Thursday, May 31, 2018

3 Reasons Why You Should Create a Microsite (Plus 5 Creative Examples)

3 Reasons Why You Should Create a Microsite (Plus 5 Creative Examples)

The term “microsite” refers to branded content that exists independently from the main company website.

Microsites have their own URL and are typically used for specific campaigns or for posting ongoing content.

A blog, if it exists outside of the company’s main website, could be considered a microsite. Some popular examples of microsites include Blendtec’s WIllItBlend and Officemax’s ElfYourself. We’ll explore other examples and why they work in this article.

The top 3 benefits of creating a microsite

While creating a separate web entity for your business might seem like a hassle, there are quite a few benefits. Microsites do not necessarily have to be long-term projects. Many of them only exist for the duration of a marketing campaign. Here are three top benefits of creating a microsite:

1. Focused content

A microsite allows for more focused content. For example, if you run an e-commerce website that sells clothing, you could create microsites for specific brands or demographics. A visitor looking for children’s clothing specifically could visit your microsite without being distracted by other product pages that may not be of interest.

2. A place for experimentation

Do you have a great idea for a marketing campaign, but aren’t quite sure if it will be effective if you launch it site-wide? Microsites are easy and affordable to set up and are great for experimental and research purposes. You can even set up several microsites with different messages to see which one performs the best. The possibilities are endless!

3. SEO

Creating a unique, easy-to-remember URL for your microsite that’s relevant to focused content will allow users to find your website quickly. A low bounce rate will most definitely boost SEO for your website. Also, owning an assortment of keyword-rich domains is highly valued by search engines. However, you will want to be mindful of duplicate content. If you create a microsite, be sure there is no similar content on your main company page.

Microsites: 5 Companies doing it right

If you want to start using microsites for your business but aren’t sure where to start, look to these companies for inspiration. These microsites are creative, fun, focused, and encourage user interaction.

1. Pepsi

As part of its This is the Pepsi campaign, Pepsi worked with Google to create the microsite PepsiGoBack. This WebVR experience allows users to travel through time and witness Pepsi’s iconic moments. It’s a compelling interactive experience that uses new technology. There is definitely a cool factor with this microsite!

2. The Collaborative Fund

The Collaborative Fund is a group of entrepreneurs, internet companies, and investors working together to make the world a better place. Wanting to encourage the concept of car sharing, it created FutureofCarSharing.com. This simple microsite features an interactive infographic touting the environmental, social, and economic benefits of carsharing.

3. Spotify

Music is personal. Many of us associate music with happy or sad memories. Spotify took hold of our personal relationship with music and created YearinMusic, a personalized, interactive microsite that displays statistics on your listening habits during the previous year. It’s easy to use and easy to share! The site also includes other music stats of interest such as Top Artists and Playlists.

4. Bolthouse Farms

Bolthouse Farms is committed to healthy food and a healthy planet. It combined its love of food with our persistent need to post pictures of our food on social media and created URWHATUPOST.com. The site shows real-time conversations on social media about healthy food vs. unhealthy foods. This colorful page is full of information and you can participate by using the hashtag #UrWhatUPost.

5. Domino’s

As a digital marketer, I continue to be impressed with Domino’s. The company is always forward-thinking in its advertising. Remember its order a pizza via emoji campaign? Of course, they make full use of microsites, along with WebVR technology. Check out DominosDXP, a fully-equipped, one-of-a-kind pizza delivery vehicle with a warming oven! The microsite allows the user to get a close look at the vehicle and all of its features and even go along for a ride.

Wrap

All of these microsite examples are hyper-focused and interactive. Making use of new technology such as WebVR adds a cool factor that’s impossible to ignore. While many microsites are simplistic in design, the nature of microsites allows you to take risks.

Have these companies inspired any ideas for your first microsite? We’d love to hear about them!

Guest author: Richard Horvath started his career designing websites and is now the President of  TheeDesign, an award-winning web design and digital marketing firm in Raleigh, NC. Richard works closely with small businesses and startups, creating visually appealing and SEO-friendly websites. He guarantees quality work and complete customer satisfaction. He recently opened a second agency in Houston, TX called TheeHouston.agency.

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Digital Asset Management: What It Is and Why You Need It

digital-asset-management-what-it-isEditor’s note: The following is adapted from the author’s book, Digital & Marketing Asset Management: The Real Story of DAM Technology & Practice, published by Rosenfeld Media and copyright by Real Story Group.

Since the turn of the millennium, digital media of all kinds have become an increasingly significant part of our everyday experience. Every day, we consume and interact with photos, audio files, video clips, animations, games, interactive ads, streaming movies, and even experiential marketing, which has gained a digital edge with the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality.

This digital media boom is driven by a combination of trends and innovations: inexpensive, highly functional digital still and video cameras (even as part of mobile devices); increased network bandwidth; decreased storage costs; low-cost, high-performance processors; high-capacity, solid-state memory; affordable cloud services and the requisite digital media infrastructure.

Navigating all this digital media creates challenges for consumers and enterprises alike.

Consumers want to organize the experience and consumption of digital media files. They want to be able to find them, categorize them, and use them when and where they want – and they want to do all of this across multiple devices.

Meanwhile, enterprises and content marketers have a similar but much broader wish list. Of course, they want to be able to find their assets easily, but most often they want to use digital media “products” to reach prospective customers. They may use digital assets as part of a marketing campaign to reach a specific audience in a specific form, such as a digital or physical brochure, an email promotion, a movie trailer, or a website landing page. The digital media could be the product itself – a music collection, streaming television series, video, electronic magazine, e-book or catalog – distributed in a variety of formats or forms.

To produce these products, you need to create, organize, find, and use pieces of digital media: not only the individual images, graphics, photos, video segments, and audio files that form the elements of your product but also the layout, editing, and design files that provide the structure. In most cases, you need to add textual information such as copy, descriptions, and product data as well. Finally, you have to assemble everything together in the right format within the specific production process or workflow.

