Tag Archives: #OMSummit

Content isn’t King … it’s Gold.

Posted on February 19, 2013 by | 1 Comment

content gold

In a keynote at the Online Marketing Summit last week, speaker Russell Sparkman, president and CEO of FusionSpark Media, proposed that the popular analogy “Content is King,” actually falls short in describing the value good content delivers to a brand.  Instead, he believes content is more like gold, in a whole variety of ways:

  • Like gold, content is a great long-term investment.
  • Like gold, content isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality
  • Like gold, content conducts electricity by provoking sharing, engagement and curiosity
  • Like gold, content and gold are both malleable and can be shaped and stretched into other forms of media
  • Like gold, content can eventually be made into “bling,” and can become very lucrative when we add value.

Russell backed up his premise with several examples of the value of content to an organization’s strategy.  Here’s a video of an earlier  but related presentation  he gave that’s well worth watching:

Spinning Gold into Nonprofit Exposure:

The first example was a nonprofit called Florida Friendly Landscaping which designed a web site (www.floridayards.org) to help residents of Florida learn ecofriendly practices in gardening. The website hosted environment quizzes, a “drag and drop” interactive backyard, and a certification program offered to Florida residents that wanted to be recognized as “eco-friendly”. How well did this content work?  The electricity created by the certification program was astounding! So many applications were submitted that Florida Friendly Landscaping simply couldn’t fulfill the demand.  In terms of initial long-term investment in great content; the site still indexes at the top of desired search results, the foundation gets 6-10 inbound email per day, without any investment in social media or refreshing content since 2005!  Pure nonprofit Gold!

Content to Drive Profits:

Gary Vaynerchuk is a Russian immigrant currently residing in New Jersey that founded The Wine Library TV channel on youtube.  By having a firm grip on his is audience Gary creating a wildly popular series of over 1000 wine tasting videos that have been viewed over 1.7MM times.  Why did these videos garner viewers?  Each video was quirky, fun and appealed wine enthusiasts in a humble or unpretentious manner.  One example worthy of mention is where Gary pairs some of his favorite vino with poplar cereal brands.  His video content is so popular, if you search for wine tastings he comes up right underneath Wine Spectator.

By generating high quality content, Gary has appeared on late-night television, shaped his Youtube video channel into a seven-figure book deal and turned his “mom and pop” liquor store turn into a multimillion dollar retailer.

These examples illuminate exactly why Content is Gold – not King.  For more perspective from Russell, we recommend his post titled “Content Marketing Secrets, Part VI: Content is King … NOT!”

Author Michael Seghieri is a Divisional Vice President with MultiVu, a PR Newswire company specializing multimedia content production and distribution.

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Social & Mobile: The Ad Kingdom is Changing

Posted on February 14, 2013 by | 1 Comment

In the first day of the general sessions for the online marketing summit in San Diego, “content” was a constant theme across many sessions.  The first two I attended were specifically relating to the “royalty” of content:  “Content is Gold” and “TV Advertising is King, but the Kingdom is About to Change”.

Both of these titles are not only true, but the messages couldn’t be clearer.  TV advertising has always been predominant (it still is), but online video and specifically targeted video, is catching up… and fast!  And in that ever-important 18-34 audience, TV advertising can easily become wasted dollars.  (See the excellent infographic by Koeppel Direct illustrating this trend at the bottom of this post.)

One only has to consider the larger idea of TV advertising to realize this change is occurring:  Everything has to be part of social media.   Without asking “How does it conform to social media” is to miss the entire point of today’s advertising mindset, and more importantly… the mindset of the audiences.

Ask anyone who has grown up with the internet “What does TV mean to you?” and they’ll point to their laptop or tablet or smartphone.  It’s ANY screen.  Video content has become the glue to engage audiences across any device.  TV does not own this space anymore (outside of the Super Bowl I suppose!).

Static imagery still remains relevant.  But the terminology may be changing more slowly.  We still think of a “Kodak moment”.  When that is replaced by “Instagram moment” in all of our minds, we’ll know the changing of the guard has occurred.

In addition, to today’s youth market that is growing up with online, TV Networks mean nothing.  Their devices house their content.  Hulu, Youtube, and their brethren are the new “TV networks”.

Maybe most importantly, people don’t want to be told what they want by an ad anymore.  They want to be told by a friend what’s important or interesting… and act on that!  Social media has become a major force in how people not only engage, but purchase.  Video needs to address this, particularly on TV, or it will continue to lose relevance to the growing hyper-connected audiences.

TV commercials must change to make it more specific to the online audience.  A simple 30 second commercial spot may not address the specific target audience, or engage with them enough through social, interactivity, or relevance.  It is reminiscent of the first TV commercials for the new television audience in the 1950’s.  One of the very first TV ads was for Bulova Watches:

Not understanding how this new medium worked, the TV ads simply became a video of a magazine ad:  Showing a ticking watch, with the announcer reading the magazine text.  Hardly the stuff that TV audiences expected from this amazing new technology in their living rooms.  But now, those commercials appearing directly on our devices are no more relevant than the Bulova Watch ad… unless the the creators take into account targeting, interactivity, and conforming to social media best practices.

