The Crucial Role of Content&Social Marketing in Brand Promotion

2013 Content Marketing Report IMN just released their 2013 Content Marketing Survey Report which includes some great stats on content marketing, comparisons from 2012 to 2013, and insights on how content marketing varies by industry. One of the big takeaways from the report was that more marketers have an increased awareness of content marketing, which is a great sign. 78% said that they are somewhat familiar or very familiar with content marketing, and 10.9% considered themselves an expert. 49% currently have a content marketing strategy in place, 31% have had one for more than a year, and 18% have put a strategy in place within the last year. When it comes to the most effective content marketing tools, social media, website, email blasts, and newsletters came out on top. The report also looked at challenges that marketers are having when it comes to content marketing, and they include not having channel-specific strategies, not have enough resources, and utilizing basic program tools. Facebook Updates Facebook has once again changed its algorithm. This time, they have added two features called “Story Bumping” and “Last Actor”. Story bumping makes it so that the stories that show in the news feed aren’t just new stories but new to that specific user. So if the user has not seen a story but it’s still getting a lot of likes and comments, it will show up towards the top of the user’s news feed. This has fully launched on the web but has not yet gone live on mobile yet. Last Actor changes the way stories are ranked in a user’s news feed to help make them more real-time. Facebook tracks the user’s last 50 interactions and uses those as signals to rank last 50 interactions a little bit higher. Both of these updates are good for marketers, especially the story bumping, because there will be more opportunities for the brands’ audiences to see their content. Email Opens Reach Highest Number in Recent History According to eMarketer’s new report “Email Benchmarks: Key Metrics and Trends for 2013”, nearly one in three emails sent in North American in Q1 2013 were opened, which is the highest number in recent history. The factors that are having the biggest impacts on email performance are mobile device adoption and the use of marketing automation to send more targeted emails. The Value of Social Media Forrester’s new forecast on social marketing predicts that US marketers alone will spend $4.8 billion on social marketing tactics in 2013 and marketers worldwide will be spending billions, as well. 60% of marketers will increase their social budget this year. Despite the increase in spending, marketers still aren’t seeing enough ROI or value. So what’s the issue? Many marketers don’t recognize social as another channel, they think it is something that can stand alone and separate from other marketing efforts. Marketers should be using social in combination with other marketing channels in order to support the full customer journey. By Jessica Maxwell, Associate Marketing Specialist