Upon completion, you want to distribute and track all the product components, as well as any changes or versions over time. Additionally (if that weren’t enough), many digital files have restrictions and rights that must be monitored and respected.

And this, dear readers, is the raison d’ĂȘtre of digital asset management.

Enterprises and content marketers need to manage each piece of the brand story, campaign, or product independently of, or in addition to, managing the whole.


Marketers should manage each piece of brand story independently and as part of whole, says @TheresaRegli.
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This management of digital media throughout its lifetime is the general domain of digital asset management.

What is digital asset management?

As a discipline and a technology, DAM is all about the control, flexibility, portability, access and reporting of digital assets between organizations, customers, partners and suppliers. (Digital assets are files that have an intrinsic or acquired value over their lifetime.)

DAM is concerned with delivering the right content to the right people, on all devices, mostly in real time, with the ability to track and measure digital asset engagement across an enterprise and its potential global reach.

Technically speaking, a digital asset is more than just the media file. To realize the value of a file (or collection of files), you need to have additional information about that asset. In short, you need metadata.

For most DAM purposes, an asset is defined as the media content plus its metadata. This metadata can be as simple as the name, author, or creation date of the file; or as complex as the rights and fees around use of an image or the extracted speech converted to text from a video. Content only becomes a usable asset when metadata is associated with it.


#Content only becomes a usable asset when metadata is associated with it, says @TheresaRegli. #contentstrategy
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Metadata is essential to managing these assets, providing useful information about the content, such as: “Older woman holding a baby, photo, taken by Phil Smith, January 5, 2008.” This information makes content accessible and searchable, provides context, defines usage rights, shows an asset’s history of use, and over time can be used to determine an asset’s value.

What do DAM systems do?

Though DAM is first a discipline, it’s also a technology. In its simplest form, a digital asset management system provides a secure repository that facilitates the creation, management, organization, production, distribution, and, potentially, monetization of media files identified as digital assets.

Like other content management technologies, a DAM system provides basic library services: a common (typically centralized) and secure place to store, organize, and retrieve files. It also provides core process services, including specific facilities for the management, manipulation, transformation, security, movement, and processing of rich media files and their metadata. Most DAM systems can now integrate with other tools and systems, which, for a content marketer, can be particularly useful. No more doubts about whether you’re accessing the correct or latest version of a logo or asset.

How does DAM fit the bigger picture?

It’s not always obvious. Choosing the right tools for holistic and effective digital marketing is not unlike crafting a complex cocktail: you have to find the right mix of ingredients in the right balance that works for you. What works for one organization might not work for yours, much like one person prefers a martini and someone else prefers a Negroni. Both drinks contain vermouth – just like two organizations might both have DAM systems – but it’s the mixing with other ingredients that mean the results can be quite different.

As a digital marketer, you need to think of yourself as the enterprise technology mixologist, working with your colleagues to come up with the right mix. While DAM is obviously on your ingredient list, it’s equally important to understand the role that each technology plays, as well as the potentially different priorities or goals other users may have. Otherwise, your cocktail will be a confused mess in a glass, and no one will come back to your bar.


Digital marketers are enterprise technology mixologists, finding the right mix for a great drink. @TheresaRegli
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How does DAM operate in digital marketing framework?

While the term “digital marketing technology” (or “martech”) is commonly used within the industry, marketers often disagree on what it means. Construed broadly, digital marketing technology is the collection (another cocktail, anyone?) of digital systems that marketers use to gather, cultivate, and nurture leads and customers.

Traditionally, these systems reflected how a marketer wanted to represent a brand or product line. However, as marketing becomes (or aspires to become) more customer-centric, marketers increasingly sense that new approaches must focus more intensely on customer preferences – including their browsing and buying history – and meet them in the channel of their choosing (mobile, in-store, catalog, or otherwise). Digital assets are instrumental to realizing this plan.

The most obvious example is ad tracking: when someone browses a product on one site only to keep seeing promotions or banner ads for the same item on a different site a few hours later. Not all potential customers appreciate this kind of retargeting as it can sometimes seem like the sales assistant is chasing them down the street after they’ve left the store. But it doesn’t only have to be ad content. DAM technology can assist other systems to personalize the content served to a returning visitor based on their previous activity.

Top-performing organizations already recognize that a superior customer experience is intrinsically tied to the quality of their digital channels. And companies that sell tangible products are increasingly and effectively tying together in-store and digital shopping experiences (omnichannel marketing). With the right assets and metadata, and a well-mixed cocktail of DAM and martech, it should then be possible to serve targeted content to prospects and customers alike.


Top performers see superior customer experience as intrinsically tied to digital channel quality. @TheresaRegli
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At its core, this is the value of DAM: if you’re doing it right, your assets are target ready. They have the right metadata to meet up with the right content and target the customer in the most effective way. And that should make any content marketer’s job easier.

A version of this article originally appeared in the February issue of  Chief Content OfficerSign up to receive your free subscription to our quarterly print magazine.

Intimidated by the complexities of digital asset management? Don’t be. Learn in person how to do it well from the presenters at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today for best rates and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Wednesday, May 30, 2018

How To Test If Your Online Business Will Make Any Money

How To Test If Your Online Business Will Make Any Money

The light bulb came on.

You just got an online business idea that’ll change everything. A way to convert your passion or skill set into money, so you can finally quit your job, become your own boss and live the laptop lifestyle.

You don’t want to waste any time or doubt might set in, so you move as quickly as you can. You pour money into website design and start creating content for your online business. You even have products lined up for the stream of orders you’ll get once you launch.

“People have to buy.” You say to yourself, your idea is just too good. Then a week later you setup Ad campaigns online and launch.

The visitors drip in slowly at first and just when you expect purchases to start going up, you get nothing. You change your website design and reduce the price of your products. Then you wait some more.