The companies that do this well, will succeed in achieving their goal.  That is the new Kingdom, and it’s changing before our eyes!

Author Kevin Wilk is a divisional vice president with MultiVu.

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Let’s Get Personal (But Not Too Personal): A Relationship-First Approach to Mobile Marketing

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | 1 Comment

This year nearly 10 trillion SMS messages will be sent. 90% of those will be read within three minutes. The opportunity for marketers is huge, but sending generic, blast messages is a recipe for failure. Success requires delivering individualized messages that align with each and every consumer’s journey.

I attended a session on Mobile Marketing during OMS 2013 today and got just a peek at the nuances of mobile marketing strategy. Wacarra Yeomans  from Responsys led an informative session with great takeaways.

Amazingly, we are all intense multi-taskers.  86% of people admit to checking their phone while doing other things- at a meal with someone else, while driving, at a religious service, and even on the toilet.  Even with all this segmentation and lack of attention spans, the customer is demanding a different type of relationship, one where they are in the driver’s seat and determine the level of access and type of interactions.  Savvy customers in 2013 expect more from marketers.  Interactions need to move from campaign based to customer focused.  They expect you to “know me”, “engage me” and “lead me”.

According to a study by mobile technology consultant Tomi Ahonen and commissioned by Nokia, we are so dependent on our mobile phones that on average, we check them every six-and-a-half minutes, or about 150 times per day.   A statistic like this makes it sound like it should be easy to reach customers on the mobile devices, but it’s much more complicated than that.  Courting mobile customers and having them build a real relationship with your brand is a bit like trying to court the most fickle girl at the dance, the one who might dance with you, but is always looking around the room for the bigger, better deal, and who also might walk away and not dance with anyone if she doesn’t like the song.

44 % of opt- in email subscribers also welcome SMS marketing messages, but almost all users find text spam much more offensive and invasive than email spam.   Half of all users have actually ditched a brand entirely because of a poor mobile experience.

In order to avoid a poor mobile experience, it’s important to have a very clear intent to engage your target audience.  You must be relevant, but there are so many more personalized factors that you need to consider.  Some of the main categories of engagement are:

  • Interest- product availability and discounts or coupons
  • Desire- like texting your zip code to find a store near you
  • Action- notifications to keep you informed, like “your shoes have shipped”
  • Experience- allowing users to interact with customer service
  • Loyalty- polling and voting

It’s clear that a billboard by the side of the road or a spot on local radio is no longer the only way to reach your target audience, and that the personalization of the message is the key, especially when the  message is being delivered to a device in their pocket.  Mobile marketing is here to stay and will likely evolve to include video and other multimedia content in the very near future.  As long as brands are willing to pay attention to the voice of the consumer, we will have many messages to keep us checking our phones at inappropriate times for many years to come.

Author Heather Williams is a national account manager for MultiVu, PR Newswire’s multimedia division.

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Content Marketing Like a Pro

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Author Paula Henderson

Why is content marketing important? According to the company Media Whiz, It is the future of marketing and how you should be generating new business. I bet most marketers don’t think like a salesperson when writing for their respective audiences but if you use your content to win your customers, it will generate leads for your business.  As a salesperson, I often have to think to myself why I would want to buy a particular product or service. When posing that question, it’s easier to write with authority. Daryl Colwell, VP of Business Development for @MediaWhizLLC tells us to make our buyer the hero. “Produce content that informs your customers and improves their business, says Colwell.

Our VP of Social Media Sarah Skerik riffed on a quote from the movie Field of Dreams, saying “If you build it, they don’t always come.” In other words, don’t create content just to have content.

In Skerik’s workshop at the Online Marketing Summit Conference she spoke on making your customers your advocates and finding your industry rockstars by customizing your content to meet their needs. MediaWhiz also suggested using websites such as Answers.com and Yahoo Answers to find specific questions around a subject which will help you tailor your content accordingly.

More benefits for SEO writing:

  • Attracts Authority Signals (links, social shares) – improves SEO performance
  • Positions brand as authority on relevant topics
  • Increases conversion rates

-Educates users on topics that are difficult to understand.

While it is important to write with these SEO tips in mind, you’re not a computer so write for humans!

Top 5 tips MediaWhiz provided for Content Marketing:

1)    Know your audience: Write for a specific reader or customer. Know what they want and how/where they consume information

2)    Include images: Images will “pop” when content is shared

3)    Commit: Not a one-night stand. Establish an editorial calendar and publish often.  Give customers a reason to keep reading.

4)    Engage the right buyers with the right content. Write content for all levels of the sales funnel.

5)    Repurpose content. Turn blog posts into white papers; white papers into infographics, etc.

Follow the tweet stream at #OMSummit for ongoing commentary from the Online Marketing Summit this week.

Author Paula Henderson works for PR Newswire consulting our agency clients  in Los Angeles, CA.

