Monday, 22 February 2016

8 Instagram Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid


8 Instagram Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid


Instagram, Instagram, Instagram.


These days the image sharing social networking site has taken the stage and everyone including celebrities, entities, marketers, creatives and of course the general public istapping into this networkevery day. Humans love visuals, and thats probably why the image-sharing concept is rapidly gaining popularity.


So, what do marketers do? Run the race and sign up for Instagram just to share pictures? Well, thats part of it, but what about the rest? More often than not, just sharing pictures isnt enough and it definitely wont make your brand stand out of the millions of accounts that get created every day for the same purpose!


Dont mistake presence for quality marketing!


Here are 8 Instagram marketingmistakes you should avoidwhile operating your business account.


1. Setting your account to private


Privacy - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Business2Blogger


This could be an unintentional mistake but definitely a major one!


Having your images and videos set to private may make sense for personal accounts, but it sure doesnt make any sense for company accounts that are meant to be marketed to the general public.


You could come across any business or individual in the Instagram community who has an interest in what you have to offer. By setting your account to private, you are only limiting your opportunities.


Make sure your account is set to public, so that you always have a higher chance of reaching out to a massive audience and pulling out potentials that could be your next favorite fan or follower.


2. Posting random photos or videos


irrelevant images - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Its Erin James


You might be the sole social media marketer for a company, or perhaps a solopreneur marketing your own business.


You may like to share random photos of your coffee mug or your dog, or maybe even a new place you visited.


However, keep in mind that although you want to be social, this is a business account, not a personal one in which you get to share anything in the world you like.


By posting pictures that are not relevant to your brand, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional. Theres nothing wrong with being a little personal once in a while and putting a face to your brand. However, try to keep a fine balance between your random posts and relevant ones.


3. Low quality photos


low quality photos - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Klear


As a business, you need to appear as professional as possible.


Prospectsare judging your brand as well as your brands quality in various ways. Believe it or not, but the quality of your pictures and videos also sends a message about the quality of your product or service.


High resolution photos are automatically associated with quality and professionalism. The opposite is true for crappy photos with poor resolutions.


Make sure your pictures are twice the recommended size (meaning 1280 by 1280 px) so that the picture turns out to be a high quality image. Also make sure that your images are sized correctlyand perfectly centered without any odd-seeming cut outs.


4. Not using hashtags correctly or not using them at all


inappropriate use of hashtags - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Yina Goh


What definescorrect hashtag usage?


First of all, your hashtags should be searchable thats the whole idea behind categorized hashtags.


Second, they should be short and relevant because #we #all #know #how #annoying #a #hashtag #overload #is!


Plus, make sure you are following popular hashtags that are relevant to your niche.


Not using hashtags at all is another mistake many brands and businesses make. Hashtags provide reach to others in your community and vice versa. As a result, it creates a gateway for more potential fans and customers who are also following and contributing to popular hashtags you frequently post to.


5. Not posting consistently


not posting consistently - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: HubSpot


You know what they say, consistency is the key. And this is definitely true in this case as well.


Posting on social media, blogs, or any media channel for that matter requires consistency. When you are consistent you are predictable and fans and followers like a predictable frequency.


One more thing to note is that you shouldnt mistake quantity for consistency. Spamming your followers feeds with a plethora of images every day is not a good idea. It increases the likelihood of you annoying your prospects and alienating them after they decide to unfollow you. Try to spread out your posts with relevant and engaging content that is high quality.


6. Not following your followers


not following your followers - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Sprout Social


Clever marketing strategies usually call for getting to know your customers as best you can.


If your fans decide to follow you, make sure you treat them with at least a follow back. You dont have to comment or communicate with them on their personal account, of course. However, following your followers will give you the chance to get to know them better and find out what interests them.


With this information youre better prepped up for getting their attention and meeting their needs.


7. Not proofreading


Grammatical - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source


Misspellings and grammar mistakes Yikes!


This is one easy way to make yor brand look unprofessional. Missing punctuation, sloppy spelling, and careless grammar can make people cringe.


They are also quick to ruin impressions in front of a massive audience. A great example of this is a recent York University advertisement that spelled engineering wrong and made the news.


8. Not engaging with your audience


not engaging with fans - example of Instagram marketing mistakes


Source: Seen Moment


Engage, engage, and engage!


This is the number one tip every social media marketer should be looking into. Engagement is all about connection. The best way to connect to your customer is to interact with them.


