Online video marketing involves strategies that use video to promote a brand, product, or service.
What Is Online reputation management (ORM)?
Online reputation management (ORM) is the act of reviewing what is being said about a company or individual online so that the company or individual can engage in activities to improve the overall public perception of a company with which they are considering doing business online.
What Is Native Advertising?
Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to the coherence of content with other media that appear on the platform.
What Is Micro influencer?
Micro influencers are people online who have influencer potential yet garner less followers than macro influencers. For perspective, micro influencers tend to have somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 followers.
What Is Marketing automation?
Marketing automation refers to software that allows companies to automate and measure marketing tasks and workflows.
What Is Macro Influencer?
Macro influencers are people online that have influencer potential and routinely command the attention of millions of followers.
What Is Many-to-many communication system?
Many-to-many communication system refers to a system in which each person within a system can post messages and receive messages.
What Is Key performance indicator (KPI)?
Key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that indicates progress toward an intended result.
What Is Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is the use of marketing strategies to optimize the communication of a consistent message of the company’s brands to stakeholders.
What Is Informal Research?
Informal research involves collecting market intelligence by using a variety of easily available information from various sources. This method usually trades statistical precision for cost effectiveness.
What Is In-Stream Video Ads?
In-stream video ads are video ads that are placed in the video shown to the viewer.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that utilizes various tools to develop content that will attract consumers to your product or brand, rather than using strategies that invade their awareness.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing focuses on using influencers to promote a brand message, product, or service to the larger market.
What Are Inbound Links?
Inbound links, also known as “back links,” are hyperlinks on other sites that bring users to your site.
When A Hit Occurs?
A hit occurs any time a user accesses a page on a website (sometimes referred to as a pageview).
What Is Formal Research?
Formal research is a systematic way to answer specific questions to better understand a particular issue.
What Is E-word-of-mouth (eWoM) marketing?
E-word-of-mouth (eWoM) marketing is a form of buzz marketing that focuses on person-to-person exchange to disseminate information.
What Is An Entry?
An entry is the first pageview of a visit and is called the entry point, which is often not the home page.
What Is Entrance and exit rates?
Entrance and exit rates are calculated metrics, which are the percentage of sessions that begin or end on a page.
What Is Direct Traffic?
Direct traffic is website traffic from visitors who directly type the website’s URL into the browser.
What Is Earned Media?
Earned media is content that is organically generated by other users and online publishers such as product reviews, social media following and sharing, and coverage by online news outlets. See owned media and paid media for other placement strategies.
What Is Digital media content ?
Digital media content is content developed for and disseminated through digital media channels.
What Is Digital media channels?
Digital media channels, in the context of marketing, is a channel used for disseminating information that is electronic in nature, such as the Internet, mobile networks, or social media.
What Is Data Mining?
Data mining is the process of discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems.
What Is Customer relation management (CRM)?
Customer relation management (CRM) is an approach to manage a company’s interactions with current and potential customers.
What Is Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)?
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is an online advertising term that refers to the price of one thousand ad impressions on one webpage.
What Is Cost per click (CPC)?
Cost per click (CPC), also known as “pay-per-click” (PPC), is an online advertising payment method in which an advertiser pays for each time an ad is clicked.
what Is Cost per acquisition (CPA)?
Cost per acquisition (CPA), also known as “cost per action,” is an online advertising pricing metric that measures how much an advertiser pays for a specified acquisition (e.g., a sale, click, registration).
What Is Conversion rate?
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors on your site who complete a target action that you wish visitors to take (a conversion). It is one of the most important indicators of a retail website’s success.
What Is Consumer Privacy?
Consumer privacy involves protecting sensitive personal information that consumers provide.
What Is Buzz Marketing?
Buzz marketing refers to a viral marketing technique that use social media and other media channels to generate a sudden surge of public attention to promote products and services.
What Is Business To Business?
Business-to-business (B2B) refers to commerce transactions between businesses.
What Is Web Bot?
A (web) bot is a computer program that runs tasks automatically over the Internet in a way that simulates human activity.
What Is Big Data?
Big data refers to extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions.
What Is Basic Metrics
Basic metrics of website analytics include pageviews, sessions, users, time on page, entry, and exit.
