In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll tell you how to win over Gen Z with influencer marketing, and why you should. Spotify is opening the doors of its podcast kingdom, a little, to 3rd party developers. And I’m going to tell you, but you aren’t going to believe, the percentage of website content that NEVER gets seen by consumers.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll tell you how to win over Gen Z with influencer marketing, and why you should. Spotify is opening the doors of its podcast kingdom, a little, to 3rd party developers. And I’m going to tell you, but you aren’t going to believe, the percentage of website content that NEVER gets seen by consumers.

Content Marketing Quickie March 24 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Does your brand have a sincere purpose? Do you know how to convey it without losing the sincerity? Cause that’s really important. Get the latest on how B2B is consuming and producing content. And yes, you need technology, but that won’t get you nearly as far with customers as dealing in emotions.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Does your brand have a sincere purpose? Do you know how to convey it without losing the sincerity? Cause that’s really important. Get the latest on how B2B is consuming and producing content. And yes, you need technology, but that won’t get you nearly as far with customers as dealing in emotions.

Content Marketing Quickie March 17 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Forrester shows us that in #B2B, there is definitely a literal monetary cost for getting content wrong. For all the talk it gets, we’ll show you CX just ain’t that great for most companies, and why. And, you’ve GOT to hear how much time small businesses are putting toward making a video. You won’t believe it.  

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Forrester shows us that in #B2B, there is definitely a literal monetary cost for getting content wrong. For all the talk it gets, we’ll show you CX just ain’t that great for most companies, and why. And, you’ve GOT to hear how much time small businesses are putting toward making a video. You won’t believe it.

Content Marketing Quickie Feb 10 2020 - The Cost of Getting B2B Content Marketing Wrong

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: TikTok is apparently the social video beast that can’t be stopped, so we’ll tell you trends in it to watch out for. What are the best WordPress plugins for content marketers? And audio content you really need to be thinking about, but that is not podcasting. 

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: TikTok is apparently the social video beast that can’t be stopped, so we’ll tell you trends in it to watch out for. What are the best WordPress plugins for content marketers? And audio content you really need to be thinking about, but that is not podcasting.

TikTok Marketing Trends and the Rest of the Content Marketing News for March 3 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Martech stacks can be confusing. We’ll clear it up by listing the main components of one. We’ll tell you how many pieces of content it takes to get a B2B buyer to buy, and what kind. And 5 big reasons you might be unimpressed your website traffic and conversion rates.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Martech stacks can be confusing. We’ll clear it up by listing the main components of one. We’ll tell you how many pieces of content it takes to get a B2B buyer to buy, and what kind. And 5 big reasons you might be unimpressed your website traffic and conversion rates.

Content that Gets B2B Buyers to Buy The Rest of the Weeks Content Marketing News 022520

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Tactical tips on how to get your podcast discovered. New B2B video marketing statistics including when and how business types tend to watch. And some of the biggest wastes of marketing dollars made by small and medium businesses.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Tactical tips on how to get your podcast discovered. New B2B video marketing statistics including when and how business types tend to watch. And some of the biggest wastes of marketing dollars made by small and medium businesses.

How to Get Your Podcast Discovered + The Other Content Marketing News of the Week 021820

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: A new social media network, but one unlike any that’s come before it. An update on the health of Twitter. And 5 tips to measure how well your LinkedIn Company Page is performing for you. 

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: A new social media network, but one unlike any that’s come before it. An update on the health of Twitter. And 5 tips to measure how well your LinkedIn Company Page is performing for you.

Content Marketing Quickie February 11 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: 4 things you’ve GOT to know about writing headlines that get clicks. How to organically boost the number of Instagram followers you have. And why sit around guessing? We’ll reveal what sponsored content costs on YouTube and TikTok.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: 4 things you’ve GOT to know about writing headlines that get clicks. How to organically boost the number of Instagram followers you have. And why sit around guessing? We’ll reveal what sponsored content costs on YouTube and TikTok.

Content Marketing Quickie February 4 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll reveal what people say are the most important factors for them to trust your brand. What happens when the cookies are gone and you can’t track people anymore? And the advertising &amp; marketing world is seemingly uniting behind an effort to determine what content will and won’t be permitted. Yikes.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll reveal what people say are the most important factors for them to trust your brand. What happens when the cookies are gone and you can’t track people anymore? And the advertising &amp; marketing world is seemingly uniting behind an effort to determine what content will and won’t be permitted. Yikes.

Content Marketing Quickie January 28 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’re going to blow your mind with how much brands are spending on influencer marketing, and for no visible reason. You’ll get some myths about SEO that are probably sucking up your time. And dystopia is right around the corner, Instagram is judging photoshopped artistic images as fake news and hiding them.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’re going to blow your mind with how much brands are spending on influencer marketing, and for no visible reason. You’ll get some myths about SEO that are probably sucking up your time. And dystopia is right around the corner, Instagram is judging photoshopped artistic images as fake news and hiding them.

Content Marketing Quickie January 21 2020

Sound smart in conversations about content marketing. Quick summary of the latest content marketing, branded content, and digital marketing news + a bit of snarky commentary. From Mike Stiles and Brand Content Studios.

