That's What She Said... About Marketing

My name is Loi Tran and I love marketing and all its aspects. This blog is to show you my research and thoughts that I have regarding Content Marketing.

[contentmarketingstuff]

12 Types of Awesome Visual Content You Can Use in Your Blog Posts https://t.co/SPZizIRxIr #contentmarketing… https://t.co/6RmHFJThyS

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This is a great post! 

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Content Marketing: Moments in Storytelling

Wow! It's the 8th week already! And hey, it's Friday the 13th!!!! I can't believe how fast time flies when you truly are focused on something. For me, I want to truly focus myself in marketing and by doing that, I started my shop with the help of my older sister. My shop features fairly simple things but with those things, you can create many styles and forms of beautiful artful things by using aquatic plants and unique decorations. There are still so many things I have yet to curate for my shop and so many things I want to implement from learning them in my marketing classes. Like today, I just read a fantastic article on Twitter storytelling features that they had just come out with! Woah there Twitter, a little late to the game or what? Nonetheless, useful feature! I can't wait to use it!

Twitter in the prior has only allowed users of all backgrounds to post only 140 characters. Well, guess what, it's 280 characters now. So go ahead, write your life story. Yes, Twitter is a bit late to the game but its new feature can be so beneficial for companies and brands.

This article mentions 6 simple tips to help brands build a storytelling foundation using Moments on Twitter. Tips are as follows:

Tip 1: Recycling the best tweets It's crazy how many content there is on Twitter but well, of course, Twitter is on the top when it comes to social media platforms. Newsfeed on Twitter moves at an exceptional pace and to mend that for decent content, you can now post Moments! Hence, recycling your tweets! WHAT?! NO WAY!? Yes...yes way... Many times marketers get flustered from so many content flowing through twitter that there will be a hard time to stand out from the rest and getting the impact that is expected. Well, now this feature called Moments can help them re-share old impactful posts and giving them new life!

Tip 2: Showcase brand-related hashtags to leverage social proof Encourage your followers to use hashtags that are relevant to your brand by using Moments on twitter! Doing that, you will need to capture those tweet and rely on your fans to help you tell your story about your brand or service. Needless to say, this tip is the most powerful tip.

Tip 3: Pin them! Pin them on the top of your company's profile to showcase your top piece of content! Twitter allows users to pin their tweets to the top of their profile and with that, brands and companies can pin their Moments on the top of their page as priority view. This will make the Moment easily accessible to viewers! Wonderful!

Tip 4: #Hype When there is an event going on, there is usually a before, after, and during tweet. With Moments, you can post these tweets sequentially allowing fans to see the brand's perspective of the event. Therefore, you can #hype your event and allow fans to view them in an impactful manner.

Tip 5: Promotion Every time when there is a new launch of a product or service, there is digital content that goes with it. For instance, when Lay's comes out with a new flavor of chips or when Nike comes out with a new style of shoe, you will always see on their social media platforms posting relative content. Well now, Moments can showcase those top content surrounding the launch in a respective and interactive presentation. So instead of a tweet writing to your fans, you have a new product coming out this Fall, you can curate a presentation of Gifs, pictures, videos, and or vines to showcase and make it into a productive and interactive viewing.

Tip 6: Share What's great about this tip is that you can totally use Moments as an embedded code to insert into your website or one of your blog posts! There, they can be easily accessed and interacted with.

Summing all this up, Moments are basically ways to tell stories on Twitter through a collection of Tweets, any Tweets. It can be arranged in many ways in order to engage with fans and viewers. It's a productive and useful way for brands to engage with fans through storytelling! Well, I know what I'm using now for my business. I'm planning to use this feature in the near future to improve my engagements! That's what! GOOD TIMING TWITTER!

P.S. Did you hear about this? This is from Moments in Twitter! Proves how useful Moments are! 

[enjoy-the-life-baby]

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Sorry but I couldn’t help myself...