What Is Banner Blindness?
Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information, which can also be called ad blindness or banner noise.
What Is Average Session Duration?
Average session duration is a calculated metric, which is the sum of time on a page for every pageview in the session
What Is Average Page Depth?
Average page depth is a calculated metric, which is calculated as pageviews divided by sessions.
What Is An Ad Impression?
Ad impression is the point at which an ad is fetched from a server to be displayed on a page.
what is an Ad Fraud?
Ad fraud is concerned with theory and practice of fraudulently representing online advertisement impressions, clicks, conversion, or data events in order to generate revenue. While ad fraud is more generally associated with banner ads, video ads, and in-app ads, click fraud has been associated with search marketing and conversion fraud with affiliate marketing.
Mobile Marketing By Mike Tao
In earlier lessons,
I mentioned how smart and mobile devices have profoundly
impacted human lives, in general. In digital marketing, more specifically. According to Salesforce,
68% of the companies have integrated mobile marketing into
their overall marketing strategy. And 71% of marketers believe mobile
marketing is core to their business. In this lesson,
I'll focus on three key questions, and we'll take a closer look
at mobile marketing. First, we'll ask,
what is mobile marketing? And second, what are the channels and
key features of mobile marketing? And third, what are the advantages and
limitations of mobile marketing? Let's begin with the basic
concept of mobile marketing. As in the case of many emerging industries
and practices, there is no clear and agreed upon definition to mark
the boundaries of mobile marketing. But there is a definition that I think
that captures the essence of this concept. According to Marketo,
a leader in marketing animation software. Mobile marketing is a multi-channel,
digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target
audience on their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices,
via websites, email, SMS and MMS,
social media, apps, and etc. The core objective of mobile marketing
is to reach and engage target consumers on their mobile communication devices
via multiple communication channels. Recent data show that smartphone
adoption rate in the United States has reached near saturation to
about 81% in the year of 2016. This means that a vast and majority of Americans now can be directly
reached via mobile communication. More remarkably, on average, Americans now spent nearly three hours
per day on their mobile devices. And 50% of the mobile phone
users habitually grab and check their phone first thing in
the morning before they do anything else. And one-third of the subscribers now only
use their mobile devices to read emails. Taken together, these statistics
clearly suggest that mobile media have become the most important
channel to reach and engage consumers. Mobile devices have overtaken desktop
computer to become the most dominant digital media platform in 2014,
and have never looked back. Mobile ad spending in the US
grew from $28 billion in 2015 to over $100 billion in 2016, and accounted for
more than 50% of the total digital market. According to Emarketer's forecast model, mobile advertising spending
will reach nearly $200 billion, and top 70% of the total
market by the year of 2020. Meanwhile, mobile commerce
transactions currently amount to about $1.5 trillion annually, and
will reach $3.2 trillion by 2017. The evolution and growth of mobile
technology are also incredible. Mobile communication has moved beyond
the confines of mobile phones and tablet computers to smart accessories,
such as watches, and other wearables. Marketers expect that two in five Internet
users will use wearables by the year 2019. Mobile is certainly the future. With new technologies and
marketing platform developing nearly every day in the mobile and
digital world, how do we make sense of, and stay focused when facing such
a rapidly changing landscape? Well behind the dazzling new looks and
the various bells and whistles, comes with new mobile devices,
functions and applications. There are some core features of mobile
media as a multi-channel platform for various marketing communication
that we should focus on. Let's take a look at them. One of the most significant features of
mobile marketing is its omnipresence. It can take place anywhere at any time. Most smartphone owners have their
phones within arm's reach at all times. And these gives marketers unprecedented
access to the demographics they're trying to reach. Something that has never been done and never seen before with
a traditional medium. Furthermore, users are doing
more than just having their phones with them at all times. They're always is using them, as well. This proximity to the users, and their
willingness to use particular devices allow advertisers to ensure that
the messages that they're delivering are sending and
being received directly by the consumers. And the technological nature
of the medium allows these mobile devices to effectively gauge
the effectiveness of the ads, as well. At the same time, smart mobile devices
are not only communication devices, but also a data collection tool. By caring their phones on them at all
times, smartphone users are providing marketers with behavioral insights
that can help guide future tactics. Mobile communication also
offers ubiquitous reach. Today, the number of
mobile phones in used, in many countries are near or more than
a size of their total populations. The smartphone penetration rate
has reached 30% globally, and well above 50%, a most of
the developed in emerging economies. According to a study conducted
by Peer Research Center in 2015, nearly half of the survey respondents
reported that their mobile phones were something they
could never live without. Mobile communication provides marketers the ability to reach people all
