Yesterday’s advocacy is thought leadership in the era of social media.
Via The Advertising Trend That Will Shake Up 100 Years of Journalism - Forbes
Content tips for using marketing automation software
+ It’s better to deliver two exceptional pieces of content per month through your marketing automation, than to post content that doesn’t hold any real value twice a week.
+ Make your first pieces of content to new prospects short, casual, and wholly educational (no selling allowed yet). Once the channel of communication gradually opens, you can begin to nurture with more hearty pieces of education, then get into the promotional content.
+ Create content appropriate for each stage of the sales funnel
How content marketing is replacing advertising
The bottom line is that there is only one true branding mechanism online and that’s content marketing. What makes me so certain? Well, for starters, content marketing enables brands to share their story in long form and in their own words. An incredible sea of change in the way information is shared and distributed online means that for the first time ever, any brand can create its own content affordably and at scale. The story can come in the form of blogs, articles, reviews, ebooks or videos. It can be low-cost or it can be professionally produced. But let’s be clear: we’re not talking about ads! It’s real, interesting content that delivers informational or entertainment value.
Content marketing is a strategy with two obvious pillars: content and marketing. ‘Content’ means the creation of original content or the curation of content for the benefit of your audience. ‘Marketing’ means getting people to discover and engage with your content.
The good news is that there’s already plenty of inspiration to draw from. Just check out some of P&G’s content sites, such as BeingGirl.com, Man Of The House and Home Made Simple. Browse the great recipes at General Mills’Tablespoon.com or Kraft’s KraftRecipes.com. Get some quality advice from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project or the Allstate blog.
Just like search was a decade ago and social was five years ago, content marketing is the next digital media revolution.
Staying Relevant – Social Media Conversations
- add value and create opportunities
- educate and inform
- motivate, inspire, acknowledge and validate
- show yourself as a person
- provide opportunities to “own” your brand
3 ways to optimize social media for demand generation
How demand generation and social media teams can work together
- Use social media to drive traffic to marketing content and expose it to people not yet in your database.
- Reduce friction for hand raisers. Instead of a long registration form capture info with web analytics and use a social sign-on.
- Connect prospective buyers with partners, sales and customer communities so B2B buyers know what the relationship will be like after they purchase.
Social media content marketing is the second-most popular way of promoting content for one’s brand and is used by 74 percent of B2B marketers. Posting articles is first. Full infographic at All Twitter