If your audience is commenting on your posts and asking questions, make sure you respond!


Sum up


Be wary of these Instagram marketing mistakes and avoid them at all costs!


Sometimes, even the smallestand simplest of mistakes can turn off prospectsand be the reason for people unfollowing you and being unfollowed hurts!


Guest Author:Skornia Alison works as a social media manager at an online service that offers online college essay help. When shes not circling or tweeting friends, she loves writing blogs on social media marketing, content strategy development, and more.


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Twitch competitor DingIt rounds up 20M monthly viewers

DingIt's homepage.




Twitch shouldnt be, well, twitching just yet, but another site wants a piece of that streaming pie.


DingIt, a global streaming site specializing in esports, noted today that it has an average of 20 million monthly viewers a year after its launch. Of course, it has a ways to go if it hopes to catch up with Twitch, the leading streaming site. Twitch has over 100 million viewers a month. Still, this is a good start for the U.K.-based DingIt, another company taking advantage of the growing esports market, which will hit $463 million this year and $1.1 billion by 2019, according to Newzoo. DingIt boasts on its site that it has the highest resolution and bit rates of any streaming site, with a delay of just four seconds.


This first year has been nothing short of spectacular, said Mark Hain, chief executive officer of DingIt, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. All our projections and expectations have been exceeded so we know there is a real demand for what DingIt offers. Most exciting of all is that we have been able to drive significant revenues from our global ad platform, proving that it is possible to deliver a quality esports experience and make the business side work too.


During its first year, DingIt notes that it spent $400,000 on original content and acquiring the rights to stream third-party tournaments. All of DingIts viewers have watched a combined 743 years of content.



Twitch competitor DingIt rounds up 20M monthly viewers

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Sunday, 21 February 2016

Facebook's Zuckerberg appears at Samsung event to talk VR; confirms Minecraft is coming to Oculus

2016-02-21 19.51.00




BARCELONA, Spain -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered a much-needed shot of adrenaline to Samsung's Unpacked press conference by making an unannounced appearance on stage to talk virtual reality and to praise his South Korean partner.


"VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want," Zuckerberg said. "For right now, it's mostly used for gaming. That's quickly evolving."


Zuckerberg asked the audience to imagine being able to do everything from sit around a virtual campfire with friends any time they want to holding spontaneous meetings in VR.


He added: "They why Facebook is investing so much in VR, so we can't deliver these new social experiences. VR is going to be the next social platform. And that's why we're working with Samsung."


Zuckerberg said Samsung is the only company that can build the OLED screens at scale needed to deliver the "low persistance rending" necessary to make VR a mainstream technology.


In addition, Zuckerberg cited some new VR-related stats: more than 1 million hours of video have been watched in VR. And as a step in that direction, he touted the embrace of 360-video on Facebook.


"We've been working to make Facebook the best platform for 360 video," he said. "360 videos are even more immersive. You feel like you're actually there. Our comunity already loves 360 videos. More than 1 million people are watching them every day. And more than 20,000 360 videos have been uploaded."


Zuckerberg said Facebook has created new teams with the company to develop next generation social apps for VR. And he said more engineers have been shifted to accelerate the underlying VR technology. As an example, he said in the coming weeks, Facebook would deliver too Gear VR a technology called "dynamic streaming." This tech delivers higher resolution video to the area someone is watching and lower resolution to other areas to improve quality and reduce bandwidth needed to deliver the video.


Finally, Zuckerberg said 200 gaming apps have already been developed for Oculus, and that Minecraft would be coming to the VR platform also.



More information:














Facebook's Zuckerberg appears at Samsung event to talk VR; confirms Minecraft is coming to Oculus

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Saturday, 20 February 2016

7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016


7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016


Once upon a time, SEO and content marketing were separate concepts...


They are quickly becoming one and the same.


Google places value on high quality content and ranks your site based on the experience visitors have with your content.


Gone are the days of aggressive link building and over night SEO strategies. Instead marketers are encouraged to play a long-term game by creating resourceful pieces of content that will naturally attract attention from credible websites and social media networks.


This Google trends graph pits "link building" against "content marketing"...


Google content marketing trends graph


It's no surprise to see a decline in search volume when it comes to link building and a continuing growth for content marketing.


Content marketing is becoming more and more popular to build relationships with your audience, and if you don't take action now and build a solid content marketing strategy your competition will get ahead.


