Has it been a week already? We can’t believe it either. A lot can happen in just seven days; look at what happened back in September, where one week we were advising you how to make your content accessible via smartphones, and the next we were talking about smart watches! With the world advancing as quickly as it is, it’s hardly surprising that content marketing is progressing just as fast. The whole point of content marketing is to stay current and to keep feeding your readers interesting and up-to-date information, which is why every week we bring you all the latest news, insights and opinions content marketing related. This week we explore the realms of video content marketing, investigate just how useful calendars can be and reveal Amazon’s deepest, darkest secret…
The variations of video content marketing
As we’re sure you’re aware, content can come in a number of forms; why limit yourself to writing about recent software developments alone when you could also share a video demonstrating them? Video content is becoming increasingly popular as it allows you to add variety and make your content available on different platforms. The Content Marketing Institute have gone to the trouble of not only investigating why video content is booming and set to take over the world, but also giving us some great examples of the five types of business videos used by big brands to push their content marketing. Read all about Vlog, Vine, event videos, interviews and presentations, and why if you don’t get your camera out you’ll soon be left behind.
The ultimate content marketing calendar
Content marketing takes careful, strategic planning in order to be successful. If you want your content to be seen, you need to know exactly when and where you’ll publish it, as well as how and why, which is why it is always helpful to create a content marketing calendar to stick to. A cleverly designed calendar will help you to plan ahead and create a content strategy, set expectations with your audience and could even encourage team work. If you’re not sure where to begin devising one or are worried the current content marketing strategy in your head is about to be forgotten, take a look at the one Streetwise Media found. The calendar is broken down by theme, target audience, purchasing cycle and keywords. It’s time to get organised, and this calendar will certainly help to get you started.
Amazon’s secret to success revealed!
Many assume it is Amazon’s social recommendation feature that makes it so successful, which is true in some ways, but have you ever asked yourself why? Arjan Haring of Econsultancy did and he stumbled across a rather well disguised secret. Amazon relies on copy to persuade their customers to buy what they love. ‘Customers who bought this also bought’ is a line so simple no one would have guessed that it probably took months to create. Those words are ‘Cues of social proof,’ as Haring says, ‘a very well-known persuasive principle of social psychology.’ He explains that offers with a social proof message are far more effective than neutral messages such as: ‘You could also try?’ It’s a fantastic and insightful read, and you’re bound to learn a thing or two…
Identifying influential tweeters
Content marketing has always been about engaging with the customer, getting to know what they want to hear about and targeting your content toward them, and we already know that Twitter is a great way to do that. However, Econsultancy recently introduced a map that showed the follower relationships between a number of users talking about their brand, sharing links or tweeting @Econsultancy, and decided that this data was far more valuable than was originally thought. Using the map, they can determine who are the more influential of their readers and what interests and excites them. They can then work on targeting their content even more specifically. More than willing to share their ideas with you, Econsultancy has gone into great detail about how you can do the same and benefit from being able to identify the innovators among your readers.
The purpose of repurposing
We know – and we’re sure you do too – just how much effort goes into content marketing. From coming up with the idea and doing the research, to content creation and promotion, the process can include a number of people from copywriters to SEO specialists, so it seems a waste to only use the piece just once. Content repurposing requires you to alter your content to make it fresh and different by giving it a new angle or possibly changing the format, but the benefits are quite worth the time you might spend doing so. Repurposing your content could help to lower costs, advance production, expand audience reach, extend its longevity and much more, Arnie Kuenn of the Content Marketing Institute explains. He says in his article that explains the advantages as well as offering ways to go about it: ‘…content repurposing can be a very efficient way to make the most of your great content creation efforts.’ It’s a good thing we pre-emptively followed his advice when we designed our feature content to include a variant for wider use across the web then…
The anatomy of content marketing
We spared you an infographic last week, so now we’re making up for it. This week’s is teeming with interesting statistics such as ‘blogs on company websites result in 55% more visitors’ and ‘interesting content is a top three reason people follow brands on social media.’ Did you know that blogs give sites a whopping 434% more indexed pages, or that 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from a brand they’re following on the social network? While we already know a lot of the information on this graphic, seeing the figures certainly spurs you on to take your content marketing seriously, not only focusing on the content creation, but how you will extend its reach. Perhaps you could print it off and put it up on the noticeboard as a reminder.
That’s quite enough for you to think about for one week, but be sure to keep checking in as we constantly update our website with information we’re sure you’d love to get your hands on. In the meantime, if you’d like to talk to a member of the team about the content marketing services we can provide, get in touch!