A week, a month, still nothing. Realization starts to creep in. No one wants what you’re selling.

You aren’t alone…

Anyone that’s ever tried to sell something online has probably had this experience before.

I know I have. One of many reasons why businesses fail is because they simply have no market.

This is particularly prevalent online, where people think they can make any old hobby profitable with just a website and Ads.

Unfortunately, online businesses operate exactly like brick and mortar businesses, the only difference being they have a lower setup and operation cost. Putting a bad idea on the internet doesn’t make it any better.

Discovering that no one wants what you’re offering is painful, especially after you’ve dedicated so much time and money into setting it up. To save you the trouble and heartache, in this post I’ll show you how to quickly and cheaply test if your online business has any chance of making money.

Testing your idea ensures that when you do launch, your business has a high chance of success, and if it isn’t profitable you’ll know before investing a fortune in it.

There are many ways to test profitability, but I’ll simplify it into two methods:

  1. The Easy Way
  2. The Hard Way

Please don’t rely on hope marketing, where you have an idea and just launch with the “HOPE” that people will buy. It doesn’t work.

The Easy Way

The fastest and cheapest way to know if your idea has any chance of making money involves simply checking if anyone else is profiting from what you want to do.

When you come up with a business idea, whether it’s a blog or an e-commerce store, the presence of competition shouldn’t discourage you.

Rather it means that there’s a market for what you plan to offer and you simply have to position yourself in front of that market with a better offer and you’ll capture a bit of it. This is usually what people mean when they say “follow the money”.

Yes, the other businesses are more established and that’s an advantage, but it doesn’t mean your business can’t become better than theirs.

Apple, Google, Facebook, and WordPress were not the first companies to do what they currently do. Yet they overtook older more established competitors.

This doesn’t just apply to big companies alone. The most popular and profitable blogs on the internet today weren’t the first. So get it out of your head that you need to be the first on the scene or your idea is ruined.

Competition is good because all you have to do is create a better or different offer than your competitors to win.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Find competitors

The easiest way to check if your online business has any competition is to make a simple Google search.

For example, if your online business idea involves becoming a business coach. Just type into the search bar, sentences people seeking business advice would use.

For example, the search term “business coach” will bring up the most established websites in that niche.

Online business - image 1

When you’ve found people doing what you want to do, your next step is to learn as much as you can about them.

2. Research the competition

Research is helpful in a lot of ways. It’s where you really get into how your competitors operate. It tells you whether your competitors are making money, how they’re making money and how you can improve your own idea based on what’s working for your competitors.

In the research stage, there are two main questions you need to resolve:

  1. Are your competitors making money?
  2. How can you offer more value?

Are they making money?

Just because you’ve found competitors doesn’t mean that your idea is solid just yet. First, you need to determine that they’re making money from the business.

Here’s how to find out:

Check their income report

Some businesses are very open about how much they make and where that money comes from. They release monthly income reports that not only detail the specific amount they make but also where the money comes from. If your competitors offer an income report all you have to do is analyze it.

Matthew Woodward publishes monthly income reports on his blog.

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And Buffer takes it to a whole other level.

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But what if your competitors don’t publish income statements like the vast majority of businesses.

How do you gauge their success then?

While a little trickier, there are some ways to estimate their profitability.

Check product reviews

If your competitors offer a product or service, odds are customers have left reviews. And since only a very small percentage of buyers about 2% to 10% leave reviews. The more reviews a product has the more successful the product is and by extension the more profitable the business.

Problogger’s ebook has over 187 customer reviews.

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Gauge their website traffic

Since traffic is correlated with internet profitability, especially if that website relies on advertising or affiliate revenue, estimating how much traffic a website is getting is a great way to know if they’re making money.

A lot of websites offer web traffic estimates but Similar Web is by far the best source.

Here’s a SimilarWeb traffic estimate for Healthline.

Online business - image 5

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The popularity and revenue streams of your niche will determine how much traffic is needed for a website to hit profitability.

Once you’re satisfied that your competitors are indeed making money. It’s time to plan how you’ll tap into that market.

3. How can you improve?

Your competitors will give you a lot to work with. Once you know that they’re profitable and even know how they make their money. The next stage involves creating value for their market.

You can learn how to do this by:

  • Signing up for their newsletter.
  • Using the products and services they offer.
  • Reading their comment section and customer reviews.

Your job here is to create something of similar or more value to what your competitors are offering, or maybe even branch into a different angle, for example, a business coach for women rather than just a business coach.

This way you provide more value with a targeted message to your customer base.

You have to learn everything you can about your competitors. Who their customers are, what pain points they have, and what they like and hate about a service or product.

Then brainstorm ways you can serve the customers better.

You can see how competition, contrary to being bad for a new business is really good news. Because it allows you to know what’s working already, and improve on that.

Learn, improve, launch and grab market share. Easy right?

But what if you don’t have any competition? What if there’s no business doing what you want to do?

In the vast majority of cases, this means there’s simply no profit in your market. If there was money to be made, someone would be making it.

There are exceptions, however. In very rare cases you might have stumbled onto an idea that’s truly unique and possibly profitable. Though ideas like this are riskier they do have a chance of success.

You’ll have to be extra careful with new ideas, and before you invest fully, you’ll need to test them in the real world.

In the end, you’ll either have a unique business you can make money from, or you dodged a bullet by testing before you poured your savings into it.

Which brings us to the other method of validating an idea.

The Hard Way

One of the most destructive beliefs about online businesses, blogs, e-commerce etc. Is that you can target any group because the internet is global. This simply isn’t true.

