates, with one or two new posts going up every day. With Twitter, where each post is under 140 characters and users follow hundreds or even thousands of different accounts, you need volume to get noticed. In contrast, posting too many updates on Facebook is a common reason for people deciding to ditch friends and brands from their newsfeeds.

Google+ has had the Circles function since its inception, which encourages users to filter and organize the people and pages they follow. This reduces the risk that your followers will feel overwhelmed if you post more content than you’d put up on Facebook. But at the same time, Google+ is not Twitter, and users will likely expect a bit more than a stream of shared links.

Rich content. Dell provides a great example of a brand page that fully utilizes the richness of Google+ updates. As I scroll through the recent posts there are some links, but there are also embedded videos, photos, and infographics. This variety of content makes for a great look and feel, and I imagine it’s exactly what the guys at Google were after when they designed an interface that sits somewhere in between a Twitter profile and a blog.

Via www.contentmarketinginstitute.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

The new Facebook Business Page is not only a visual transformation of the site, it is a game changer for the marketing function.

The fact that Facebook will automatically transition existing business pages to the new format over the next thirty days means that marketers will have no choice but to evolve from the static “tabs” mindset to a “Timeline” mindset based on continually fresh, engaging, and authentic content.

As part of the redesign, the company has effectively shelved Facebook tabs as default landing pages, a strategy which many large corporations, small businesses, and social marketers had spent time, energy, and significant budget building out. These default tabs, while effective in certain cases for driving “likes” and other calls to action, were essentially landing pages like what you see on traditional websites.

Never content to settle for the status quo, Facebook is shaking things up by moving to a timeline design. While specific posts can be “pinned” to the top of the page, these get automatically unpinned after seven days. The idea is that continually fresh content will engage fans — that the best way to drive fan engagement is to make marketers more engaged and having to post, monitor, and respond more often on their Business Pages.

Grab the rest of the article at adage.com