over the world, at all the time. As the tendency to rely on mobile
technology continues to become a natural facet of human behavior,
this broad and deep rich afforded by mobile
technologies will only grow. Next, mobile messages received from
a personal mobile device is more personal than from a computer on the desktop or
other devices that are at our home. Because of the physical and psychological
proximity between the users and the device. Users of mobile device tend to develop
a deep and intimate connection with the technology and the device than
they do with stationary computers. For example, my student and I recently
conduct a series of lapse studies, and we found that mobile devices
were more likely to be perceived by the users as a part of
their psychological self. The participants in our study who used
a mobile device to access information and solve problems felt smarter and
more confident than their counterparts. Those other participants,
who used desktop computers for completing the exact same task. And mobile devices are also
becoming fashion accessories. Smart watches and personal fitness
wristbands are just some of the examples of how smart and mobile devices
can be used as fashion statements. Moreover, mobile phones are used for
personal entertainment. Rather than using laptops and desktops, we
use mobile computers to view televisions. And mobile apps makes it possible to
have personal interaction on social media, as well. So as well as personal information
being shared by brands, social media, and friends, the more human the technology
is, the more personal it seems. Another key feature of mobile
marketing is two-way communication. Interactive mobile communication devices
offer marketers the opportunity to have a conversation with the target consumers
through text messaging and branded apps. This provides a sense of immediacy that
other marketing channels cannot offer. And finally,
mobile marketing is location-based. Mobile devices provide geolocation
data to the service providers, and then by extension, the marketers, as well. Consumer privacy and
ethical concerns aside, which is something I'll talk
about a little bit later. The geo targeting technologies allow
marketers to deliver tailored messages to customers based on the location. And help them find product and
service near by. According to the Peer Research Institute,
74% of adult smartphone users age 18 and older, said that they use
their phones to get directions or other information based on
their current location. Furthermore, by the very act of
using this location based features, the customers feed even more
data to the phone companies and marketers, which then lead
to more opportunities for marketing and advertising,
and creating this cycle.
Let's dive a little bit deeper and take a closer look at mobile marketing communication. Using their mobile devices, users engage in different social and communication activities. They check emails, make phone calls, send and receive text messages, search for information, play games, watch videos, take and share photos and videos. This list goes on. Thus mobile marketers must understand and develop a multichannel strategy to effectively reach their target population. Mobile devices allow users to move around while seeking formation as well, even at their homes. As such, much of the display advertising, search marketing, and social media marketing strategies we studied in the earlier lectures can be applied to mobile marketing platforms. Now however, marketers must be aware of and carefully consider, and then adjust accordingly their strategies for the unique physical technological and contextual characteristics of mobile communication. In the next couple of slides I'm going to talk about some channels that are commonly used in mobile marketing communication. Let's start with mobile display and video advertising. More and more users use mobile devices to browse the web instead of using their desktop computers. This presents new opportunities for online display marketing. As a speed and a bandwidth of wireless network technologies grow, mobile videos has also become increasingly popular, which has led to a sharp increase in mobile video advertising. In the United States for example, spending on mobile video advertising doubled from $720 million in 2013 to $1.5 billion in 2014 in just one year, and it's expected to touch six billion dollars in 2018. When used effectively, small screens of mobile devices can become an advantage to marketers, because they offer less space for content. Small screens are more likely to capture the attention from users than the big ones. As such, interstitials and native ads, those we talked about in an earlier lesson are far more effective formats for mobile devices than they are on desktop computers. Next. Because they're smaller screen sizes however, display and video ads must be redesigned and formatted for mobile viewing. For example, advertisers need to create mobile specific video ads that are under or around 15 seconds in length to run on native social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. Mobile users don't want to and often are unable to directly interact with the display and video content on a mobile phone such as when they're driving or using the thumb. So as such, mobile display and video ads must accommodate such unique user experience. A good example is the auto playing feature of Facebook's instream videos. Instead of having users click on the play button, the videos will automatically play when viewing from a mobile device as users scroll through their Facebook feeds. This very subtle change in the user interface design significantly increase the chance of an ad being viewed on Facebook. Finally, average smartphone users cannot afford unlimited data plan. Marketers must also be considerate and think about the impact of mobile advertising on connection speed and data usage, and how those features and characteristics