Expert blogger Jon Morrow defines a good market (in terms of blogging) as having the following characteristics:

  • Self-identifies: They know what they are and identify themselves as that. E.g. Rock climbers.
  • Can be grouped together: They share enough of the same problems and desires that they can be grouped together.
  • Includes a wide continuum of beginners: Beginners are the most active learners. It’s hard to get experts to agree with an opinion or even get enough of them together to turn a profit.
  • Shares the same perspective: The market you target must also share the same perspective. For example, you shouldn’t create a relationship advice blog for both men and woman. Their perspectives are just too different for you to target both.
  • Wants to learn: Since blogs serve mainly to educate, your market must also have the desire to learn.
  • Has an ongoing interest: According to Jon Morrow, your market must also have an ongoing interest, rather than a brief one. For example, most photographers want to become better, whereas soon to be brides are only interested in the topic once.
  • Consists of millions of people: Finally, your market must be large enough for it to be worth the resources you’ll spend.

Now, even though Jon Morrow’s advice is focused on blogs, it’s still very useful for any internet based business. You can’t simply target any group you want online, and even if you could, not every group is profitable.

A blog for rock climbers might work. But one for vegetarians that are rock climbers? Forget it.

Using Jon Morrow’s characteristics of a good market can help you dispose of some of the bad ideas in your head. But even if your market ticks all the boxes on his list, you’ll still need to test if your idea has any hope of gaining traction.

You know the characteristics of a good market. But how do you know if your idea has market potential?

To do this, you’ll need to look for trends, talk with ideal customers and then use what you’ve learned to test the idea with a minimum viable product to see how it plays out in the real world.

1. Look for trends

Google has a nifty tool for determining rising popularity, it’s called Google Trends. It displays the frequency and volume of a particular search term. Making it a perfect tool for determining the viability of an idea.

For example, if your idea involves selling security drones. You can use Google trends to check its popularity.

Online business - image 6

Public interest in security drones is clearly unsteady. Google Trends can also tell you which location has the most interest in a topic.

2. Talk to your ideal customers

Think about who you’re creating your product or service for.

How old are they? Where do they spend their time? What are their problems and desires?

Then find and talk to those people.

Take part in conversations with your ideal customers. Search for topics or groups related to your idea on social media. You can join groups where your ideal customers are on Facebook or forums like Reddit.

Once you’ve found them take part in conversations. Ask questions, conduct polls, message users privately and try to know more about them and their needs. If you can meet with them offline that’s a plus.

What you’re trying to establish at this stage is that there truly is a demand for your business. That real people with real problems and desires need what you have to offer.

Listen to them. Do they like your idea? That’s a good sign. Do they seem reluctant? That’s also something to note.

Learn as much as you can from them and improve your offer until you consistently get positive responses from people.

Note that talking to your ideal customers can also be useful in the Easy Way since you can use customer research to get an advantage over more established businesses.

But even with people’s approval you still aren’t there yet. If history has taught us anything, it’s that what people say they’ll do and what people actually do are not always in sync.

Maybe the people you talked to didn’t want to disappoint you. Maybe you asked the wrong questions. The fact is, the only way to test if an idea is profitable, is not to talk about it but to actually get it out there in front of real customers.

That brings us to our final stage of testing, your minimum viable product (MVP).

3. Create an MVP

An MVP, also known as a minimum viable product, was made popular by Eric Ries. It’s the least amount of features you need in a product for it to deliver enough value so you can learn.

The MVP exists to provide answers to assumptions, such as if people like your product, what features they like or don’t like etc.

When it comes to online businesses MVPs are easy to set up.

MVPs for blogs

If your idea revolves around a blog to show your expertise and build an audience, you can create a signup form and link it to your email list for free with MailChimp.

Simply click on the create campaign button.

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Then choose to create a landing page.

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And finally, choose your list and click Begin.

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With your list and signup page ready you can start providing quality information that your audience cares about on websites like Medium, Quora or wherever your audience base is present. Then at the end of each post or answer, provide your readers with a link to your sign up page to get a content upgrade.

Medium’s most read author Benjamin Hardy does this on all his medium articles.

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By creating value consistently and building relationships on these networks, you can gauge whether people are interested in what you have to offer.

If they’re not interested you’ve saved yourself a lot of money and time, but if they are, when you do launch you’ll have a large audience base, to begin with.

MVPs for products

If you want to test if you can sell a product before sourcing or producing it. You can create a free landing page with MailChimp.

Simply follow all the steps outlined above, only switch to product landing page rather than a signup page.

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Add pictures of your product, with powerful copy and descriptions, then add a buy button.

MailChimp shows how awesome your landing pages can be.

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Make sure to state the price up front so you can know for sure that people that click buy really want to purchase and don’t simply want to check the price. Then run Ads on Google.

When visitors click on the buy button, it tells them that the product is not available at the moment and that they should input their email address and you’ll send them a notification when it’s in stock.

Then monitor your conversion rate. That is how many people that saw your landing page clicked the buy button. You can do this with the MailChimp report option.

To view your conversion rate, click on reports in the nav bar.

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And you’ll be presented with your landing page and even email list data.

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If enough people click your buy button (which is hypothetically a purchase), and it’s enough to cover the cost of running Ads with a significant profit margin left for you.

Your idea is solid.

If on the other hand, your conversion rate can’t cover the cost of Ad’s or leaves little to no profit for you. It’s time to test something else.

When you run these tests, any business you do go into will have a much higher chance of success

Conclusion

So in essence, to test if your online business idea is profitable you can either go with the:

  1. Easy way: which involves researching and improving the competitions offer.
  2. Hard way: Looking for trends, talking to customers and testing your ideas with an MVP.

With all the tools and information available today, starting a business has never been easier, there’s nothing holding you back, but businesses run on planning and work, not hope. Do your research.

Guest author: Lenny Johnson is a freelance writer and content strategist for hire at B2B Content Lab. He engineers high impact content that builds authority, increases customer loyalty and drive sales for B2B SaaS and marketing brands.

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4 Paths to Better Content Management and Strategy [New Research]

2018-content-management-strategy-research

I’ve been in the content marketing space long enough to be familiar with the saying, “If you create all this great content and yet no one sees it, what’s the point?”