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Guide To Content Branding Strategy

Let me just start off by wishing you all a happy happy weekend and I'm back once again to tell you more of your most favorite thing in life, CONTENT marketing! Woot woot! I'm actually very excited to share this with you because I feel that this can relate to most of the entrepreneurs out there and especially you.

Like I've mentioned before, I currently am curating my own little online shop of terrarium and aquatic goods. (I'll explain why reminded you all of that soon)

Here's an article Michael Brenner wrote that has got me thinking about establishing a marketing strategy that will boost my sales and awareness. 

https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/create-content-marketing-strategy-brand-personality/

In this article, Brenner started talking about how to make your brand's content distinctive and gave examples of companies that have made a name for themselves through content marketing. IMPRESSIVE! And what's more impressive is that they didn't just do it by simply content marketing, SEO, or campaigns, it's making their brand unique in its own way. It's about being creative and imaginative in order to make your brand stand out from the rest.

And in order for that to work, Brenner stated that we must strategize a way to form the best elevation of content to show your brand's true colors. I'm completely wowed!

Alright, let's get to it.

Know Thyself Be your brand. It is an identity and it has goals and visions. And let me quote him (because any other way of saying this would not suffice for this level of intellect) "A system of values. A voice. It also, like other entities, has the ability to change over time, to react, to succeed and fail. And as such, it has a story"

Discover your brand's identity through a set foundation or mission statement.

Erika Heald, a chief content officer suggests that we create a chart to define our brand's identity. Here is that chart.

This chart will help you evaluate and strategize your brand's goals and visions folllowed by some questions that you will have to use in order to create a brand story instead of being "generic".

Questions: The Three W's

Why does your business exist and for what purpose? 

What's your history? What did the founders do to get it going? What challenges came up? What solutions were created? How has the organization responded to each high and low point along the way?

Who are the characters that created the brand? For older organizations, who have helped it thrive over the years?

As a marketer, I assume myself in the view of a consumer all the time. And as that goes, I always look for the company's background story or in this case, brand story. To me, it intrigues me and piques my interest and gives me a reason to purchase something from them or even to follow them. I'm sure every consumer can relate.

Back to the questions, it is a NEED and a MUST to ask yourself those questions in order to strategize a rockin' brand story otherwise your brand will just be like any other brand, GENERIC!

Understand Your Buyers Review and revise your buyer personas! Refine them if need be. Buyer personas are best recommended to change every season or every few months. This practice is based on understanding your audience.

Ask yourself these questions.

Questions: Buyer Personas

What are your buyer's topics of interest?

How do your buyers prefer to digest content? 

What questions are they asking on social media, online forums and your customer feedback surveys and questionnaires? 

What are their pain points? (problem, real or perceived. Creating solutions for those pain points)

What are their goals? 

What information do they need in order to reach the next stage of the buyer's journey?

This method is to find out what your customers are looking for and what they want from you. It's also to learn more about them.

Research and study! 

Know what resources you can get your hands on and ask more questions like these: 

What makes a popular blog different than others?

What are other industry brands doing in terms of in-person events, webinars, video, branded apps, and social media?

How are successful brands interacting with their customers? Would you read/watch/listen to their content if you were in their market? Why or why not?

And best of all, follow digital contents like Ad Week's Brand Marketing section and the Webby awards.

So the point of all of these questions and marketing rant is that brand content can be curated if you have a strategy to make it so! SO MAKE ONE!

The reason why I mentioned my shop is that I feel most related to this article. I feel as if this article's content can help me improve my marketing strategy. Many people sell things like I do, maybe not everything but very similar. I want to be able to stand out from the rest and use my imagination and creativeness to curate a strategy that can boost my content marketing points. I have yet to create a brand story and I feel that is the most important factor in content marketing at this stage. Okay, and scene! Thank you for reading everyone, have a great weekend and hope to see you back here next week! I'm off to strategize my brand story!

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This is the future of online content marketing, believe it or not. 