factors will influence the graphic quality of mobile display and video. Now, one of the most obvious use of mobile phones in marketing is direct text messaging. After all, the original and intended function of cell phones was making calls and sending or receiving text messages. There's several different types of mobile messaging services. Traditionally the short or text message service or SMS, and then the multimedia messaging service or MMS, are delivered through wireless service providers. However, with the growing penetration rate of smartphone and mobile apps mobile messaging marketing is increasingly conducted via messaging apps or mobile apps with push functions. Mobile apps offer marketers the capacity to integrate mobile messaging marketing with other digital marketing strategies such as display advertising and others. App-based messaging services also allow marketers to circumvent wireless providers altogether, and sidestep telecommunication policies and regulations. There are several key ingredients to successful mobile messaging marketing. Companies must first decide on an overall strategy based on the type and the characteristics of target population. Are they existing consumers? How would they feel about getting marketing messages on their mobile phones? Then the companies need to find a right mix of content, context, and frequency of messaging. It is also critical to consider consumers privacy preferences and tolerance. Another important mobile marketing channel is through search. Recent statistics show that 81 percent of mobile searches are driven by speed and convenience because a mobile device is always on, always accessible. Then the outcome of mobile search is valuable to all businesses not just business to consumer. As 73 percent of mobile searches trigger additional action and conversions such as additional research or contacting a vendor directly. Additionally, mobile searches trigger quick follow-ups. 63 percent of mobile search triggered action within one hour of the initial search and 55 percent of the purchase related conversions occur within one hour of the initial mobile search as well. Research has also shown that nearly half of consumers start mobile search with a search engine, and one third of them start mobile search with a branded website. As such, many of the search optimization strategies we discussed earlier in this course would still apply in mobile marketing. First, businesses should optimize search engines results, for mobile display, since more people now search on mobile devices than on computers. Mobile search generates more page views. So, it is important for brands to ensure that their website are mobile friendly. Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors who access their site from mobile devices have a positive experience. If the brand site is not mobile friendly, users are less likely to stick around, and if their site is slow, users may not even wait for the page to load. So, most of the websites have their website mobile optimized. For example, Google has launched a mobile friendly version of their search engine, and the algorithm for mobile search engine results are thought to be evolving, and aspects such as location and predictive searching will become increasingly more important. Businesses should also use web directories effectively. Web directories and search engines are often used interchangeably, but they're actually different. Directories are organized website listings put together by human reviewers, whereas search engine listings are put together by an automated system. Much of the confusion comes from the various hybrid models that have developed over times. Many search engines have incorporated directory services to assist with issues such as categorization and cite quality. Site owners can submit their sites to directories and human editors to determine the value of the site and whether it should be included in the directory. All the web directories have been fallen out of favor it is still a very useful and cost effective strategy for highly specialized local and regional businesses, as many of these companies will be hard to find through simple traditional keyword searches. More and more consumers rely on recommenders or recommendation system instead of search engines to get product information. Although a different recommendation system, use different strategies and algorithm to determined the outcome. Companies online reputation and a sentiment of customers reviews are almost always waited very heavily in this evaluation process. So, for example, customer ratings on Yelp is a huge factor in restaurant recommendation. Ratings and positive customer reviews are important determinants for a business to get recommendation by Amazon. So, it's important to build a very good online reputation, in order to take advantage of the mobile search. Now, let's take a look at another form of mobile marketing, which is through apps and mobile apps. Mobile app marketing is a fast growing strategy, apps are now an integral part of our daily lives. According to Nielsen, smartphone users today spend an average of 30 hours per month using their mobile apps. Mobile app marketing strategies can complement very nicely other promotional activities such as special offers and coupons and then as such drive e-commerce or simply help connect a brand with its loyal customers. Together with mobile websites, mobile apps are valuable to both consumers and the marketers. Commonly seeing mobile app strategies include branded and sponsored apps. Many companies develop their own branded apps. An advantage of branded and sponsor apps is that they offer a Company a high degree of control over the design, functionality and the features of the app. However, well designed and customized apps can be costly to a business. While mobile users download and install new apps all the time, they typically abandon a majority of the apps they download after just using