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Though they may seem very similar, the difference between miniblogs and regular blogs is that with the latter, comments are allowed on all posts.
Miniblogs, on the other hand, require people to vote for their favorite comment or create one themselves.
This tactic works particularly well in communities where members can add value through discussion and new ideas. In this way, voting becomes an exercise in crowd surfing – letting the community pick what happens.
Vote posting also has another advantage over individual articles – it creates links to sources. People who visit your site from a vote post know immediately whether you’re worth reading and how trustworthy you are. That’s because they’ve either read your work or voted on it.
Online viewers are increasingly choosing to watch video content rather than read text-based stories.
Facebook in particular has been a dominant player in this area, by offering different versions of its news feed depending on whether you’re reading Facebook posts or watching Facebook videos.
By creating an experience that mimics what people already do on their social media platforms, Facebook hopes to encourage people to consume longer stretches of time viewing content that looks like it would play well with friends.
Google recently made a big push into online video with the launch of Google Play Movies Apps. And YouTube, the world’s largest video website, estimates that people spend 100 million hours per day streaming video (that’s about 40 billion minutes).
Why all this effort? Because surveys show that video gets far more engagement than any other form of content. If someone watches a three-minute video, for example, they'll click on another video less than two weeks later. By comparison, if they read an article of similar length, they'll probably just scroll down and look at something else.
Consumers also say they enjoy being able to listen instead of read, since it allows them to move beyond the surface when speaking with a speaker.
For these reasons, content marketing managers are spending more money and time planning video campaigns than ever before.
This is one of the most common misconception about content marketing, ‘Keywords are what make blogs searchable.’
According to Google, using relevant words in your blog posts is only half of the battle. The other half is making sure that those pages have enough backlinks (references) to them from high-quality sites.
Google considers both internal and external links quality. If several of your own site's articles link to the same article, that helps! External links come from outside websites who want to talk about your topic or help their visitors read it.
You can get started with content marketing by grabbing an audience first. Then work down on your keyword list and build out your initial content strategy.
Content creation takes time and effort, so once you've got a base going, go slow. Only put up fresh content every week or two.
Keep doing this well into the future, people will start to find you and be found by you, and then they'll begin looking for information around your content topics.
One of the biggest lies that businesses tell is that their customers are always searching for them. This isn’t true.
When consumers search for products or services, they usually want three things: information, entertainment, and sales.
They need facts and figures to make decisions, as well as tips and guides to help them through life’s ups and downs.
They want to be entertained — someone to talk about with friends. And they want to find deals, bargains, or discounts.
If you give all three of these things to your customers, they will come back again and again. You can meet all three needs with fresh content.
Your business just has to understand how to create and deliver fresh content to satisfy each need.
Here are all the different types of content people seek (and pay for) and ideas for creating it.
Email marketing has been around for years, but it’s still one of the most effective ways to promote content and run successful campaigns. By establishing a dedicated email trackable link from your website or landing page, you can measure the effectiveness of any advertising efforts quickly and easily.
By implementing an easy-to-use plug-in, you can see when people open emails, read them, delete them, or mark them as spam.
This allows you to not only track how many people opened your email, but also how much traffic your email promotion generated. While there are some financial reasons to use email marketing, the main reason is to see which messages caused an increase in sales.
A lot of business owners make the mistake of thinking that just having a company profile is enough to gain customers. It isn’t.
You need to put effort into it.
It has to be updated regularly, including details like new products/services, jobs posted, deals, awards, etc.
People do check company profiles for information about your business, and if you don’t have anything detailed set up, then you will lose traffic and potential customers.
Video is now one of the most significant ways that people consume content. More than 80% of all internet traffic is estimated to be video related.
That makes sense considering how much time we spend watching videos. From YouTube to Facebook, users have more channels for streaming videos.
Given this increasing demand for video content, it’s no surprise that traditional marketing strategies have started taking note. More and more companies are investing in visual storytelling tools as a way to connect with consumers.
However, not every company should use a video strategy right away. Before you run out and create your first video, consider these tips from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. He talks about the importance of video motivation and engagement.
Also, research shows that viewers want depth and quality over fadness and instant results. For example, tweet pictures often receive few likes and comments compared to their text equivalents.
Thus, while video has grown in popularity, don’t expect to see an immediate impact from adding video to your content. It takes time to build confidence in the audience.
One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is focusing only on their own interest. In fact, I would say that most corporate cultures focus too much on branding and advertising; they forget about the importance of customer service.
When customers are unhappy, they will tell everyone around them who will listen how bad the company was to work with them.
It’s like people have learned not to trust companies again. How can you expect people to do business with your brand if you don’t even offer proper customer service?
This starts with at least acknowledging someone else might be hurt by our actions. If we all did this little bit more often, it would go a long way towards making things better.
Stories are an incredibly popular way to connect with your audience, so don’t forget them! Instead of focusing on how you sell something, tell a tale that leads up to the real message.
Your audience will be much more engaged if they are able to follow your story along the way. Consider their position in life – where they are in the journey that you are enabling them to take.
Consider your target market and what they can afford to buy compared to your products. Are they likely to buy now or later?
The idea is to have a story that tells who you are and makes you feel less like a commodity and more like a person.
Stories are one of the most effective ways to do this, mainly because we were designed to hear stories from parents about their children and feel connected to the child even when we cannot hold them in our arms.
That connection was created over a story and extends to any other narrative including films, novels, blogs and commercials.
