Content Marketing Quickie
Content Marketing Quickie July 16 2019
Listen on
Episode notes
Hey, it’s Stiles from Brand Content Studios and here’s your Content Marketing Quickie for the week of July 16, 2019.
-If the apocalypse was coming, you’d want us to tell you about it right? Well probably the best article I’ve read in a long time just came from Michael Stelzner at Social Media Examiner, who’s seen the future not for what he wishes it was, but for what it is. And if you’re a content marketer, and you probably are because I don’t get a lot of farmers listening to my show, you’ve got some serious thinking about the future to do. We’ve talk about this a little before and I’ve put out the warning before, but Michael says look, Google used to provide millions of answers to a search. But we’re moving toward a one answer world, which Wired has written will kill off the internet as we know it. Do I have your attention yet? With voice assistants, we’re moving to the conversational web, not pages and pages of links. You know who that benefits? Google. Not you. Michael points out Google already does everything it can to answer your question before any search results come up. They ran some tests and learned while people searched “social media” 1.43M times over 90 days and Social Media Examiner was always near the top, less than 1% of searchers clicked their link. So while you’re killing yourself to rank, it’s starting to not matter anyway. All your keyword obsession and authority building and SEO…you’re working your ass off in a system that won’t even exist soon. Google will be the provider of the one best answer. Without links to you to click, what do you think is going to happen to your traffic? Or worse, your new email subscribers? Basically, we’re facing an incredible shrinking audience for brands. And do you know the only way to make up for that and stay visible? Give money to Google for ads! Michael very honestly says all this has them thinking about what to do. And what they’ve come up with is not really even an answer, but it’s a few ways to maybe adapt. One is really focus on conversion rate optimization, because converting the fewer opportunities you get will be more critical. Start thinking beyond written word and shift hard to media; video and audio. And, think about the one thing Google can’t deliver…your own opinion. It probably won’t get searched unless you’re famous, but it is the content that’s truly unique to you. You may have noticed I get a little opinionated here myself sometimes.
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/death-google-search-traffic-what-it-means-for-marketers/
-How about I tell you what Vidyard & Ascend2 learned when they went poking around to find out what B2B marketers are doing? This is always fun because it makes you go phew, we’re doing that too or hey, that’s the opposite of what we’re doing! Which of us is right? Over half say their main reason for doing content marketing is to improve brand awareness. Getting more customer conversions actually came in second. 93% think what they’re doing is working, it’s lifting that brand awareness or whatever their goal is. Now overall, they’re most worried about increasing sales revenue, but if we’re just talking about content marketing, they regard the top challenges as brand awareness and getting better sales leads. Didja hear me? Not more, better. 91% say content marketing budgets will be going up, but before you go to some club and make it rain, ¾ of them said that increase will be moderate. What do they think is the most trusted kind of content? Most of them said case studies. 66% say the best way to get all this content marketing done is a collaboration of in-house resources and outsourced specialists, aw they’re talking about me, they are such sweet survey takers. Now we know how marketers love metrics and there are all kind of metrics you could get so, which ones are B2B marketers focusing on most? Leads generated, but they like a good conversion rate too – preferably paired with a lovely red Merlot. But once they’ve had a lot of that Merlot and get real honest, they’ll tell you if content marketing is actually doing anything for them. And it is! 43% said sales revenue went up as a direct result, 35% for more lead gen and 18% felt more people were aware of their brand. Actually only 4% said they didn’t get jack squat for their foray into content marketing, and who knows what they spent or what they did. It’s not always our industry’s fault y’know.
-If you want to figure out how your content can play nicey nice with the algorithm on LinkedIn and get seen by more people, their Senior Director of Product Management Pete Davies has spilled the beans. Look at them all over the place. See what they want is more engagement from users because, let’s face it, a lot of busy businesspeople, when they go on LinkedIn, are lurkers and consumers and takers. They’d rather get audited than like or participate in a discussion. So, LinkedIn is focusing more on niche-specific professional conversations and not so much pumping up things that are already trending. So apparently when you open the app, bam, it’ll with greased lightning like speed look for newer posts from your connections and the different things you follow. You know what identifies those occupation specific conversations? AI! Because AI is the magic word that fixes everything! Davies says, “Members are more interested in going deep on topics they’re interested in. We see better conversation around niche ideas than broad.” Wait a minute, I’m going to write that down. People are more interested in the things they’re interested in. This statistic will come as no surprise. Engagement on LinkedIn newsfeed posts is usually just generated by the top 1% of power users. Which I think I am. Interestingly, the LinkedIn algorithm doesn’t favor any one format over another. So LinkedIn videos, while nice and probably smart, won’t automatically get more love. What the algorithm is turned on by are posts that out and out encourage engagement. It can pretty much predict not only how likely it is a user will engage, but whether others in that user’s network will engage too. Writer Amy Gesenhues suggests given all this, using hashtags, more niche ones vs broad, might be the smart play. But keep it to three or less or you’ll look like you’re having some kind of hashtag seizure.
-Lastly, and quickly, don’t forget about Pinterest if you want to inspire your customers. They say there’s been a 31% increase in searches for “inspirational videos” since last year, and active users are 54% more likely to say those inspire them more than videos they see on other platforms. So to help all that they’ve got an improved uploading tool, a refreshed gallery tab so you can feature your clips in one nice place, and a lifetime analytics metric – which is cool because remember videos don’t get buried in a feed on Pinterest, they keep popping up…like R Kelly legal charges. Recommendation algorithms are starting to help people find related videos too. Venturebeat’s Kyle Wiggers reminds you 59% of millennials have discovered products on Pinterest, which puts it right up there with Instagram. Pinterest users spend 29% more than non-users. And 90% of weekly users turn to Pinterest to make buying decisions, with 78% saying brand content there is “useful.” Don’t you want to be useful someday?
https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/10/pinterest-introduces-new-video-tools-for-brands-and-creators/
That’s the Content Marketing Quickie for this week. If you are starting to conclude it’s not that bad, go ahead and subscribe to it. Ask your friends if they heard or been victimized by it yet. And we’ll have more next week.