Archives for January 2014

Short Form Content: The Latest Social Media Trend

January 31, 2014 by

www.jeffkorhan.com

Would you like to speed up your content creation process, while concurrently making it more relevant to your audience?

While Google still loves long-form magazine style content, it is certainly better to create short form content than nothing at all.

However, instead of considering short-form content a compromise, recognize it for what it is. This is a win-win for your business and its on-the-go audience that often only has time for a snack.

It’s no coincidence that the fastest growing social media channels are those that deliver the bite-sized content that active people crave. For businesses, we’re talking about Instagram, Pinterest, and Vine.

Benefits of Short Form Content

In addition to participating in these highly active communities that were specifically designed for short form content, they integrate seamlessly with Facebook and Twitter, thereby multiplying your efforts.

So, instead of publishing directly to Facebook, consider publishing to Instagram and then link that message to both Facebook and Twitter. That gives you an easy three for one.

Additional Benefits of Short Form Content

  1. Takes less time
  2. Builds the content creation habit
  3. Readily shareable
  4. Consistency increases engagement
  5. A link is a link

Let me elaborate on that last point.

When building your online presence, every link counts. In other words, both a short and long piece of content offer you one link that leads back to your primary website. Obviously, when you consider your investment in time, it’s easier and more economical to earn inbound links with short form content.

In fact, it is arguable that a heavily shared video on Pinterest, Instagram, or Vine will drive more traffic than a long form article. It all depends upon the nature of your business, social marketing strategy, and the behaviors of your communities.

If you want to learn more about Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine, go to Social Media Examiner and search for the respective channels. You will discover informative articles and podcasts.

Personally, I learn more from the in-depth podcasts. Of course, you can also Google these channels or their experts. I’ve found Cynthia Sanchez to be the top expert on Pinterest and Sue B. Zimmerman for Instagram.

Design Your Short Form Strategy

For short form content to work for you, it has to be planned.

Here are some ideas that I pulled right out of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business. (This is page 60 if you already have a copy).

  1. The how-to
  2. Expert viewpoints or perspectives
  3. Interviews
  4. Product or service reviews
  5. Trends and best practices
  6. Helpful tools, tips, and techniques
  7. Business promotions

Obviously, you would not want to exclusively focus your content on business promotions. However, as one example, you could certainly combine #1 and #6 to show your community how to get the most from your products and services, which effectively is a subtle form of promotion.

Taking this a step further, let’s assume you want to encourage more sign-ups for an event you are hosting. Build a list of a dozen or so tips that are representative of the benefits one will learn at that event. Then roll them out as a series of teasers that gives your audience a sample of what they can expect by attending.

Just be sure to focus on being helpful, rather than promotional.

One Business Channel

Remember that while there are many social networks, they have to collectively work together as one business channel.

Therefore, you should ideally develop a balanced mix of both long and short-form content to give your audience, as well as Google and the other search engines, exactly what they want.

To put this into perspective, you may find The Best Blog Post Length Test interesting. It helps to put short and long into perspective, so that you can use them to more effectively tell your stories.

How is your business using the new short form social media channels? Please share your thoughts in a comment.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)  

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Photo Credit

Internet: The New Super Bowl of Marketing

January 26, 2014 by

www.jeffkorhan.com

The Super Bowl is an annual ritual that captures the attention of millions.

This blend of entertainment is an orchestrated process of marketing the game itself, half-time show, and of course, the line-up of television advertising spots, but still entertainment online companies as adult services like https://www.zoomescorts.co.uk/ use online marketing to advertise their products and get more results of it

This massive stage has elevated advertising to a celebrated art form, but is it still relevant?

For brands and their media partners, Super Bowl ads offer the opportunity for influencing a massive, global audience. However, so does the Internet.

It’s a New Ball Game

We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in which brand awareness is created in new ways that are within the reach of nearly every business, large or small.  It’s a new ball game.

This year you will not see the little E*Trade baby promoting its brand, because the company has ended its 7 year marketing relationship with this platform. According to its Sr. VP of Branding, E*Trade is reallocating its resources to better target their audience of key prospects and customers.

How about you?

Is your business reallocating marketing resources to ensure its future relevancy?

Build Your Own Super Bowl

Brands invest considerable resources into those Super Bowl ads, and they can achieve measurable results. The problem is they receive little residual value, having to then show up next year to do it again, often at a higher price.

Marking the 30 year anniversary of a watershed moment, the iconic Apple 1984 Super Bowl commercial is being celebrated as the greatest Super Bowl commercial of all time. This was clearly the right medium for Apple to reach a massive audience to promote the launch of the Macintosh.

Yet, in these Internet days anyone can reach a massive audience, and certainly Apple and other giant brands are capable of doing that on their own. This is the opportunity for Apple, eTrade, and mainstream small businesses like yours and mine.

If your business is going to invest the resources to create high quality media, should it not also use a platform where it can manage, control, and literally own that media forever?

What’s interesting is it is actually easier for people than businesses to build an audience today, at least for small businesses. This says something about the future of brands.

Brands are now personal, and they will favor platforms that amplify those qualities.

If your brand is your promise, isn’t that promise more powerful when it is personal?

This is why businesses are smartly using content marketing and social media to engage their audience by helping them, answering questions, and otherwise solving their most relevant problems.

Now You Are The Media

In addition to building their own audience, brands are recognizing that advertising and marketing as we know it are changing. The truth is we probably shouldn’t even call this marketing.

Content marketing is a means for using media, especially social media, to help your customers, thereby attracting a larger following that can ideally benefit from your products and services.

Content marketing is giving your customers what they want, and in many circumstances, what they need but do not even know they want.

Is that marketing?

The truth is this works, and that is why businesses large and small are creating useful content so that they can also package an advertising message within it too.

Content is an investment that has staying power, especially if there is a timeless aspect to it. It is the rare commercial such as Apple 1984 that earns that quality.

Stop Marketing and Create Media

Marketing these days is a new game. In fact, many of us are wondering if we should be calling it marketing any more – or maybe we just need a new definition of marketing.

Unlike traditional Super Bowl marketing, content that lives on the web has the potential to achieve a greater reach over time. So, think of your blog as a syndicated television series of content that gets replayed for years to come.

Your content marketing is the show.

The Internet is the Super Bowl.

Any questions?

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)  

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Photo Credit

Social Media Pay to Play: When it Makes Sense

January 19, 2014 by

One of the important social media trends for 2014 is making financial investments in the major social media networks in order to accomplish specific objectives, otherwise known as pay to play. The key is to distinguish between an investment and expenditures that deliver little future value. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are now public companies. They […]

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