Content Marketing Quickie

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of June 11, 2019.   -You’re probably getting ripped off. That’s right, if you buy digital ads for your company you are definitely getting ripped off, it’s just a matter of how badly. Cybersecurity company Cheq just released a study that shows advertisers will blow more than $23B globally to ad fraud this year alone. For every ad dollar spent, 10-15% of it winds up in the pockets of companies who are actually supposed to protect you from digital ad fraud. Now if you’re Polyanna and think it couldn’t possibly be that bad, you’ll embrace another study that was done using the exact same methodology by the Association of National Advertisers. They say yeah, you’re getting robbed, but it’s only costing advertisers $5.8B, and that’s down from 2017. You’re supposed to feel good about that. But the fact that two studies who approached it the same way came to two wildly different conclusions only underlines the truth…digital advertising is such an in-the-shadows, slight-of-hand shell game ecosystem that you can’t get to the truth. And when you’re stealing money from people, the last thing you want is for things to be clear and trackable. That’s just a little tip for all you amoral kids from Uncle Mike. Guy Tytunovich is Cheq’s CEO, and he used to be with Israeli intelligence by the way, he said, “We wouldn’t have run this research if it wasn’t for other research pieces we strongly disagreed with and, in some cases, felt were inadvertently misleading.” Cheq found up to 30% of digital ads are affected by fraud, so that’d be around 21T per year. It’s actually campaigns with cheaper CPMs that get hit the hardest. And did you know for every impression served, at least 20 different companies have their hands in the digital ad ecosystem pot, all taking a cut? If nothing is done about ad fraud, and don’t hold your breath, it’s going to reach $26B next year, then $32B by 2021. Roberto Cavazos, a University of Baltimore economics professor isn’t holding his breath, He says, “There’s little regulation or disincentive against fraud.” And the final nail in the coffin is, marketers don’t seem to care! They paid a boatload of the company’s budget to buy digital ads, they checked the box, and nobody seems interested in whether they got what they paid for. So I guess everybody wins?  https://adage.com/article/digital/report-ad-fraud-hit-23-billion-isnt-going-down/2174721   -Well I hope I didn’t leave you too disillusioned about digital ads in that last story but if you’re a publisher, hang onto your headgear because it gets worse. You know about tracking the users of publisher websites, right? Advertisers will pay the publisher to get personal info on the site’s users, then they’ll combine that with data they buy somewhere else to form these pretty intense profiles they use to follow people around the web and target them with relevant ads. The idea is that this makes the publishers a lot of money so they can continue offering their content free to readers, who of course are paying, they’re just paying with their privacy. It’s a nice idea but it’s not that true. New research found selling out their readers with this kind of tracking actually only gets publishers a whopping 4% more revenue than good old-fashioned ads based on context. That works out to $.00008 per ad. Wow, somebody’s getting a new coffee maker for the break room! This isn’t exactly breaking news, it’s long been doubted the user data selling and reader tracking helped much. So it boils down to the ad tech industry getting a huge favor from publishers while all publishers get is a slimier reputation with their users. How big of a favor? Some earlier studies found advertisers pay up to 500% more for targeted ads than contextual ads. Doing a little math here, if content publishers only benefit 4% of that, carry the one, calculate out pi to 7 decimals…hey where’d that other 496% go? Some people point out that tracking even demonetizes publisher audiences because their readers are simply followed to lower value sites where they can be targeted with ads for less. And as if all that weren’t a big enough kick in the pants, guess who’s accountable for privacy and data protection laws. That’s right, the publishers.  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/research-shows-publishers-benefit-little-tracking-ads   -Alright enough about all that, let’s talk influencer marketing. What if you wanted to do influencer marketing, but there were no influencers out there that are just right for what you do? Craig Coffey had that problem. He’s director of marketing communications at Lincoln Electric. This may shock you, but there just aren’t that many influencers with large established audiences around welding. By the way, if you want a solid income and job security, let me be the first to propose a prosperous career in welding to you. Only .01% of the world’s population knows how to do it. I’m not kidding. Because of that, Craig knew it didn’t really make a lot of sense to try to become the biggest influencer in and amass a huge welding audience. But that didn’t mean the company couldn’t become the kind of influencer they needed but couldn’t find. They thought broader than welding and established Spring Make, an event that brought together not just welders, but makers of all kinds, like woodworkers and blacksmiths. Score. People came out of the woodwork – ha, see what I did there – to not just talk about what they do, but to broaden their maker skills into these other areas. There were classes in making things, but also classes about how to make something else…content. And if they’re out there making content, who are they going to see as the leader in the space? That’s right, Lincoln Electric, who put on the event. In fact, Spring Make quickly became a content brand itself, separate from Lincoln Electric. And why not? The event generates enough content to carry them through an entire year. If you do big events but you have no content strategy for it and aren’t getting any content assets out of it by the way, we need to talk. Needless to say, Craig’s happy because they made themselves the influencer in all things maker. Craig throws these fun stats at us. 40% of customers are using ad blockers. 70% of millennials prefer products endorsed by non-celebrity bloggers. And influencer marketing delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional marketing. Write it in lipstick on your mirror, “You can be the star you’re looking for.”   -And lastly and quickly, you know I’m always blabbing on about how content should make people feel something. Anything. If it doesn’t, all you’ve done is add to the meaningless noise out there that makes life harder for everyone. Well new research out of Finland says not only can you make people feel emotions, those emotions physically show up in different ways in the body. In other words, they’re so powerful they are literally felt. Ever have your heart broken? That happened in your mind but it’s felt in the chest. Same with stress, which is felt in the neck, and anxiety which shows up in the stomach. Of course, different people process emotion differently depending on their tolerance and history, but still, this is something to keep in mind for those of you who still think the content you make doesn’t have to play to human emotion.  https://in.mashable.com/science/3966/decoded-why-people-feel-emotions-in-their-bodies   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. If you think it was any good, and if you think good content should get a little help, a review or a subscribe would be great. Let other content marketers know about this mess. Be back next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of June 11, 2019. -You’re probably getting ripped off. That’s right, if you buy digital ads for your company you are definitely getting ripped off, it’s just a matter of how badly. Cybersecurity company Cheq just released a study that shows advertisers will blow more than $23B globally to ad fraud this year alone. For every ad dollar spent, 10-15% of it winds up in the pockets of companies who are actually supposed to protect you from digital ad fraud. Now if you’re Polyanna and think it couldn’t possibly be that bad, you’ll embrace another study that was done using the exact same methodology by the Association of National Advertisers. They say yeah, you’re getting robbed, but it’s only costing advertisers $5.8B, and that’s down from 2017. You’re supposed to feel good about that. But the fact that two studies who approached it the same way came to two wildly different conclusions only underlines the truth…digital advertising is such an in-the-shadows, slight-of-hand shell game ecosystem that you can’t get to the truth. And when you’re stealing money from people, the last thing you want is for things to be clear and trackable. That’s just a little tip for all you amoral kids from Uncle Mike. Guy Tytunovich is Cheq’s CEO, and he used to be with Israeli intelligence by the way, he said, “We wouldn’t have run this research if it wasn’t for other research pieces we strongly disagreed with and, in some cases, felt were inadvertently misleading.” Cheq found up to 30% of digital ads are affected by fraud, so that’d be around 21T per year. It’s actually campaigns with cheaper CPMs that get hit the hardest. And did you know for every impression served, at least 20 different companies have their hands in the digital ad ecosystem pot, all taking a cut? If nothing is done about ad fraud, and don’t hold your breath, it’s going to reach $26B next year, then $32B by 2021. Roberto Cavazos, a University of Baltimore economics professor isn’t holding his breath, He says, “There’s little regulation or disincentive against fraud.” And the final nail in the coffin is, marketers don’t seem to care! They paid a boatload of the company’s budget to buy digital ads, they checked the box, and nobody seems interested in whether they got what they paid for. So I guess everybody wins? <a href="https://adage.com/article/digital/report-ad-fraud-hit-23-billion-isnt-going-down/2174721" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://adage.com/article/digital/report-ad-fraud-hit-23-billion-isnt-going-down/2174721</a> -Well I hope I didn’t leave you too disillusioned about digital ads in that last story but if you’re a publisher, hang onto your headgear because it gets worse. You know about tracking the users of publisher websites, right? Advertisers will pay the publisher to get personal info on the site’s users, then they’ll combine that with data they buy somewhere else to form these pretty intense profiles they use to follow people around the web and target them with relevant ads. The idea is that this makes the publishers a lot of money so they can continue offering their content free to readers, who of course are paying, they’re just paying with their privacy. It’s a nice idea but it’s not that true. New research found selling out their readers with this kind of tracking actually only gets publishers a whopping 4% more revenue than good old-fashioned ads based on context. That works out to $.00008 per ad. Wow, somebody’s getting a new coffee maker for the break room! This isn’t exactly breaking news, it’s long been doubted the user data selling and reader tracking helped much. So it boils down to the ad tech industry getting a huge favor from publishers while all publishers get is a slimier reputation with their users. How big of a favor? Some earlier studies found advertisers pay up to 500% more for targeted ads than contextual ads. Doing a little math here, if content publishers only benefit 4% of that, carry the one, calculate out pi to 7 decimals…hey where’d that other 496% go? Some people point out that tracking even demonetizes publisher audiences because their readers are simply followed to lower value sites where they can be targeted with ads for less. And as if all that weren’t a big enough kick in the pants, guess who’s accountable for privacy and data protection laws. That’s right, the publishers. <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/research-shows-publishers-benefit-little-tracking-ads" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/research-shows-publishers-benefit-little-tracking-ads</a> -Alright enough about all that, let’s talk influencer marketing. What if you wanted to do influencer marketing, but there were no influencers out there that are just right for what you do? Craig Coffey had that problem. He’s director of marketing communications at Lincoln Electric. This may shock you, but there just aren’t that many influencers with large established audiences around welding. By the way, if you want a solid income and job security, let me be the first to propose a prosperous career in welding to you. Only .01% of the world’s population knows how to do it. I’m not kidding. Because of that, Craig knew it didn’t really make a lot of sense to try to become the biggest influencer in and amass a huge welding audience. But that didn’t mean the company couldn’t become the kind of influencer they needed but couldn’t find. They thought broader than welding and established Spring Make, an event that brought together not just welders, but makers of all kinds, like woodworkers and blacksmiths. Score. People came out of the woodwork – ha, see what I did there – to not just talk about what they do, but to broaden their maker skills into these other areas. There were classes in making things, but also classes about how to make something else…content. And if they’re out there making content, who are they going to see as the leader in the space? That’s right, Lincoln Electric, who put on the event. In fact, Spring Make quickly became a content brand itself, separate from Lincoln Electric. And why not? The event generates enough content to carry them through an entire year. If you do big events but you have no content strategy for it and aren’t getting any content assets out of it by the way, we need to talk. Needless to say, Craig’s happy because they made themselves the influencer in all things maker. Craig throws these fun stats at us. 40% of customers are using ad blockers. 70% of millennials prefer products endorsed by non-celebrity bloggers. And influencer marketing delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional marketing. Write it in lipstick on your mirror, “You can be the star you’re looking for.” -And lastly and quickly, you know I’m always blabbing on about how content should make people feel something. Anything. If it doesn’t, all you’ve done is add to the meaningless noise out there that makes life harder for everyone. Well new research out of Finland says not only can you make people feel emotions, those emotions physically show up in different ways in the body. In other words, they’re so powerful they are literally felt. Ever have your heart broken? That happened in your mind but it’s felt in the chest. Same with stress, which is felt in the neck, and anxiety which shows up in the stomach. Of course, different people process emotion differently depending on their tolerance and history, but still, this is something to keep in mind for those of you who still think the content you make doesn’t have to play to human emotion. <a href="https://in.mashable.com/science/3966/decoded-why-people-feel-emotions-in-their-bodies" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://in.mashable.com/science/3966/decoded-why-people-feel-emotions-in-their-bodies</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. If you think it was any good, and if you think good content should get a little help, a review or a subscribe would be great. Let other content marketers know about this mess. Be back next week.