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SEO Tips for Developing Effective Messages

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | Leave a comment

It should go without saying that if you’re publishing content online, you should be capitalizing on the opportunity to positively influence search engine rankings for your organization.   Each piece of content a brand publishes can (and probably should!) improve the search engine rank of the company’s web properties.

At the Online Marketing Summit this week, a number of speakers offered advice on SEO and content strategy, many of which are useful for PR.

A slide from the Andrew Delamarter's presentation

A slide from the Andrew Delamarter’s presentation

Create a keyword-driven editorial calendar.  

Andrew Delamarter, director of search at Huge, emphasized the importance of using keywords to direct content creation, suggesting that brands build keyword-driven editorial calendars.  In addition to aligning content production around target terms, this tactic also ensures that the content a brand publishes is broadly aligned with key themes.  It’s a good idea, and as he noted, it’s not technical. It’s storytelling.

Appreciate and attract authoritative signals.

Great content generates potent authority signals that search engines notice.  When people like and share content on social networks, the are driving high-quality traffic to the content.   Visitors that elect to click on your content upon the recommendation of a peer are generally spend more time on page and act upon the calls to action you’ve provided them.  These interactions with content indicate to search engines that the content is valuable.

“Offer incentives for readers to share content, ” advised Daryl Colwell of MediaWhiz. “Focus on the why not the what.  How will your content help your customers?”

Develop understanding of what content works in mobile, and mobile user behavior.

We act differently when we use mobile devices for search.  Our intentions are often different, the keywords we use are different, and the content we’re seeking is different.  Search gurus are predicting that mobile search will overtake desktop search within a year or two.  One of the most important things communicators can do is to build knowledge around your organization’s audience behaviors on mobile devices.   Communicators need to manage their communications at a platform and keyword level.

“Dark Traffic” – an important new metric

Driving social interaction is great, but it presents one difficulty – it’s tough to track.  URL shorteners, which are so frequently used to share social content – strip out referring data, and show up in your web analytics reports as “unknown” sources of traffic.  Delamarter suggested that communicators should pay attention to increases in the quantity of unknown traffic – it indicates more social traffic around your content, and that’s a good thing.

Search engines are continuing to tighten their algorithms in order to deliver truly relevant results to their users.   New signals they’re valuing include things like Klout scores (in the case of Bing) and citations (rather than simple links.)  From a strategy standpoint, the best search engine visibility benefits will be driven by the content your audience finds most useful – and that should be one communicators’ primary content goals.

Related reading:

SEO trends for 2013 & what they mean for PR

Search, Social & Content Marketing

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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Content Engagement Tips from an E-Mail Marketer

Posted on February 12, 2013 by | 1 Comment

I sat in on a session about email marketing at the Online Marketing Summit yesterday, and wow – those folks have one difficult job.  Much of the conversation was about formatting, in order to increase the likelihood that the images in the email body will render.  Fact is, many email programs and company firewalls disable images, meaning that email marketers also have to pay close attention to their text messages, and there in was some good advice that that PR pros can use, too.

The speaker, Karen Talavera of @synchmarketing,  addressed the change in what sort of information works in today’s campaigns, and suggested that it’s time to leave the old AIDA model of messaging for a new approach.

So you can see the differences clearly, here’s a brief outline of the AIDA model:

  • A – Awareness:  the message attracts the reader’s attention.
  • I – Interest: the reader’s interest is piqued.
  • D – Desire: the message convinces the reader they want what’s being promoted.
  • A – Action: the call to action that turns the reader into a customer.

Instead, she offered a new model that I thought was pretty interesting – “IEEO”   which focuses instead on educating and engaging the reader, or, as Karen put it, “Serving, not selling.”  Here’s an outline:

  • I – Invite – Messaging doesn’t hit the reader over the head with the offer
  • E – Engage  - Instead, the messaging engages the reader, serving up multimedia and related information
  • E – Educate/entertain – The overall tone is educational and/or entertaining – it’s not the hard sell
  • O – Offer – Instead of “buy now” the call to action is presented in an offer that is relevant to and fits with the overall tone of the message.

The IEEO approach is radically different than the traditional AIDA method.  The newer approach incorporates and is informed by customer needs, and relies upon education rather than desire to inspire the reader to take action.

However, we’re talking about an approach to email marketing.   Those communications are designed to immediately capture reader attention, and convert the reader from prospect to purchaser in the space of one message.

While most press releases aren’t intended to generate sales directly, there’s no question that they have to compete for attention, and within most press releases are various calls to action – just like marketing emails.    Awareness-building has been a core function of press releases since time immemorial.   However, as I considered the IEEO approach to email messaging, I started to wonder if we could generate more value from press releases – for both the issuer  and readers – by borrowing some tactics from email marketing.  Is generating awareness enough for us, or should we be crafting press releases and other PR content with the goal of engaging and educating our readers – and guiding them to a specific call to action – within the press releases we issue, and the other content we publish?

Follow the tweet stream at #OMSummit for ongoing commentary from the Online Marketing Summit this week.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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