content marketing
Content Marketing at a Glance
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It's a fun infographic, but the elements of content marketing are solid.
Source: socialmediaexplorer.com via annieteich on Pinterest
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The #1 Blogging Mistake and How to Fix It
It's easy to do. We're all so busy in "regular" times that when we hit "extraordinary" times, our too-full schedules quickly come unraveled.
I'm no different, which is why it's been since late May since my last blog post. I have perfectly good reasons. Most of us do. A family wedding, a funeral, a conference, travel, a summer cold and VOILA!! More than a month has passed without a blog post.
If I were one of my own clients, this is what I'd say: Continue reading
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Do You Know the Difference Between Content Marketing v. Inbound Marketing?
As the terms "content marketing" and "inbound marketing" gain greater traction, it's important to note the ways they are the same and different from previous types of marketing and how they relate to each other.
Smart companies understand that everyone in their organization is in the customer service business and everyone helps market the business through their daily interactions with customers and prospects. So, the end goal of marketing has not changed. We are still in the business of connecting the right people with the right product or service.
While some of the basic units of effective marketing are the same, the strategy and process of getting to the end goal are a bit different. And of course, we're calling it something new. Continue reading
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Content Marketing IS Real Writing
As long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer. From the time I knew what a writer was, I've wanted to be one. In those long ago days when I wanted to be able to create the kind of adventures I loved reading, I believed that a real writer was a fiction writer.
Turns out that a lot of people felt that you weren't a legitimate writer unless you wrote fiction. Aside from the fact that journalists routinely win Pulitzer prizes and some of the best writing in our culture is nonfiction such as biography, essays and memoir, there has always been a hierarchy of writers with fiction writers at the top of the pyramid.
And business or corporate writing? That was considered beneath notice of "real" writers. It was commercial – as if selling novels, newspapers and magazines were not? Continue reading
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Case Study Must Haves for K-12 Solutions
One of the most common ways to demonstrate product efficacy or to tell a product story in the K-12 industry is through a case study or a customer success story. Case studies are an important component of your content marketing strategy in pushing out content of interest to your community of prospects.
While the general structure of a case study is basically the same across all industries, K-12 stories are usually quite compelling because they strike at the heart of two things our culture holds most dear – kids and education.
Case studies have a four-part basic structure: Continue reading
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Why Content is the Secret Sauce in Your Marketing Mix
When developing a marketing mix for a new campaign, not only do we need to ensure that each channel's tactics complements the others, but they also need to stand on their own to move the prospect forward to the next step in the process.
Our marketing mix should include every available channel that makes sense for the product. We can choose from: direct marketing (including email, phone, print), search marketing, social media marketing, advertising, public relations and mobile marketing.
Different products require a different marketing mix, but no matter what channels we use, each should lead the prospect to the product website which is "brand central." It's there that we get to tell our story in detail and prove our authentic intention to help customers solve their problems. Continue reading
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3 Terrific Resources to Learn More about Content Marketing
Most marketers in the K-12 education industry have now at least heard the term content marketing. Many educational publishers have been doing content marketing for a long time – telling success stories with their customers as the hero.
Content marketing is fundamentally a way to attract or pull your customers and prospects toward you with great storytelling instead of pushing out traditional sales messages. There are many practitioners in other industries that have blazed the trail like Rebecca Lieb who talks about the difference between advertising and content marketing. Continue reading
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Three Basic Elements of Successful Customer Engagement
Earlier this week we talked about the difference between social media marketing and content marketing. What they share at their core is the idea of authentic customer engagement.
So what is the essence of successful customer engagement?
First you must to listen with genuine interest to your customer. You have to hear what their concerns, issues and goals are.
Second, you must understand how to help them solve their concerns with what you have to offer which is relevant to them.
Third, you must respond to them in an authentic and transparent way supporting their need for individual attention, additional information or the move to the next step of the process. Continue reading
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The Difference Between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing
To put these topics in appropriate relationship to each other, it’s best to begin with a definition of content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as ‘the creation and distribution of educational or compelling content in multiple formats used to acquire and retain customers.”
What do we mean by “content”? Content can be as short as 140-character tidbits to share on Twitter or it can be long-form white papers, articles, videos, etc. To be valued, the content has to be informational and topic-focused rather than the traditional product focused marketing of the past. Continue reading
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You Only Get 9 Seconds to Make an Impression (Sally Hogshead video)
It used to be that you had 1 minute to grab your prospect's attention. Then it dropped to 30 seconds. Now, because of our fractured attention span, it's dropped to only 9 seconds. Obviously this has huge implications for our… Continue reading