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Hey guys I’m back again! Every week like clockwork! Anyways, I’ll do my best to deliver today.

Today we’re going to discuss a little about the underused micro-content in other aspects besides social media. We see on social media everywhere that there’s a compilation of short words that help us define the reason or purpose of the attached article, meme, or pictures. We post 140 characters on a tweet (now it’s 280, well now you can write about your whole life in one tweet), captions on a Facebook post that tells us what it is they want us to read, etc., it’s a form of content marketing, micro-content.

What exactly is micro-content?

It’s just like what the words imply, it’s a small group of words which can be skimmed by the reader to understand the wider message of the article. It’s a short-form content that makes a great impact.

Clear and inviting to the reader

An example of micro-content in social media is a tweet, with less amount of characters the curator curates carefully what can capture the reader in seconds time. An example of micro-content in videos is Buzzfeed, 20-30 seconds short videos make a BIG difference. Consumers/audiences have an attention span of 8-10 seconds, how can you captivate them in those 8-10 seconds?

Think of an elevator speech, what can you say to raise awareness or make an impact in those mere seconds?

Yes, micro-content is often used in social media but it doesn’t have to be limited to. It’s an under-used content type in general. It often makes significant impact upon use.

Mirco-content and its uses:

Like I said, it doesn’t have to be limited to social media, but it is important regardless to form a set of words that will inform and engage customers in seconds time.

Areas that it can be used (but it isn't as much): tools to help your sales rep SELL! Job Performance Aids Marketing and Selling Content Content Source for New Content Creation

Salespersons need guidelines and set of tools that they can use during times of prospecting assets. Having a set of those guidelines (basically what to say) can help new customer acquisition and revenue growth. Not to sound like a broken record, but basically sales need a handbook (not like those 10 inch thick company handbooks that they tell you to read and you never even lay eyes on it, it can be a document or anything remote that can inform you that it’s what suitable for the situation) that tells them what to say and how to say as well as emails and that type of micro-content is underused.

Companies like Asana take advantage of this option that marketers lack and provide them for profit. It’s an SAS that provides tools and services to teams to curate there workspace remotely. That means teams can access micro-content repositories that are set up for them and access them.

Aside from that, as marketing and selling content, sales rep needs visual support as well as customers. And with the attention span of 8-10 seconds, you need to capture attention and generate interest. With that means, it is usually the first then readers see and aligns with the readers' preferences in cases where they should be a use for it.

How-tos:

How do you do micro-content? Honestly, I hope this question is never asked because it's something you already do every day. All you need to do is dilute it into words that can immediately make the reader understand and engaging. When can you use it? I believe you can use it whenever there's a long-form finished asset or when it's necessary to rapidly respond to prospects or candidates.  And you can use it anytime when you're delivering through social channels or sales channels.

According to Jim Burns In the article, MICRO-CONTENT: THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT TYPE YOU DON’T MANAGE, micro-content is not limited to marketing and can be utilized to create new customer prospects and increase revenue. He then states that there are uses that can be identified under micro-content. These uses can be in a company setting whereas your sales rep can utilize the function to easily find information that relates to the situation.

In respect to our fan page media project in our marketing 3810 class, I intend to use this type of content to engage prospects and as well as using for my online business where I can make templates with to respond to customers questions and situations and making it easier to find, I will apply micro-content.

https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/micro-content-important-content-type-dont-manage/

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[seoanubhavgarg]

The Anatomy of Content Marketing

[digital-marketing-in-the-ai-era]

How to Boost your Digital Marketing Strategy

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An infograph of ways to boost your Digital Marketing Strategy. Notice how this visual representation noted “Content Curation”. It’s it crucial to the start of any marketing strategy. 

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Vision Brand: Coca-Cola

And... We're back! Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a nice break from me ranting on about the obviousness. Anyways, I'm here to introduce you to a marketing strategy by the HUGE beverage company, Coca-Cola. Yes, Coca-Cola. Well, let me tell you some informative facts about Coca-Cola marketing to give you some insight on how HUGE they are. 

