Tag Archives: Advertising

How to Amplify Your Content

Today we have a guest post and infographic for you from the multi-talented Ivan Serrano about how you can amplify your content! Take it away, Ivan.

Back in its early days, many marketers focused on link-building techniques to get a higher ranking on Google. With Google focusing more on providing relevant content to its visitors, these old tactics are now a great way to get your site flagged. Now their focus has shifted to the quality of the content. This switch has forced brands to change their tactics to content marketing. 93 percent of B2B marketers currently use content marketing for a couple reasons:

  • Seven out of ten consumers prefer custom content because it is tailored to their interests.
  • Good content is a major reason consumers follow brands on social media.

While creating quality content is definitely important, the problem is that every brand is doing the same thing. If you’re just expecting to earn a huge following simply by creating a blog entry or white paper, you’ll be in for a rude awakening. With so much new content available to consumers on a daily basis, if you don’t promote it, there’s no way anyone will ever find it.

Content Amplification

Content amplification is a strategy where you increase the value of your content and reach the largest audience by promoting it on the right channels. All content amplification starts with your owned media which includes:

  • Social media profiles
  • Blog
  • Website
  • Email list

From there, you can and should utilize different avenues of paid media like Facebook ads or Twitter’s Promoted Tweets so you can reach a wider audience. The best part is that these paid social ads allow you to pinpoint your amplification strategy to exactly the right people, who ultimately will help build your community. The infographic below provides more information on how to amplify your content properly, the questions you should ask yourself when creating your content and the tools to find influencers (click to enlarge).

Amplified Content

click to enlarge

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Building a Creative Online Campaign

When you’re braving the choppy waters of internet marketing, it can be easy to get lost. Sometimes it feels like you’re just throwing spaghetti at a wall just to see what sticks. There must be a better way to build a compelling campaign!

There is.

First, let’s go over the basics: marketing is about experimentation and a willingness to try and try again. Even the most successful companies in the world deal with their fair share of dud marketing campaigns… and these are businesses with entire dedicated marketing departments at their disposal. The occasional failure is part of the game.

The other part of the game is having the wherewithal to recognize why something didn’t work. Or better yet, why it did. You can’t just give up because your first, second, or even third attempt to navigate the waters turned up mediocre results.

Creative Campaign

Creativity is key.

Photo Credit: AlicePopkorn via Compfight cc

Here’s some advice to help in creating a compelling, creative campaign.

  • Do your research. Do you know what your current or potential audience wants? Are you sure? Seek out what your competitors are doing online. What’s working for them? What’s not? What do you have that can fill a niche they can’t? Use it.
  • Make it personal without losing your core messaging. What’s going to make people care about your marketing efforts? Maybe you can be a hub for local events, or post pictures of the sort of goofy fun you have in your shop every day. If your audience is parents, share content that will resonate with them, like parental humor or photos of your kids. Just don’t forget that you’re also trying to get them to DO something.
  • Invest in high-quality imaging. Social sites and many websites are moving toward highly visual designs that often rely on high-quality images. Visual storytelling has proven to be something the public reacts to very strongly. Stunning photography or carefully crafted designs convey a level of professionalism and, done correctly, are highly sharable. Can you create creative visual messaging?
  • Learn the art of story. Do you know how to tell a story in 100 words? It’s an important skill to learn. You’ll often hear that “Content is King,” and it’s the truth. People respond to interesting, entertaining, or valuable content. Blend mediums. How can you combine sound and text? Video and audio? Images and story? It doesn’t hurt to brush up on your grammar, too. Polished text is professional text.
  • Be willing to change direction. You may find that something you did on a lark ended up with ten times the reaction of your usual efforts. Don’t wave it off as a fluke. If something you do finds a foothold, be willing to lean further in that direction, even if it means abandoning other “safer” efforts.
  • If you don’t have the bandwidth to do it internally, hire a professional. As in, a professional internet marketer with experience and a portfolio. Many people claim expertise in the digital realm, and if you’re not very familiar, in can be difficult to determine who really knows their stuff. So insist on seeing success stories.
  • The product or service must deliver. Okay, you’ve done your job well and set up a plan that will draw people to you (hopefully) in droves. Now you have to deliver what they were promised.

Above all, find what makes you stand out and don’t be afraid to experiment. Do something completely different! Write a mini-play. Film a video. Think of the advertising that really sticks with you, then put your own spin on it. This isn’t easy, but if you strike the right balance, it can be explosive!

Stephanie Wargin is the Social Media Strategist at Zenergy Works, a web design and SEO company located in Santa Rosa, California. Her friends like to brush her hair into her eyes whenever she talks about Facebook.

Twitter Ads Open After Beta Test

Another Social Media Platform has created a method to monetize the incredible traffic and extensive database of information through advertising. Twitter has recently opened up its advertising platform to everyone after an extensive beta test.

twitter

Twitter’s self-service advertising platform features Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts as advertising formats. Promoted content is displayed right beside regular content on a Twitter user’s newsfeed and is identified as “promoted”. This means that the Promoted Tweets are right in the newsfeed for all platforms, including mobile, and the Promoted Accounts are included on the Homepage under “Who to Follow”.

Twitter offers targeting options, including interests, gender, location, device, user names, and platform. These options should be leveraged to help users reach the most relevant audience. There is a budget estimating tool, and advertisers can establish a maximum daily spend, as well as estimate the reach of their ads using an “Estimated Reach” graph to evaluate targeting and budget options and how they affect the reach of the ads.

Much like pay per click ads, Twitter’s self-serve ads require users to pay only when targeted audience members engage with Promoted Tweets or Accounts. Engage is defined as interactions like retweets, replies, clicks, favorites and follows. The advertising platform also provides analytics that display the usual ad metrics like impressions and click rates for Promoted Tweets and a follower growth chart that has data on followers gained with and without Promoted Accounts.

Bottom Line: Twitter has gone to great lengths to incorporate these ads into the normal flow and use of the platform. The most effective ads on Twitter will incorporate the same feel as a normal tweet, and be targeted to a platform that is carefully selected by location and interest. You may test your approach by sending tweets to your regular followers, and if you are encouraged by the response, turn the tweet into a Promoted Tweet. Local firms can benefit from the geographic targeting.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California SEO, Social Media Optimization and Marketing, and Website Development Firm.

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