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What’s One of the Best Ways To Reach Your Audience to Avoid “Content Shock”?

March 6, 2018 By Leave a Comment
“Content Shock” coined by Mark Schaefer, refers to the rising amount of content posted on the internet on the various channels vs. the finite ability of people to consume all that content. In talking with Mike Barrett, he shared with me a infographic on video content. What’s important to note is that if you want to reach an audience, then video can be the most effective method. And YouTube has a large number of viewers. But it isn’t just about the numbers. YouTube also creates unique relationships with viewers that few other sites can claim.
Here’s more of Mike’s thoughts on the topic and important reasons why YouTube can’t be ignored by anyone who is creating content. With the expansion of channels to reach an audience and the volume of content, whether you are a Marketer, an entrepreneur, a content creator, or simply an entertainer, it is difficult to succeed in a competitive online landscape without video in 2018.
Where Blogs Once Ruled
Video is now the expectation among people online who are seeking interesting content or valuable information.  There is a lot of evidence to suggest that not only is video more popular, but it is also more effective in delivering your message. For example, people remember as much as 80% of what they watch as opposed to merely 20% of what they read.
Top Video Platform
With improved bandwidth more video/ vlog content created every day, YouTube has maintained its position as the top video platform, even as other massive sites like Facebook have started leaning into video heavily.  YouTube has cleared an astonishing 1.5 Billion users and has over 5 million independent channels regularly contributing new content. There is more content than any one person could hope to consume – as many as 400 of hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
Here’s some stats to get your wheels turning:
And this where the whole infographic from Mike Barrett – with many more statistic from Vlogging Guides – can be found.
YouTube is Trusted
 Since it was formed in 2006, YouTube has come a long way since funny cat videos.  It is now a credible source of information for many in both their personal and professional lives. YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world behind only Google which means that a startling number of people are actually turning to YouTube first when they have a question that they need help answering.
That is significant – if you can produce videos that answer those questions and solve those problems, then you can build an engaged audience who will trust your brand and your voice.
Video as a medium has proven that it is effective. Forty-four percent of people report that they have taken action specifically due to an online video, and videos have shown that they improve conversion rates on sales pages, or within emails.
High Engagement
 YouTube is not a site that people use to skim headlines. In fact, an average YouTube user watches 1 hour of video per day on the site. Much of this is due to the many high-quality content producers, but the engineers at YouTube deserve some credit as well.
The site is intelligently designed to maximize use viewing time by promoting videos that perform well in user satisfaction metrics. It uses a sophisticated search algorithm that helps surface the videos that fit exactly what a user is looking for. This is supported by personalized recommendations that give users a number of suggested videos that are related to content that they have engaged with in the past.
The Platform Is Growing
 YouTube’s total view time increase 10x between 2012 and 2017, and it is showing no signs of slowing.  One of the main reasons this upward trend is likely to continue is that younger people have shown that they use the platform that most. 95% of 13-17-year-olds in the US are regular YouTube users, the most of any age bracket.
As more young viewers enter prime YouTubing age, and the platform grows in international markets, YouTube likely still has a long way to go before it reaches its ceiling. This is one of many reasons why it is not too late to establish yourself on this platform now, and why it is critical to do so in 2018.
Thanks Mike for gathering the stats on YouTube! Appreciate you sharing them with me and giving me the opportunity to share them with everyone!
@DrNatalie, VP, Success Cloud, Business Transformation
Salesforce
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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Customer Experience, CX, Digital Marketing, Dr. Natalie's Blog, vlogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

Video Advertising: Key to Getting Customers Attention As Ad Blocking is Increasing

November 10, 2016 By Leave a Comment

Searches for Influencer Marketing have grown 5x in 2015 according to a study from Google Trends from January 2016. Nearly 40% of Millennials are using ad block applications and their use is growing fast according to a study by PageFair & Adobe. So how does a company get their target customer’s attention? And with content marketing a #1 priority for most CMOs as more and more sales are decided upon before even talking to a sales person. And sometimes a salesperson is never contacted, so getting the customer’s undivided attention has never been so important. Perhaps the answer is video marketing. Video consumption has exploded across all devices and is one of the fastest growing advertising category.

