Alecs is the Client Accounts Manager at Express Writers and has years of copywriting and journalism under her belt.
LinkedIn is among the most popular social media outlets available today because of the unique premise it presents to its users, including the ever-growing LinkedIn publishing platform.
On LinkedIn, you are judged not on what you look like, but on what your accomplishments are.
It’s one of the most useful social networking sites for large companies and HR departments looking for the next big star.
It’s even better as a tool for getting content out to the masses while ensuring that it’s still accredited to you.
LinkedIn lends itself to the publication of long form content because it’s a site made up of readers, thinkers and doers.
People who plan before they act.
The more information they have the easier it is for them to make a decision. However, as LinkedIn grows, publishing on this godsend of a platform might not have the same sort of impact it once did.
Learn the pros and cons before you dive all in on LinkedIn’s new publishing platform.
Examining the Positive Side of Placing Content on The LinkedIn Publishing Platform
LinkedIn serves as the single best way to get in touch with professionals in a particular field. Because of the interactive style of long form posts that the social media network allows on its publication platform, you can engage in discussion very easily with other members of the same industry or field.
From a professional’s perspective, this can only lead to good things. Differing opinions can stimulate debate and can lead to getting new insight on something that they thought they knew inside out.
The wide reach of the platform combined with the type of users you are getting access to makes it ideal for a young professional trying to get noticed in his or her field of choice.
3 Key Benefits of Being On The LinkedIn Publishing Platform
Publishing long form content on LinkedIn benefits the user by: 1. Relevant Outreach
Recently, LinkedIn announced that it crossed a million members publishing on their platform. When compared with other social media networking sites, one million sounds like a small number. However, if you consider that the people on this social networking site is made up of decision makers (about 45% of LinkedIn is in upper management) that number starts looking a lot larger. Since LinkedIn opened its long form publishing platform to users in February 2014, over 130,000 posts per week are made utilizing the site’s publishing platform. That’s quite an accomplishment for a little over a year of service. This is a testament to the volume of experience that the LinkedIn community has to share with the wider world, and make no mistake, the users really love sharing their insights. 2. Equal Reach Regardless of Station
What makes LinkedIn’s platform such a roaring success? Unlike other blogging sites where you would need to find people to read your work, usually in response to you reading theirs and leaving feedback, LinkedIn’s community usually starts the ball rolling for you. It’s the kind of publishing platform where even the smallest voice has the same potential outreach as the largest. With a user base of over 364 million total movers and shakers of industry plugged into the social network, it makes it much more likely that people who count will see what you post. For an ambitious person, publication on LinkedIn gives them far more potential for their work than any other type of social network. 3. Ideal for Starting Discussion
Because of the blog-type nature of LinkedIn posts, industry professionals can chime in with things that are presented in a publication that they agree with and point out the items that strike them as odd. The rapport that it can generate is what LinkedIn was aiming for when they developed the platform to be like this. The Executive Editor of LinkedIn Daniel Roth is noted as saying that LinkedIn’s publishing platform was meant to be a tool to turn insight into conversation. Based on how many relevant conversations it has started over a number of fields, it is safe to assume that they accomplished their goal.
The Downside of Publishing on LinkedIn: 2 Main Points
It’s not all roses in this part of the social media world, however. It may seem as though LinkedIn’s publication platform makes it ever so easy to get a ready audience for your posts. At the start of its availability for all users, long form posts usually guaranteed a pretty large reach. However, as time went on the amount of people it reached started dropping drastically until December 2014 when outreach seemed to come to a screeching halt. What could have caused this is anyone’s guess, but there are a few good estimations as to what may have affected the number of people being able to view individual posts, such as: 1. Rise in Competition
More and more users started publishing long form posts that grabbed the attention of readers and because of this the total audience would be split among the writers with the best posts. This would have been a factor if the quality of all posts were kept the same. As content producers, we should know that being able to maintain the quality of your own posts over the space of a month can be difficult, not to mention the posts of hundreds of individuals. While this might be an easy method of explaining away the massive drop in interaction for some users, it seems as though it’s too simple a solution for such a complex problem. 2. LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn likes taking care of its users. That’s why it developed LinkedIn Pulse, as a method of showcasing the best in long form publications from the user base. Before Pulse came along you were just as likely to get your content seen as a user that has a higher quality post.