To stay ahead of the curve, it is essential to keep up to date with the latest content marketing trends. To make it easier for you, here are top 7 content marketing trends that will rule 2016.


Trend#1 - The magic of user-generated content


There is no one better than your customers themselves to create content for your business.


It will be authentic, trust-worthy and appealing to your target audience (as they are your target audience). Plus, people naturally want to know about a product or service from the user's perspective.


The Guardian rightfully states that 70% of consumers place peer recommendations and reviews above professionally written content. And this is what happens with everyone, right? So, ask your customers to create content for you and display it on your site or in your store to gain the trust of more and more people.


One great example of user-generated content is Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign in which the company produced Coke bottles with customers' names on the labels and handed them out throughout different cities.


They asked the customers to share pictures of their personalized coke bottle on Twitter and other social media platforms. The company attributes the campaign to a 2% increase in US sales.


Coca cola user-generated content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"User generated content (UGC) allows you to collect, moderate and publish at scale from content collected and curated from brand advocates and fans." - Jeff Bullas, world's #1 Content Marketing Influencer, Social Media Marketing Strategist & Speaker.


Trend#2: Zero in on interactive storytelling


People are not mere spectators these days. They demand content in which they can get involved, without feeling targeted. They seek a visual story that's powerful and out of the box.


A blog published at TruConversion.com suggests to be mindful that your target audience is more likely to remember and react to great stories.


By interactive storytelling I mean that you can present your content through or with images, videos, infographics, quizzes, calculators, assessments, generators, or graders.


According to IMPACT Community Coordinator, Carolyn Edgecomb, storytelling is one of the best ways you can develop deeper connections with your target audience.


Have a look at the video content made by New York Times T-Brand Studio.


NYT content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"There's so much static content out there on the Web that it's important for businesses to produce content that yields enough power and substance to capture the target audience's interest right from the get-go. This is where interactive content provides an optimal solution to businesses, especially to small businesses. It is perhaps the best way to increase traffic and conversion among small businesses." - Rahul Aggarwal, Founder - Designhill.com.


Trend#3 - Episodic content is a must-have


Breaking your content into parts and organizing it over a time-period will keep your audience engaged. It builds anticipation as you create a narrative and give breaks in between.


Episodic content has a long lasting impact on the reader's mind which cannot be achieved by one piece of writing. If you are able to create suspense in your reader's mind through the first episode of your content, they will most likely come back to watch or read it.


An article on SEMrush explains how to take care of the timing of episodes with a long enough gap to ensure that your target audience actively seeks the next instalment.


There are many examples of episodic content that you come across everyday but hardly notice. This technique never fails to generate curiosity about your brand. For instance, an example of episodic content is Serial. Serial changed the podcast game and produced a captivating story in weekly, hour-long segments. Every episode of Serial ended with the host leaving her audience with a cliffhanger, thus creating a desire to hear the next episode.


Dustwun content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"Thousands of people are, usually collaboratively, producing a lot of short-form, episodic fiction and hundreds of thousands more are reading it." - Anna Rafferty, Director, Digital Marketing Strategies, Penguin.


Trend#4 - Try personalizing your content


Simply creating content is not enough anymore.


The challenge is to produce something that connects with your audience at an altogether different level. With so much content being produced every day, people are getting immune to even the best of it. Therefore, you need to add a flavor of personalization to your content in order to get the desired results.


Wouldn't it be great to have different content for different types of visitors? I mean, you can design your page in a way that visitors feel that the page speaks in their language.


According to TruConversion, personalized content talks directly to your target audience and offers the exact solution he/she is looking for. And an article on Conversionxl.com states that content personalization makes money.


For instance Paramore, an American rock band's merchandise store, uses geo-location data to direct visitors from different parts of the world to their respective pages. This helps the buying process for customers as they are able to see prices in their national currency. This is how it looks when people visit the site from US:


Personalization content marketing trends


(Image source: conversionxl.com)


And this is how it looks when anyone visits the site from the United Kingdom:


Geo-location content marketing trends


Whenever you're personalizing your content, make sure that everything in the content - whether it's the font, words or the overall voice --speaks to your target market and resonates with them in the best way. So that when they look at it, it's their experience, their voice, their taste they see.


Also, don't forget to ensure that content is laid out in a way that highlights your branding elements such as logo design, icons or symbols. This will make customers remember your brand along with their experience for a really long time.


What do the experts say?