Adobe, a the leader in video content creation and delivery, announced it’s acquisition of TubeMogul which will enable brands to capitalize on the huge shift to online video. The acquisition of TubeMogul  strengthens Adobe’s leadership in digital marketing and advertising technology. The addition of TubeMogul will enable Adobe’s customers to maximize their video advertising investments across desktop, mobile, streaming devices and TV. TubeMogul’s video advertising platform. In addition, this allows their customers to build upon their capabilities in search, display and social advertising planning and delivery using Adobe Media Optimizer with Adobe Marketing Cloud. This combination will give customers access to first-party data and measurement capabilities from Adobe Audience Manager (Adobe’s data management platform) and by using Adobe Analytics.

Why is video advertising so important? Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, digital marketing, Adobe gave this statement, “Whether it’s episodic TV, indie films or Hollywood blockbusters, video consumption is exploding across every device and brands are following those eyeballs.” Adobe feels the acquisition of TubeMogul, will give customers a ‘one-stop shop’ for video advertising, providing even more strategic value for the use of the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

TubeMogul is a video demand-side platform (DSP) leader. Brett Wilson, CEO and co-founder, TubeMogul said, “The combination of Adobe Marketing Cloud with TubeMogul’s software creates a uniquely comprehensive platform that will help marketers always know what’s working — and act on it.” And what’s key is measurement – to know what is working and not working, and obviously do more of what is getting a result.

There are so many choices for Marketers today, as far as software and it is only getting more confusing with all the choices. When a software company can show you how to get results, you know you are going in the right direction. Education and learning to use all the features and functions of what the various software platforms provide is of growing concern for most companies to obtain the highest ROI possible for the investment they have made.

It’s key that Marketers are clear on what their strategy, goals, objectives and tactics are and have a strong measurement program to be able to show that the software purchase enhanced the brands ability to drive more awareness, increase customer acquisition and turn more leads into sales. And with ad blocking increasing, there’s got to be another way to get customer’s attention. Video seems to be a prime candidate. This is just one example of how early adopters and innovators are taking hold of the market place and making their competition irrelevant. And like the BlueOcean authors said, that’s the key to financial success in today’s marketplace. Cross the chasm, join the digital transformation and digital disruption evolution or expect to be disrupted. Disrupt or be disrupted. Those are the choices to being innovative leaders and using design thinking to transform your business revenue model.

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, www.ConstellationResearch.com

Covering Customer-facing Applications to Create Great Customer Experiences

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Filed Under: Analytics of Everything, CEO, Chief Revenue Officer, CIO, CMO, Content Marketing, Crossing the Chasm, Customer Experience, customer experience maturity, CX, Digital Disruption, Digital Marketing, Digital Performance Management, Dr. Natalie's Blog, Innovation, Leadership, Organizational Change Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Salesforce Unveils Next Generation Social Studio

November 19, 2014 By Leave a Comment

If you have been wondering what Salesforce has been up to, they have unveiled their next generation social studio, which is now fully integrated into the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It’s got an interesting twist in that it includes next generation social listening, social customer service for service teams and new social lead engagement for sales teams. It seems that the world is finally getting that from the customer’s point of view, that they are not talking to Sales, or Marketing or Customer Service — the customer is talking or interacting or engaging with a company. And to have all of that contained in one application or platform and make the customer information available for all of the various functional departments seems like the best way to make customers feel hear and listened to.

Social media is ubiquitous with customers, yet many companies are still struggling with how social can improve business decisions and processes. Customers and Consumers are adopting social and digital very fast, where as companies are dragging their feet, some kicking and screaming or others even turning a blind eye to it.  As a result, many companies are falling into the digital transformation / customer experience gap.

Digital Disruption Transformation Chasm

Social Studio including a simple user interface that empowers any employee to benefit from social listening and engagement on desktop and mobile devices. Innovations include social customer service for service teams and new social lead engagement for sales teams. Leading global brands like Activision, McDonald’s, and ADP leverage Social Studio and the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to connect with customers in a whole new way.

What Functional Departments Want and Need

Marketers want to run social campaigns, engage with customers, and use social insights to drive marketing decisions. Service teams need to surprise and delight their customers with social customer care. Sales teams need to find and connect to new customers faster with social lead generation. However, social is still isolated from key customer interactions. This means that many companies will fall into the customer experience / digital transformation chasm. However, with the right strategy, leadership, people, process and technology can prevent a company from not crossing the chasm and catch up to customers and consumers.