However, because of Pulse, those users would generally be highlighted more and far more users would read their posts as opposed to yours, provided theirs is of a higher quality. LinkedIn Pulse is not necessarily a bad thing, since it pushes the envelope on what LinkedIn is likely to accept as good content. If you want the views, make sure your content is the best that can be found on LinkedIn for your niche.
Four Ways LinkedIn Affects Your Business
As we said before a lot of professionals utilize LinkedIn as a means of developing their own content marketing strategy. Whether it’s for use in finding new talent or simply exploring the available jobs in their region, LinkedIn serves as a jumping off point that professionals and companies alike can go to check out what the field has to offer. There are a number of different types of LinkedIn users and each one utilizes the platform for their own ends. Some of these include: 1. Individual Professionals
Engineers, architects and professionals from any industry find a home on LinkedIn as a place where they can present their ideas though the long form publishing platform and gain a following. This can lead to a number of different opportunities opening up for them throughout in and around their locale. From consultants, especially, being able to showcase their talents through long form posts and a ready availability of previous projects gives them an advantage over other professionals in their field that don’t use social networking to meet new clients. 2. Large Businesses
LinkedIn is one of the largest pools of ready workforce in the world that is not constrained geographically. It is probably the richest grounds for finding new talent in a field. Companies such as Shell, Fugro and ArcelorMittal have already realized this and their job posting board is prolific, with jobs that range across countries where they have holdings. Because of the multinational nature of these countries they can find a suitable candidate in another country they operate in and transfer them to where they are most needed. LinkedIn gives them the cream of the crop as far as hires go. 3. Small Businesses
Even smaller businesses get in on the deal with the hiring market. Because their area of influence is smaller, the amount of talent they have in their pool is considerably less. However, thanks to the location features that LinkedIn has built into its architecture, it’s easy for even small companies to find the perfect worker for the job they want filled. 4. Business-to-Business Marketers
One of the groups that benefits the most from LinkedIn is the B2B marketers. Their entire market is situated handily in one single social networking website making it easy to get in touch with them and to run a carefully planned content marketing strategy to make those companies aware of their existence and the products they offer. It’s a win-win situation on both fronts since the businesses get a supplier that is easily reachable for arranging details.
So, Is The LinkedIn Publishing Platform Worth It?
The crux of the matter is whether long form content (or content of any form) on LinkedIn is worth it anymore.
With the decrease in visibility and the promise that only the best of the best will be showcased in LinkedIn Pulse, does it really matter to create content on LinkedIn?
The answer is yes, it is still very much worth it.
Although you may not get the same sort of audience your content is used to, the audience that you do impact is still better than impacting no one at all.
You should try to make your content of the highest quality to find yourself on Pulse, but failing that, still make it a high enough quality so that your readers get something out of it.
Create good content now and, even though LinkedIn might not reward you for it, your industry just might. Photo courtesy Featured photo original design (c) Express Writers In-line second photo Inc.com
Alecs is a Client Accounts Manager at Express Writers.
Peanut butter would never be the same without jelly.
In like sense, combined strategies make for a much richer experience.
In your daily life, I’m sure you can come up with at least five things without even thinking too hard about them that work well together. The same goes for content marketing. Some things just function better together and work towards accomplishing an overall goal. The strengths of one particular type of marketing covers the weaknesses of another.
Just like a well-prepared team, using content marketing methods that overlap make for a much better overall experience.
Ready, set, GO… Your content will be ready to win in no time with a content combination strategy.
The Power & Synergy of A Content Combination Strategy
Content combination strategy is the plan by which you make these individual content management strategies work as a team.
What the strategy does is figure out which individual strategies cover the most amount of exposure for your target demographic. From there you can develop distribution plans for each of those vehicles of exposure. Thus, if your initial exposure medium was blogging but you saw a need for outreach on social media and print media, then you would incorporate those types of marketing into your overall marketing plan.
Using a content combination strategy allows you to adjust your content to suit. Blogs are great for long-form content but if you operate on social media, for example, those users tend to favor images over long form narrative content. Combining the content you produce and matching it to the relevant medium for distribution allows you to increase your outreach and develop more high quality content that will encourage users to come visit your page.