"The name of the game in 2016 is personalization. Marketers will have more opportunities than ever to deliver the exact content that people want when they want it." - Shawn Fitzgerald, VP/Digital Marketing Group at Thomasnet.


Trend#5 - Select social media for content distribution


An article published on Designhill explains that social media has become increasingly popular amongst small businesses, who are using social media hacks to reach out to their customers and reinforce their brand.


In fact, Social Media Examiner's Industry Report 2015 reveals that 92% of marketers report that social media is important to their marketing mix. In 2016 too, more and more marketers will make use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. for distributing their content.


Thoroughly research the platforms where your target audience hang out and choose the right platforms. Facebook has almost 1.4 billion users and Twitter has 302 million active users. So, use these platforms to distribute content and increase your leads.


Kissmetrics explains that you must define a good distribution schedule for each network and map it out in a simple timeline.


Social sharing times graph for content marketing trends


(Source: Kissmetrics)


What do the experts say?


"No longer can you rely on Facebook to provide free traffic to your website or blog. It's become just another paid advertising channel. All social networks are now in this game and as social media has become just another media channel, that reality is not going away. You are going to need to adapt." - Jeff Bullas, World's #1 Marketing Influencer, Strategist & Speaker. CEO at Jeffbullas.com.


Trend#6 - Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand


SEO and content marketing complement each other.


Content marketing fulfils the demand created by SEO. The more unique and fresh the content is you create, the better it will be for your search rankings.


Who doesn't want to be on the first page of any search engine?


An article published on Search Engine Land explains that being found in organic search results and attracting traffic to your site makes it possible to engage people and convert them into fans and customers.


Content marketing trends SEO


(Source: Brafton)


What do the experts say?


"Content is king, and it is expected to play an even bigger role in 2016 digital marketing. Content should be educational, entertaining or enriching, rather than a message centered around a direct sales pitch. A strong strategy of creative, personal, interesting content is eclipsing more traditional areas like SEO management and advertising."- Ben Silverman, Marketing Writer for Brafton.


Trend#7 - Budgets will skyrocket


2016 will see a rise in the investments by marketers in content marketing.


In the past, marketers did not see content marketing as something they could invest in. But as time goes on, content marketing has proven to be one of the most effective methods of driving website traffic. But it takes money to create effective interactive content to draw traffic, generate leads and increase conversions. Therefore, more and more marketers are willing to spend thousands of dollars on their content marketing efforts.


An article published on Hubspot notes that 71% of marketers are getting an increased content marketing budget.


Plus, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 54% B2B marketers will increase their budget for content marketing significantly over the next 12 months.


Infograph for content marketing trends


(Source: Contenthook)


What do the experts say?


"I'd say that things are getting serious: content marketing is not yet a science but a proven methodology for it has emerged and gone are the days when you could simply rely on pure creativity and... luck. While content generation remains key, successful content marketers invest at least as much time and budget in the other parts of the content marketing cycle: planning, distribution as well as analyzing what works and doesn't." - Guillaume Decugis, CEO & Co-Founder at Scoop.it.


Wrapping it up


With the beginning of a new year, marketers have already ramped up their content marketing strategies for 2016.


It's important for you as a marketer to keep up to date with the latest content marketing trends and stand out from the crowd.


I hope that these content marketing trends will help you somehow in achieving new heights for your business in 2016.


Have a great year ahead!


As always, please share your thoughts in the comments, if you enjoyed this post share it on twitter, and never hesitate to hit me up with any questions, critiques, or feedback.


Guest Author: Saumya Raghav is a content marketer who works at Designhill, one of the world's fastest-growing custom design crowdsourcing marketplace. A blogger, columnist, content marketing expert, editor, marketing instructor, and conversion scientist by day and a reader by night, he loves to write on topics related to digital marketing strategies, technical and international SEO, web analytics, startup and small business strategies, growth hack strategies, conversion optimization strategies, etc. You can engage with him on Twitter - @saumyaraghav, Facebook - and LinkedIn.


The post 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.






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Make Money Online posting articles, videos like this
7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016

7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016


7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016


Once upon a time, SEO and content marketing were separate concepts...


They are quickly becoming one and the same.


Google places value on high quality content and ranks your site based on the experience visitors have with your content.


Gone are the days of aggressive link building and over night SEO strategies. Instead marketers are encouraged to play a long-term game by creating resourceful pieces of content that will naturally attract attention from credible websites and social media networks.


This Google trends graph pits "link building" against "content marketing"...


