The importance of content marketing is a topic that has been discussed time and time again by marketers and brands. It is a challenging and time-consuming process that that requires planning, research, producing, curating and publishing – ideally done by a team of content marketers.
JBH marketing recently released an infographic on content marketing in the United Kingdom based on research carried out by the Content Marketing Institute. The research highlighted a severe lack of importance placed on content marketing in terms of allocation of budget, developing a solid content strategy and most importantly, delegating content marketing to a team of experienced and skilled professionals.
From this infographic, there are 4 important areas that all marketing teams should look into developing for a successful content marketing:
Budget
Only 31% have a budget allocated to content marketing and already 38% of these teams are facing a lack of budget allocated. Budgeting is most commonly set aside for creation of content but it also needs to be available for advertising it as well. Especially since Facebook has made it harder to gain visibility among your audiences, it is a necessity that your content marketing tactics have a budget in place for that as well.
Define Your Content Strategy
Only 42% of marketers in the UK have developed a content strategy. The remaining 58% of marketers are turning a blind eye towards developing a strategy which in turn, decreases their effectiveness tremendously. These are the basic elements that you should have mapped out in your strategy:
What are you goals and objectives in content marketing? Once you’ve got this figured out, the following steps should all align to meet these goals.
Who is your target audience? Understanding your target market in terms of interest, presence on social media platforms, type of content they prefer consuming and what topics they are interested in will provide you a better understanding of what content topics you should be covering, what types of content you should be creating and which mediums you should be sharing your content on.
Create a content calendar: It should contain topics your audience will want to read, watch or listen. The best practice would be to plan at least 3 to 4 weeks ahead to get all your content mapped out. Try using different tools online to make it a more efficient and organized process.
Choose the correct mediums to share your content: Your brand doesn\’t have to present on every single social media platform nor is it a necessity for your brand to own blog. It would all boil down to where the majority of your target audience is present and which mediums are the most effective in encouraging engagement from them
Evaluation & Analysis: Map out a regular evaluation processes to determine the effectiveness of your strategy – this could be after every month or two. You also need to be constantly updated about your target audience because their interests and habits will change overtime.
Form a Content Marketing Team
Depending on the size of your business and the content strategy of your team, it is important to have a team that is dedicated to content marketing. It could even be as small as a team of three people that is planning, producing and designing your content. Picking a team of skilled and professional content marketers would garner greater returns on investment rather than spreading your marketers thin.
Content Quality vs Content Quantity
While 46% of marketers are facing a lack in content, we have reached a place in social media where there is currently too much content that is being pushed out to the public each minute. Instead of producing more content and spending more of your budget on writers or graphic designers, brands should instead focus on producing a smaller amount of content that has been well thought out and planned and would have a stronger quality overall. Your audience is already exposed to so much content that they tend to only give their attention to those of higher quality, so that is what marketers should be vying for instead.
On average, we spend 3.3 hours on our phone each day. Exact Target released their 2014 Mobile Behaviour Report recently and shared their findings on consumer’s mobile usage patterns. While it is a known fact that a lot of users are increasingly consuming online and social content through mobile devices, some of the statistics have revealed that brands have not begun altering their mobile features to suit the needs of these consumers.
54% of those surveyed said mobile-optimized websites don’t provide enough information. 37% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a mobile optimized website and 48% of people spend more time on mobile-optimized sites. These numbers show that there is a need for brands to develop their mobile web designs to give their audience the experience they are looking for.
We\’ve seen a fair share of mobile web designs that are so bad, they shouldn’t even be mobile optimized in the first place. Instead, take a look at the 7 designs that deserve to be credited for their efforts.
Spotify
Spotify is simplicity at its best. It is straightforward and extremely fuss-free. Granted, there isn’t much to showcase on their website except to focus on their free Spotify app, but the brand has made their website very visually appealing that you wish you could scroll on forever. A good point to note is the balance that they have struck with text and images.
Maserati
Maserati’s mobile web design is just as sleek as their cars. They’ve even gotten a little fancy with automated news stickers that updates their news every 5 seconds, fast enough for impatient people yet slow enough for you to catch it. What a lot of companies don\’t realize is that your website’s design is a reflection of your brand. Take pride in it and you will alter the perception of your audiences.
Time
Time has a very structured mobile web design, which is extremely important for content-heavy websites. Unlike other news websites that just post up headlines of the latest articles, they’ve incorporated images as well for the main page, and good quality ones at that! They’ve also a cool Tap feature that increases a reader’s interaction with the site without complicating the layout too much.