Understanding Content Synergy Dynamics
Some things just work very well together. Take, for example, email marketing alongside offering a free e-book to readers. Email marketing by itself can be a hit and miss affair. Some users actively avoid ending up on mailing lists. However, when combined with the prospect of a free e-book, email subscriptions soar. People always enjoy the thought of something for nothing and that’s why free e-book marketing tends to net far more email subscriptions than any other type of strategy.
The combination of these strategies sees the utilization of the email address as the object you need to obtain. With an active email address you can add the user to your email list and send them good content and information that they can use to better their lives, interspersing it with offers for products they may be interested in.
In order to ensure that the email is active, you send them a copy of your e-book that they want, opting in to your mailing list to get it. It’s a novel idea that balances the user’s greed with an entry point for marketing to the customer at a later date.
Not all content pairs are as synergistic as that one. Modern methods of social media make it easy for interaction to take place and utilizing it in tandem with a product that a company offers in order to win free merchandise is something many small businesses have adopted. This sees the use of a widespread media outlet and user generated content alongside free marketing in terms of the product being visible on the user’s picture which is then shared and liked in order for them to win the prize.
Extending Effectiveness and Outreach
Most content marketers run blogs. It’s their major source of production and distribution of content. The problem with blogs is that they are usually limited to a particular location in the hierarchy of modern media. Blogs are considered places where people go to share ideas and discuss things at length. On the opposite end of the perception spectrum is social media. Social media serves as the place where people go to interact with their friends and close acquaintances. It’s here that the majority of consumers exist.
The numbers show that worldwide, there are over two billion users on social media. How many of those do you think take time to visit a blog? The answer is quite a lot, depending on it shows up on their feed. Blogs and websites have realized that utilizing social media in tandem with their regular posts can lead to an increase in their popularity and overall positive KPI’s. Social media networks like Facebook make it easy to create pages that are linked officially to blogs so that users can benefit from their massive user base when creating content.
Sometimes, it works the other way around. Some Facebook pages have become so popular that they’ve forced their owners to build blogs around them in order to capitalize on their success. A good example of this is SciBabe on Facebook. Originally a page made to rant against the anti-science point of view of the popular Food Babe page, the owner eventually expanded it into an entire website dedicated to fighting misinformation on social media (a noble pursuit, but ultimately futile).
Research in Multiple Formats: How to Appeal to a Wider Audience
Content marketers already know the power of infographics. They are among the most popular ways of spreading information to people in a single, easy to share image. Infographics themselves sometimes represents a compilation of work from various research outlets. Statistics and facts are gathered and put into cool, flashy graphical representations to make the facts fun to read and easy to internalize for later use. The infographic is the modern successor to an older type of research distribution material, the white paper. Although infographics are the new kid on the block, white papers still have quite a bit of a following.
Older copywriters have told me about the days when they would be tasked with creating white papers that were a couple dozen pages long from information given to them by a particular company. What a white paper is, for those of us who grew up in the digital age, is a report that is written to offer factual information on a product or proposals on an issue. Although there is still a market for white papers, that market has shrunk considerably as more and more people are moving away from traditional printed media. Online white papers do exist, of course, and these are usually given as “free e-books” to people who are interested in a particular topic.
The average layman on social media, however, doesn’t have the time and attention span to find themselves reading a twenty-page report on solar panel efficiency and the impact on the future of renewable energy (for example). However, if you take the same statistics and factoids from the white paper and place it into an infographic that is then posted on social media, you are guaranteed to get the same people to share it, because it’s something they’re interested in. One of the major fallouts of a shorter attention span for consumers is that you have to adapt your methods of communication to stand a chance of getting your message across.
Keyword, Descriptions and e-Commerce
E-Commerce is how most companies are developing their online marketing ability these days because it makes for easier convenience. Stores that operate online don’t need to worry about having specific opening hours or missing out if no one is around to mind the store. They are the true realization of all the good things that the internet promised to business owners. By itself, e-commerce manages to generate quite a lot of extra profit for a company. SingPost, a Singaporean postal service provider, managed to hit 46.6M in profit during the first quarter of 2015 thanks to investments in e-commerce and improved logistics. When combined with keywords, the amount of total profit you’re looking at can be quite large.
