F.A.R.E. Content Marketing
Attract and retain customers with Frequent, Authentic, Relevant, and Engaging content
Content Marketing and Social Media: How Do You Know If It’s Really Working?
You’ve read all those blog posts. Social media has hit the mainstream and content marketing is buzzing. You have a presence. You produce content. Maybe you even have a social media manager and a content director. But how do you know it’s really working?
Reporting on a recent study, Sam Laird at Mashable blogged:
How do marketers and entrepreneurs measure whether social media marketing pays off? Most do so by measuring the accumulation of friends, likes, followers and other online connections. Thirty-nine percent look at shares of brand content, while 35% measure actual leads from social media. Just 18% measure success by overall brand awareness and favorability as gauged by consumer surveys.
Looking at the data reported, it’s apparent that we measure what is easy to measure: likes, fans, followers, views, visitors, while measuring leads, sales and customer perceptions take more effort.
Still it is very doable and not so overwhelming when measurement is part of a program and a strategy. Simple measurement techniques are usually the result of a lack of a strategy and a lack of a clear set of objectives for what one is trying to accomplish with social media marketing or content marketing.
As an example, perhaps you are looking to improve conversion rates in the acquisition funnel (e.g. get more people to sign-up). You can measure your current conversion rates at each stage in the funnel (e.g., register, attend, etc.). Then, as part of a program surrounding one segment of customers you measure the changes in conversion rates after audiences interact with content assets (videos, blog and website content, eBooks, guest posts/articles, infographics, etc.)
Reported data shows that website visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy.
Through a program designed to measure the impact of activities defined by a content marketing and social media marketing strategy and plan it’s possible to get much deeper insight into customer opinions as well as ROI. The optimal measurement, to truly see if it’s all “working”, requires looking at metrics from total reach to support resolution, from the value of a Facebook fan to share of conversation. That may not be possible right away, but there are ways to get beyond measuring likes and mentions.
What are you doing?
Converged Media Lab: Top Success Criteria by AltimeterGroup on Flickr.
Top Success Criteria for Converged Media: Combining, Paid, Owned & Earned Media
From the Altimeter Group: “11 Success Criteria to Make Converged Media a Reality: We found through interviews a set of patterns from respondents on what will make this a reality and organized the criteria into four distinct categories: Strategy, Organization, Production, Analysis. While this process is likely followed in any individual point channel, now, it must be an integrated approach.”
Via Flickr:
From Altimeter Group Report: “The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Must Combine Paid, Owned and Earned Media,” by Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang. Download the report at www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports
The Convergence of Paid, Owned & Earned Media by AltimeterGroup on Flickr.
The Convergence of Paid, Owned and Earned Media
This Venn diagram from the Altimeter Group’s latest report reveals the trend among successful brands and brand marketers who have seen measurable effectiveness from combined efforts across channels.
Via Flickr:
From Altimeter Group Report: “The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Must Combine Paid, Owned and Earned Media,” by Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang. Download the report at www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports
5 Reasons Why You Need to Focus Your SEO on Content
By now, most of you have probably implemented many traditional SEO techniques, keywords in Meta Data, keywords on page, as many inbound links as possible, etc. Now, some of those factors might be actually hurting your search ranking.
According to the latest ranking factors data from Searchmetrics the following factors are most relevant for a good ranking in Google search results:
- Social media signals: social signals from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are frequently associated with good rankings. So that means you need quality content that people are willing to share. Use our F.A.R.E. Content model to create content people will be willing to share.
- Brands have the advantage: Mainly because they produce more content and achieve higher engagement and social signals. You can start making a dent in a niche by focusing on content.
- Too much advertising is detrimental: The algorithms appear to prefer sites that have a balanced approach between content and ads. So focus on content, not ads on your site.
- Link quality is essential: Backlinks are still important but quantity is not the only important thing. Inbound links from poor quality sites can actually harm your ranking.
- Keywords in domains still important and frequently attract top results: despite all the rumors to the contrary, keyword domains are still alive and well and are often in the top rankings.
About Me
Chris Bechtel, a Senior Strategist at Make Good Social, and a Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing and Online PR professional has spent more than 15 years working with companies from small business ($1MM) to large enterprises ($500MM+) including ACS (a Xerox Co.), City National Bank, Epson, and Toyota extend the reach of their content online.
Contact Me: about.me/chrisbechtel
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