Content Marketing Quickie June 11 2019

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of April 8, 2019. Let’s see what changed while you weren’t looking.   -Are you one of those people that talks to the commercials when they come on TV? “Hey cartoon of lower back pain illustrated by little lightning bolts around it, that’s exactly what I feel like! Can your solution really help me?” If so, sure your family is very worried about you but you’ll love this news. When you’re listening to music or a podcast on Pandora, you might soon be able to talk to the ads you hear, and they’ll listen. Maybe you’ll say, “Hey ad, please email me more information about what you’re talking about.” Or maybe you’ll say, “Not interested. I don’t believe that non-stick frying pan is really coated in diamonds.” Later this year, in the year of our Lord 2019, Pandora will do a beta test with Instreamatic, which is a company called Instreamatic. The ad unit will listen and respond to voice commands. Will it work? Probably as well as Siri, Alexa and all those things who I’m sure always completely understand what you’re saying so you don’t have to repeat it three times. But Instreamatic says it uses those magic letters AI to anticipate your intent — sometimes even before you say anything to the ad. It will assume it knows what you want better than you do. But check it out, this ability to dialogue with ads has the potential to solve what’s been a really huge, even a large problem for audio ads. You can’t click them. It’s called the “Click Challenge,” which sounds like a game show that would be hosted by Howie Mandel. But by being able to tell the audio ads I love you or I never want to hear from you again, it helps marketers know they need to change their creative or improve their targeting. And of course it means streaming audio like podcasts can get full credit as an advertising medium that works. Instreamatic colluded with a Russian broadcast, and that experiment showed this can even increase ad revenue. They ran voice-activated ads in December that represented just 1% of the impressions, but…those few voice-activated impressions brought in 10% of total audio revenue for the show for that month. I don’t have any ads in this podcast, but you’re welcome to yell at it if you want.  http://www.insideradio.com/free/pandora-listeners-may-soon-be-talking-back-to-the-ads/article_712b6420-5567-11e9-bdc4-6fce638705c4.html   -Hey CMO, what’s the trouble kiddo? Did you have a bad dream? Is something bothering you? The answer is yes it is. CMOs do worry, in secret. So Kapost did a survey at the CMO Summit in Denver, Denver – Home of the people who live there, asking CMOs what keeps them up at night. The answers were honest and not entirely surprising, so if you’re a CMO, see if you agree and when you wake up in a panic, you’ll know you’re not alone. They worry Is My Messaging On-Brand? Most CMOs said no, it’s not. We can’t be sure we’re on brand or on message, and that’s IF we even have a clear brand personality or key messaging someone is watching out for. Yet they find the prospect of a content audit big and scary. C’mon it’s a good thing, it’s not like a tax audit. SiriusDecisions says 65% of all content is completely wasted because the company doesn’t know it exists, doesn’t know where to find it, or it’s old, or it’s now wrong. Another thing they worry about is Are My Teams Aligned? Accenture says 4 in 5 marketers don’t even know for sure what their content objectives are. Teams in silos are winging it and doing their own thing and shoving stuff out ad hoc, they’re checking the box. And they worry Is Everyone on My Team Working toward Strategic Goals? The answer is most likely not. Marketing teams think only about the channel or team they’re supporting in the moment. Strategy, if there even is one, get sacrificed quickly just to get stuff out the door. The result is very confused customers getting weird and disjointed experiences from the brand. https://marketeer.kapost.com/marketing-leaders-questions/   -Ah, the ability to fast forward and rewind to wherever you want to be while watching a video. Pretty basic thing right? Instagram didn’t think so, cause you can’t do that when you’re watching a video there. Oh sure they let you do it for videos on IGTV, but on the ones that show up in your feed, not so much. And it’s not like they don’t know it’s wanted. Users have been asking about it and for it a long time, scratching their heads, asking, “Why is this not regarded as important by you guys?” Well if you ask long enough, good things might happen. The scuttlebutt skinny word on the street is they’re testing putting a seek bar on videos in the feed. But just in the feed, not as part of an Instagram story. So if you’re an Instagram fan you can go on just about every other video platform there is and start practicing; forward, backward, forward, back. What control! What raw power!  https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/29/18286805/instagram-video-seek-bar-scroll-playback-feature   -Email is a pretty darn solid distribution channel for content. And if you don’t believe that let us help you with 13 email marketing stats put out recently by Convince &amp; Convert. Actually I’m only going to give you 7 because this is the Content Marketing Quickie and I don’t want to change it to the Longie. 1. The average subject line is a little over 43 characters. Short &amp; powerful people. Long subject lines are a real issue on mobile and with many email service providers who won’t even show long ones. 2. Over 347B emails will be sent and received by 2022, that’ 78B more than 2018. So it’s competitive out there and your only hope is great email content. 3. 68% of Millennials say promo emails influenced a purchase. In fact it was the most effective of all the methods studied. 4. 56% of emails are read on iPhones or Gmail. So avoid large image files and long paragraphs. And Gmail users can Snooze you now, so you need to convey some sense of urgency. 5. The average email open rate across all industries is 20.81%. It ain’t a great number, but at least now you know if you’re average. 6. 73% of email marketers send emails at least weekly. Frequency’s a gamble. You win if people like them and you’re staying top of mind, you lose if your emails are bad because people will eventually be annoyed enough to unsubscribe. 7. 55% of consumers like emails with relevant products and offers. That’s kind of a no brainer but it does show personalization and showing items that match preferences is the game, and it’s a data game. Isn’t that right Dave? See, I tried to personalize. Surely one of my listeners is named Dave.  https://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/email-marketing-statistics/   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Be that person that turns your followers on to something half decent, share the link to this podcast and then you can discuss whether or not I’m annoying. And we’ll see what happens next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of April 8, 2019. Let’s see what changed while you weren’t looking. -Are you one of those people that talks to the commercials when they come on TV? “Hey cartoon of lower back pain illustrated by little lightning bolts around it, that’s exactly what I feel like! Can your solution really help me?” If so, sure your family is very worried about you but you’ll love this news. When you’re listening to music or a podcast on Pandora, you might soon be able to talk to the ads you hear, and they’ll listen. Maybe you’ll say, “Hey ad, please email me more information about what you’re talking about.” Or maybe you’ll say, “Not interested. I don’t believe that non-stick frying pan is really coated in diamonds.” Later this year, in the year of our Lord 2019, Pandora will do a beta test with Instreamatic, which is a company called Instreamatic. The ad unit will listen and respond to voice commands. Will it work? Probably as well as Siri, Alexa and all those things who I’m sure always completely understand what you’re saying so you don’t have to repeat it three times. But Instreamatic says it uses those magic letters AI to anticipate your intent — sometimes even before you say anything to the ad. It will assume it knows what you want better than you do. But check it out, this ability to dialogue with ads has the potential to solve what’s been a really huge, even a large problem for audio ads. You can’t click them. It’s called the “Click Challenge,” which sounds like a game show that would be hosted by Howie Mandel. But by being able to tell the audio ads I love you or I never want to hear from you again, it helps marketers know they need to change their creative or improve their targeting. And of course it means streaming audio like podcasts can get full credit as an advertising medium that works. Instreamatic colluded with a Russian broadcast, and that experiment showed this can even increase ad revenue. They ran voice-activated ads in December that represented just 1% of the impressions, but…those few voice-activated impressions brought in 10% of total audio revenue for the show for that month. I don’t have any ads in this podcast, but you’re welcome to yell at it if you want. <a href="http://www.insideradio.com/free/pandora-listeners-may-soon-be-talking-back-to-the-ads/article_712b6420-5567-11e9-bdc4-6fce638705c4.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://www.insideradio.com/free/pandora-listeners-may-soon-be-talking-back-to-the-ads/article_712b6420-5567-11e9-bdc4-6fce638705c4.html</a> -Hey CMO, what’s the trouble kiddo? Did you have a bad dream? Is something bothering you? The answer is yes it is. CMOs do worry, in secret. So Kapost did a survey at the CMO Summit in Denver, Denver – Home of the people who live there, asking CMOs what keeps them up at night. The answers were honest and not entirely surprising, so if you’re a CMO, see if you agree and when you wake up in a panic, you’ll know you’re not alone. They worry Is My Messaging On-Brand? Most CMOs said no, it’s not. We can’t be sure we’re on brand or on message, and that’s IF we even have a clear brand personality or key messaging someone is watching out for. Yet they find the prospect of a content audit big and scary. C’mon it’s a good thing, it’s not like a tax audit. SiriusDecisions says 65% of all content is completely wasted because the company doesn’t know it exists, doesn’t know where to find it, or it’s old, or it’s now wrong. Another thing they worry about is Are My Teams Aligned? Accenture says 4 in 5 marketers don’t even know for sure what their content objectives are. Teams in silos are winging it and doing their own thing and shoving stuff out ad hoc, they’re checking the box. And they worry Is Everyone on My Team Working toward Strategic Goals? The answer is most likely not. Marketing teams think only about the channel or team they’re supporting in the moment. Strategy, if there even is one, get sacrificed quickly just to get stuff out the door. The result is very confused customers getting weird and disjointed experiences from the brand. <a href="https://marketeer.kapost.com/marketing-leaders-questions/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://marketeer.kapost.com/marketing-leaders-questions/</a> -Ah, the ability to fast forward and rewind to wherever you want to be while watching a video. Pretty basic thing right? Instagram didn’t think so, cause you can’t do that when you’re watching a video there. Oh sure they let you do it for videos on IGTV, but on the ones that show up in your feed, not so much. And it’s not like they don’t know it’s wanted. Users have been asking about it and for it a long time, scratching their heads, asking, “Why is this not regarded as important by you guys?” Well if you ask long enough, good things might happen. The scuttlebutt skinny word on the street is they’re testing putting a seek bar on videos in the feed. But just in the feed, not as part of an Instagram story. So if you’re an Instagram fan you can go on just about every other video platform there is and start practicing; forward, backward, forward, back. What control! What raw power! <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/29/18286805/instagram-video-seek-bar-scroll-playback-feature" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/29/18286805/instagram-video-seek-bar-scroll-playback-feature</a> -Email is a pretty darn solid distribution channel for content. And if you don’t believe that let us help you with 13 email marketing stats put out recently by Convince &amp; Convert. Actually I’m only going to give you 7 because this is the Content Marketing Quickie and I don’t want to change it to the Longie. 1. The average subject line is a little over 43 characters. Short &amp; powerful people. Long subject lines are a real issue on mobile and with many email service providers who won’t even show long ones. 2. Over 347B emails will be sent and received by 2022, that’ 78B more than 2018. So it’s competitive out there and your only hope is great email content. 3. 68% of Millennials say promo emails influenced a purchase. In fact it was the most effective of all the methods studied. 4. 56% of emails are read on iPhones or Gmail. So avoid large image files and long paragraphs. And Gmail users can Snooze you now, so you need to convey some sense of urgency. 5. The average email open rate across all industries is 20.81%. It ain’t a great number, but at least now you know if you’re average. 6. 73% of email marketers send emails at least weekly. Frequency’s a gamble. You win if people like them and you’re staying top of mind, you lose if your emails are bad because people will eventually be annoyed enough to unsubscribe. 7. 55% of consumers like emails with relevant products and offers. That’s kind of a no brainer but it does show personalization and showing items that match preferences is the game, and it’s a data game. Isn’t that right Dave? See, I tried to personalize. Surely one of my listeners is named Dave. <a href="https://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/email-marketing-statistics/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/email-marketing-statistics/</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Be that person that turns your followers on to something half decent, share the link to this podcast and then you can discuss whether or not I’m annoying. And we’ll see what happens next week.

Content Marketing Quickie April 8 2019

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: Almost half of B2B marketers think their content is ineffective - why? Welcome to the world of multi-touch attribution and finding out what REALLY influenced your prospect to buy. And shocking proof that marketers just aren’t as smart as they think they are.

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: Almost half of B2B marketers think their content is ineffective - why? Welcome to the world of multi-touch attribution and finding out what REALLY influenced your prospect to buy. And shocking proof that marketers just aren’t as smart as they think they are.

Content Marketing Quickie October 22 2019

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: You’ll learn the platforms and kinds of content social media marketers are favoring this year. Influencers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea…in fact different people view them very differently. And comprehensive results of what B2B content marketers think works and what they’re struggling with.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: You’ll learn the platforms and kinds of content social media marketers are favoring this year. Influencers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea…in fact different people view them very differently. And comprehensive results of what B2B content marketers think works and what they’re struggling with.

Content Marketing Quickie January 7 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: What you need to know to get the most out of your YouTube channel this year. You’ll learn the things you’re putting in emails that tick people off the most. And hear the three essentials to organizing your internal content team in a way that makes sense.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: What you need to know to get the most out of your YouTube channel this year. You’ll learn the things you’re putting in emails that tick people off the most. And hear the three essentials to organizing your internal content team in a way that makes sense.

Content Marketing Quickie January 14 2020

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: If digital advertising is a part of what you do, hear the things you should be paying attention to heading into 2020. Find out how much additional revenue could be yours IF you maintain a consistent brand personality. And find out the preferred content making tools of the top Instagram influencers.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: If digital advertising is a part of what you do, hear the things you should be paying attention to heading into 2020. Find out how much additional revenue could be yours IF you maintain a consistent brand personality. And find out the preferred content making tools of the top Instagram influencers.