Keywords are the backbone of search engine optimization. By knowing what keywords pertain to your business and strategically selecting keywords to focus on, you are much more likely to benefit from searches for a particular product or products.
Keywords can be utilized in product descriptions in order to boost sales from e-commerce based businesses. By utilizing keywords like this, you make any search engine a possible portal to a sale. Consider that consumers conduct over 3.5 billion searches per day on Google along, that should tell you the size of a potential market that you are getting access to.
All that glitters is not gold, however and keyword research can be time consuming and tedious. Some companies exist that are skilled at performing keyword searches for clients at a professional level, so they may be of some help in finding keywords that have a high enough volume with low enough competition to be worthwhile. Trying to do it yourself may be frustrating but it’s definitely worth trying, if only because of the potential for great sales.
Adobe’s Integrated SEO Social Strategy
Adobe is a giant in software, famous for such notable titles as Photoshop and Illustrator, just to name a couple. In a 2012 conference David Lloyd, the software giant’s SEO manager, explained how it used data to inform and improve its impact on social media, its content optimization and strategies surrounding its website. The operation, as is to be expected for a company of this size, is monumental.
Multiple teams of individual explore and sift through incoming data on keywords and URL’s that affect the company. The ones that are most important to the company and its products along with the URL’s of the best performing posts by Adobe themselves are retrieved and sent to their social media department. The teams at the social media center then go about linking and sharing the content that already has substantial conversion numbers, allowing them to leverage their data of reach out to more users across multiple social media channels. But what does all this have to do with SEO?
The keywords are where the SEO-social synergy comes in. By utilizing the keyword research and tying it in to already well-performing content they drive the popularity of that content and the connected keywords through the roof. Adobe utilizes a software suite known as BrightEdge that was able to prove the success of their synergistic content management strategy. A combination of seven tweets managed to drive Adobe’s rank up from twenty eighth to second for the keyword phrase “social analytics”. Lloyd maintains that for something like this to happen, it requires a lot of product awareness and good business skills.
Above All Else, Have a Plan
Seeing how content strategies work together in tandem to create a powerful marketing system that can reach out to the furthest edges of marketing and even combine disparate elements seems like an exciting prospect, especially for rookie content marketers.
Here’s the spoke in your wheel: before you rush off to do something that combines six or seven different marketing tactics, you need to have a plan.
Going off half cocked will end in you investing time and effort into a project that will most likely fail in the long run. Know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Define Your Goal
A combined content strategy is one that links different marketing types together to drive towards one final goal. You need to define your goal before you decide what vehicles you’re going to use to get there. Marketing can be very engrossing, but it can also be very frustrating. When you’re utilizing multiple content vehicles to achieve your goals, you’re in for a whole lot more frustration. Sometimes something will work, and you’ll have no clue how to duplicate it. Sometimes something won’t work no matter what you do. Combined content strategies are powerful when they work, but in order to get them to work, you have to know these content marketing channels inside and out.
Develop A Thought-Out Plan
Developing a well-thought-out plan that uses different channels that all direct their content towards a final goal is what you should be aiming to achieve with a combined strategy. You need to know what you want your users to do and figure out how these disparate strategies can work together as a team to finalize your goal. Some teams are better suited to work together than others, but that doesn’t mean you should leave out combinations from the get-go.
Content strategies evolve, and while a simple one might be a good place to start, eventually the needs of the company will outgrow it and you’ll have to think of new ways to promote the company or product.
Combined strategies offer you depth that will guarantee performance as time goes by.
The social media scene is dynamic. Updates to, as they put it, “improve user experience” are affecting businesses especially those who produce poor-quality content more than ever.
Just what are these changes and how will they impact your Facebook’s newsfeed? And, subsequently, your Facebook strategy and business?
I am going to take a look and show you how you can still work effectively with the recent Facebook change.
Facebook updated – again.
Facebook Changed, Again
It seems like we can’t go a month or so without hearing about a major change whether on Google, or a leading social channel like Facebook. Even the average user can tell social networks’ update frequencies through their smartphone alerts.
In the latest release from Facebook, we are noticing that the social media giant is living up to the promise of making users’ Timelines more oriented for them, with the recent Facebook’s newsfeed update.
Many people wondered just how Facebook would do this because the company constantly seems to make choices that go against that. However, there are now major changes to your timeline, which helps you see exactly what you want.