Google content marketing trends graph


It's no surprise to see a decline in search volume when it comes to link building and a continuing growth for content marketing.


Content marketing is becoming more and more popular to build relationships with your audience, and if you don't take action now and build a solid content marketing strategy your competition will get ahead.


To stay ahead of the curve, it is essential to keep up to date with the latest content marketing trends. To make it easier for you, here are top 7 content marketing trends that will rule 2016.


Trend#1 - The magic of user-generated content


There is no one better than your customers themselves to create content for your business.


It will be authentic, trust-worthy and appealing to your target audience (as they are your target audience). Plus, people naturally want to know about a product or service from the user's perspective.


The Guardian rightfully states that 70% of consumers place peer recommendations and reviews above professionally written content. And this is what happens with everyone, right? So, ask your customers to create content for you and display it on your site or in your store to gain the trust of more and more people.


One great example of user-generated content is Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign in which the company produced Coke bottles with customers' names on the labels and handed them out throughout different cities.


They asked the customers to share pictures of their personalized coke bottle on Twitter and other social media platforms. The company attributes the campaign to a 2% increase in US sales.


Coca cola user-generated content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"User generated content (UGC) allows you to collect, moderate and publish at scale from content collected and curated from brand advocates and fans." - Jeff Bullas, world's #1 Content Marketing Influencer, Social Media Marketing Strategist & Speaker.


Trend#2: Zero in on interactive storytelling


People are not mere spectators these days. They demand content in which they can get involved, without feeling targeted. They seek a visual story that's powerful and out of the box.


A blog published at TruConversion.com suggests to be mindful that your target audience is more likely to remember and react to great stories.


By interactive storytelling I mean that you can present your content through or with images, videos, infographics, quizzes, calculators, assessments, generators, or graders.


According to IMPACT Community Coordinator, Carolyn Edgecomb, storytelling is one of the best ways you can develop deeper connections with your target audience.


Have a look at the video content made by New York Times T-Brand Studio.


NYT content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"There's so much static content out there on the Web that it's important for businesses to produce content that yields enough power and substance to capture the target audience's interest right from the get-go. This is where interactive content provides an optimal solution to businesses, especially to small businesses. It is perhaps the best way to increase traffic and conversion among small businesses." - Rahul Aggarwal, Founder - Designhill.com.


Trend#3 - Episodic content is a must-have


Breaking your content into parts and organizing it over a time-period will keep your audience engaged. It builds anticipation as you create a narrative and give breaks in between.


Episodic content has a long lasting impact on the reader's mind which cannot be achieved by one piece of writing. If you are able to create suspense in your reader's mind through the first episode of your content, they will most likely come back to watch or read it.


An article on SEMrush explains how to take care of the timing of episodes with a long enough gap to ensure that your target audience actively seeks the next instalment.


There are many examples of episodic content that you come across everyday but hardly notice. This technique never fails to generate curiosity about your brand. For instance, an example of episodic content is Serial. Serial changed the podcast game and produced a captivating story in weekly, hour-long segments. Every episode of Serial ended with the host leaving her audience with a cliffhanger, thus creating a desire to hear the next episode.


Dustwun content marketing trends


What do the experts say?


"Thousands of people are, usually collaboratively, producing a lot of short-form, episodic fiction and hundreds of thousands more are reading it." - Anna Rafferty, Director, Digital Marketing Strategies, Penguin.


Trend#4 - Try personalizing your content


Simply creating content is not enough anymore.


The challenge is to produce something that connects with your audience at an altogether different level. With so much content being produced every day, people are getting immune to even the best of it. Therefore, you need to add a flavor of personalization to your content in order to get the desired results.


Wouldn't it be great to have different content for different types of visitors? I mean, you can design your page in a way that visitors feel that the page speaks in their language.


According to TruConversion, personalized content talks directly to your target audience and offers the exact solution he/she is looking for. And an article on Conversionxl.com states that content personalization makes money.


For instance Paramore, an American rock band's merchandise store, uses geo-location data to direct visitors from different parts of the world to their respective pages. This helps the buying process for customers as they are able to see prices in their national currency. This is how it looks when people visit the site from US:


Personalization content marketing trends


(Image source: conversionxl.com)


And this is how it looks when anyone visits the site from the United Kingdom:


Geo-location content marketing trends


Whenever you're personalizing your content, make sure that everything in the content - whether it's the font, words or the overall voice --speaks to your target market and resonates with them in the best way. So that when they look at it, it's their experience, their voice, their taste they see.