Content Marketing Quickie December 31 2019

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of May 28, 2019.   -Some people are mad at Mailchimp. People get mad sometimes when change happens. Then some people get mad when they need change at a toll booth and can’t find any. It’s a real no win situation. But Mailchimp wants to be more than just an email marketing platform now. They want to serve small businesses in just about every way small businesses need to be served. They teamed up with Square to offer shoppable web pages. They broke up with Shopify amidst rumors they’re going to develop and roll out their own ecommerce platform. They’ve introduced a CRM, a tool to build websites including buying your domain, and, here’s the part that has some people angry, a new price structure in which you’ll get charged for all your contacts, not just your subscribed ones. I mean there’s some grandfathering for people already on plans but nothing last forever grandpa. Darcy Kurtz at the chimp says, “We have the permission and credibility to play in this space.” The CRM gives you what you’d expect, you can store data there, see your customers and prospects, segment those peeps for messaging, even see a customer’s lifetime value based on engagement data. Gee, I wonder what my lifetime value is. Other tools “smart recommendations,” which makes recommendations based on user data using…the magic phrase everyone’s required by law to use now, AI. You can now even retarget with Facebook and Instagram ads like you already could for Google. But wait there’s more, it’s also a social media manager, you can do your organic posting on Mailchimp. As for the bacon, the green, the scratch, even the free version comes with the CRM, smart recommendations, starter templates and automations. Then if you want custom branding and a/b testing it’s $9.99/month. Other plans go up to $299.99/month, wow, that’s less than $300, which gets you phone support and advanced segmentations.  https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/mailchimp-debuts-a-crm-platform-to-help-small-businesses-act-like-enterprise-businesses/   -How are Millennials going to feel when we stop talking about them? Well they’ll probably feel like Boomers – getting shoved closer to the “they don’t matter” column. But they better get their existential selves ready because now the talk has started to shift to Gen Z. Gartner studied them like little lab rats raised on the Wiggles and found out cool things like they’re 1.5x more likely to follow a brand if that brand puts out content that boosts their image. That’s right, you’ve got to pay attention to their image, because while other generations worried about fitting in, Z’s are savvy self-branders and self-marketers. Plus, they are true digital natives, so they aren’t awed by technology just for the hell of it being newish, they expect the Internet and social media to serve their perceived needs. 81% of them follow friends online but guess how many follow brands. About 30%. When they do look at social content from brands, they want it to inform and inspire them. Again, they take social media seriously, but mostly as a way to project the image of themselves they want to. Lots of likes on their posts makes them feel better. So let’s get back to that informative and inspirational content. It’s got to be that if they’re going to share it. The study says it has to interest or excite them; make their friends laugh; or express how they’re feeling. You can get them as loyal customers, but they’re going to drive that relationship, not you. But to do that you have to find them, which isn’t easy because they change social media apps like Disney changes their classic movies. Some other things that will help you make content for them, root it in their top personal values, which are identity, creativity and passion. And you can capture attention by taking a stand, as long as they agree with that stand. Finally, there’s not that much difference to them between their digital and real worlds, so you need to meld the two as much as you can. https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=241255   -If Google’s SEO Myth Busters podcast was willing to tell you the top 3 SEO factors to focus on, would you want to know what they are? Fine, I’m going to tell you thanks to Webmaster Trends Analyst Martin Splitt. Factor #1 – Your content serves a purpose for the user. It’s about something they need or want. Use phrases people would use when searching for that thing, which means you B2B people should calm down with the jargon that impresses only you and talk like a non-tech management level person would talk. Factor #2 – Meta Data. Ooo now you’re getting excited aren’t you? This is what creates the little snippet that shows up under your entry in the search results. By itself, it’s not a ranking factor, but what you put here will convince people to click your entry, or not. Make sure the titles and meta descriptions are unique and specific about that page, copy and pasting or default content is not such a good idea. Factor #3 – Hopefully, you feel the need, the need for speed. How fast your pages load isn’t more important than other things, you can be slow and still rank well – that’s how I got out of high school, but it matters. Best way to approach it is it’s an SEO factor, but it’s got nothing to do with the ranking algorithm itself. There you go, tips right from the Google’s mouth.  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-3-google-factors/#close   -And quickly squeezing another one in, a survey by Yum Yum Videos says 87% of small business owners are quite happy with their ROI from video marketing. Use of video marketing is still going up. 21% are going to do it for the first time this year and those who’ve done it are likely to invest in it again. In 2019, unless these owners are lying, 67% will make more than 3 videos, 34% will make 3-6, 19% will make between 6-10, and 14% of Quentin Tarantino wannabes will make more than 10. Great. What are those videos likely to be? Well since 95% of online consumers have watched at least one explainer video, that’s the top choice for 80% of businesses who believe it also brings in the best ROI. They’re going to put these videos mostly on social media, specifically, in order, YouTube, Facebook then Instagram. The most small business owners, 66%, said it’s video that will have the biggest impact on their strategy this year. But just in case you hate videos, some other formats made the list, including eBooks, infographics, blog posts, and yes, podcasts.  https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/05/video-marketing-roi-statistics.html   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. This has been going on long enough that I can ask you to take a minute and review me on whatever platform you listen on. I won’t even tell you what to say. You’re a content marketer, you’ll think of something. Back next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of May 28, 2019. -Some people are mad at Mailchimp. People get mad sometimes when change happens. Then some people get mad when they need change at a toll booth and can’t find any. It’s a real no win situation. But Mailchimp wants to be more than just an email marketing platform now. They want to serve small businesses in just about every way small businesses need to be served. They teamed up with Square to offer shoppable web pages. They broke up with Shopify amidst rumors they’re going to develop and roll out their own ecommerce platform. They’ve introduced a CRM, a tool to build websites including buying your domain, and, here’s the part that has some people angry, a new price structure in which you’ll get charged for all your contacts, not just your subscribed ones. I mean there’s some grandfathering for people already on plans but nothing last forever grandpa. Darcy Kurtz at the chimp says, “We have the permission and credibility to play in this space.” The CRM gives you what you’d expect, you can store data there, see your customers and prospects, segment those peeps for messaging, even see a customer’s lifetime value based on engagement data. Gee, I wonder what my lifetime value is. Other tools “smart recommendations,” which makes recommendations based on user data using…the magic phrase everyone’s required by law to use now, AI. You can now even retarget with Facebook and Instagram ads like you already could for Google. But wait there’s more, it’s also a social media manager, you can do your organic posting on Mailchimp. As for the bacon, the green, the scratch, even the free version comes with the CRM, smart recommendations, starter templates and automations. Then if you want custom branding and a/b testing it’s $9.99/month. Other plans go up to $299.99/month, wow, that’s less than $300, which gets you phone support and advanced segmentations. <a href="https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/mailchimp-debuts-a-crm-platform-to-help-small-businesses-act-like-enterprise-businesses/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/mailchimp-debuts-a-crm-platform-to-help-small-businesses-act-like-enterprise-businesses/</a> -How are Millennials going to feel when we stop talking about them? Well they’ll probably feel like Boomers – getting shoved closer to the “they don’t matter” column. But they better get their existential selves ready because now the talk has started to shift to Gen Z. Gartner studied them like little lab rats raised on the Wiggles and found out cool things like they’re 1.5x more likely to follow a brand if that brand puts out content that boosts their image. That’s right, you’ve got to pay attention to their image, because while other generations worried about fitting in, Z’s are savvy self-branders and self-marketers. Plus, they are true digital natives, so they aren’t awed by technology just for the hell of it being newish, they expect the Internet and social media to serve their perceived needs. 81% of them follow friends online but guess how many follow brands. About 30%. When they do look at social content from brands, they want it to inform and inspire them. Again, they take social media seriously, but mostly as a way to project the image of themselves they want to. Lots of likes on their posts makes them feel better. So let’s get back to that informative and inspirational content. It’s got to be that if they’re going to share it. The study says it has to interest or excite them; make their friends laugh; or express how they’re feeling. You can get them as loyal customers, but they’re going to drive that relationship, not you. But to do that you have to find them, which isn’t easy because they change social media apps like Disney changes their classic movies. Some other things that will help you make content for them, root it in their top personal values, which are identity, creativity and passion. And you can capture attention by taking a stand, as long as they agree with that stand. Finally, there’s not that much difference to them between their digital and real worlds, so you need to meld the two as much as you can. <a href="https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=241255" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=241255</a> -If Google’s SEO Myth Busters podcast was willing to tell you the top 3 SEO factors to focus on, would you want to know what they are? Fine, I’m going to tell you thanks to Webmaster Trends Analyst Martin Splitt. Factor #1 – Your content serves a purpose for the user. It’s about something they need or want. Use phrases people would use when searching for that thing, which means you B2B people should calm down with the jargon that impresses only you and talk like a non-tech management level person would talk. Factor #2 – Meta Data. Ooo now you’re getting excited aren’t you? This is what creates the little snippet that shows up under your entry in the search results. By itself, it’s not a ranking factor, but what you put here will convince people to click your entry, or not. Make sure the titles and meta descriptions are unique and specific about that page, copy and pasting or default content is not such a good idea. Factor #3 – Hopefully, you feel the need, the need for speed. How fast your pages load isn’t more important than other things, you can be slow and still rank well – that’s how I got out of high school, but it matters. Best way to approach it is it’s an SEO factor, but it’s got nothing to do with the ranking algorithm itself. There you go, tips right from the Google’s mouth. <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-3-google-factors/#close" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-3-google-factors/#close</a> -And quickly squeezing another one in, a survey by Yum Yum Videos says 87% of small business owners are quite happy with their ROI from video marketing. Use of video marketing is still going up. 21% are going to do it for the first time this year and those who’ve done it are likely to invest in it again. In 2019, unless these owners are lying, 67% will make more than 3 videos, 34% will make 3-6, 19% will make between 6-10, and 14% of Quentin Tarantino wannabes will make more than 10. Great. What are those videos likely to be? Well since 95% of online consumers have watched at least one explainer video, that’s the top choice for 80% of businesses who believe it also brings in the best ROI. They’re going to put these videos mostly on social media, specifically, in order, YouTube, Facebook then Instagram. The most small business owners, 66%, said it’s video that will have the biggest impact on their strategy this year. But just in case you hate videos, some other formats made the list, including eBooks, infographics, blog posts, and yes, podcasts. <a href="https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/05/video-marketing-roi-statistics.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/05/video-marketing-roi-statistics.html</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. This has been going on long enough that I can ask you to take a minute and review me on whatever platform you listen on. I won’t even tell you what to say. You’re a content marketer, you’ll think of something. Back next week.

