Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Today, planning the actual distribution of the content you've spent so many hours and resources expertly creating is just as critical to your marketing strategy as the quality of the content itself.

Unfortunately -- for audiences and marketers alike -- too many would-be content marketing rockstars give themselves a nice pat on the back for sharing content on Twitter and Facebook and calling it a day. So before you toast to your status as a progressive marketer who also publishes on LinkedIn and posts on Reddit, consider this: There are dozens, if not hundreds, of methods for content distribution beyond social that you might be overlooking.

But we’re not about to leave you empty-handed. Below you’ll find 10 creative ways to distribute your content -- with a little bit of background to set the stage....

Quite often I give presentations to groups of entrepreneurs who think that social media is all about building up followers and fans. You hire a social media intern to share some updates, you get some fans and followers, and that somehow generates business for you.It doesn’t work that way.

People get impressed with lots of followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but the truth is, the majority of those followers never see your content and you don’t get a lot of value from them.

Your focus should not be on social media. What I tell to the groups I speak to is that they need to focus on strategic content, relationships, and technology.

I’m not saying social media is not important, but if you switch your focus a little, your social following will be a lot more valuable. It’s not all about the numbers, and in this article I’ll explain why....

With the caveat in the section above–that we’re often doing a little of both–and some informal polling of many esteemed marketers I know, here is where I’ve landed on social marketing vs. content marketing.

Social marketing is a channel where we find potential customers by listening to earned conversations and analyzing our owned accounts. We then interact with those people to move them through the customer journey.

You can use various tactics to make that movement happen. Content marketing is a tactic. It’s a method of marketing that allows companies to add value for potential customers by creating and distributing (sometimes through social) collateral like blog posts, videos, and web pages.

These pieces of collateral entertain and educate your target audience about topics related to your product. They’re intended to generate interest in your offering by reinforcing relevant problems, challenges, misconceptions, and, finally, solutions....

Putting together an A+ landing page can be tricky.

There are so many elements that a top-notch landing page needs, and making those elements the "best" they can be often depends on what your landing page goals are. 

Take form length, for example. It's just one of the many components you need to optimize, but best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well -- it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher quality submissions.
Download our free guide to landing pages here to learn how to design landing pages that convert. 

So if you're looking to up your landing page game, it's helpful to know what goes into a great landing page and see a few examples of these nuanced elements in action. Surprisingly, when I started doing research into the latter, I realized there are hardly any sites out there with examples of modern, impressive landing pages that are more than just a sign-up form on a homepage. So we decided to compile a list of landing pages we love ourselves....

With all the different types of social platforms out there, it can be challenging for brand marketers to decide when is the optimal time and day to post. According to H1 2016 research, on Facebook and Twitter, the best-performing posts were made in the evenings, and later in the work week.

Between January and July 2016,TrackMaven tracked 17.5 million social media posts from 17,737 brands worldwide across various industries to determine when was the best time and day to post.

Social posts at the close of a work day (in Eastern Time) at the tail of the week performed the best on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to the data. Pinterest took this trend a bit further with posts tending to get the best traction on Fridays at 1am. Meanwhile, LinkedIn posts, which largely cater to the business crowd, had the advantage when made midweek at 9am....

Marketo vs. Eloqua vs. HubSpot. Kapost vs. Newscred vs. Percolate. Sprinklr vs. Buffer vs. Hootsuite. And so on, and so on. The list of marketing technology vendors keeps growing. Which makes sorting through and implementing those martech tools a job in itself.

But how does the explosion in martech help your marketing team get sh*t done today?

It doesn't. So, while waiting for you to evaluate, decide, deploy, integrate, and optimize the spaghetti of solutions, try feeding your team a few lightweight apps that cost next to nothing and are dead simple to use....

If you’re trying to increase the number of leads that your business gets from online channels such as SEO, PPC advertising or Social Media Marketing, you need to consider how well you’re attracting prospects who are top of the funnel. These are people who are part of your target market, but who may not be ready to purchase a product or service at this time. Draw these people in with top of funnel content.