Also, don't forget to ensure that content is laid out in a way that highlights your branding elements such as logo design, icons or symbols. This will make customers remember your brand along with their experience for a really long time.


What do the experts say?


"The name of the game in 2016 is personalization. Marketers will have more opportunities than ever to deliver the exact content that people want when they want it." - Shawn Fitzgerald, VP/Digital Marketing Group at Thomasnet.


Trend#5 - Select social media for content distribution


An article published on Designhill explains that social media has become increasingly popular amongst small businesses, who are using social media hacks to reach out to their customers and reinforce their brand.


In fact, Social Media Examiner's Industry Report 2015 reveals that 92% of marketers report that social media is important to their marketing mix. In 2016 too, more and more marketers will make use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. for distributing their content.


Thoroughly research the platforms where your target audience hang out and choose the right platforms. Facebook has almost 1.4 billion users and Twitter has 302 million active users. So, use these platforms to distribute content and increase your leads.


Kissmetrics explains that you must define a good distribution schedule for each network and map it out in a simple timeline.


Social sharing times graph for content marketing trends


(Source: Kissmetrics)


What do the experts say?


"No longer can you rely on Facebook to provide free traffic to your website or blog. It's become just another paid advertising channel. All social networks are now in this game and as social media has become just another media channel, that reality is not going away. You are going to need to adapt." - Jeff Bullas, World's #1 Marketing Influencer, Strategist & Speaker. CEO at Jeffbullas.com.


Trend#6 - Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand


SEO and content marketing complement each other.


Content marketing fulfils the demand created by SEO. The more unique and fresh the content is you create, the better it will be for your search rankings.


Who doesn't want to be on the first page of any search engine?


An article published on Search Engine Land explains that being found in organic search results and attracting traffic to your site makes it possible to engage people and convert them into fans and customers.


Content marketing trends SEO


(Source: Brafton)


What do the experts say?


"Content is king, and it is expected to play an even bigger role in 2016 digital marketing. Content should be educational, entertaining or enriching, rather than a message centered around a direct sales pitch. A strong strategy of creative, personal, interesting content is eclipsing more traditional areas like SEO management and advertising."- Ben Silverman, Marketing Writer for Brafton.


Trend#7 - Budgets will skyrocket


2016 will see a rise in the investments by marketers in content marketing.


In the past, marketers did not see content marketing as something they could invest in. But as time goes on, content marketing has proven to be one of the most effective methods of driving website traffic. But it takes money to create effective interactive content to draw traffic, generate leads and increase conversions. Therefore, more and more marketers are willing to spend thousands of dollars on their content marketing efforts.


An article published on Hubspot notes that 71% of marketers are getting an increased content marketing budget.


Plus, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 54% B2B marketers will increase their budget for content marketing significantly over the next 12 months.


Infograph for content marketing trends


(Source: Contenthook)


What do the experts say?


"I'd say that things are getting serious: content marketing is not yet a science but a proven methodology for it has emerged and gone are the days when you could simply rely on pure creativity and... luck. While content generation remains key, successful content marketers invest at least as much time and budget in the other parts of the content marketing cycle: planning, distribution as well as analyzing what works and doesn't." - Guillaume Decugis, CEO & Co-Founder at Scoop.it.


Wrapping it up


With the beginning of a new year, marketers have already ramped up their content marketing strategies for 2016.


It's important for you as a marketer to keep up to date with the latest content marketing trends and stand out from the crowd.


I hope that these content marketing trends will help you somehow in achieving new heights for your business in 2016.


Have a great year ahead!


As always, please share your thoughts in the comments, if you enjoyed this post share it on twitter, and never hesitate to hit me up with any questions, critiques, or feedback.


Guest Author: Saumya Raghav is a content marketer who works at Designhill, one of the world's fastest-growing custom design crowdsourcing marketplace. A blogger, columnist, content marketing expert, editor, marketing instructor, and conversion scientist by day and a reader by night, he loves to write on topics related to digital marketing strategies, technical and international SEO, web analytics, startup and small business strategies, growth hack strategies, conversion optimization strategies, etc. You can engage with him on Twitter - @saumyaraghav, Facebook - and LinkedIn.


The post 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.






from Jeffbullas's Blog http://ift.tt/20ZaiCm


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Make Money Online posting articles, videos like this
7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Reign Supreme in 2016