Content Marketing Quickie May 28 2019

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of May 7, 2019. Let’s see what you guys did to the industry this week.   -Want a job in content marketing? Well you should be in good shape. There were 23,846 job openings in it last year. But what content marketing skills are in the most demand? You need to know this so you can go on Coursera and at least learn enough terminology to bluff your way through the interview. Fractl studied ads on Indeed to figure out what hirers are looking for. And while that’s a fun parlor game, what makes this less than informative is that the people writing job ads for content marketing positions mostly have no clue what they want, need, or should ask for. They also don’t know the proper terms. And they usually print out a glossary of responsibilities they expect one person to handle alone. But anyway, here’s what the Indeed ads are showing. They’re mostly looking for junior level positions. Then comes senior level positions, then interns, who’ll make $37,000 to $43,000. For senior roles they want to pay $60,000 to $90,000. Um, I can tell you I’m more expensive than that. They want 2-3 years’ professional experience including from the interns who are just coming out of school. Nobody said you had to use logic in your want ads. The skills they want to see are social media, content creation and SEO. The senior positions are going to want you to also be a strategy and management rock star. But overall, content creation is the big ask, across all formats and channels. They want you to be brilliant for their $37,000 investment. But don’t forget the soft skills. Especially interns should be good at going to get soft serv ice cream for the office. No that’s not what I mean by soft skills. We’re talking about those interpersonal skills, a willingness to work hard, and being really good at details. Unfocused lazy jerks will probably have a harder time landing one of those multiple content marketing gigs.  https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/study-reveals-the-skills-you-need-to-get-hired-in-content-marketing-02192325   -Congrats to my pal Steve Pratt and Pacific Content for getting acquired by Rogers Media as this little burst of podcast acquisitions continues. Hey, everyone’s finally realizing that audio is a legitimate format that people like…imagine that. If only we had 99 years of evidence from radio that that was the case! Need more proof? Edison Research is always good about rounding up the numbers in terms of how podcasting is used, how it’s growing, and what kind of people are listening to it…and here are the latest figures from their survey of American listeners. 70% are now aware of podcasts, so that about 197M people. 51% have listened to one, hopefully this one. Nearly a fourth of us listen on a weekly basis. One article pointed out almost 4x more people listen to podcasts weekly than watched the Game of Thrones season premiere. And you may have noticed podcasting didn’t get nearly the media coverage the dragon show did. It’s mostly still guys that listen to podcasts, 36-29%, but I’m not supposed to assign genders so forget that statistic. But it is okay to call people rich and people who listen to podcasts are far more likely to make over $75,000 a year, so you’ve got a nice affluent audience with air pods in just waiting for you. Here’s a big one, podcasting is now the most listened to form of audio at 28%, overtaking AM/FM radio’s 24%. Those DJ’s don’t really play your song requests anyway…the robot says what’s going to be played. This next stat surprised even me, and I try to never allow my eyebrows to go up. 93% listen to most of an episode. Hey I love video, but video can only dream of that level of consumption. People don’t skim, they really listen. Most people listen on mobile, which wasn’t always the case, it used to be desktop. But listening on smart speakers is up to 10% now. Alexa, play me one of NPR’s 12,000 podcasts. So you get it, people like podcasts…but why exactly? They say the number one reason is you can listen while you’re doing something else, it’s the only content format that lets you multitask, which people love to do. I’m changing my oil right now.  https://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcast-research/2019-podcast-statistics/   -Facebook continues to confound and confuse. They had their big F8 party where Zuck told us what they’re going to do next and what they’re going to do is redesign the app and website in a big way to be more about groups. Groups will be promoted and integrated in as many places as possible throughout this year, so get ready to adapt to a new look and a new experience. In the app, no more blue bar at the top. The logo and nav icons are there now. The icons for Stories are bigger cause they’re pushing that, but the status update box isn’t as prominent because Facebook doesn’t want to be about that as much now. Zuck wants it to be more about private communication. Private meaning, I guess, groups. They’ll encourage you to join them all over the app. Facebook says groups are among the most "meaningful" ways people use Facebook. I disagree, but I do like to get warned on my neighborhood group if there’s a coyote roaming around. All this also smells like a tactic to get you to connect with more people. Maybe every friend you’ve ever had in your life is already a connection and Facebook isn’t happy you’ve maxed out. So they’ll have a "Meet New Friends" feature so you can connect with people you don’t really know who are in your groups. Which is…LinkedIn! What does this mean if you’re a brand? I’d start figuring out which groups directly relate to what you sell and focus on making educational content that adds to the discussion there.  https://mashable.com/article/facebook-app-website-redesign-groups/   -In the true spirit of the Content Marketing Quickie here’s a really quick story that’s impactful and doesn’t really need to be expounded on. How confident do you think marketers are that their content marketing is working? Well I’ll tell you. A mere 10% are confident they’re making an impact. Heinz Marketing shows 63% say their content marketing strategy is either ineffective or only partially effective. The trend ain’t good either, that’s way up from 35% who said that in 2017. There’s a lot broken folks, and it needs fixing, it doesn’t need more baseless hype.  https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/15/marketers-lose-faith-the-efficacy-content-marketing   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Talk about these things with your friends and coworkers, and God forbid you tell them about this podcast so they become listeners too. That would just be crazy. We’ll get caught up again next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of May 7, 2019. Let’s see what you guys did to the industry this week. -Want a job in content marketing? Well you should be in good shape. There were 23,846 job openings in it last year. But what content marketing skills are in the most demand? You need to know this so you can go on Coursera and at least learn enough terminology to bluff your way through the interview. Fractl studied ads on Indeed to figure out what hirers are looking for. And while that’s a fun parlor game, what makes this less than informative is that the people writing job ads for content marketing positions mostly have no clue what they want, need, or should ask for. They also don’t know the proper terms. And they usually print out a glossary of responsibilities they expect one person to handle alone. But anyway, here’s what the Indeed ads are showing. They’re mostly looking for junior level positions. Then comes senior level positions, then interns, who’ll make $37,000 to $43,000. For senior roles they want to pay $60,000 to $90,000. Um, I can tell you I’m more expensive than that. They want 2-3 years’ professional experience including from the interns who are just coming out of school. Nobody said you had to use logic in your want ads. The skills they want to see are social media, content creation and SEO. The senior positions are going to want you to also be a strategy and management rock star. But overall, content creation is the big ask, across all formats and channels. They want you to be brilliant for their $37,000 investment. But don’t forget the soft skills. Especially interns should be good at going to get soft serv ice cream for the office. No that’s not what I mean by soft skills. We’re talking about those interpersonal skills, a willingness to work hard, and being really good at details. Unfocused lazy jerks will probably have a harder time landing one of those multiple content marketing gigs. <a href="https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/study-reveals-the-skills-you-need-to-get-hired-in-content-marketing-02192325" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/study-reveals-the-skills-you-need-to-get-hired-in-content-marketing-02192325</a> -Congrats to my pal Steve Pratt and Pacific Content for getting acquired by Rogers Media as this little burst of podcast acquisitions continues. Hey, everyone’s finally realizing that audio is a legitimate format that people like…imagine that. If only we had 99 years of evidence from radio that that was the case! Need more proof? Edison Research is always good about rounding up the numbers in terms of how podcasting is used, how it’s growing, and what kind of people are listening to it…and here are the latest figures from their survey of American listeners. 70% are now aware of podcasts, so that about 197M people. 51% have listened to one, hopefully this one. Nearly a fourth of us listen on a weekly basis. One article pointed out almost 4x more people listen to podcasts weekly than watched the Game of Thrones season premiere. And you may have noticed podcasting didn’t get nearly the media coverage the dragon show did. It’s mostly still guys that listen to podcasts, 36-29%, but I’m not supposed to assign genders so forget that statistic. But it is okay to call people rich and people who listen to podcasts are far more likely to make over $75,000 a year, so you’ve got a nice affluent audience with air pods in just waiting for you. Here’s a big one, podcasting is now the most listened to form of audio at 28%, overtaking AM/FM radio’s 24%. Those DJ’s don’t really play your song requests anyway…the robot says what’s going to be played. This next stat surprised even me, and I try to never allow my eyebrows to go up. 93% listen to most of an episode. Hey I love video, but video can only dream of that level of consumption. People don’t skim, they really listen. Most people listen on mobile, which wasn’t always the case, it used to be desktop. But listening on smart speakers is up to 10% now. Alexa, play me one of NPR’s 12,000 podcasts. So you get it, people like podcasts…but why exactly? They say the number one reason is you can listen while you’re doing something else, it’s the only content format that lets you multitask, which people love to do. I’m changing my oil right now. <a href="https://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcast-research/2019-podcast-statistics/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcast-research/2019-podcast-statistics/</a> -Facebook continues to confound and confuse. They had their big F8 party where Zuck told us what they’re going to do next and what they’re going to do is redesign the app and website in a big way to be more about groups. Groups will be promoted and integrated in as many places as possible throughout this year, so get ready to adapt to a new look and a new experience. In the app, no more blue bar at the top. The logo and nav icons are there now. The icons for Stories are bigger cause they’re pushing that, but the status update box isn’t as prominent because Facebook doesn’t want to be about that as much now. Zuck wants it to be more about private communication. Private meaning, I guess, groups. They’ll encourage you to join them all over the app. Facebook says groups are among the most "meaningful" ways people use Facebook. I disagree, but I do like to get warned on my neighborhood group if there’s a coyote roaming around. All this also smells like a tactic to get you to connect with more people. Maybe every friend you’ve ever had in your life is already a connection and Facebook isn’t happy you’ve maxed out. So they’ll have a "Meet New Friends" feature so you can connect with people you don’t really know who are in your groups. Which is…LinkedIn! What does this mean if you’re a brand? I’d start figuring out which groups directly relate to what you sell and focus on making educational content that adds to the discussion there. <a href="https://mashable.com/article/facebook-app-website-redesign-groups/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://mashable.com/article/facebook-app-website-redesign-groups/</a> -In the true spirit of the Content Marketing Quickie here’s a really quick story that’s impactful and doesn’t really need to be expounded on. How confident do you think marketers are that their content marketing is working? Well I’ll tell you. A mere 10% are confident they’re making an impact. Heinz Marketing shows 63% say their content marketing strategy is either ineffective or only partially effective. The trend ain’t good either, that’s way up from 35% who said that in 2017. There’s a lot broken folks, and it needs fixing, it doesn’t need more baseless hype. <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/15/marketers-lose-faith-the-efficacy-content-marketing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/15/marketers-lose-faith-the-efficacy-content-marketing</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Talk about these things with your friends and coworkers, and God forbid you tell them about this podcast so they become listeners too. That would just be crazy. We’ll get caught up again next week.