Mashable
Similar to Time’s layout, Mashable’s mobile web design is equally as organized and structured as Time’s. A difference is that Mashable places more importance on images rather than text, which is fine as they’ve got a structured layout.
Nokia
Nokia’s mobile web design came as a surprise as their counterparts had some really bad layout choices. It has a very clean and simple layout with only one drop-down column, which is quite a rarity in mobile web designs. One takeaway that we’ve got here is that organization is key!
Luxola
For an e-commerce website, Luxola (an online beauty store) was one of the best ones from the crowd. All their items were sectioned in different categories, from the type of products to the different brands that they carry. Their seamless design is perfect for customers who want to shop on the go, which is actually rather hard to experience with e-commerce mobile web designs. Even huge companies such as eBay and Amazon have really bad layouts that just refrain you from buying anything using your phone.
Google+
Amongst all the other big names in social media, Google+ came out tops in their design – even beating Facebook and Twitter, brands that have been in the social media game much longer than Google+ has. The newsfeed provides you with updates in a shortened version that allows you to get a gist of the article without having to scroll through the whole piece. Images and text also appear at the right size that doesn’t require you to zoom in.
4 Tips For A Great Mobile Web Design
1. Simplicity is key: Don’t go overboard on your design, keep it simple and straightforward.
2. Organize and Categorize: Navigation is most important for the reader/consumer so you need to make it easy for them to browse through your website. It’s also a great way to get all your content on the web design without having to remove any information.
3. Quality Visuals: We’ve come across so many (almost) great mobile web designs that just lacked in high-quality visuals. A pixelated image will ruin your mobile experience even though the layout of your site is good.
4. Display Specifications: Text and images should be clear enough to read without having to zoom in. It should be optimized to fit the mobile screen.
If you’re part of a brand that’s guilty of having a bad mobile web design, it’s time to get it changed!
In a previous post by Divya Ramesan on developing a content strategy for your brand, she discussed timeliness and location as important factors that determine the success of your strategy. Most digital marketers and social media managers schedule their posts according periods that bring about the highest engagement from their audience using social software – which is a perfectly accurate means to determine when to send our your updates. Marketers are also choosing a select group of platforms where the majority of their audience is active on to gain the reach and traction they are looking for. If you are spreading yourself thin across all the various social media platforms, rethink your choices. Why waste resources on platforms that may not bring you the reach that you’re aiming for?
Choosing the right place and right time to share your content is essential to ensuring that you’re actually getting your message out to your target audience. But some of us marketers have a perception towards when to post content which this infographic from Po.st by Radiumone sets straight.
These are the three takeaways that I have gathered:
Sharing Content Over Weekdays vs Weekends
At Beta21, we went through a trial and error stage with our Twitter updates. We began by scheduling our Tweets on an hourly basis across all seven days a week while using Tweriod and Buffer as tools to analyze our engagement. Over a period of time, this myth of increased engagement over the weekend was indeed debunked. Retweets and engagement was lowest on weekends, Sundays especially. As a result, we are now focusing on content sharing and engagement on weekdays!
The Effectiveness Of Link URLs
The lifespan of a shortened link and the rate of clicking on a social link are interesting factors to consider in determining the extent of social sharing. It’s great to note that the lifespan of shortened links increases days after it is being shared. Getting vanity URLs is another element that marketers should be looking into as well, given the fact that it results in 25% more click-throughs.
Content Sharing On Twitter And Facebook
For the first myth of having most contents shared on Facebook and Twitter, I would have to say this perception would have to vary depending on which industry your business is in as it would greatly affect the engagement you should expect.
However, referring to the 6th myth on Facebook delivering greater shares for content as compared to Twitter, this was debunked as well! When we carried out a comparison across 30 of our previous articles, Twitter did provide a much greater share count for articles. In fact, 76% of the articles performed better on Twitter than on Facebook.
While Beta21 also focuses on Google+ and LinkedIn as content sharing platforms and we’ve come to realize that the former performs exceptionally well in sharing visuals such as infographics while the latter may sometimes be a little unpredictable.
What are your social sharing observations? Do share them in the comments section below!
Social Matters was a 2-day event under All That Matters, the only event in Asia that connects businesses and fans at one location. If you missed our previous article from Digital Matters, read it here. The issues and trends raised by the speakers during the discussion panels at Social Matters heavily revolved around a lack of conversation and engagement with audiences on social media. Marketers have been to focus on pushing out content to their audiences on Facebook or Twitter, rather than using these social platforms to converse with their audience.