them a few times. The second mobile app marketing strategy is in-app display advertising and native advertising. We have talked about this type of ads in online display marketing in an earlier lesson. So, I'm not going to elaborate here further. Finally, almost all major retailers now offer their own shopping apps to facilitate mobile shopping. The smaller and the local retails can also take advantage of the smart devices, by linking their products and services with shopping apps such as Groupon and Amazon. Finally, let me just talk a little bit more on location-based marketing. As I mentioned earlier, location-based marketing is one of the unique and important features of mobile marketing. Knowing the location of your customers, give marketers the opportunity to provide contextualized marketing information and capture the micro moments for marketing opportunities. There are three primary location-based marketing strategies, location-based add delivery for example, Snapchat uses location-based marketing with his geo filters to deliver relevant advertisement based on where the users are. Recent statistics show that up to 84 percent of the millennials act on a location-based notification. Another particular useful search engine an online directory optimization tactic is to ensure that the business appear at the top of the search results when a customer conducts a related search near a particular location. For example, when a hungry traveler is searching for a place to eat using a smartphone, you want to make sure that your restaurant appears at the top of the search result and have good customer reviews. Location-based marketing can also be used to engage customers directly, when the customer is close to the point of purchase for any product the store can use the information to send notifications to the users through their mobile apps or text messaging services. I sometimes use a mobile app called hooked, this is a free app for college students to look for food and drink places near their campuses. This app uses both location and the time of the day to deliver the best deals to nearby users, and restaurants can sign up to this service to get listed and use their platform to provide promotional deals directly to potential customers.
All About Content Marketing By Mike Tao
Let's now turn our attention to content marketing. A fast growing digital marketing strategy, that is particularly relevant to social media. Unlike traditional media platforms, on which the audience attention is primarily driven and held captive by the publishers and professional content producers, users of digital and social media can freely create, view and share information and content based on their own interests. As such, traditional forms of advertising can easily be ignored and filtered. So in addition to making the advertising messages more creative, more eye-catching, another strategy for marketers to engage consumers is through the interesting and original content tailored for their target audience. In the remaining time of this lesson, I want to discuss content marketing, and then the critical role of social media as a driving force behind this growing marketing trend. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a highly strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. To simply put, content marketing is about marketers playing the role of media content producers to create original and interesting content for its target consumers with an aim to attract their attention to the brand or the product. For example, instead of, or in addition to paying for an advertising campaign of a new convertible sports car, an automaker can create a popular blog on the web or podcast series about the joy of driving. The influence of the content marketing is not achieved through explicit and direct persuasions, but through audience engagement and brand recognition. There are a variety of ways to place and promote marketing content. Content marketing can be done through paid, display advertising, and sponsorship. For example, marketers can pay to promote their original content within a social media users news feed as native advertising, they can also sponsor a block section on a popular news web portal. There also several unpaid channels for content marketing. Postings and sharings by social media users, is a huge driving force behind successful content marketing. While unpaid and organic content sharing on social media is essential, some companies may also sponsor marketing content on social media, that looks and feels just like user-generated content. For example, some companies can pay for YouTubers, to create sponsored product reviews or publicity stunts to generate brand awareness. Even though, any sponsor program must be clearly labeled. Research show that consumers often have a hard time separating those organic and those sponsored social media content, and this is the gray area where native advertising and creative content marketing overlap. Finally, many of the channels previously used in public relations such as earned media coverage, owned corporate media outlets can also be strategically used for content marketing. In fact, the lines between public relations activities and content marketing activities are so thin and arbitrary in the digital era, these two marketing functions have been largely merged in the digital marketing world. Because of its flexibility and low cost, content marketing is often used in complement to traditional promotional campaigns. More and more businesses adopt an integrated marketing approach to reach customers. In these integrated campaigns, marketers carefully plan, coordinate, and execute the timing, and pace, and rhythm in channel of marketing communication, to engage their target consumers. This process is highly strategic and coordinated. Content marketing, is also a great choice in situations where marketers are uncertain about the impacts and outcomes of traditional advertising campaign.