This simple question helps those starting in content marketing stay focused on the big picture.

Today, though, that saying should go something like this:

If you create all this great content and yet you’re not putting it in front of the right person at the right time on the right platform on the right device in the right format in the right language, what’s the point?

(I could make the question longer, but I’ll just leave it there for now.)

Delivering content in such a personalized, context-dependent way requires a strategic content management approach and a sophisticated tech platform most likely fueled by artificial intelligence.

In other words, it requires systems and repeatable processes for creating and managing content in a way that can scale.

Yet 72% of respondents to our 2018 Content Management & Strategy Survey say their organization is challenged with managing their content strategically.


72% of #content pros say they’re challenged with managing #content strategically via @CMIContent. #research
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And only 12% say they’re extremely/very successful at managing content. The fact that 85% say they’re moderately or minimally successful shows how much work needs to be done.

The content management struggle is real

It’s not hard to see why marketers grapple with content management. The explosion of AI and other technologies is astounding. As Robert Rose said at this year’s Intelligent Content Conference, “Technology is outpacing our ability to comprehend what we can do with it.”


Technology is outpacing our ability to comprehend what we can do with it, says @robert_rose. #intelcontent
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If you’re struggling to manage content in a responsive, automated, scalable way, you’re hardly alone. And the findings from this year’s study, sponsored by Contentful and Publicis.Sapient, provide some clues about where to focus your efforts.

1. Build teams that understand content strategy

The surveyed marketers say their organization’s top strategic content management challenges in 2018 include:

  • Enough staff skilled in content strategy (61%)
  • Content production workflow (47%)
  • Lack of budget (44%)

content-management-challenges-2018


Top challenge for #content management pros: Finding staff skilled in #contentstrategy. @CMIContent #research
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Not surprisingly, how to build a scalable content strategy is one of the top educational needs:

educational-needs-managing-content-strategically-2018

If you’re working to build the right team, try the ideas in these articles:

2. Find your way with automation

While there are terrific examples of companies ahead of the curve, many are in the novice and intermediate stages of proficiency at using automation to strategically manage content. Only 20% describe their company as expert or advanced.

proficiency-managing-content-strategically-2018

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If you’re looking for ways to become more adept at content management, explore these articles:

3. Identify the right technology – and use it to full advantage

Fifty-one percent of respondents say their companies have not acquired the right technology to manage content across the organization. Another 35% have the technology but aren’t using it to its potential. Only 14% are confident about the technology in place and how it’s being used.

right-technology-manage-content


51% of content pros say they lack the tech to manage #content across the enterprise via @CMIContent. #research
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If you’re seeking guidance on selecting and implementing technology, these resources may help:

4. Treat content as a business asset

As we found in the 2017 survey, most organizations (93%) view content as a business asset – an asset or process where there is direct investment and increasing value over time.

The caveat is the degree to which they view it as such. While 42% say “to a strong degree,” another 51% say “somewhat.”

Given this finding, it makes sense that only 43% of respondents have a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset.

content-viewed-business-asset

What does it mean to manage content as a business asset? Michele Linn likens it to the holistic process organizations create to manage their products. “Product managers address multiple stages including planning, creation, launch, updates, and retirement,” she writes. “Content professionals need to do this as well.”

Prepare for a rapidly changing future

Would companies become more successful with managing content if they:

  • Hired more staff skilled in content strategy?
  • Automated more content management processes?
  • Developed better internal processes for teams to evaluate, implement/integrate, and maximize use of the (right) technologies?
  • Documented a strategy for managing content as an asset?

These are certainly good building blocks; however, more work needs to be done. Marketers must build more agile processes and teams because the way audiences discover and consume content is changing dramatically.

Forget about engaging with content – we are moving rapidly into a world where it will be nearly impossible for people to discover your content unless your team is deliberate in how it makes that happen. Lay the groundwork now by investing in the right talent, processes, and technologies to ensure that your content will perform in the future.

Want to learn more about how your peers manage their content? Read the report, 2018 Content Management & Strategy Survey.

Special thanks to Kim Moutsos, CMI’s VP of editorial, for her assistance with this article.

Want to go more in depth into content strategy and management? Get video-on-demand access to the 2018 Intelligent Content Conference. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 4 Paths to Better Content Management and Strategy [New Research] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

15 Examples of How NOT to Use LinkedIn for Social Selling

15 Examples of How NOT to Use LinkedIn for Social Selling

In just a short period of time, social media has reinvented the way companies sell products and reach potential customers.

According to InsideView, 41 percent of all B2B companies report generating leads on Facebook, yet a total of 61 percent of business marketers in the United States utilize LinkedIn’s social media platform to generate new leads and sell products (The Drum, 2016).

With the continued expansion of social selling, taking advantage of these Internet services requires more attention now than ever before.

LinkedIn stands apart from most other social media services by focusing more on cultivating a professional business environment than that of other platforms. While Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others were initially designed for individual social interactions, designers and programmers created LinkedIn as a business platform from the ground up.

Due to the stark differences between LinkedIn and other social media outlets, social selling varies significantly.

The importance of LinkedIn

Prior to looking at ways not to use LinkedIn for social selling, a business first needs to understand the importance of utilizing LinkedIn in the first place.

According to InsideView, only 47 percent of B2B companies use LinkedIn at all. This is compared to 90 percent of businesses using Facebook and 53 percent of businesses use Twitter (The Drum, 2016).

Despite the lower utilization numbers, LinkedIn generates more leads than all other social media platforms. LinkedIn does not provide the same social interactive elements as Facebook and Twitter, as its lack of instant messaging and easy image sharing does leave B2C companies at a loss in these regards. However, due to the professional nature of the platform, it provides a very different method of interacting with customers while boosting leads.