You can do three new things to help improve your newsfeed, making it more interesting and engaging.
Users can select which friends and brands they want to see first, who to follow and unfollow, and discover new content based on past interactions. This is great for the normal Facebook user, helping them see exactly what they want to, but this provides some fear for businesses.
What Is This Change & What Does it Mean for Your Business?
Just what is this change? Well, as you saw above, it is simply about giving people the control over their own Timelines and newsfeeds.
In addition, Facebook’s newsfeed is making sure to tailor new pages to fit what users have looked at and interacted with already. For example, if you follow and interact with book related Facebook pages, Facebook will tailor the new pages to fit the bookish theme.
What does this mean for your business?
Per Hubspot, organic reach has steadily been declining on the social channel, which is definitely a major stressor for marketers. This means that, even more so, you are going to need to focus on creating excellent, engaging Facebook content for your clients. You will also need to make sure you work hard to establish connections and relationships with followers, fans, and customers to ensure they will continue to see your posts.
If you already have that standing, then you should consider encouraging people to select your brand for the “See First” feature, helping you continue reaching out.
How Can You Get Customers to See Your Content First?
Are you looking for the magic ingredient to get clients to see your content first?
One of the best ways is to ask your clients to select the “See First” option.
You might be surprised at how many people will willingly do that simply because you asked nicely. If you don’t have a lot of Facebook interaction yet, however, you will need to focus on upping the interaction through content before asking people to select that option.
As I mentioned above, you are going to need to focus on content, instead of the number of posts you make. In addition, you need to focus on knowing your audience and creating things they will want to see. Always share your top content on Facebook, and to stay on people’s “See First” list, make sure you don’t overwhelm them with too much content in a day.
Your Ads Can Still Be Seen, but There’s a Catch
Facebook will tailor the newsfeed to fit a person’s interest based off of what he or she has selected to see “first.”
This could impact your ads and which ones they see, making it harder for some people to see your ads.
However, this doesn’t mean you should give up on Facebook ads completely. They can still come in handy, and if you are writing social content that appeals to your readers, the chances are high that you’ll be able to be one of the 300 or so posts a person sees in a day.
If your budget is small for advertising, then don’t fret. You can still get reach by making awesome content and encouraging your existing clients to share it. Work on creating shareable content for Facebook and include things like images and videos to help bring about more shares for your content.
3 Major Strategies To Help You Improve Your Facebook Strategy
With this change, it is important to look at your Facebook strategy and improve it to help your reach and to encourage users to put you on their “See First” list. Shehan Peruma from HubSpot gives some excellent marketing strategies for Facebook that can definitely help your strategy. Let’s look at a few of these ideas. 1. Re-Evaluate Your Strategy and Run Analytics Tests
This is a great chance to re-evaluate your current Facebook strategy to see how you can improve it with the latest changes. Run some analytics tests to help with this evaluation, and never hesitate to ask your clients for their input. 2. Focus More On Content Creation and Curation
Don’t focus too hard on getting people to see your content; that will come along after focusing on the importance of content creation and curation. Work to create original, great content your clients will enjoy, and always find great outside sources to share on your Facebook, as well. 3. Always Respond to Anyone Who Comments
As you can see, keeping up a business-client relationship will be important with this new Facebook change. A great way to help build a relationship is to respond to anyone who comments on your Facebook posts.
Facebook is Still as Important as Ever
Just because Facebook’s newsfeed made another change, doesn’t mean it is losing its relevancy. It is still as important as it has ever been, making it a vital aspect of any social media strategy. Don’t give up on the channel, but instead focus on creating great content and building relationships with your clients.
Creating great Facebook content doesn’t need to be stressful, either.
Express Writers can help you create and curate excellent content for all of your social channels. Take a look at our services to see just how we can help you.
Annie is a Content Manager at Express Writers.
Developing a content strategy can easily seem like it can be a futile exercise.
Many people don’t have a clue about where to start when it comes to putting together a detailed plan for what their content should do and what sort of demographic it should be aimed at.
The truth of the matter is that overthinking content marketing can be dangerous.
Instead of focusing on the minor details, what you should be aiming for is to see the big picture.
It’s only through that you will actually be able to experience the true power of content marketing the way it was meant to be used.