Here are 5 of the best pointers from Social Matters:
Focus More On Emotions
Maria Spinelli, Vice-President, SEA, BrainJuicer, shared in her discussion that emotional advertising strategies perform much better in worldwide markets as compared to rational advertising strategies. Consumers are more open to accepting content, especially videos or adverts, that display a more human and emotional approach because it is more relatable.
Audiences React Better To Familiar Content
Guy Nicolucci, Hollywood Emmy-winning Sreenwriter, has spent years as a comedic writer, creating scripts for comedians such as Jimmy Fallon and Conan O’Brien. He shared that audiences always show a better reaction whenever a joke or the script is based on a topic or idea that they are familiar with. Essentially, content creators should repurpose ideas and concepts, with an added spin on them, to garner greater response from their audiences. It’s okay to create videos or write articles about issues that have been discussed before as long as you incorporate your brand’s own image and voice into it.
Take Advantage Of Social Media To Listen To Your Consumers
Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, shares that brands should be investing more resources and time into listening to what their audiences want and need from them, also called social listening. His take on this is to engage with your consumers through regular surveys as a means to understand their views. What consumers want is to be heard, rather to be fed with content and information that they have no interest in.
Viewers Want More Than Just Content
Michael Stevens, also known as Vsauce, creates immensely engaging content on YouTube on a regular basis and manages to consistently garner large amounts of views and comments on his videos. His secret to being a successful content creator goes beyond just creating and posting videos. Instead, he taps into his audiences and engages them by making it a two-way conversation. He is a firm believer that constant engagement with his audiences is the key to gaining loyal viewership.
Re-evaluate Your Social Strategy
During on the panel discussions about being a digitally devoted brand, Damien Cummings, CMO (APAC) of Phillips brought up the issue of how most companies social strategy focuses too much on creating daily content. Creating conversation is a more important factor of social content. Brands need to join in a conversation, reinvent a conversation or just create a conversation to ensure constant engagement with their consumers.
Dubbed as the only Business2Business2Fan event in Asia, All That Matters covered a range of Music, Digital, Social and Sponsorship Matters conferences in Singapore from the 20th to 25th May 2014. Beta21 had the opportunity of covering Social and Digital Matters, where esteemed speakers from various industries participated in discussions and gave talks to share their views on trends and issues in social media and digital marketing.
Panel discussion at Digital Matters with James Miner, Susana Tsui, Keith Timimi, Kim Douglas, Jeffrey Seah and Mike Rich.
If you missed out on two days of Digital Matters, fret not – we’ve got you covered. We picked out a handful of topics that stood out from the convention:
YouTube: A Dominating Platform
Video content is becoming an increasingly popular form of engagement for consumers. Jasper Donat, Founder & CEO of Branded, was in conversation with Tom Pickett, Vice-President of Content for YouTube to discuss how YouTube provides a two-way conversation between content creators and content viewers. This creates greater engagement between both parties, where real-time communication can also occur, providing creators with insight to what their viewers want to see.
Increase Your Fans, Not Your Audience
Alex Carloss, Global Head of Entertainment for YouTube, shared that brands should be more focused on creating fans from your audiences. Fans are the ones that will be loyal to your brand or business and they are the ones you should be building stronger relationships with. Having a large audience would not be as effective as having a strong base of loyal fans.
Content Quality, Not Quantity
This is a topic that has been continuously discussed time and time again, and the speakers at Digital Matters could not stress it more. At a time where content is cluttering the digital sphere, only the ones that are appealing and interesting will stand out. Marketers should then also be spending a fair amount of money to push out quality content to bring greater success.
Develop An Agile Working Culture
During a panel discussion, several speakers brought up an issue currently faced in agencies where internal structure is hindering their quality and output. Susana Tsui, APAC CEO of PHD, shared that at a time where digital media is progressing at such a fast pace, agencies cannot afford to continue a rigid structure where there is no room for flexibility.
Steps to Success For Technology Corporations
Nicholas Wodtke, Vice-President of Media Solutions, Samsung, shared his expertise on 5 simple steps that a technological oganization should follow in order to achieve long-term success (seen in the infographic below). He also shared that organisations should be more focused on gaining the mindshare of their consumers – What do you consumers want? What are their opinions on your products? What content would they like to see from your brand? Attaining the mindshare of your consumer is beneficial in understanding what engages them, instead of pushing out content or products that your consumers aren\’t interested in.
To sum it all up, we’ve got 5 of the best tips from Digital Matters in the infographic below:
