JING CAO

CSULA, Senior, Marketing CONTENT MARKETING INSIDE OUT. Purpose: to analyze and study how companies are using social media for content marketing. "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. (-Aristotle)"

[borislavkiprin]

5 top tips for SEO #infographic

[jcao93-blog]

Keep Calm And March On!

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Running out of ideas for content marketing? Think again! There are two important days coming up in march, that means more opportunities to create fresh ideas that will strengthen your content strategy. Audiences love holiday related content that is the reason why those contents tend to do better. Audiences are searching around to find inspirations and ideas for special events. Therefore, you want your content to satisfy their needs.

1. Saint Patrick’s Day: March 17th

For Saint Patrick’s Day, popular contents would be DIY crafting ideas, gift ideas, and food recipes. Marketers can utilize Pinterest for these contents to encourage shares and likes. Companies like Oreo, Pillsbury, and Cheerios can create Saint Patrick’s Day related dessert recipes which will be very valuable to a lot of audiences who are hosting a party or is looking for dessert recipes. 

2. Easter: March 27th

For Easter, candy brand Hershey’s who also owns Reese’s uses Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to post their Easter themed candies. This will let loyal customers know that they are available and that they should get these limited edition candies before they run out. Hershey’s post shows audiences that they can put the carrot shaped chocolates in Easter baskets which will be valuable to individuals who are putting a basket together as a gift to loved ones. Similar to the candy brand, the natural cosmetic brand Lush also uses social media to showcase their Easter bath bombs with links and info on where to get them. By doing so they are facilitating purchases. 

Overall, take advantage of Saint Patrick’s Day and Easter for great content ideas. This will boost the freshness of your content and encourage likes or shares.

[jcao93-blog]

3 Characteristics Of Excellent Content

The most difficult part of content marketing is creating valuable and compelling content. Due to a large number of companies doing well in content marketing on social media, more and more companies start to have a misunderstanding of content. They think they can just post anything online and it would be considered as content marketing. Truth is, excellent content should have these 3 characteristics:

ENGAGING - Engaging content grabs the audience’s attention which makes he/she want to take part by commenting, liking, or sharing the content. Create entertaining, helpful, and unique content that cannot be found elsewhere. Content that makes audiences feel angry, surprised, happy, or AWE will encourage audiences to engage. 

VARIETY - Have a high social media presence in order to provide customers with a variety of contents. Companies who wants to reach a broad audience should be active on at least 3-4 platforms. Different platforms target different audiences and forms of content. Videos are found on YouTube, visuals are found on Pinterest or Instagram, and text contents are found on Tumblr. A company should have all forms of content to target different audiences.

For example, Urban Decay is on most of the platform except Pinterest but they utilize Instagram to share visual contents. They use social media to encourage trial and create brand loyalty.

CONSISTENCY - All content should have consistency so the audience knows when to check for new content. When you don’t post frequently, audiences will stop following you and eventually replace you with your competitor. Therefore, create an editorial calendar that will organize your posting time and reminds you to post on time. Content marketing is a long term investment; therefore, marketers have to be patient and consistent in order to see the results of CM.

IN CONCLUSION - When creating content, make sure to create a variety of contents that are engaging and be consistent with posting. As a result, you are more likely to succeed in content marketing.

[eugenedumanskiy]

The Best Time to Outreach

[borislavkiprin]

Web Design Trends to Expect This 2016 #Infographic

[jcao93-blog]

Content That Gives You Wings

Red Bull is a globally recognized company for its famous energy drink that supposedly gives you "wings." It’s no surprise that Red Bull doesn’t give you actual wings; however, their contents on social media says otherwise. Red Bull’s targeted audiences are students and extreme sports fanatics. Therefore, Red Bull has excellent social media presence in order to make sure that they capture all potential customers. Red Bull is active and posts daily on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and occasionally on Vine. Red Bull’s use of social media platforms show understanding of how different platforms work and develops the best strategy to deliver compelling and valuable content relevant to their target audiences. One of their rare but effective strategy is using non-branded hashtags. Non-branded hashtags can attract new audiences. Red Bull utilizes social media to post amazing pictures of nature and outrageous stunts.

Let's look at Red Bull's content based on Jonah Berger's 6 Principles (STEPPS): 1. Social Currency - The content is shareable because of the high quality pictures and videos Red Bull provides. There are a lot of pictures of extreme sports and beautiful landscape. 2. Trigger - Content triggers interest because it makes you want to drink red bull when doing extreme sports or something that requires a lot of energy. 3. Emotions - Red Bull’s content on social media makes audiences feel adventurous, excitement, AWE, and energetic. 4. Public - Content includes pictures of attract young women giving out Red Bull (wings) to people on the streets and college campuses.  5. Practical Value -   Red Bull boosts your energy. 6. Stories - There are definitely stories involved in the visual contents. The stories focus on athletes and individuals accomplishing crazy stunts.