How Is Salesforce Tackling The Digital Transformation Chasm

What Salesforce has done it build the next generation of Social Studio, using on the best elements of Radian6 and Buddy Media and extending social listening, analysis, content marketing and engagement across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. It also includes a completely new social listening and sentiment engine monitors more than one billion social data sources from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, news sites and more.

Social Studio is designed to meet the scale of the largest multi-brand, multi-region companies, enabling social media teams to empower other groups throughout an enterprise with a unified, easy-to-use social solution for sales, service and marketing. Social marketing and community management teams can finally get rid of their spreadsheets and manage social content calendars in Social Studio. Integration with Social.com, the Marketing Cloud’s social advertising solution for agencies and advertisers, allows teams to monitor top performing content published from Social Studio directly within Social.com, and amplify the content with sophisticated social advertising campaigns to reach more current and potential customers.

Social Studio in the Service Cloud 

Leveraging Social Studio, customer service teams can easily monitor social channels for customer support issues, create a customer case to be managed in the Service Cloud and route these social cases to right person or team to ensure timely resolution of customer issues. With the combined power of Social Studio and the Service Cloud, any company can surprise and delight customers with social customer care on the world’s leading social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Sina Weibo. For the first time, every Service Cloud customer can now get started with social customer service for no additional charge, managing up to two Facebook or Twitter accounts directly from the Service Cloud. Social customer service drives business results, as customers spend 20-40 % more with a company when the company responds to customer service requests over social media.

Social Studio in the Sales Cloud

Two-thirds of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media1. Now sales reps can use Social Studio to find and connect to new customers faster with social lead generation. By listening to conversations across more than one billion social data sources sales reps can identify new leads and engage with them in real-time directly from the Sales Cloud. In addition, using Social Studio, Sales Cloud can automatically make Pardot marketing automation and lead scoring more efficient by adding social data, such as sentiment or influencer status, to campaigns and leads.

Social Studio Partner Program

Social Studio is an open platform where any developer, ISV, customer or partner can directly build and deploy applications. Social Studio launches today with a select partner program that brings together seven of the industry’s leading vendors for visual content and compliance and rights management, content discovery and performance marketing. Partners include Getty Images, Nexgate, a division of Proofpoint, Pressly, Rallyverse, Shutterstock, and Trendpottr.

And that’s one of the ways brands are solving the issue of not following into the customer experience conference and the digital transformation chasm. But it’s not just technology, its got to be a people, process and technology combination. And it has to lead by senior executives, the Board of Directors and become pervasive throughout a culture. And that is a big initiative to accomplish and needs organizational change management. And while people have been talking about organizational change management for years, perhaps it’s time has found its time and place and will finally be taken seriously.

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Covering Marketing, Sales and Customer Service by Delivering Customer Experiences.

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Filed Under: CMO, Content Marketing, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Digital Marketing, Dr. Natalie's Blog, Marketing Automation, Marketing Optimization, Marketing Software Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Content Marketing: BrightEdge Announces Community Edition Including the Data Cube To-Go

September 8, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Most brands didn’t realize the digital disruption and revolution mean that they would become digital publishers. But at the end of the day, that’s exactly what happened. So what are great digital marketers doing to optimize content? That’s what this blog post is about: How are you optimizing your content? So if you are a CMO or Digital Professional, I don’t need to tell you that content is “it.” In fact, According to the Custom Content Council, 42 percent of the $43.9 billion spent on marketing in 2013 was allocated to content marketing. If you look on, LinkedIn there are nearly 2 million professionals working in the content marketing field today.

What’s really important to these professionals is to make sense of what content works and what doesn’t.  Marketers need help to navigate content marketing by making their most powerful technologies available to the entire digital marketing community. Access to this type of technology offers marketers the powerful insights they need to make informed decisions and drive tangible business results.