Content Marketing Quickie May 7 2019

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: The many ways big ad agencies are being threatened like never before. Why podcasting seems to be one of the very few mediums where ads are downright welcome. And, how to get your target audience to do what you want them to do using brain science!

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: The many ways big ad agencies are being threatened like never before. Why podcasting seems to be one of the very few mediums where ads are downright welcome. And, how to get your target audience to do what you want them to do using brain science!

Content Marketing Quickie November 5 2019

In an episode of the Content Marketing Quickie you do NOT want to miss: Is digital advertising a load of BS and ad platforms &amp; marketers just won’t admit the truth? What should the real goals for content marketing be? And Google might be about to publicly shame you if your website doesn’t pass this test. https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13230718600-5d15791f

In an episode of the Content Marketing Quickie you do NOT want to miss: Is digital advertising a load of BS and ad platforms &amp; marketers just won’t admit the truth? What should the real goals for content marketing be? And Google might be about to publicly shame you if your website doesn’t pass this test. <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13230718600-5d15791f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13230718600-5d15791f</a>

Content Marketing Quickie November 19 2019

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Trends in email marketing B2B marketers should be especially interested in. That darn Google search algorithm is changing again and we’ll tell you how to adjust your content, or not. And what are most brands doing, trying to take creative all in house and ditch agencies or turn to gig economy creatives?

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: Trends in email marketing B2B marketers should be especially interested in. That darn Google search algorithm is changing again and we’ll tell you how to adjust your content, or not. And what are most brands doing, trying to take creative all in house and ditch agencies or turn to gig economy creatives?

Content Marketing Quickie December 17 2019

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: Okay Instagram influencers, what now that your Likes might be completely hidden? The things brands must be doing right now to get ready for the Voice revolution. And, we’ll tell you the one kind of content B2B marketers can put out that will be more effective than anything else you can do.

In this week's episode of the Content Marketing Quickie: Okay Instagram influencers, what now that your Likes might be completely hidden? The things brands must be doing right now to get ready for the Voice revolution. And, we’ll tell you the one kind of content B2B marketers can put out that will be more effective than anything else you can do.

Content Marketing Quickie November 12 2019

In this week’s #ContentMarketing Quickie: Some interesting stats on how B2B marketers are using content in Account Based Marketing and what their biggest problem is. Hint, it’s a really familiar one. With especially younger consumers losing trust in paid influencer marketing, we’ll tell you what it is they totally trust. And what are the main things that get people to shell out and subscribe to information websites?

In this week’s #ContentMarketing Quickie: Some interesting stats on how B2B marketers are using content in Account Based Marketing and what their biggest problem is. Hint, it’s a really familiar one. With especially younger consumers losing trust in paid influencer marketing, we’ll tell you what it is they totally trust. And what are the main things that get people to shell out and subscribe to information websites?

Content Marketing Quickie November 26 2019

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: The case for why B2B should stop debating podcasting and accept that it’s another vital marketing channel. How to spy on what your competition is doing with their content strategy. And the threats facing the digital advertising dominance of Google and Facebook.

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: The case for why B2B should stop debating podcasting and accept that it’s another vital marketing channel. How to spy on what your competition is doing with their content strategy. And the threats facing the digital advertising dominance of Google and Facebook.