For example, a well executed advertising campaign can boost sales and brand recognition in the very short run. But it's medium and long-term impacts on brand loyalty and trust might be questionable and hard to measure. So content marketing could be a very much better and a far more effective strategy for developing sustained consumer engagement. Similarly, content marketing is more powerful and useful than many traditional marketing activities for raising awareness and knowledge among consumers about a product or a cause. While a 30-second tv spots or web banner impression, can arouse temporary interests. These marketing channels are not ideal for consumer education. As such, content marketing is frequently used and widely adopted in promoting social causes such as environmental protection and health, and these topics require marketers to truly engage the stakeholders by promoting sustainable behavioral change. Finally, Content Marketing is a cost effective tool. It is ideal for startup companies with a small marketing budget but aggressively seeking growth. It is also a great marketing channel for promoting non manufactured and knowledge based products and services.
There are several important steps to follow in creating a successful content marketing campaign. The process should always start with research and strategy. Content marketers should develop a set of clearly articulated business goals and objectives, and then thoroughly analyze and research the market condition. Then, gain a deep understanding of their target consumers and media users. Based on these insights, content marketers can then decide on the theme and the topic of the content that they want to create. The next essential step in content marketing is planning and preparation. Content marketers need to improve the visibility of the websites through SEO or Search Engine Optimization, search analytics, traffic and analytics, and they can also develop a full list of keywords and search phrases. Then, they need to budget human equipment and financial resources. Issues to be considered range from the cost of buying and maintaining a domain name, to finding a reliable and sustainable content developing team. After research and careful planning, it is time to create digital assets such as images, videos, articles, and et cetera. One critical issue to consider before launching a content marketing campaign, is its sustainability. Marketers must consider and understand that it's labor intensive to create new, relevant, and interesting content for the target audience, and update them frequently. In the digital world, media users can choose from millions of information sources, and it's extremely difficult for the audience and the readers in the digital era to stay focused on one thing. As such, do not treat content creation lightly. Good and relevant stories will spark audience interest, but they lose their interest very quickly. Now, once the content is created, the next step is to promote the content through various digital channels. Commonly used channels for delivering marketing content includes: search engines, social media, direct mail, and blogs. Finally, content marketers should promote and monitor, and track the delivery and impacts of content, through performance indicators such as social media buzz, website traffic, number of subscriptions, and more. Content marketers can use very similar measures of campaign impact as those used in public relations. For example, a commonly used way to assess return on investment or ROI of a content marketing, is to calculate the monetary value of reaching a certain number of audience, if this were a traditional advertising campaign. This measure is known as the advertising equivalency, and it's a very useful measure of ROI. Finally, I want to circle back to the focus of this lesson which is social media. Social media play a huge role in a success of a content marketing campaign. Social media allow marketers to identify and personalize content for their target audience, making the content more relevant and "sticky." Social media also allow information to be quickly and widely shared through online social networks, creating a "buzz" around the content. These two dimensions, the buzz, and personal relevance, or stickiness, can create four types of commonly seen content marketing campaigns. First, the vanity content that does not generate a widespread buzz, or a sustainable interest among social media users. For example, much of the content marketing fall into this category. As digital media users, we may notice such type of marketing content on our social media feeds every day. We may even read it out of our curiosity. But we probably wouldn't share with our friends, nor would we pay closer attention to such vanity. Sometimes, however, certain interesting content can get our attention and trigger a widespread social media buzz around an issue. This type of publicity matched material is a powerful way to create short-term, and intense public attention. But the public may quickly move on to the next hot issue. For example, last year, a silly debate about the color of a dress in a photo shared on social media triggered an intense public interest. But a story like this quickly moved out of the spotlight, and then replaced by something else. Some marketing content can successfully reach a target audience and stick to them. However, such highly personalized content, may not generate buzz in the general public. For example, I'm subscribed to many digital marketing blogs, and I frequently read those blogs to help myself stay connected to the rapidly changing digital media landscape. But, rarely would I share such information with my social media friends, and all my social media pages. Finally, and perhaps the most successful type of content marketing, is the viral content marketing. The viral content marketing campaigns were those that can lead to wide and long public engagement. Those are stories, blogs, and online videos that are viewed and shared by millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world, and will be circulated on the web for a long time. For example, the movie trailers of upcoming blockbusters such as the Star Wars franchise or the Marvel superhero movies can generate sustained buzz globally.