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A B2B company not taking advantage of LinkedIn leaves potential sales on the table. But you need to understand the differences between LinkedIn and other platforms to uncover what a business needs to do to excel on LinkedIn and how to avoid the potential pitfalls of social selling.

Here are 15 things you should avoid doing on LinkedIn if you want to maximize its social selling potential.

1. Being impersonal

LinkedIn hinges on networking. The major draw for millions of users is the ability to connect with other business professionals they might not have otherwise had the ability to. However, this leads to a major caveat in social selling. Far too many sales members pitch products and services as if they were applying for a job instead of conversing with a potential customer.

Customers want to be treated just like that: a customer. So when a member of the sales team contacts them, informing the business or potential lead of their high sales records and conversion rates, it doesn’t connect with the consumer. Instead, it comes across as a sales staff member attempting to reach a particular quota. Anyone making a sales pitch needs to understand they are connecting with people, not simply selling a product.

2. Ignoring a lead’s LinkedIn page

When making a sales pitch, you need to follow the other company (or individual’s) page. This demonstrates a lack of foresight on the part of the sales professional or company itself. Before making any kind of sales pitch or even messaging the potential lead, it is necessary to follow the prospective individual or organization’s LinkedIn page.

3. Posting negative comments about your competitors

Negativity has a major impact on all parties involved. A single negative comment can hinder future sales.

But if you are posting negative comments about your competitors it comes across as disingenuous. People will lose respect for you, making the negative comment reflect poorly on your organization rather than the company you commented on.

4. Alienating an audience with your content

Social media revolves around connecting with others. The vast majority of social media sites push sharing personal content, such as family photographs, updates on weekend plans and sharing ideas on global events. This kind of content may work well on websites like Facebook and Instagram but not on LinkedIn. As a professional social media site, sharing family photographs doesn’t have a place and can remove the professional presence of a company.

Beyond posting overly personalized content, sharing blog posts and other information that might alienate one portion of a company’s customers should also be avoided. Political, religious and controversial, hotbed topics have no place on a business page. There are a handful of exceptions to this rule, such as a clearly identifiable Christian organization sharing religious posts, but for the most part, this kind of content harms a business more than it helps.

5. Being too “salesy”

While LinkedIn does require business professionalism, “social” still remains a key component to networking and connecting with potential buyers.

According to the 2016 B2B Content Marketing Trends in North America, LinkedIn stands as the best social selling platform, with 66 percent of users ranking it as the best selling platform over Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare and others. But despite these numbers, potential clients don’t want an overt bombardment of sales copy appearing on their walls and shared to their page.

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The entire purpose of using any platform sits on the shoulders of remaining social and networking. Readers and potential business partners are less likely to share a sales pitch than quality, educational material.

According to LinkedIn Analytics, the most shared content are lists, followed closely by “why posts,” “what posts” and “how to” articles. This demonstrates most readers are on a quest for knowledge, seeking out helpful information and answers to questions they may not have even realized they had until spotting the article headline. Attempting to go with an overt sales pitch doesn’t bode well for sharing, which in turn doesn’t help a company expand its outreach. Shared content attracts more eyes and brings in more lead opportunities without making readers feel as if they are receiving a cold call.

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6. Ignoring group discussions

Staying connected and active on social media takes a considerable amount of work. Outside of a handful of major corporate enterprises, a business needs to remain connected with other businesses and consumers through every means necessary. A company does itself a great disservice by not partaking in online group discussions. A business needs to view online group discussions not as a waste of time, but as an open networking opportunity. It essentially is an Internet conference for people from around the world.

Social Media Marketer Gary Hyman recently shared information based on online group discussions conducted over a week period. During a single week, an online group experienced nearly 1,700 discussions and 654 comments. This puts a single commenter with demonstrated experience and expertise on a subject in direct connection with hundreds of potential customers and business partners. These are accounts the business likely has no current connections with. A single, helpful comment or discussion can assist these businesses and convert the once unknown accounts into perspective leads and customers.

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Posting and sharing insightful information on LinkedIn may spur current followers to share the content, so others may in turn read and gain access to a company’s knowledge. However, a group instantly puts dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of prospective leads into direct connection with them. Not partaking in LinkedIn group discussions is a missed opportunity businesses need to avoid.

7. Slipping into “Facebook” mode

LinkedIn is not Snapchat or Facebook. It is a networking tool, designed for connecting companies and business professionals together. Far too many businesses and individuals alike confuse social and personal. They see the need to be social, so they share personal information. Small amounts of personalization can reflect well on a company page, especially if there is a direct connection with the business itself (such as an employee picnic with families and writing about the importance of making personal time in a professional world). However, over the top personalization may completely remove any sense of professionalism.

8. Leaving your connections in the dark

Establishing a connection on LinkedIn serves as the ground floor of growing a relationship. However, without proper cultivation, this relationship lacks the capability of developing into anything other than a number on a profile page. One of the biggest mistakes anyone can make on LinkedIn is failing to stay connected with both current and new connections.

According to Forbes (2017), growing a network connection revolves around a four-step process. The first is to reach out. Simple, yet an essential beginning to growing and cultivating LinkedIn connections. The next step is accepting all connection requests. If a business spurs a connection request it may sour any future endeavors. The third step is to connect with those who are suggested via LinkedIn and the fourth step is to use the Groups Preview option offered by LinkedIn.

These four steps help establish and grow a network, but it still requires continual nurturing. Abandoned contacts do not turn into leads, sales or partners, so staying connected is a must. To do this, a business needs to interact on LinkedIn. By offering status updates, liking and commenting on the posts of others and sharing beneficial content from reputed sources (such as Fast Company or Forbes) it shows an active account, which in turn helps boost interactions between profiles.

The next step in cultivating connections revolves around acknowledging these connections. LinkedIn provides beneficial tools including birthdays and work anniversaries. By commenting and liking these updates it continually puts the company’s profile in front or those receiving the comments, which helps convert these connections into leads and sales. There are 22 thousand interactions every minute on the platform between 460 million professionals. It is important to contribute to these interactions (DataSift, 2017).