Content Marketing Quickie December 3 2019

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of July 9, 2019.   -Your email list, love it, cherish it, nurture it and grow it. According to a McKinsey &amp; Co study, it’s your best friend, and it’s 40x more effective at getting to your target audience than Twitter or Facebook. Yeah yeah, everybody, including all of us, complain about how much email we get, but it works doggone it. And Jason Aten gives us a few reasons why it works. First, gee only 3.8B use it, so it’s got reach to beat the band. And at least for now, email platforms don’t render you helpless against some algorithm that stops your message from going where you send it based on…I don’t know, some constantly changing who knows what? It can be customized, and those whiz bang marketing automation tools let you send things based on interactions far more than social media. And that’s good because email is also personal – it’s the home of direct one to one digital communication, especially where business is concerned. People might skip looking at their social channels for a few days, lord knows businesspeople don’t check LinkedIn or even get their LinkedIn messages, but people do check their email. Some studies say we check it up to 80 times a day. It’s permission based. Turns out liking a Facebook page means very, very little. It’s the lightest level of commitment someone can make to you other than completely ignoring you. But if someone gives you their email address, they’re serious about wanting to hear what you have to say. And finally, you get a level of analytics that’s far more useful to you than the assumptions and guesswork you have to engage in on other channels. You know who opened your emails, if they clicked on the links, what they did when they went to your site. That’s the kind of data that can really help you tweak things and get to closing faster. It’s also pretty easy to A/B test with email so the aforementioned tweaking can be accomplished. Now obviously there’s a right and wrong way to do email, and most of that revolves around the quality of the content you put on it and how you present it, but that content quality thing is kinda true of every channel now anyway.  https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/this-mckinsey-co-study-shows-why-you-should-still-use-email-marketing.html   -I’m a writer, I love writing, but from what I hear the robots and AI are going to replace me. I’m doomed and it’s right around the corner. But aside from putting super nice people like me out of work, this notion of AI creating blog posts and other text assets comes with a sort of dystopian risk. A risk that actually might render the whole endeavor pointless. Here’s the problem. Everyone’s worried about the manipulation of people politically with misinformation, but what about manipulating the entire search engine ecosystem with garbage content? These systems are actually getting pretty good at auto-creating something that looks relatively authentic. Now apply that capability to a system that relies on a high volume of content with grabby headlines and keyword manipulation. The machines can crank out vast amounts of that at scale and clutter up the Interwebs beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Limitless sites and blogs and ads. They’ll look legit because AI can make posts look like what we’re used to, complete with quote outs and the author’s photo – which may or may not be a real person. But if you actually read these things, they’re of no real value to anyone actually seeking answers to something. In fact, they count on people like you and me to NOT read all the way through the articles we turn up through search. But Mike, you say, can’t Google tell the difference? Well they’ve always tried to stop people from gaming search, and you can bet they’re working on this issue, but as of today, AI’s limitless deluge might just be unstoppable. Fractl’s Kristin Tynski says there are “massive implications” for SEO and they’ve actually been using an AI tool called Grover, not for evil, but just to test how good AI is at inhuman content generation. Rowan Zellers is the one who made Grover, and he says for now, you can still tell an AI generated post from a real one. They themselves can spot them with 92% accuracy. But the abilities will get better and when that happens, SEO consultant Mike Blumenthal says it will attract spammers en masse, and as a sad side note, it could drive the cost of grinding oceans of worthless content way down. That’s when people who actually make worthwhile content will be expected to do it for 47 cents a month.  https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/19063562/ai-text-generation-spam-marketing-seo-fractl-grover-google   -Remember the classic scene from Seinfeld where he’s arguing with the lady at the rental car counter? He says, “You know how to take a reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And really, that’s the most important part is the holding.” Well many businesses are that rental car company. They know how to get a customer; they just don’t know how to keep a customer. And considering how much it costs to get a new customer, the failure to keep happy customers is a truly epic and expensive fail. A Brightback study found 97% of large business leaders, from B2B, B2C and hybrid companies, say they’ve made customer retention a top priority. But some of those sectors are more serious than others. 68% of B2Bs are certain they prioritize retention appropriately, though 29% think they could be doing better. But only 44% of B2Cs feel like they’re doing a good enough job. But wow, check out small businesses. The Manifest found that 6%, only 6% are prioritizing keeping customers. Okay swell, well how do you keep a customer? Brightback found offering at-risk customers special deals is one of the top 3 most effective tactics in B2C. For B2B and hybrids, they like to test different discount offers when customers contact to cancel. They also like letting customers pause their subscription. But here’s where the real difference shows up. When it comes to customer retention objectives, most B2Cs said they want to improve satisfaction with better customer experiences and support. But only 14% of B2Bs are thinking that way. Instead they want to teach customers how to use the service and do better onboarding. Their baby’s not ugly, those stupid customers just have to learn to love it y’see.  https://www.marketingcharts.com/brand-related/brand-loyalty-109085   -Lastly, and quickly, Gavin O'Malley tells us that Forrester learned B2B marketers think their website is the most effective tool for early-stage demand-gen effectiveness. More than digital advertising, SEO, sales enablement, partner enablement or events. Okay, just one problem. After Forrester looked at 60 websites across 12 B2B industries, they found nearly every single one lacking. Laura Ramos said, “Most B2B marketers continue to fail miserably when it comes to creating content buyers find interesting, interactive, or compelling.” The number one offense, making prospects dig through a crowded maze of offerings and info to maybe find what they were looking for. B2B sites love big fat websites that are complicated and full of jargon. It’s makes them feel like bigshots and make site visitors, um, leave. But those same businesses will tell you they have no need for content strategists or creators. Forrester recommends “internalizing the customer mind-set” and adjusting content based on that. Crazy idea.  https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/337647/forrester-b2bs-think-their-sites-build-awareness.html   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Big bump in downloads last week so thanks. You may have noticed by now I’m not really selling anything. It’s just news and some fun comments so maybe you’ll be cool with sharing it and telling people about it. Back next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of July 9, 2019. -Your email list, love it, cherish it, nurture it and grow it. According to a McKinsey &amp; Co study, it’s your best friend, and it’s 40x more effective at getting to your target audience than Twitter or Facebook. Yeah yeah, everybody, including all of us, complain about how much email we get, but it works doggone it. And Jason Aten gives us a few reasons why it works. First, gee only 3.8B use it, so it’s got reach to beat the band. And at least for now, email platforms don’t render you helpless against some algorithm that stops your message from going where you send it based on…I don’t know, some constantly changing who knows what? It can be customized, and those whiz bang marketing automation tools let you send things based on interactions far more than social media. And that’s good because email is also personal – it’s the home of direct one to one digital communication, especially where business is concerned. People might skip looking at their social channels for a few days, lord knows businesspeople don’t check LinkedIn or even get their LinkedIn messages, but people do check their email. Some studies say we check it up to 80 times a day. It’s permission based. Turns out liking a Facebook page means very, very little. It’s the lightest level of commitment someone can make to you other than completely ignoring you. But if someone gives you their email address, they’re serious about wanting to hear what you have to say. And finally, you get a level of analytics that’s far more useful to you than the assumptions and guesswork you have to engage in on other channels. You know who opened your emails, if they clicked on the links, what they did when they went to your site. That’s the kind of data that can really help you tweak things and get to closing faster. It’s also pretty easy to A/B test with email so the aforementioned tweaking can be accomplished. Now obviously there’s a right and wrong way to do email, and most of that revolves around the quality of the content you put on it and how you present it, but that content quality thing is kinda true of every channel now anyway. <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/this-mckinsey-co-study-shows-why-you-should-still-use-email-marketing.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/this-mckinsey-co-study-shows-why-you-should-still-use-email-marketing.html</a> -I’m a writer, I love writing, but from what I hear the robots and AI are going to replace me. I’m doomed and it’s right around the corner. But aside from putting super nice people like me out of work, this notion of AI creating blog posts and other text assets comes with a sort of dystopian risk. A risk that actually might render the whole endeavor pointless. Here’s the problem. Everyone’s worried about the manipulation of people politically with misinformation, but what about manipulating the entire search engine ecosystem with garbage content? These systems are actually getting pretty good at auto-creating something that looks relatively authentic. Now apply that capability to a system that relies on a high volume of content with grabby headlines and keyword manipulation. The machines can crank out vast amounts of that at scale and clutter up the Interwebs beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Limitless sites and blogs and ads. They’ll look legit because AI can make posts look like what we’re used to, complete with quote outs and the author’s photo – which may or may not be a real person. But if you actually read these things, they’re of no real value to anyone actually seeking answers to something. In fact, they count on people like you and me to NOT read all the way through the articles we turn up through search. But Mike, you say, can’t Google tell the difference? Well they’ve always tried to stop people from gaming search, and you can bet they’re working on this issue, but as of today, AI’s limitless deluge might just be unstoppable. Fractl’s Kristin Tynski says there are “massive implications” for SEO and they’ve actually been using an AI tool called Grover, not for evil, but just to test how good AI is at inhuman content generation. Rowan Zellers is the one who made Grover, and he says for now, you can still tell an AI generated post from a real one. They themselves can spot them with 92% accuracy. But the abilities will get better and when that happens, SEO consultant Mike Blumenthal says it will attract spammers en masse, and as a sad side note, it could drive the cost of grinding oceans of worthless content way down. That’s when people who actually make worthwhile content will be expected to do it for 47 cents a month. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/19063562/ai-text-generation-spam-marketing-seo-fractl-grover-google" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/19063562/ai-text-generation-spam-marketing-seo-fractl-grover-google</a> -Remember the classic scene from Seinfeld where he’s arguing with the lady at the rental car counter? He says, “You know how to take a reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And really, that’s the most important part is the holding.” Well many businesses are that rental car company. They know how to get a customer; they just don’t know how to keep a customer. And considering how much it costs to get a new customer, the failure to keep happy customers is a truly epic and expensive fail. A Brightback study found 97% of large business leaders, from B2B, B2C and hybrid companies, say they’ve made customer retention a top priority. But some of those sectors are more serious than others. 68% of B2Bs are certain they prioritize retention appropriately, though 29% think they could be doing better. But only 44% of B2Cs feel like they’re doing a good enough job. But wow, check out small businesses. The Manifest found that 6%, only 6% are prioritizing keeping customers. Okay swell, well how do you keep a customer? Brightback found offering at-risk customers special deals is one of the top 3 most effective tactics in B2C. For B2B and hybrids, they like to test different discount offers when customers contact to cancel. They also like letting customers pause their subscription. But here’s where the real difference shows up. When it comes to customer retention objectives, most B2Cs said they want to improve satisfaction with better customer experiences and support. But only 14% of B2Bs are thinking that way. Instead they want to teach customers how to use the service and do better onboarding. Their baby’s not ugly, those stupid customers just have to learn to love it y’see. <a href="https://www.marketingcharts.com/brand-related/brand-loyalty-109085" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.marketingcharts.com/brand-related/brand-loyalty-109085</a> -Lastly, and quickly, Gavin O'Malley tells us that Forrester learned B2B marketers think their website is the most effective tool for early-stage demand-gen effectiveness. More than digital advertising, SEO, sales enablement, partner enablement or events. Okay, just one problem. After Forrester looked at 60 websites across 12 B2B industries, they found nearly every single one lacking. Laura Ramos said, “Most B2B marketers continue to fail miserably when it comes to creating content buyers find interesting, interactive, or compelling.” The number one offense, making prospects dig through a crowded maze of offerings and info to maybe find what they were looking for. B2B sites love big fat websites that are complicated and full of jargon. It’s makes them feel like bigshots and make site visitors, um, leave. But those same businesses will tell you they have no need for content strategists or creators. Forrester recommends “internalizing the customer mind-set” and adjusting content based on that. Crazy idea. <a href="https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/337647/forrester-b2bs-think-their-sites-build-awareness.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/337647/forrester-b2bs-think-their-sites-build-awareness.html</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Big bump in downloads last week so thanks. You may have noticed by now I’m not really selling anything. It’s just news and some fun comments so maybe you’ll be cool with sharing it and telling people about it. Back next week.

Content Marketing Quickie July 9 2019

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of June 18, 2019.   -You lucky Instagram advertiser you. You not only got something new, you got something that allegedly is going to make everything better and everyone happier. And it all has to do with how you and influencers mercilessly use each other. In the next few weeks you’ll be able to do Paid Partnership ads. That’s what it will say right there on the ad, Paid Partnership, and your brand name will be there too. It’s all about ad transparency, right? You see after all this time creating content marketing so that the public won’t be able to tell the difference between content and an ad, the platforms are having to make it clearer which is which. But what’s good about this is it lets you incorporate your brand content into their Instagram ad strategy. According to Instagram’s numbers people, 68% of people go there to interact with creators, so now brands can use those digital artists in an advertising environment that includes all those Facebookie targeting options. Now your Paid Partnership post can go beyond your followers and you’re your influencer’s followers, allowing more discovery of both. See how that works? Agencies like Scott Harkey’s OH Partners dig it. Brands like Liat Weingarten’s Old Navy dig it. You know Instagram has some pretty unhappy influencers, and they’re hoping this makes them a little happier. And isn’t that what we all want? Just to be a smidge happier? What made them unhappy was Instagram taking away the like counts from posts. So this could be a way to appease them with additional reach. I don’t know. Influencers are a vain lot and they get off on big like numbers. Anyhoo, this Paid Partnership ad option will also be available in Stories in a few months.  https://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-advertisers-can-now-promote-creators-organic-branded-content-posts-as-ads/   -How important is mobile? Well put your phone in the driveway, run over it with your car, and see how you feel. That’s how important mobile is. Vince Nero reports that Siege Media just put out some stats to back that on up. 1. Browsers and apps have to be really fast on mobile. After all, the expectation is “I’m on mobile, I’m on the go, I’m so busy and important I need this site to load instantly.” Think with Google says 53% of mobile users are gone if things don’t happen in 3 seconds, probably sooner. 2. Despite more power and big beautiful monitors, nobody wants to sit down to a desktop anymore. ISSUU, I’m not stuttering, all those letters are in their name, shows mobile traffic has a 125% growth rate. Desktop has a 12% growth rate. Wah wahhh. 3. The most value is in video content, especially videos that make you feel something. It’s not just me, Animoto did a study showing 29% of men and 23% of women are likely to comment on emotional videos. 4. Think with Google also found people interact twice as much with brands on mobile than anywhere else. And 5, you should use social to listen and see what people want on mobile from you. That’s why I keep the Content Marketing Quickie quick…cause you’re on the go! Go, go, go! Very busy, very important.  http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/5-mobile-content-tips-backed-by-statistics/marketing   -Aw, what’s the matter Skipper? You’ve submitted 498 guest posts to influential sites and got turned down by every single one of them? You know why? Because you know and they know that you’re just trying to use them to get authoritative links back to your site, a site which is probably much less authoritative than theirs because otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to get on it. Adam Torkildson says don’t feel too bad. There’s nothing wrong with trying to guest post, just be cool about it and understand how things work. These sites got to be the coveted authoritative sites that they are by making sure the content that goes on it stays high value. Now I know you think every word you write is pure Shakespearean gold cuddling the knowledge of the great minds of our time like Newton, Hawking and Carrot Top, but…maybe not. Probably not. When you send in your 498 articles, they’re thinking is this real difference-making content? Will it actually hurt our influence? Is it something new or just the same old rehash and bringing up the rear thought leadership? Literally, you won’t be able to pay them to harm the influence they’ve worked so hard and spent so much time building up. Adam’s tips to give yourself at least a shot. Don’t sell yourself in the article, don’t put 12 links to yourself in it. And as mentioned earlier, add real value with something fresh. If you aren’t providing that, you aren’t needed. And lastly, make sure you are writing for the site’s niche audience. You’re not submitting the same article unedited to 20 different places, are you? Well stop it.  https://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-marketing-2/having-a-hard-time-guest-posting-youre-not-alone/   -And lastly, what kind of Quickie would I be if I didn’t include some of the more pertinent info for digital marketers that came out of the Mary Meeker annual Internet Trends Report? They call her the queen of the Internet y’know. Well this thing is 333 slides long so here we go…slide #1. Wait, don’t hit stop and go find an NPR podcast, I’m not going through all 333. Just the fun ones. Internet ad spending was up 22% in 2018; most of it’s on Google and Facebook, but Amazon and Twitter are growing their share a bit. 62% of digital display ad buying is for programmatic, and that number is really headed up…up and to the right. It’s costing more, a lot more, to acquire customers. Now we all know that sucks because if it gets too high, it’s really not worth the long-term revenue that each new customer provides. Mary says things like free trials and unpaid tiers are going to play a much bigger role in customer acquisition going forward. For instance this podcast is free, and it’s my devilish plan that it will make you listen to more episodes which will also be free so…I don’t seem to have much of a business plan here. Dangerous waters ahead for targeted advertising thanks to regulation and privacy issues. Nobody knows where all that is going to land just yet. Plus, although more people are seriously starting to worry about it, Americans are spending more time with digital media than ever: 6.3 hours a day in 2018, up 7%. Mostly on mobile. So, if you make some half decent content, the people are definitely glued to their smartscreens. Time spent on YouTube and Instagram is going up most. Digital is now 28% of all video usage time, so TV’s share is down to 72% cause I math. Monthly active podcast users went from 22 to 70m since 2008, with the sharp rising trend hitting right before 2014. Images rule when it comes to content and how we communicate, we are basically regressing to grunts and cave drawings. And lastly, I just have to say my heart goes out again to all my friends in my former industry of radio, which continues to get screwed over royally by advertisers. When you look at TV, desktop and mobile, the ad spend share pretty much matches up with its usage by the public. But look at print, and even though only 3% of media time is spent there, advertisers love it anyway – giving it 7% of ad spend. Now look at radio, it represents 12% of media usage, but advertisers couldn’t care less. It only gets 8% of ad spend. Maybe ad buyers are still just pissed they didn’t win concert tickets as a kid.  https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18651010/mary-meeker-internet-trends-report-slides-2019   That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Subscribing will make it easier for you to get. Course if you use the Apple podcast app, they’ll stop counting downloads if you don’t listen for a while so…use Spotify. Back next week.

Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of June 18, 2019. -You lucky Instagram advertiser you. You not only got something new, you got something that allegedly is going to make everything better and everyone happier. And it all has to do with how you and influencers mercilessly use each other. In the next few weeks you’ll be able to do Paid Partnership ads. That’s what it will say right there on the ad, Paid Partnership, and your brand name will be there too. It’s all about ad transparency, right? You see after all this time creating content marketing so that the public won’t be able to tell the difference between content and an ad, the platforms are having to make it clearer which is which. But what’s good about this is it lets you incorporate your brand content into their Instagram ad strategy. According to Instagram’s numbers people, 68% of people go there to interact with creators, so now brands can use those digital artists in an advertising environment that includes all those Facebookie targeting options. Now your Paid Partnership post can go beyond your followers and you’re your influencer’s followers, allowing more discovery of both. See how that works? Agencies like Scott Harkey’s OH Partners dig it. Brands like Liat Weingarten’s Old Navy dig it. You know Instagram has some pretty unhappy influencers, and they’re hoping this makes them a little happier. And isn’t that what we all want? Just to be a smidge happier? What made them unhappy was Instagram taking away the like counts from posts. So this could be a way to appease them with additional reach. I don’t know. Influencers are a vain lot and they get off on big like numbers. Anyhoo, this Paid Partnership ad option will also be available in Stories in a few months. <a href="https://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-advertisers-can-now-promote-creators-organic-branded-content-posts-as-ads/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-advertisers-can-now-promote-creators-organic-branded-content-posts-as-ads/</a> -How important is mobile? Well put your phone in the driveway, run over it with your car, and see how you feel. That’s how important mobile is. Vince Nero reports that Siege Media just put out some stats to back that on up. 1. Browsers and apps have to be really fast on mobile. After all, the expectation is “I’m on mobile, I’m on the go, I’m so busy and important I need this site to load instantly.” Think with Google says 53% of mobile users are gone if things don’t happen in 3 seconds, probably sooner. 2. Despite more power and big beautiful monitors, nobody wants to sit down to a desktop anymore. ISSUU, I’m not stuttering, all those letters are in their name, shows mobile traffic has a 125% growth rate. Desktop has a 12% growth rate. Wah wahhh. 3. The most value is in video content, especially videos that make you feel something. It’s not just me, Animoto did a study showing 29% of men and 23% of women are likely to comment on emotional videos. 4. Think with Google also found people interact twice as much with brands on mobile than anywhere else. And 5, you should use social to listen and see what people want on mobile from you. That’s why I keep the Content Marketing Quickie quick…cause you’re on the go! Go, go, go! Very busy, very important. <a href="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/5-mobile-content-tips-backed-by-statistics/marketing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/5-mobile-content-tips-backed-by-statistics/marketing</a> -Aw, what’s the matter Skipper? You’ve submitted 498 guest posts to influential sites and got turned down by every single one of them? You know why? Because you know and they know that you’re just trying to use them to get authoritative links back to your site, a site which is probably much less authoritative than theirs because otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to get on it. Adam Torkildson says don’t feel too bad. There’s nothing wrong with trying to guest post, just be cool about it and understand how things work. These sites got to be the coveted authoritative sites that they are by making sure the content that goes on it stays high value. Now I know you think every word you write is pure Shakespearean gold cuddling the knowledge of the great minds of our time like Newton, Hawking and Carrot Top, but…maybe not. Probably not. When you send in your 498 articles, they’re thinking is this real difference-making content? Will it actually hurt our influence? Is it something new or just the same old rehash and bringing up the rear thought leadership? Literally, you won’t be able to pay them to harm the influence they’ve worked so hard and spent so much time building up. Adam’s tips to give yourself at least a shot. Don’t sell yourself in the article, don’t put 12 links to yourself in it. And as mentioned earlier, add real value with something fresh. If you aren’t providing that, you aren’t needed. And lastly, make sure you are writing for the site’s niche audience. You’re not submitting the same article unedited to 20 different places, are you? Well stop it. <a href="https://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-marketing-2/having-a-hard-time-guest-posting-youre-not-alone/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-marketing-2/having-a-hard-time-guest-posting-youre-not-alone/</a> -And lastly, what kind of Quickie would I be if I didn’t include some of the more pertinent info for digital marketers that came out of the Mary Meeker annual Internet Trends Report? They call her the queen of the Internet y’know. Well this thing is 333 slides long so here we go…slide #1. Wait, don’t hit stop and go find an NPR podcast, I’m not going through all 333. Just the fun ones. Internet ad spending was up 22% in 2018; most of it’s on Google and Facebook, but Amazon and Twitter are growing their share a bit. 62% of digital display ad buying is for programmatic, and that number is really headed up…up and to the right. It’s costing more, a lot more, to acquire customers. Now we all know that sucks because if it gets too high, it’s really not worth the long-term revenue that each new customer provides. Mary says things like free trials and unpaid tiers are going to play a much bigger role in customer acquisition going forward. For instance this podcast is free, and it’s my devilish plan that it will make you listen to more episodes which will also be free so…I don’t seem to have much of a business plan here. Dangerous waters ahead for targeted advertising thanks to regulation and privacy issues. Nobody knows where all that is going to land just yet. Plus, although more people are seriously starting to worry about it, Americans are spending more time with digital media than ever: 6.3 hours a day in 2018, up 7%. Mostly on mobile. So, if you make some half decent content, the people are definitely glued to their smartscreens. Time spent on YouTube and Instagram is going up most. Digital is now 28% of all video usage time, so TV’s share is down to 72% cause I math. Monthly active podcast users went from 22 to 70m since 2008, with the sharp rising trend hitting right before 2014. Images rule when it comes to content and how we communicate, we are basically regressing to grunts and cave drawings. And lastly, I just have to say my heart goes out again to all my friends in my former industry of radio, which continues to get screwed over royally by advertisers. When you look at TV, desktop and mobile, the ad spend share pretty much matches up with its usage by the public. But look at print, and even though only 3% of media time is spent there, advertisers love it anyway – giving it 7% of ad spend. Now look at radio, it represents 12% of media usage, but advertisers couldn’t care less. It only gets 8% of ad spend. Maybe ad buyers are still just pissed they didn’t win concert tickets as a kid. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18651010/mary-meeker-internet-trends-report-slides-2019" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18651010/mary-meeker-internet-trends-report-slides-2019</a> That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. Subscribing will make it easier for you to get. Course if you use the Apple podcast app, they’ll stop counting downloads if you don’t listen for a while so…use Spotify. Back next week.

Content Marketing Quickie June 18 2019

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll tell you some ways to get the click through rate on your videos up, and why you should really want to. Learn the red hot marketing trend that’s predicted to be abandoned within 5 years. And B2B buyers state clearly how they want to hear about and communicate with vendors, but marketers say eh, what do you know?

In this week’s Content Marketing Quickie: We’ll tell you some ways to get the click through rate on your videos up, and why you should really want to. Learn the red hot marketing trend that’s predicted to be abandoned within 5 years. And B2B buyers state clearly how they want to hear about and communicate with vendors, but marketers say eh, what do you know?

Content Marketing Quickie December 10 2019

The best episodes for anyone looking to learn more about topics such as happiness, fulfillment, depression and psychology/mental health in general. With interviews with industry experts, personal stories of individuals, this topic has lessons applicable to everyone. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Episodes on Mental Health, Emotions & Thoughts

The best podcast episodes about true crime. For any thrill seeking podcast listeners who just can't get enough of the captivating stories of murderers and criminals. This topic has all the best episodes from many different true crime podcasts.  Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!