There are several important steps to follow in creating a successful content marketing campaign. The process should always start with research and strategy. Content marketers should develop a set of clearly articulated business goals and objectives, and then thoroughly analyze and research the market condition. Then, gain a deep understanding of their target consumers and media users. Based on these insights, content marketers can then decide on the theme and the topic of the content that they want to create. The next essential step in content marketing is planning and preparation. Content marketers need to improve the visibility of the websites through SEO or Search Engine Optimization, search analytics, traffic and analytics, and they can also develop a full list of keywords and search phrases. Then, they need to budget human equipment and financial resources. Issues to be considered range from the cost of buying and maintaining a domain name, to finding a reliable and sustainable content developing team. After research and careful planning, it is time to create digital assets such as images, videos, articles, and et cetera. One critical issue to consider before launching a content marketing campaign, is its sustainability. Marketers must consider and understand that it's labor intensive to create new, relevant, and interesting content for the target audience, and update them frequently. In the digital world, media users can choose from millions of information sources, and it's extremely difficult for the audience and the readers in the digital era to stay focused on one thing. As such, do not treat content creation lightly. Good and relevant stories will spark audience interest, but they lose their interest very quickly. Now, once the content is created, the next step is to promote the content through various digital channels. Commonly used channels for delivering marketing content includes: search engines, social media, direct mail, and blogs. Finally, content marketers should promote and monitor, and track the delivery and impacts of content, through performance indicators such as social media buzz, website traffic, number of subscriptions, and more. Content marketers can use very similar measures of campaign impact as those used in public relations. For example, a commonly used way to assess return on investment or ROI of a content marketing, is to calculate the monetary value of reaching a certain number of audience, if this were a traditional advertising campaign. This measure is known as the advertising equivalency, and it's a very useful measure of ROI. Finally, I want to circle back to the focus of this lesson which is social media. Social media play a huge role in a success of a content marketing campaign. Social media allow marketers to identify and personalize content for their target audience, making the content more relevant and "sticky." Social media also allow information to be quickly and widely shared through online social networks, creating a "buzz" around the content. These two dimensions, the buzz, and personal relevance, or stickiness, can create four types of commonly seen content marketing campaigns. First, the vanity content that does not generate a widespread buzz, or a sustainable interest among social media users. For example, much of the content marketing fall into this category. As digital media users, we may notice such type of marketing content on our social media feeds every day. We may even read it out of our curiosity. But we probably wouldn't share with our friends, nor would we pay closer attention to such vanity. Sometimes, however, certain interesting content can get our attention and trigger a widespread social media buzz around an issue. This type of publicity matched material is a powerful way to create short-term, and intense public attention. But the public may quickly move on to the next hot issue. For example, last year, a silly debate about the color of a dress in a photo shared on social media triggered an intense public interest. But a story like this quickly moved out of the spotlight, and then replaced by something else. Some marketing content can successfully reach a target audience and stick to them. However, such highly personalized content, may not generate buzz in the general public. For example, I'm subscribed to many digital marketing blogs, and I frequently read those blogs to help myself stay connected to the rapidly changing digital media landscape. But, rarely would I share such information with my social media friends, and all my social media pages. Finally, and perhaps the most successful type of content marketing, is the viral content marketing. The viral content marketing campaigns were those that can lead to wide and long public engagement. Those are stories, blogs, and online videos that are viewed and shared by millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world, and will be circulated on the web for a long time. For example, the movie trailers of upcoming blockbusters such as the Star Wars franchise or the Marvel superhero movies can generate sustained buzz globally.
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