I think it helps to visualize the entire buying process in the shape of a funnel. People at the top of the funnel (often shortened to “TOFU”) are doing general online research related to your industry. Continuing down the funnel, we describe people who are further along in the buying process as being in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) or at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU)....

There are hundreds upon hundreds of tools to choose from. For example, here’s a list of 75 content marketing tools that you should absolutely review.

But, here’s what you may not realize: there are many ways to use each tool. For this reason, it’s imperative that you spend the appropriate amount of time examining and experimenting with each one.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the finer details of five top online marketing tools. For each one, I’ll give you a better idea of how you can use it to your advantage.

Remember, accessing an online marketing tool is just the start. If you truly want to achieve top results, you must know how to use it. Here we go! 

Are you ready to give content marketing the time, money and resources it deserves?

While your answer may be yes, it’s never easy to get up and running with a new marketing strategy. There are questions to answer, challenges to overcome and various tasks that need addressed.

With 88% of B2B marketers currently using content marketing as part of their overall strategy, neglecting to do so will put you in the minority.

As you get started, you’ll soon find a variety of ways to better research, plan, create and distribute content.

What I’ve created here is a list of content marketing tools that you’ll want by your side as you roll out your first campaign.

These tools cover the most important details you’ll need to address before you get started, as well as in the early days (and weeks) of running your campaign....

The concept of content marketing has been around for hundreds of years (see this example from 1672), and the discipline has gained incredible popularity since 2007, according to Google Trends.

But, when we recently launched a new e-book that answers common content marketing questions, we learned that many of our readers are just getting started.

As such, we want to make sure we continually cover the basics. Whether you are new to the practice, need a new way to look at what you’ve been doing, or need help explaining this to your relatives, this post is for you....

So the question shouldn’t be how can I create content on the cheap, but rather, how can I do more with less?

The answer: create masterful content that is worth more.
Content that generates traffic. Content that inspires shares. Content that gets written and talked about. Content that earns conversions. Content that wins trust. Content that positions you as an authority. Content that wins business, retains customers, and invokes referrals....

As social media marketing becomes more challenging and time-consuming, it’s time to get more organised when managing your brand’s social presence.

It’s not easy handling a brand’s social presence, but its successful management can lead to great results. Social networks keep growing and they are heading into a more mature phase, which means that the challenges grow for every brand that tries to stay competent.

No matter what goals you set for the new year, you still need to stay on top of your brand’s social media marketing and the right checklist may help you with all the tasks you need to do at the beginning of the year....

It’s no secret that we as consumers are exposed to a plethora of promotions and ads every single day. In fact, according to some we are exposed to somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 ads per day, a staggering number that is only increasing. So how can we as marketers cut through the noise and reach consumers where they are?

The answer may lie in the intersection between personalized content and mobile technology. According to an infographic by Microsoft and VMob, utilizing real-time data can lead to hyper-personalized content creation. For example, a retailer who aligned seasonal marketing and promotional messages with localized weather trends saw sales increase by 18%.

Take a look at the infographic below to find out how you can use targeted metrics to create personalized content....

So we need to do some of the following despite the inner voice trying to keep us plugging away.

• Reading and researching
• Acting on the ideas that emerge
• Creating
• Publishing
• Building digital assets.

To help you find some inspiration I have been crawling through the most shared content marketing articles on BuzzSumo and come up with these 10 “must read” posts on content marketing.

So if you are a savvy digital marketer or an entrepreneur that understands the importance of building great online content, then these are worth a long glance....

Four years ago, I shared that your content must resonate with your audience so they follow you where you want to take them.

I also asked what kind of content universally resonates with people. It’s content that:

• We never get tired of
• We always have time for  
• We don’t forget
• We want to share with others

This is the kind of content we must create if our goal is to influence, inspire, and move to action the unique group of people we have chosen to reach.

To help, I originally created a list of 21 types of content we all love to consume.