Overall, Red Bull is excelling in content marketing on social media becuase of following reasons:

Understands who the targeted audiences are

Understands how different social media platforms work in order to deliver different content

Responding, retweeting, liking, and interacting with other users

Creating high quality, compelling, and valuable content relevant to audiences

Posting daily to stay active

Using non-branded hashtags to get discovered

[jcao93-blog]

The Confusion Between Content Marketing And Campaigns

Many companies are utilizing social media platforms for campaigns nowadays, but it does not mean that content marketing and campaigns are the same thing. However, companies are replacing campaigns with content marketing as if they have the same functions and deliver the same purpose. Content marketing ultimately is about building relationships with customers and brand image. In contrast, campaigns are designed to promote a product or service provided by the company.

Customer Relationship Unlike campaigns, content marketing allows companies to communicate and interact with customers through comments to understand how they feel about the company and receive valuable feedback. Don’t just monitor and listen, always reply by explaining, informing, or thanking customers for their engagement so they feel valued and important.

For example, Coca-Cola takes the time and effort to interact with their audiences by liking and replying to their comments on Facebook. This encourages audiences to take part and engage because Coca-Cola acknowledges their opinions by showing appreciation and consideration.

Brand Image The content reveals the company’s values and ethos which contributes to brand image and helps audiences relate to the brand. In addition, behind the scene contents are popular because it encourages and promotes customer loyalty. Since they are exclusive, it makes the audiences feel like insiders. Also, behind the scene contents, builds trust because it shows the public the authentic side of the brand.

My recommendation is to invest in both content marketing and campaigns since they both serve different purposes. Content marketing takes time because it is a long-term investment which strengthens the brand overall and the goal of a campaign is to promote products. Therefore, you need both to become an industry leader.

[socialmediadaily]

11 Facebook post ideas to create interest on your business page (infographic)

[melanaportnoy]

[jcao93-blog]

Be a Teacher Not a Seller

Content Marketing is not about selling, it’s more about attracting audiences to share your content. “Teach, don’t sell is exactly what makes content marketing different from advertising ” (Brian Sutter, 2016). For example, Lowe’s Fix In Six series on vine provides useful content to passionate DIY-ers. Not only does these short how-to videos teaches the audience tips and hacks, it also builds a connection with the audience that encourages them to share the content.

In the article Want To Be Successful With Content Marketing? Teach, Don’t Sell, Brian Sutter believes that customers do not like ads; thus,we download ad blocker and skip ads on all social media platforms. In order for customers to appreciate your content, you should:

Avoid Call To Actions To Buy

Having a call to action embedded to your content may add purpose, but avoid call to actions that directly asks customers to buy. However you can talk about your product features. Bellroy utilize Instagram to post high quality pictures of it’s products. The picture below shows the features and functions of the wallet that would make people want to buy the wallet without linking or mentioning the word “buy” anywhere.  

Curate  

Don’t always create, curate helpful, interesting, and fun content. Sharing helpful content with your audiences can show that you are not all about self promotion but you are honest and that you truly care for them. It builds trust between you and your audience so that they are more likely to like you as a company.

Overall 

Customers don’t like advertisements of any sort because it makes them think that you are trying to take advantage of them and people don’t like being used. On the other hand, by providing content that are beneficial to customers, it will attract more customers to trust and like your brand because they are more likely to recommend you to others. 

[jcao93-blog]

Which Is Better?

What Is Content Marketing?

As many people many be familiar with Content Marketing already, it is an effective marketing approach that delivers compelling and valuable content to audiences mainly through social media platforms. It’s main goals are: 

Raise brand awareness

Encourage trial

Influence desire

Facilitate purchase

Customer loyalty

What Is Native Advertising?

On the other hand, Native Advertising is a form of paid/ sponsored advertisement where the ad is relevant to the platform it appears on. However, content placed must be relevant or valuable. “Brands pay for the placement of content on platforms outside of their own media” (Joe Pulizzi, 2015). The main forms of native advertising that can be found on social media are:

In-Feed Ads 

Search Ads

Recommendation Widgets

Why Choose CM?

Content marketing is effective in generating keywords; therefore, it can improve search rankings, visibility, and discoverability. Content marketing can provide a better experience for audiences due to the useful content the company provides. Compared to native advertising, CM is less costly because most CM is done by the marketing department of the company. In addition, NA is usually labeled as sponsored which drives customers away because sponsors are usually perceived as ads. 

Why Choose NA?

Unlike content marketing, native adverting does not  require long-term commitment. Thus, it saves a lot of time that can be spent else where. Many companies are practicing CM, but it is difficult to produce fresh and unique content due to the intense competition. Native advertisements can be placed on desired sites and found on social media feeds and it is more likely to be seen since for CM, audiences would have to go out of their way to search for it.

In Conclusion 

Although content marketing is very time consuming, I prefer CM over native advertising. Audiences are more likely to engage with CM than NA. CM also builds strong brand personality and image. For example, Old Spice’s brand personality on Instagram gives a unique creepy vibe and Taco Bell is fun and colorful. Therefore, it will attract target audiences and promotes content sharing.