The Blank Slate Theory & Your Content Strategy
As artist Joe Madureira says, a blank slate is as exciting as it is daunting. What we propose to do through a blank slate comparison is to see how a company starting from no website or content marketing strategy can utilize the tools of developing a content strategy to be successful. In this fictionalized case study we will be utilizing a two-phase plan for the creation of a detailed content strategy that can be used to improve a website’s ranking and visibility.
Methodology Behind Our Experiment
Utilizing a free tool like Google Analytics allows us to easily track the key performance indicators (KPI’s) that we’re interested in. Indicators such as number of visitors and unique visitors over time allow us to gauge the success of our content marketing strategy. If we want to be more specific we can set up funnels in Google Analytics in order to track clicks from what content leads to which page to determine the most popular content for attracting users. The numbers from Google Analytics will be our guide to how well our content strategy is doing, just like in real life.
Time to start working on that content strategy, if you haven’t already!
Content Strategy Phase One: The Basics
There are a handful of things that a basic content strategy should have in place as a jumping off point. These form the framework for your future content production and also aids in your SEO compatibility and your search rank score. These things are the very basics but even though they seem to be unnecessary at the start, they are a powerful means of attracting traffic and formulating leads. The basic start for a website’s content strategy comes from incorporating these key elements: 1. META tags: META tags aid in helping to describe a page’s content to a search engine. Including META tags in your site setup ensures that you are able to include the most important elements that you would expect to get your page noticed. The more relevant information you include in your META data the better your search relevancy will be. This translates into increased traffic from search engines, as relevancy is extremely important to users. No one wants to click a page and end up somewhere they didn’t expect to be. 2. Keywords: These are words that describe the content on your page and allow a user to be aware of what the site they are visiting is about. Used in combination with META description tags, your keywords form the backbone of your content strategy in the realm of SEO. You don’t want too much of your keywords cluttering up your page since search engines are usually wary of too high a keyword density. Ideally, your keyword density should lie between 3% and 5% for any particular keyword set. 3. Product Descriptions: These give your site the look and feel of a professional company and also gives Google something to reference. Your product descriptions should also have keywords considered and should conform to the limit of 3% to 5% as well. Keeping this figure is enough to satisfy the search engine that you’re not keyword stuffing just to make your content more popular. The descriptions should be meaningful as far as possible and written for the user. It’s a true test of balancing your content writing in order to appeal to both search engine robots and the average user. 4. Basic Content: Basic content gives your site a barebones for further development of content as time goes by. Through your basic content you are trying to attract users and at the same time get them to do something. Whether it’s subscribing to an email list or clicking over to a product page, your basic content should be original and should appeal to the customer. It should bring value to the customer’s life in some way. That is the hallmark of good content.
Content Strategy Phase Two: Advanced Operations
After setting up the initial barebones on the blank slate website, we can now proceed to monitor it for a period of time to see how it evolves and develops in terms of traffic. This sets a benchmark from where we can go on to the advanced part of the exploration and the key motivator for developing a content strategy.
Does content really make a difference in generating leads and increasing visits? Let’s find out by utilizing the major vehicles of content marketing: 1. Blogs: Blogging has long been accepted as one of the ways to generate traffic and to keep your website fresh to attract new visitors. Search engines enjoy blogs because they tend to deal with a particular niche and once the search engine determines the niche the blog is in it’s easy to direct relevant traffic to the site. Blogs allow for a company or website to focus on creating high-quality content that appeals to their target demographic. Through this content the company can generate new leads or conversions, or develop customer loyalty by focusing on providing useful content to their users. Blogs need to be updated regularly in order to remain relevant. Updating too much can cause useful information to be lost. There’s a fine balance to walk here, but doing it well is worth the effort. 2. Social Media: The newest way for websites to interact with customers directly and to generate leads is through content marketing on social media. The use of memetics and other content that attracts users to like or share allows a company to spread the word far and wide and to get a much more diverse outreach than with simple SEO marketing. The virality of social media content is what makes it attractive as a medium for content marketing. All it takes is the right combination of images, words and emotions to make a piece of content that could theoretically reach hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. Websites such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter have made it even easier for content marketers to share great content with their followers.
