There are several trend stories that caught our attention this August. We are past the mid year mark for 2017 and so it is logical to pick out learnings from what’s happened so far and also take a peek at the future on what surprises the rest of year has for us. You’ve got an interesting take on online reviews, ways to engage millennials with content marketing, how to make content go viral and a beautiful updated list of free and fabulous stock photo websites. Get your coffee before you begin… this will be an interesting ride
Survey results: Here’s what 376 marketers say is working in online marketing
Don’t we all like data-backed insights, especially when they are neatly packaged and presented in a quick blog. In a survey of our own species, (yes, we are a specie!) digital marketers shared their thoughts about trends in the Online Marketing industry and where things are headed. There are a couple of good things there on how people are likely to spend more on digital marketing than before. Strangely, though, ROI for marketing seems to be as elusive as the singing Sasquatch, probably more. Here’s to hoping we all have better and more real answers to that in the months to follow.
Instead of Staffing Up For Your Marketing Campaign, Build A Chatbot
Have you built a chatbot for your marketing campaign yet? If not, this is the perfect time to try it out. Chatbots aren’t just a customer service tool. They can take up some of the work done by real people in real time, saving time and resources for a marketing campaign. What’s more, since they can be governed by Artificial Intelligence, they will only get better with time. They won’t go on leave, will be available 24×7 and won’t leave without notice. Chatbot can be used to nurture leads and even up-sell products. Ready to give it a try?
Learn how to make something go viral
There is a proper ‘From the horse’s mouth’ course available to learn the techniques behind making something go viral. Look up the Online Diploma in Viral Marketing Live Course Webinar. Over four weeks, eight lessons and five tests, you’ll be taught to identify your target audience, tailor your message and create and deliver content. The course apparently costs $395 but is miraculously available for $9.99 for limited time. Is that good enough to make the course go viral? We’ll wait and watch.
Meet the fake news of the online marketing world (that Google loves!): Review sites
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would have surely heard that user generated content (in this case, reviews) is one of the best online currencies to help you improve your ranking. The marketer in you wants to go all out to create a Google My Business listing for your client and get started with review maintenance. Since Google’s rankings are now a mix of branded content and user reviews, these have become very important for a brand. Like all good things from Google, touts have found a way to exploit this feature too. Which is why you’ll see some bizarre, never-heard of the company with bad link profile is ranking well while those caught in between the optimization cycles are pretty much stuck. Google is yet to create a full screening process. Until then, get going with genuine reviews only.
Five Ways To Engage Millennials Through Your Content Marketing
Millennials are the biggest marketing segment and a tough one to crack for content marketers. They are fast, have access to tons of information from various sources and can quickly change sides if given a compelling reason. The right mix of communication without sounding too preachy about a brand is one of the ways to reel them in. They are often the first adopters to new technology. They value being true to themselves and expect brands also do the same. Read through to know some low hanging fruits on how you can engage the generation of the future.
11 Trade Secrets From An Expert Project Manager
In a recent survey, it was found that 94% of people manage projects at their job, but only 47% of those workers actually have “project manager” in their job title. This means there are many people in the role but don’t have formal training or expertise. This blog outlines some pro tips from someone who has been there, done that. From a timeline estimation to how to calculate the right compensation for your work, have a look at everything you can do to rise to the next level.
Keywordtool.io Review: A Simple, Useful Research Tool For SEO
So, we promise we aren’t paid to do this product plug. It comes sourced from its original content on nectafy. As content marketers, we often have to write highly optimized content and keyword research is a part of our daily work. It is time to leave your favourite Keyword Planner tool behind for a while and try Keywordtoo.io and see why it is doing a better job. You type one high lever term and in the tool and you’ll get all possible Google Suggest and auto complete phrases.
The fresh and fabulous list of websites that offer free stock images
Images are a big part of the content and they do tend to take away the need of us content marketers to be intensely verbose. They are easy on the eyes of the reader. They also don’t come free – well, almost. There are plenty of free stock photos available online – genuine, high quality and those that can be printed out into tees and billboards too! This isn’t a too good to be true offer. Our fresh and updated list of free stock photo websites is worth being bookmarked. So don’t forget to save the page!
7 Tech Trends That Will Shake Up Content Marketing in 2018
If you see life in future perfect tense, this article is for you. There are plenty of things happening now that’ll become the top trend in 2018. Whether it is how much we are glued to social on smartphones or how machine learning and artificial intelligence is shaping our reading choices, there are a few nuggets in this article which will come handy when you have to make a 2018 projection to a client. So read up!
If there are more than a few people writing trend stories about similar things, what should it tell us about the trend prediction? Either it is true or it is a new herd mentality. In this case, we want to think its the former. ‘Stackable’ content seems like a good way to think about what we plan to do in 2018. Free tools like Lumens 5 that can combine text and images through AI to create videos also seem to point in the direction.
Conclusion:
May be it is time to stop thinking about content in a two-dimensional context. Content’s new dimension of combining multiple resources and then giving choice to the user on how they want to access it seems like the thing our future will be made of. Let us wait and watch.
Here are some more interesting reads from the world of online marketing that you might be interested in.