Which do you prefer?

[borislavkiprin]

How user generated content will keep your brand relevant #infographic

[realcontentmarketing]

(via Danger Ahead: When Content Distribution Is On Auto-Pilot)

[jcao93-blog]

Sugar Coat Your Content

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, marketers are doing everything they can to take advantage of this day. As shown in the infograph, people are spending more and more each year on Valentine’s day and men tends to spend more than women. Many companies are creating content related to Valentine’s Day hoping to get a lot of likes, engagements, and shares on their content that might raise brand awareness, encourage  trial, or influence desire. Different brands are posting Valentine’s Day related content but they are utilizing social media differently.

Pillsbury

Pillsbury shares delicious Valentine’s Day themed desserts with audiences on Instagram. Many people are looking for the perfect dessert they can make for their loved ones and contents from Pillsbury can satisfy their needs. However, on this post, both the recipe and the link to the recipe was not provided. This creates mystery and curiosity which attract attention and triggers the audiences to want to know more about it. It increases engagement between the Pillsbury and the customers; thus, the comment section is loaded with questions on where to get the recipe

H&M

The trendy retail-clothing store H&M created a gift guide board on Pinterest for Valentine’s day. All the products listed are accompanied by a link to the H&M official website where you can purchase the products. By doing so H&M is facilitating sales, influencing desire, and encouraging trial. These contents provided are targeting women but they are very helpful for both men and women. Women can pin the things that they like and get an idea of what they want and men can browse through them to see what they can buy for their significant other.

Starbucks

Starbucks posts promotional content related to Valentine’s day. It informs the readers on what events are going on so they can participate. Coupon and promotional tweets are popular and readers are more likely to share it with their followers and friends.

In conclusion, creating content related to holidays can increase engagement and shares only if you create complimentary content that is relevant, valuable, and compelling. Happy early Valentine’s Day! <3

[jcao93-blog]

Content Marketing Battle: Allstate vs State Farm

As more and more industries are rapidly adopting to content marketing on social media channels, some industries are moving slower than a snail. Food, retail, and apparel companies are all over social media while the insurance industry have a low social media presence.  

Sure people can say it’s not fair that other companies are more popular on social media due to their industry and it is just difficult to produce compelling and valuable content relevant to the insurance industry. However, insurance companies like Allstate and State Farm are in the same industry but one is doing better than the other on social media. This is due to different strategies and skills.

Both Allstate Insurance and State Farm are on Twitter and YouTube but why is State Farm getting more shares and likes than Allstate? State Farm and Allstate have about the same number of followers but the amount of likes they receive differs, while State Farm got about 8000 like Allstate only has about 1000 overall. What is State Farm doing that Allstate is not?

1) Relevant and popular hashtags 

- Having about 8 to 10 hashtags can help disoverablilty and visibility. Although both companies are not using enough hashtags but State Farm uses popular and trending hashtags meanwhile Allstate uses generic or no hashtags. As a result, State Farm gets far more likes and shares.

2) Retweeting

- Rewteeting builds relationships with other companies and customers. It shows affirmation from others that the content is share worthy. You are also curating useful content for your readers and it builds an helpful image for you. When you retweet, others are more likely to retweet your content. State Farm retweets from popular accounts like Chris Paul and the LA Clippers. On the other hand, Allstate is not retweeting at all.

It can be challenging for insurance companies to create compelling and valuable content due to the industry but it is not the reason why they are doing poorly on social media. Even though State Farm is doing slightly better than Allstate, they still lacks in a lot of areas. If both companies use more trending and relevant hashtags or retweet more often then they will see an increase in likes and shares.

[ayeshaambreen]

Want to improve your social media marketing? Practice these rules.

[jcao93-blog]

Creating Killer Headlines

Compelling Headlines

Excellent headlines can attract readers to share and like your content. Your content could be unique and valuable, but if your headline is boring then no one will read it. Thus, crafting an interesting and exciting headline requires a lot of thought and effort. Here’s some tips that will contribute to a contagious headline:

Create multiple headlines and pick the best.

Keep your headline simple, and straight to the point.

The length of the headline should be long enough to give the readers a basic understanding of your content but short enough so you don’t reveal everything, just like a mini-skirt.

Use numbers. For example, Content Marketing In 3 Steps, this will give the readers an impression that the content is easy to follow and doable.

Indicate why your content will benefit readers. A good headline should give readers a clear understanding why the content presented would be valuable and useful to them.

Use words like angry, happy, excited, disappointed, and Furious to attract readers. For example, Mother of 2 Children was Angry With Disney, readers will be curious about what Disney did to upset a mother. Thus, they will want to learn and read more.

Fear of missing out is one of the major component that influences people to read and share. For example, 10 Concepts All Marketers Should Know will definitely attract all the marketer to read because they want to make sure that they know everything other marketers know and be one step ahead of the game.

Make sure to consider these tips when crafting a headline; therefore, your headline can attract readers attention and encourage them to share your content.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these tips?