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 9. Not knowing about SSI

The Social Selling Index of a company helps to increase exposure and ensures more potential leads and customers come across the company’s information. According to LinkedIn, the Social Selling Index (also known as SSI), provides a measurement of an account’s social selling skills.

LinkedIn measures the SSI using four key points of criteria (exact analytical data for how the platform measures and rates an SSI is not known, but LinkedIn does provide information on how to boost a company’s index).

The first is to establish a professional brand. This digs deeper into completing an entire profile designed with the customer specifically in mind.

The second step is to connect with the right people. It is necessary to connect with the right people. It still is necessary to understand a company’s key demographic as this helps cut down on selling time. Plus, it improves the analytical data provided by LinkedIn’s research tools.

The third step is to take advantage of insights offered by LinkedIn. By engaging with the provided information it helps improve a company’s SSI.

The last step is to build relationships. As mentioned earlier, it is vital in social selling to maintain current connections. This will help strengthen a company’s current network and establishes the business as a major force in the given industry’s market.

By utilizing these elements of an SSI, a company will boost their social selling potential. Not knowing about SSI or how it impacts a business, handicaps the company’s capability of connecting and developing new leads.

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10. Not knowing your own SSI

Beyond not knowing of the Social Selling Index, a company needs to know what their index is. This way, it knows how to go about correcting anything dragging the number down.

Navigating to the Linkedin Social Selling Index under its Sales tab a user will see an assortment of information. The top is the current SSI. It is broken down into the four different categories mentioned in the previous step. Each step is rated out of 25, with a total out of 100.

Underneath, LinkedIn provides a graph detailing the weekly SSI. This way, a company can map its performance and find days that need improving. The page also shows the average SSI for people within the industry and those within the account’s network. By having information to weigh against the company’s own SSI, it becomes easier to know what to target and how to boost the SSI number. In order to improve the social selling potential of LinkedIn, a company must take advantage of the SSI.

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11. Only sharing sales material

Sales professionals need to regulate themselves into providing sales copy only to those who request it. By openly soliciting sales copy, it not only turns connections off but it may lead to a loss of connections, should these other account holders find the constant blasting of sales information undesirable. Individuals use their LinkedIn accounts for professional purposes. They do not want advertisements posted to their walls all the time.

According to Ahmed Khater, head of Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager at Al Jazirah Vehicles Agencies (2015), 71 percent of connections want to see updates and job opportunities from companies they follow. Another 61 percent said they are more likely to share helpful information posted by the company they follow. This means instead of posting sales copy, beneficial blogs are likely to be shared by followers, which increases the chance of developing new connections and leads. Sales copy does nothing but potentially alienate current followers.

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12. Forgetting about your customers’ connections

According to Mike Templeman, contributor to Forbes Magazine, there are seven meaningful ways to make connections with social media. One of the most important ways is to look at the connections between current customers. This opens up a world of possibility, as many of these connections may also be interested in what the company offers.

By looking at the connections and the kind of content these second-tier connections share, a business can then formulate new blog posts and material based on what first, second and third tier connections share. Doing this boosts the potential for establishing new leads and expanding a company’s LinkedIn footprint.

13. Only logging in once in a while

According to the Pew Research Center (2013), 52 percent of LinkedIn users log onto their account less than once a week. In fact, just 13 percent of users log onto their accounts daily. The problem with not logging in is it pushes content a company eventually publishes to the back burner. Individuals who regularly utilize LinkedIn, by not only publishing content but by simply logging on frequently, see an increase in traffic. LinkedIn, like most other social media platforms, promote those who use the platform. While some companies may only log into their accounts once every two weeks or so, competing businesses can log in daily and ensure its material rises to the top due to frequency.

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14. Sending generic connection requests

In the world of social media, socializing with other members is a major point of interest. However, far too many users fail to personalize even the most basic content. When sending a connection request, most users send the generic request formulated by LinkedIn. However, it is possible to create unique connection requests, personalized specifically for the recipient. LinkedIn has not performed an actual study on the chances of recipients rejecting connection requests due to the standard message, but according to Work It Daily, there are users who flat out refuse to accept bland connection requests.

 15. Posting content at the wrong time

In order to boost social selling and interaction among potential customers, it is necessary to know when to post content on LinkedIn. Poor timing can lead to great content going unnoticed. The best times to post on LinkedIn, according to SEOPressor, is either around noon or between 5 and 6 pm. The worst time to post is between 10 pm and 6 am.

The best days of the week to post to LinkedIn are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, while the worst day of the week to post is Friday.

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Wrapping up

LinkedIn provides a unique social selling experience for all businesses. It varies starkly from nearly all other social media platforms out there with its exclusive to business networking design.

However, this shift in social utilization also leads to some of the biggest pitfalls and problems people experience while using the service. That is exactly why it is necessary to avoid these 15 examples of how not to use LinkedIn for social selling.

Avoiding these common yet crucial mistakes will help revolutionize a company’s Internet selling practices by boosting lead generation, increasing sales and taking its social selling to new levels.

Guest author: Rizvan is a content writer at OnlyOneMike, a blog helping people create engaging content using unique copywriting strategies.

The post 15 Examples of How NOT to Use LinkedIn for Social Selling appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.


Read Full Article: http://bathseoexpert.tumblr.com/post/174371899391

Improve Your Productivity With 8 Content Marketing Tools

improve-productivity-content-marketing-toolsEditor’s note: You may have missed this article when CMI published it a couple years ago. We’re sharing it now – and we’ve added a new tool – because improving your productivity is a never-ending battle and these tools can help.

Are you struggling with too much content marketing work?

Looking for ways to improve your productivity and free up some time?