Expected Results
As is expected with a fledgling content strategy, it would take some time for the users to reach a trickle. Ideally, we would run this blank slate website against another website that has nothing on it as a control to see the difference in traffic between that control site and our site over a period of a few months. Because of our SEO work (META tags and content descriptions etc.) we expect to see a decent amount of traffic at the end of the first six-month period. At the end of this initial setup period we can then average the amount of visitors daily and keep that score as the benchmark against which our second phase can be tested.
Introducing the second phase allows us to see how much better content marketing is compared to a site that operates without it (presented by the data from our six-month phase-one trial). Because of the nature of content strategies and the methodology used, it can take a couple months before noticeable changes start happening.
This would be the case if and only if the chosen method of content marketing is done as intended (blogs updated on time, social media accounts focusing on a target demographic etc.). Over the next six months the performance of the site would increase quite a lot based on the use of content marketing.
Conclusions
If performed properly and under the best of conditions, this experiment would prove decisively if content marketing is truly beneficial to a company or brand.
Real-life case studies are readily available where brands tout the awesome capability of content marketing to drive traffic and generate leads (GE Reports immediately comes to mind). However, the real world is rarely as cut and dried as test situations.
Many times when companies undertake a content strategy, they try to minimize the cost and maximize the impact.
Although this strategy is admirable, there are some things you shouldn’t cut corners with. Updating regularly is one of them. Generating high quality content is another. The best way to ensure that your content is of the highest standard is to invest in a professional content production team to develop content for you on a regular basis. A content strategy has the potential to do great things for your traffic, it just has to be implemented properly.
She’s risen to fame at a young age. How did it all happen?
Taylor Swift’s Marketing Lessons: Is It Natural Prowess?
Taylor Swift is probably best known for her bevy of Number 1 hits. Throughout the duration of her career, the blonde bombshell has seen the top of the Billboard Charts four times. “Bad Blood”, her most recent chart-topping hit and the third from her ultra-popular 1989 album, took less than two weeks to scale the mountain of new music, which begs the question: what’s her secret? Is it just great song writing and a direct, T-Swift-only line into the hearts of millions of music-lovers worldwide or is it something else?
The answer, as it turns out, is that Miss Swift is just really, really good at marketing. And no, she didn’t take marketing lessons..
Part of her marketing prowess comes down to knowing exactly who to partner with at exactly the right time. Although “Bad Blood” has been bumping around since the release of 1989 in October of 2014, Swift managed to propel it to the top of the charts recently by re-mixing it with Kendrick Lamar, who happens to be one of the hottest names in today’s hip-hop scene.
By doing this, Swift utilized one of the oldest and most effective marketing games in the book: combining forces for better results. There is something distinctly omni-channel-esque about Swift’s decision to pair with Lamar and it is obvious that by joining forces with the hip-hop legend, she made an amazingly intelligent marketing move that allowed her to tap into a different stream of listeners.
While Kendrick Lamar’s listeners may not have chosen to purchase a Taylor Swift album before the re-mix of “Bad Blood” dropped, it is likely that they will now, which allows Swift to broaden her already massive fan base.
Additionally, the strategic addition of Lamar means that Taylor’s typically pop/country songs now stand a very real chance of being played on Hip-Hop radio and streaming stations, which provides a new and exciting platform and serves to further her apparent plan for total global domination.
Endearing Videos for Maximum Fan Engagement
One of the foremost things that have garnered Taylor Swift global affection is the fact that she’s always seemed utterly reachable. All you need to do to produce evidence of this is scan the YouTube comments that accompany her “Shake it Off” or “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” videos for ample fan gushing and statements of identification.
In the past, Swift’s funny, sweet music videos have given her a mainline catheter into the hearts of many but, now that she has reached epic levels of popularity, she’s begun to change it up.
Unlike her previous videos, “Bad Blood” takes its plot line from a Bond-esque action film, complete with plenty roundhouse kicks, high-tech scenes and pop-culture references to Kill Bill and LeeLoo’s famous strappy costume from The Fifth Element.
In addition the fact that “Bad Blood” is visually shocking and a complete foil to anything Swift has done before, the video is chock-full of powerful female names. Everyone from Paramore’s Hayley Williams to supermodel Cindy Crawford and actress Jessica Alba are featured in the video, which means that it will show up across their respective fan bases, as well, allowing Swift to expand her already massive reach.