Along these lines, BrightEdge, content marketing platform, unveiled BrightEdge Community Edition. For the first time, BrightEdge is opening its technology up to the entire digital marketing community at no cost. The Community Edition includes access to Data Cube To-Go, a massive data repository of billions of pieces of content from across the web and Content Optimizer To-Go, a proven recommendation engine for content optimization. Marketers can download the Community Edition at no cost as an extension for Google Chrome and gain immediate insight into the performance of digital content, competitor content, and receive performance-enhancing recommendations.

BrightEdge CEO and Co-Founder Jim Yu said, “BrightEdge is committed to the success of the millions of people around the globe focused on content marketing. We are taking our most powerful technology and putting it in the hands of the entire marketing community. Whether you are a BrightEdge customer or not, you will have access to rich data insights to inform strategy and best practices. We believe this bold move is the best way to help the community deliver content that performs and delivers positive business impact.”

Lemuel Park, CTO and Co-Founder at BrightEdge said, “With Community Edition we have made it possible for anyone to take two of our most powerful and innovative technologies with you as you browse the web. We took the massive scale and power of the Data Cube and made it portable with Data Cube To-Go. We used the proven power of Content Optimizer and made it available for any page on the Internet with Content Optimizer To-Go. I am excited to see the impact our most powerful technology will have now that it is out in the wild.”

So what do customer’s who are using the technology saying? “Insight from the Data Cube is proving really useful for us as we start to really understand who is appearing in spaces that matter to us, the reasons why, and other areas we can potentially win,” said Dan Patmore, search strategy manager for Argos.

How Does The BrightEdge Data Cube To-Go and Content Optimizer To-Go Work?

When looking at any piece of web content, marketers can open the BrightEdge Community Edition and instantly bring up a simple and powerful display with insightful data on how their content is performing. Unique insights powered by Data Cube To-Go and Content Optimizer To-Go include:

  • Check the pulse on content performance: Community Edition includes the Data Cube Pulse, BrightEdge’s powerful content performance rating. Data Cube Pulse is calculated at scale on the massive repository of information in the BrightEdge Data Cube for each piece of content. With Data Cube Pulse, content marketers can understand the likely success of a piece of content at a glance.
  • Explore trends and travel in time: Community Edition will also include the Data Cube Time Machine, enabling marketers to see performance over time to understand what content is successful. With Data Cube Time Machine marketers access a unique month over month performance comparison to arm them with the insights needed for exceptional content performance.
  • Keep an eye on the competition: Marketers can open Community Edition on any website on the Internet, including competitors’. By seeing which content and topics competitors are finding success with, marketers can gain a deeper understanding of content performance web-wide and make more informed decisions about their own content strategy. Further competitive insight is provided by Data Cube Pulse and Data Cube Time Machine.
  • Optimize content with proven recommendations: Community Edition includes the revolutionary power of BrightEdge Content Optimizer. Previously available only with Adobe Experience Manager, Content Optimizer To-Go offers all marketers access to the industry’s largest and most proven set of content optimization recommendations. Content Optimizer To-Go makes use of the same powerful advice that is built into the BrightEdge S3 platform for any page visited with Community Edition.

BrightEdge Community Edition is available on a limited basis and will be rolled out to the wider public over the following weeks. For more information visit BrightEdge athttp://www.brightedge.com/getCommunity.

If you have not heard about BrightEdge and what they are up to, here’s more details on their overall solutions:

BrightEdge is the essential content marketing platform for modern business. It transforms online content into tangible business results such as traffic, revenue and engagement. BrightEdge’s S3 platform is powered by a sophisticated big data analysis engine and is the only company capable of web-wide, real-time measurement of content engagement across all digital channels, including search, social and mobile. BrightEdge’s 8,500+ global brands include leaders like 3M, Microsoft, Netflix and Nike.

Website: www.brightedge.com
Blog: www.brightedge.com/blog
Facebook: www.facebook.com/seoplatform
Twitter: www.twitter.com/brightedge

So what are you doing to optimize your content? And make sure all those dollars going towards creative are paying off?

@drnatalie

VP and Principle Analyst, Constellation Research — Covering Marketing, Customer Experience and Customer Service

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Filed Under: CMO, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Dr. Natalie's Blog, Marketing Software Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How to Overcome Social Media Marketing Obstacles

April 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

MediaPost released the results of the Chief Marketer 2012 Social Marketing Study, a survey of marketing professionals. While 76% of respondents are currently using social media as part of their marketing, they expressed several frustrations.

