Author: Lisa Arledge Powell

This article first appeared on PR Daily in June, 2015.

A report from Cisco offers a glimpse into the future of content marketing and video.

The research says it would take one person more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2019. That statistic alone should make you start thinking about how to make your brand’s video content stand out.

Consider these techniques:

1. Start with strategy. As with any communications initiative, always begin with a plan. Before hitting the record button on your camera, be clear about your company’s goals, target audience and message.

2. Keep it short and compelling. Many of today’s most popular YouTube videos run less than a minute. However, the length of your video should be determined by your goals and the type of information you’re trying to communicate. It’s difficult to keep an online viewer engaged for more than two or three minutes. If you have a lot of content on one topic, edit it into several shorter videos. Regardless of the length, begin your segment strong. Open your piece with compelling visuals and information.

 

Read More at prdaily.com

Author: massplanner.com

The social media marketing industry is so full of different voices spewing often-conflicting and often-rehashed opinions. Trying to figure out which ones to listen to and which to ignore can be tough. In this article, we give you a master list of the current social media marketing elite – in our opinion, the only voices you should be listening to. Follow these social sales gurus on Twitter to get regular, free advice on the latest social media marketing trends, tips, and traps.

These are the top 10 social media marketers to follow on Twitter right now.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the consummate Internet and social media whiz kid. While working in his father’s liquor store in New Jersey, Vaynerchuk realized the importance of e-commerce. He then created WineLibrary.com and Wine Library TV, both of which garnered millions of fans. In 2009, he co-founded VaynerMedia, a marketing agency that works with Fortune 500 companies such as PepsiCo, GE, and the NY Jets.

Follow Gary Vaynerchuk on Twitter (@garyvee) – to get tips on social media marketing and insights into the inner workings of the online marketing world. He tells you what has worked for him and his businesses, what he has seen work for others, and how you can make social media work for you. You can also subscribe to his email newsletter and read his most recent book JabJabJab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World.

 

Read More at massplanner.com

Author: Natasha Lomas

There is great writing. And there is content. And at this juncture in the internet’s evolution it seems very plain, Dear Online Reader, that you are mostly being served a tsunami of content — accelerated into your attention trough by click-dependent digital business models that require a steady stream of word fodder to engage eyeballs long enough to ambush them with ads.

You can weep for the state of the written word — and let’s face it, a whole lot of content isn’t even written these days; I mean, why expend energy composing actual sentences when you can just live stream a melon being slow-ploded by rubber bands, or you can build technology to automate the writing process to churn out even more #content?

The second option is what Israeli startup Articoolo has been busy doing. It’s built an algorithm that can generate an article on a topic of your choice — so long as it can be described in between two and five words. Just sum up your subject concisely, tell the machine how many words (max 500) to scribe on your behalf and select whether you prefer “better readability” or “enhanced uniqueness.” Then hit the create button and sit back and wait for your article to be baked by its AI.

 

Read More at techcrunch.com

Author: Jeff Bullas

Creating content can be an ongoing challenge for startups.

Content marketing provides a platform for us to show off our expertise, but it takes a lot of time and effort to pull it off correctly.

Quality over quantity is key, but even publishing one blog post per week can be hard when there are so many other facets to running a small business.

Even if you manage to write your blog post for the week, the work doesn’t end there. The last thing you want to do is publish a blog post that has errors or doesn’t read well. Remember, your content is representative of your business!

Even though it is best practice to get another pair of eyes on your content before you hit that publish button, sometimes due to time constraints or team size, that’s just not possible. Fortunately there are some simple editing hacks that can help you eliminate, or at least minimize, errors in your content.

Don’t know where to start?

Here are some straightforward hacks to edit your own content effectively and easily.

Once you’ve finished a piece, take a break from it and do something else for a few hours. If you can sleep on it, that’s even better.

 

Read More at jeffbullas.com

Author: Jill Kocher

Search engine optimization isn’t a project you can do once. For lasting success, SEO needs to be built into the core of how you manage your ecommerce business.

Fifteen years ago it was possible for an SEO professional to improve organic search while sitting by himself in a dark corner. He’d cram keywords into copy after it was already written, create sitemap after sitemap, and build links like crazy — on article sites, wikis, and blog comments. Not today.

Search engine optimization still includes keyword relevance and link authority. But the implementation of those important elements must be expressed in the way that the site is structured and built; in the products that are offered and how they’re named; and in the content marketing offerings on and off the site. That’s why it needs to be built into the core of your digital operations.

… SEO needs to be built into the core of how you manage your ecommerce business.

SEO professionals are, in fact, responsible for very few deliverables. Yes, SEOs need to conduct deep keyword research on an ongoing basis to inform strategy and taxonomy. We need to audit the site periodically to be certain that it continues to meet best practices and advise on optimization efforts. We need to optimize content and write metadata for new content.

 

Read More at practicalecommerce.com