More effective than the inclusion of big names, however, is the way that Swift and her marketing team chose to tease viewers during the lead-up to the video’s release. For the weeks preceding its launch, each of the famous faces featured in the “Bad Blood” video released a vintage-looking shot of her respective costume and character on Instagram, giving audiences an exclusive sneak peek and the added fun of a distinctly movie-poster feel.
Every time a new image dropped, the media went wild and Swift’s social media follower count gained a few zeros. Although 1989 was already a chart-topping album (it never left the top ten) Swift timed her “Bad Blood” launch with the moment when the album began to lose some of its death-grip on the industry. In order to drum up more enthusiasm for the video’s release, Swift seized one of the biggest events in the industry: The Billboard Music Awards.
One Release to Rule Them All
This year’s Billboard Music Awards opened with a clip from “Bad Blood” and the rest was history. An estimated 11.1 million people watched this year’s Billboard Music Awards and every single one of them bore witness to Swift’s newest brain-child. It doesn’t hurt that Swift went on to win eight trophies that night, furthering her reputation as a top dog in the music industry.
The fact that Swift and her team chose the Billboard Music Awards to launch “Bad Blood” was no accident. By choosing such an important, media-riddled and highly-televised event, Swift and her team ensured that the video would not only set the stage for the awards, thus creating a sort of aura that would hang over the event all night, but also that it would be highly televised, tweeted about and reported on.
In the end, it wasn’t so much the unique genius of “Bad Blood” that rocketed the track to the top of the charts as it was the dedicated, calculated and painstakingly specific utilization of advanced marketing efforts combined with brilliant launch times and media release tactics.
How Swift Does Classical Marketing With a New Twist
Swift’s launch of 1989 is akin to a master class in marketing and, if she keeps going, she’s going to usurp MBAs everywhere. Even before Kendrick Lamar entered the scene, Swift was enjoying partnerships with the likes of Diet Coke, with whom she produced an adorable commercial resplendent with kittens and plenty of whimsy.
As if the kittens weren’t enough, the commercial is set to a backdrop of Swift’s own music and, at the end, Taylor herself puts for the call to action for fans to buy her new album, as if fans needed any instruction, at that point. Taylor also partnered with Target in an exclusive-release deal that provided Target customers with a “Deluxe Edition” album, which offers three bonus tracks and exclusive content.
In-Person Promos
It’s one thing to hear about your favorite musician through a consistent filter of reporters, news outlets and tabloids and entirely another to hear it right from the horse’s (or, in this case, Taylor’s) mouth.
In the months leading up to her 1989 launch, Swift created a cross between a podcast and a talk show and live-streamed it to her audience. During each short episode of the show, Swift discussed her influences, her music, the upcoming album and her favorite things. Needless to say, fans went wild.
To take her promotions a step further and heighten her image as an approachable, friendly star, Swift did Skype Q & A’s with fans and conducted “secret sessions” during which she invited fans to her home and provided them with home-baked cookies and an ultra-exclusive screening of her new album.
Media Mogul
Swift is no slouch when it comes to multi-channel marketing and she uses each major media outlet to her distinct advantage. For massive launches, announcements and promotions, she uses mass media in the form of television ads while she chooses to use the Internet and various PR approaches for product promotion. Swift also uses her Instagram account to treat fans to well-timed sneak peaks of new song lyrics. No matter where, or how, her fans show up in the digital or social media world, it’s clear that Tay Tay is there to meet them.
What We Can Learn From Swift
It’s always been clear that Taylor Swift is great at what she does, but when you take the time to break down her success in the marketing world into tangible marketing lessons for us all, it’s a little mind-boggling. Since the release of her self-titled album in 2006, Swift has won seven Grammy Awards, 16 American Music Awards, 22 Billboard Music Awards (to name a few) and has been honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Each of her albums has sold a bare minimum of four million copies and she’s a regular at the top of the Billboard charts.
While a good portion of all that success is talent, we know that talent alone doesn’t make a successful artist. It’s clear that, in addition to her considerable musical talent, Taylor Swift also possesses considerable marketing talent that has served to make her one of the most powerful forces in the music business, even going so far as to influence tech-giant Apple’s behavior with a single tweet.
Let the record show: Taylor Swift knows a thing or two about successful marketing.