Coca-Cola spends more money on advertising than Microsoft and Apple combined.

The iconic American brand is recognized instantly around the globe and sold in more than 200 countries.

There are only two countries in the world where Coca-Cola is not sold: Cuba and North Korea

Impressed yet? I certainly am.

We're going to discuss and elaborate on Coca-Cola's 2020 strategy. Every company wants to model their strategy and base their marketing initiatives on it. There are ten chapters in the video discussing each part of the strategy and linking them to one another. I will try and summarize (only the most relevant ones) them the best I can so you can best understand.

1. Content Marketing Approach: "Liquid and Linked Content Development"

This chapter defined Liquid and Linked Content and how to utilize these aspects to reach "content excellence". Liquid is creating ideas that are contagious and cannot be controlled which fuels business objects, brand, and consumer interest, this is called Linked Content. Through these approaches, Coke provokes conversations that enable them to act and react to conversations. 

2. Case for Change

Based on 3 key drivers of Coke: the intention to double the size of their business, observed distribution and creativity, and distribution of technology. Technology is so broad nowadays that it allows greater connectivity and consumer empowerment that can develop a deeper and emotional relationship by storytelling.That in turn, leverage existing behaviors in order for Coke to manage and attain. Also, it is recognized that consumer-generated stories outnumber Coke. 

3. The Transition to Dynamic Storytelling

In this chapter, Coke depicts their transitional storytelling method from one way to dynamic. Dynamic storytelling is letting the story carry its way while you connect and converse with customers through the various social media outlets you connect with.  

4. Live Positively 

Our storytelling has to commit to making the world a better place. We have to utilize the "live positively" movement because it is a huge opportunity and it must apply to our daily lives, activities, and operations. It is the responsibility and opportunity to create change in the world.

5. Insight to Provocation

Insight is defined as small incremental thinking whilst provocations, are bigger transformative actions. By using data analytics, they will grow liquid ideas and that inspires inspirational provocation. In a business, growth is crucial and measuring growth is vital importance to the expansion of the business. In transition, they engage in online conversations to create a space that will challenge and objectify by creative briefs that deliver. 

6. Development of Liquid Content

Content in Coke's terms is the creation of stories that are to be expressed through every possible connection. For example, Coke curates value and significance to people's lives. Then it transitions to liquid stating that it is the elements of content that move freely amongst themselves but continues on as a story with a connection. We have to yearn to be the most engaging with our content with different processes but the same principles. 

7. 70/20/10

Coke describes their 70/20/10 rule for their marketing strategy:

70% Low Risk Content - the bread and butter and pays the rent. Only 50% of it should you be spending your time on and should be fairly simple to do.  

20% Innovation of what works - it engages more deeply with specific audience in mind. 

10% High Risk Content - this should only be brand new ideas and it tomorrow's 20% or 70%. 

9. Dollar Multiplier 

The whole concept begs to iterate and iterate but not replicate. The point is to manage the most affordable/cheapest plan which is called dollar multiplier. 

Overall, my opinion on this video is that I'm truly amazed. I really can't believe how far they've gone to curate their marketing concept. Also an important factor in the video that I took notice, is that 30-second ads do not stand a chance in this concept because it said that the world moved on from it and now connects through technology that enables a deeper emotional connection with customers and fuels conversations that emphasizes on act and react. I believe that using their 2020 marketing strategy can increase consumer/followers count by using liquid content. Now that I've gained knowledge on this matter, I can't help but research Coke for further know-how. 

Take a look at Geico’s (my favorite company in regards to funny tv ads) 30 second ad. 

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Robert McGuire gives us a thorough explanation of Content Marketing through his eyes.  It’s suggested that everyone in Marketing Social Media should read this to further understand Content Marketing. 