SalesForce has pulled together some takeaways and resources to help marketers overcome these social media obstacles.

It’s Hard to Calculate True ROI

At 56%, this was the biggest frustration for marketers. While social media metrics on their own do not ROI make, correlating these metrics with overall business objectives will allow you to calculate the return on investment of your social media efforts. We go over the fundamentals in 7 Steps to Measuring Social Media ROI and cover seven essential equations for social media measurement. If you have more time, check out the below webinar on ROI with and be sure to download the ebook.

It’s Hard to Link Social Engagement to Sales

When linking social media metrics to sales, you need to look at conversions or the number of people who took action as a result of your social media efforts. Create landing pages and promo codes available only via Facebook or Twitter and use web analytics to help track your referral traffic. You can also cross-reference inbound leads with your social media subscribers to measure conversation rates for your customers who follow you on social media versus those who do not. A CRM system will help you track your lead sources and how many convert to sales. For more on this, download SalesForce’s ebook, 5 Steps to Effective Social Media Measurement.

Curating Content is Too Time Consuming

While some brands and agencies have full-time teams dedicated to producing content, it is an achievable goal for brands of any size. Creating content takes time, but doesn’t need to be time consuming if you delegate your resources. We give you some ideas for how to organize your social media editorial team here. If your team is small, consider having members from other departments in your organization create or collaborate on content, whether it is a blog, ebook, or webinar. You likely have lots of employees outside your marketing team who would be willing and eager to help out. Don’t rely on your internal team alone – turn to your customers and industry influencers to contribute as well.

Read the original post here!

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Want to see how to get an ROI from Social Media? Check out these fun videos:
Video 1: Building the Business Case for Social Media
Video 2: How to Measure the ROI of Social Media

Video 3: How Social Media Benefits the Whole Company

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Want to get more info on the business use of social media? Connect with me here:
Twitter: @drnatalie
LinkedIn: DrNataliePetouhoff
G+ : Google Plus posts
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natalie.petouhoff

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Webinar: How To Increase Your Social Media Enagement and ROI

October 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Did you know 84-97% of your fans aren’t seeing your Facebook posts? Yep, that’s due to EdgeRank. Facebook admits that the average page only reaches 16-17% of its fans. And data from PageLever shows that pages with millions of fans reach as few as 3% of their fans- that is especially true for large brands who typically have large budgets for social media and Facebook.

If you are interested in not wasting money your Facebook as well as your Twitter interactions — either the budget you are spending on content, the salaries of your community managers, etc… then you need a way to understand what your engagement on social networks is, especially compared to your competitors. New specific vertical industry reports provide exactly that type of data.

The industry reports provide a comparison of the top 10 brands within a vertical market. The reports look at the comparative engagement on Facebook and Twitter. What brands learn is who has the highest engagement on Facebook and Twitter. It looks at what type of content has the highest interactions per channel. In addition, the report looks at what days do customers interact more with the various types of content.

The value to clients is that they get a good view of what where they stand compared to their customers, what type of content they should be focusing on and when to publish / republish the content to get the largest engagement. It allows companies to gain higher engagement scores and beat the fact that the marketing funnel is essentially collapsed because few people see the brand’s content.

This webinar will help you avoid wasting millions of dollars spent on social media. We’ll cover:

* How what you don’t know about Facebook engagement can kill your brand’s engagement performance
* How some companies are wasting millions of dollars on content marketing. Is that you?
* How some brand’s are using vertical Industry Reports to compare their engagement to competitors & transform their engagement and content strategy.

Sign up: http://bit.ly/X8WFNL

You’ll hear from Jason Cormier from Room214, myself and Brian Carter from InfiniGraph
—
Learn. Share. Grow!
@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff

For more info on my work:
Ebook:Social Media ROI

Social Media ROI YouTube Videos:
Video 1: Building the Business Case for Social Media
Video 2: How to Measure the ROI of Social Media

Video 3: How Social Media Benefits the Whole Company

Book on Monetizing Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Let’s Connect here:
Twitter: @drnatalie
LinkedIn: DrNataliePetouhoff
G+ : Google Plus posts

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