If you don’t have a good strategy, even the best of tools won’t be of much help. But with the right strategy in place, tools will certainly help improve your productivity.

The following is list of tools that will help you save time and become more effective with your content marketing:

1. SEMrush: Identify how your competitors rank on Google (free and paid versions)

SEMrush is a great tool to help you assess competitors’ traffic on Google and the keywords for which they are ranking.

Enter your competitor’s web address in the SEMrush SEO toolkit and see a list of the keywords for which it ranks on Google. With a free registered account, SEMrush reveals the top 10 organic keywords driving traffic to your competitor’s site.

sem-rush-screenshot

This quick way of doing keyword research can identify some target keywords. With SEMrush you can also view your competitors’ backlinks and top referring domains, check the estimated organic traffic they are getting, and perform a complete competitive analysis.


Identify your competitors’ best keywords, backlinks & referring domains w/ @semrush. @IanCleary
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2. BuzzSumo: Find out what type of content gets shared the most (free trial, paid version)

You also want to create content that gets shared across social media channels. The best way to do this is to find out what type of content normally earns a lot of shares and write content around similar topics.

With BuzzSumo, enter a website address – yours or your competitors’ – to find the most-shared content across social media channels. You also can search for keywords to find the content related to those keywords that are shared the most.

It also is helpful to use BuzzSumo to examine content shares on specific channels to help you produce content that is likely to be popular on your targeted channels.


Use @buzzsumo to find out what type of #content earns shares so you can write on similar topics. @iancleary
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3. Easil: Prepare your promotional imagery (free and paid versions)

Visuals are an important element of content promotion but going to graphic designers for every piece of imagery gets expensive and time-consuming. Easil is a design tool that allows non-designers to create different types of high-quality images in minutes.

It features a straightforward, drag-and-drop interface, free-to-use stock images, customizable templates, color palette generator, and more. Basically, all the tools you need to start promoting your content with eye-catching, shareable visuals.

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When you create great evergreen content, it’s important to share it regularly. However, you don’t want to continue to promote it with the same image. Create a batch of similar images that can be used in various promotional activities.


Don’t promote your evergreen #content with the same image on all channels, says @IanCleary.
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4. Mintent: Build your editorial calendar (free version)

An editorial calendar is essential for content marketing. Planning your content keeps you organized and more productive and, as a consequence, you deliver better content.

Mintent is content marketing software to help you keep track of campaigns and content assets and it offers a robust editorial calendar. It provides a single view of all your content, color-coded by type. You can easily add and schedule content assets, create approval workflows, assign tasks, and manage content deadlines.

mintent-content-marketing-software

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The available filters allow you to view items in the calendar by theme, campaign, author, and more, so it’s easy to find the content you’re looking for.

Your editorial calendar also enables you to see whether you have content gaps or if you’re creating too much of one content type and should diversify your assets.


Your #editorial calendar enables you to see content gaps or surpluses, says @IanCleary.
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5. AgoraPulse: Maximize your content’s reach on social (free trial, paid version)

You spend a lot of time creating valuable content so you need to make sure your fans and followers on social media see it. And unless you reshare your content regularly, the majority of your audience won’t know it exists.

A social media management tool like AgoraPulse can help you plan, schedule, and distribute your content on social channels that matter to your business the most, such as Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and Instagram. What I love about this tool is that it connects all your social accounts into one platform, making it easy to manage and measure all your efforts.


Use a tool like @agorapulse so you can manage & measure all social accounts in one platform. @IanCleary
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6. Brand24: Leverage social listening to inform content creation (free trial, paid version)

Sourcing new content ideas to feed your editorial calendar can be time-consuming and stressful. There are many ways to find ideas for your content, but I’d like to mention one that is still underused.

Although social media listening tools are primarily used for brand monitoring purposes, they can add a lot of value to your content creation efforts.

For example, you can use a social media monitoring tool like Brand24 to monitor keywords related to your key topics or your industry and track the conversations and content around those keywords. More importantly, you’ll get a better understanding of the context of those conversations.

This is really important for creating content that people will care about – you’ll have the insights you need to write content that will best meet their needs. Best of all, once you set up the monitoring Brand24 will do all the work for you, delivering relevant mentions straight to your inbox.


#Socialmedia listening tools let you track conversations – and context – around keywords, says @IanCleary.
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brand24-dashboard-example

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7. OutreachPlus: Promote your content through email (free trial, paid version)

One of the most effective ways to promote your content is emailing relevant people who could help extend its reach, be it journalists, influencers, business partners, etc.

OutreachPlus is an email outreach tool that I launched; it speeds up the process of sending personalized emails and follow-ups.

Content promotion is becoming increasingly important as it gets more challenging to get reach from social media. If you can add email outreach as another method of content promotion onto your list you’ll be that bit further ahead of your competition.

outreachplus-dashboard-example

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8. Zapier – Get automated (free and paid versions)

Zapier is an automation tool that connects hundreds of web apps together to help you create fully automated workflows in a matter of minutes. You create “zaps” – triggering tasks that initiate different applications.

There are some useful automated tasks to help with your content marketing. For example, if you are on WordPress, you can use one of the available pre-made zaps to post your new WP posts to your Facebook page.

zapier-automation-example

Here are a few more examples of automatic zaps you could create:

  • Publish your WordPress blog posts to your Scoop.it topic.
  • Get Slack notifications for new comments on your WordPress blog posts.
  • Share Instagram photos to your Facebook page.
  • Send LinkedIn status updates to Twitter.

If you have a good content marketing plan, the tools support this plan, improve your impact, and maximize your success. Review the tools you use to find out if they are delivering the results you require. Maybe you’ll consider adding one or two of the tools detailed here. What other tools do you recommend?

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Expand your content marketing tool box with helpful apps, websites, tech support, and in-person lessons. Register to attend Content Marketing World September 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Improve Your Productivity With 8 Content Marketing Tools appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.