Oreo. Starbucks. American Express. Dell. These are brands that come to mind when the topic of real-time marketing (RTM) arises — as it does with increasing frequency these days. Real-time is gaining traction for all kinds of reasons. A recent study by GolinHarris demonstrates real-time can raise literally all desirable marketing metrics. Eighty-three percent of […]
Do name-brand journalists still require the backing of name-brand media outlets? Recent headlines strongly indicate that the byline is being rapidly decoupled from the masthead. Glenn Greenwald left The Guardian to start his own media venture, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Technology veteran Walt Mossberg, together with the redoubtable Kara Swisher, are walking out […]
Programmatic upfront? AOL’s much-ballyhooed event at New York’s Advertising Week was positioned to provoke. Upfronts are ginormous, splashy, boozy, star-studded, A-list, steak, lobster and caviar TV blowouts for advertisers, not digital media buyers. It’s where broadcasters preview the next season’s programming. (And, as a Starcomm executive mentioned before AOL’s event kicked off, “We’ve always had […]
Digital content doesn’t just happen. Marketers require tools to get it done. The range of software and tools serving content marketers has mushroomed in the past couple of years. As researchers and analysts at the Altimeter Group, we started looking at the space informally back in April, building a list of software vendors. Currently, we’ve compiled […]
Is your content going rogue? Do you know all the sites and social media accounts controlled by your brand or company? Who can access and update them? Who knows the passwords? How frequently is the content on each property being updated, and how do those updates conform to larger communications and brand strategies? Or has […]
Unless you work for a very unusual, or highly progressive, organization, it’s unlikely there’s a formal content division within the enterprise. The much-ballyhooed but rarely seen in the wild Chief Content Officer really doesn’t exist. Or when the odd one is spotted, the species is too rare and dispersed to reproduce, at least for now. […]
With today’s pressing content demands, every organization with a website, blog and marketing communication documents needs a content marketing strategy. Below are a few questions to consider when developing your own strategy. Do you know everyone in your organization who creates and/or publishes content? Where are your organization’s creative assets stored and managed? (“My Inbox” and/or “My […]
How should organizations organize for content? Are brands really publishers? Very few have hired people with “content” or “editor” in their titles. Fewer still (read: almost none) have content departments or divisions within the marketing or other organizations. Yet, more and more companies are producing content like crazy. Also, multiple websites. Large corporations have tens […]
Do you have what you need to “do” content? If you don’t, you’re hardly alone. We’re in the throes of conducting interviews with dozens of marketers at (mostly) Fortune 500 enterprises about how they are organizing, budgeting and resourcing for content marketing. Ironically, while technology has democratized the creation, production and dissemination of content in […]
Search is the de facto way in which consumers navigate content platforms. Not just the Web via traditional search engines, but all types of platforms, from television to radio to music libraries. The fact that search has always been lacking from Facebook has long been a source of criticism and frustration. Facebook Search Graph There’s […]
Does your organization have a content marketing department? If not, you’re hardly alone. While commitment to and investment in content marketing is skyrocketing year over year, there are far from hard and fast rules, and only barely emerging best practices, regarding how content fits into existing marketing functions. Content generally doesn’t exist as a department […]
I recently spent two days at the headquarters of a global enterprise speaking with various stakeholders from across their marketing organization about content marketing. The purpose of the discussions was to uncover how content is being conceived, created, used, re-used, published and disseminated within the organization. Is there sufficient sharing and cross-departmental cooperation, or are […]
Content marketing has been embraced by businesses large and small. There’s far less of a need to buy media when you can create it yourself. Businesses are aware that if you have a website, a blog, a YouTube channel, a Twitter presence, a Facebook page or a host of other online offerings, then you’re as […]
Content and advertising have always been either/or propositions in the context of traditional print and broadcast media. Advertising (paid media) exists in a clearly circumscribed periphery outside, or adjacent to, the main content (owned media), which is created by a publisher or broadcaster. Advertising is interruptive. It’s the price readers or viewers pay to get […]
What is online reputation management? It’s the practice of both monitoring the online reputation of a person, brand, product or business, and of addressing negative mentions, either by eliminating or suppressing them, or by decreasing their visibility on search engine results pages by pushing them lower; for example, making the negative content appear on page […]
IBM recently published research finding that about 80 percent of those who begin a corporate blog never post more than five entries. And that’s just blogging. The Internet is littered with never-updated web sites, near-tweetless Twitter accounts, expressionless Facebook pages, and no-one-home YouTube channels. In the rush to adopt content marketing as a tactic, too […]
Sure, content marketing means developing content around your business, your products and your services. But content isn’t supposed to exist in a you-oriented void. Content is targeted externally; at customers, prospects, buyers, brand advocates, bloggers, the media, people participating in social networks, even potentially employees (if you’re recruiting). So the first rule of knowing what […]
Reading. It’s a fundamentally solitary pastime that’s becoming increasingly more social given the baked-in functionalities of e-reading devices (Tweet this!). It’s also – surprise! – an activity on the upswing for a couple of reasons: a proliferation of e-reading devices that are plummeting in price, and consumers’ broad acceptance of reading content on phones and […]
Facebook. Twitter. Google+. Pinterest. Foursquare. LinkedIn. Path. How many of these social networks do you belong to? Do you participate in every day? Every week? Every month? When a new one comes along does your heart leap in anticipation, or sink a little when you realize it’s one more thing to add to your already […]
Fire your marketing department! Social media is free! Have you heard the news? It’s been trumpeted recently in no end of misleading, link-baity headlines such as these: P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook P&G slashes marketers in lieu of free social media P&G CEO Discovers Social Media Marketing […]
Where are you watching the Big Game this year? Last year, that question was a locational where: a Super Bowl party, at home on the sofa or a local watering hole being the expected answer. This year, the “where” is just as likely to be device specific. On a PC? A tablet? Or a Verizon […]