Tal Siach says, “Content marketing is mainstream, with 90% of marketers using content to build their brands and achieve their business goals, according to the Content Marketing Institute. While it’s now widely understood that content marketing is a critical component of any marketing strategy, the most forward-thinking content marketers are experimenting with how they create, distribute and track their content’s success. That’s leading to more long-form videos as well as more interesting trends, which we’ll explore further here — micro-content and interactive apps. As marketers,... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Marketers seeking to reach the World Cup audience without paying for an expensive campaign have effective alternatives, according to a recent report from Networked Insights. The company examined more than 5 billion tweets to find 575,000 active fans in the United States, then analyzed that audience to identify insights that could be of use to marketers looking to reach fans without spending directly on official sponsorships or soccer media. Below, key findings from the report. Overlapping Interests World Cup fans over-index across various interests; that is, they are... [...]

Kunle Campbell says, “As a small business owner and principal of a boutique consultancy, I thrive on the exposure and connections provided by social media. However, managing and monitoring every platform directly with the basic tools provided by each major platform can be daunting and time consuming. This is why I use a set of tools to help schedule, manage, and monitor my content, shares, engagement, and reach on social media. For many businesses, it has become crucial to track the effectiveness of social media marketing, both in real time and at regular business cycles. And as social media... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “The 10 most popular content topics on Facebook and Twitter are very similar, but topics differ significantly beyond the top 10, according to a recent study by Klout. The report was based on Klout Topics data (categorized interests, passions, and content areas) from over 580 million people around the world. The analysis found music and television rank as the No. 1 and No. 2 most popular topics, respectively, on both Facebook and Twitter. Creating and sharing content concerning celebrities, software, holidays, films, and business is also extremely popular on both social... [...]

The latest article on  ‘MarketingProfs’ is titled “The Most Effective Calls to Action for Facebook Posts”. Ayaz Nanji says, “Simply asking people to share a post is often the most effective call to action (CTA) for Facebook posts by brands, according to a recent report from TrackMaven. Posts that include the word “share” garner nearly two times as many social actions (likes, comments, and shares) on average compared with those that do not (4.02 vs. 2.19 average interactions per post), the analysis found. Use of the word “please” was also... [...]

The latest article on  ‘Marketing Land’ is titled “5 Tips For The Email Deliverability-Obsessed”. Justin Zhu says, “Email deliverability is like a mythical sphinx wrapped in a 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. An incredible number of factors go into whether your email was delivered, how fast it was delivered and where it landed (primary, social, promotions tab, or the dreaded spam folder). Also, every ISP, like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail, behaves differently when it comes to accepting email, and they are very tight-lipped about their algorithms. Finally, once you attain a... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “How Facebook Will Fuel The Next Wave Of Open Source Businesses”. Matt Assay says, “It’s no longer in doubt: Facebook is the world’s largest open source company. Facebook could already have been considered to be in the open source lead through the release of its datacenter designs, databases and more. This week’s open-sourcing of a network switch (Wedge) and its operating system (FBOSS) have cemented Facebook’s place atop the podium of open source contributors. But have they also sounded the death knell for open... [...]

The latest article on  ‘Marketing Land’ is titled “Digital Is Digital Wherever It Appears: The Road To Total Convergence”. Scott Brinker says, “I’ve written about marketing apps and their role in the 4th wave of content marketing in my past two columns, describing some of the concepts behind them. To me, they are the interactive successor of the landing page — the next generation of lightweight web experiences for marketing campaigns. This month, I’d like to share some independent evidence about how well interactive content performs in that role”. Digital... [...]

The latest article on  ‘MarketingProfs’ is titled “How Mobile Consumers Engage With Promotional Emails”. Ayaz Nanji says, “Consumers decide to read promotional emails on their mobile devices primarily based on whether they recognize who the messages are coming from, according to a recent report from Campaigner. Just over 42% of US consumers surveyed say familiarity with the sender’s name is the main influence on deciding whether to open a promotional email on their mobile device. Other major factors include awareness of a special deal/price in the message... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “Twitter Has Been Too Slow To Catch Up With The Visual Web”. Lauren Orsini says, “Eight years after the invention of Twitter, animated GIFs have finally come to the network. That’s way too slow, and it tells us a lot about the speed with which Twitter is adapting to the way people use the Web these days. Animated GIFs, image formats which display a looping video clip, have been around since the days of Usenet and America Online. For nearly a decade they fell out of fashion, until their slightly kitschy nostalgia brought them back... [...]