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Content Marketing Defined

OK. So where do we start... First things first, let’s establish this relationship of ours as a long-term thing because it’s going to take a while for me to go through this with you. So bear with me here! 

For a while now, I’ve always wondered what content actually was. I’ve had a taste of it but never the full understanding of the content marketing world. What does it really mean? Why is it so important? And why do I keep spotting that word all over my searches? (I tend to Google a lot of marketing intel) I even subscribed to numerous marketing blogs and signed up here and there to gain knowledge about it. And now I think it’s time I try and unravel this ever-so-important topic. 

What is Content Marketing and Why Does it Matter? 

Well, from what I found out from the few weeks I’ve been in my social media marketing class, content is storytelling. But it’s more than just storytelling. Content cannot simply be put into clear and concise understanding by just a few measly words, but hopefully, this will give you the gist of it. 

Content marketing is created and curated content which emphasizes on valuable experiences. It is also defined as the creation of valuable and compelling experiences which focuses on brand awareness. Content is the drive of all businesses, it shows the target audience what you can do for them, how you can do it, or just by showing you are your own. There are many ways content is used to depict the brand. Content is curated to enhance and change consumer behavior. And another important thing about content marketing is that it’s about the customers, not us. 

Then what’s Traditional Marketing? 

Simple. It’s PAID marketing. You pay a service or a company or even some person to promote your products. It can have content, but it’s paid content The thing about traditional marketing is that you have to spend money to get money. And sometimes, marketing costs can shoot up to unbelievable amounts. You don’t want that. You want to cut costs, save, and invest that money elsewhere. That’s what I would do. 

What about Social Media Marketing?  

Good thing you asked. Social media marketing revolves around customers. Customer satisfaction, service, discussions, and such that. Social media focus on customer retention. For social media marketing, the posts you upload are short and to the point. But for content marketing, its format is long and can publish blogs (such like this), infographics, videos, and tons more to name. Although both methods are far from being the same thing, they work hand in hand and overlap each other in many ways. In order for a social media post to be successful, it relies on the content marketing. 

Let’s put my business in for example. When I create content, I post it on a social media platform. In that social media post, I include a backlink which directs prospects into my shop (here we generate a conversion rate). If a potential customer sees value and compelling content, it will generate a follow. Social media needs content. (A “duh” moment? It’s OK, sit still and continue on)... Still following or you lost? Don’t worry, repeat that paragraph again and again in your head and hopefully one day you’ll get it, we’ve all been there. 

Alright, so let’s have more examples to further simplify your understanding of this ever-so-important topic “Content Marketing.”

It’s a movement, it’s the new big thing. Have a target audience and share away!

Take a look at Denny’s content. They know what they’re doing. 

Denny’s blog is downright hilarious and stimulating. All their content is user-generated and hysterical version of food porn. (It’s not a bad word I promise)

dennys

those aren’t omelette

And have you heard of Old Spice? WIth 219K followers on Twitter, I’d say they’re doing pretty well with their content marketing. 

Their most recent post is a video of Von Miller (a football player, director, photographer, special effects artist, and actor) who hatched from this egg in what seems like a desert (maybe mars, I’ll get back to you on that) and wonders where he is and why he’s so dry. And mentions “Have I gone far?...Maybe I have gone far enough.” From that moment he saw a huge lighted Old Spice body wash bottle right in front of him. He steps closer and touches it but got electrocuted. When he was electrocuted by the large bottle, he shed all the dryness off his body and then he’s rejuvenated. And it stops. Back to reality, he was showing the video to his football team and his football team cheered. He goes to the shower and uses Old Spice to shower and had a little success cheer. This video is, in fact, a great content. This is one of Old Spice brand’s “Stat Unforsweatable” campaign. It has a bit of randomness and must to it. It entertains and keeps the audience on the screen using a famous male figure. The brand has been showing subtle yet powerful messages that you need “Old Spice Hydro Wash Pure Sport Plus” which is for hydrating for the delicate skin.