Social, Mobile, Content Marketing Predictions for 2015 Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article has moved to the new Steveology Group website. Great content marketing

 

 

These are the trends that stand out from working with midsized clients, and that influences what I advise to them.

In part 2, I will look at what other digital marketers I respect are saying and what trend data is worth keeping in mind as you up your digital marketing game for 2015.

Social Media Becomes Layered In All Content Touchpoints

For most marketers sharing your new content on Twitter and your company Facebook page is a given.

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However, until recently few marketers have integrated layered social sharing strategies across all content touchpoints. With the increasing cost of creating great content it’s now mandatory for midsized businesses on a tight budget, which is pretty much everyone, to maximize sharability.

Several tactics are emerging:

• Making headlines more telegraphic (Allowing the reader to instantly grasp the topic/value)
• Showing only the highest performing social network icons on page.
• Using tools like Click-To-Tweet to share quotable tidbits throughout the content.
• Social sharing optimized for mobile devices.
• Creating word-smithed prepopulated Tweets/posts so readers can just click and share.
• Embed social sharing in newsletters and emails.
• Granting access to exclusive content when a readers shares.

Content Is Created For Mobile First

The year of being mobile is cliché. However, 2015 is when marketers start to grasp Flex-Media (Content in audio, video, and text) and its necessity to take advantage of “content in your pocket.” That is, content that goes everywhere the user goes.

As content consumption via mobile device swells, envisioning your content marketing assets from a mobile user’s perspective first is mandatory to win big with your target customers. Content that is slow to load, doesn’t resize for the viewer’s mobile device form factor, or is not easily scanble costs you views, shares, and ultimately key engagement that closes sales.

The advantage here for midsized marketers is most enterprise companies are still creating content for the desktop in one primary media format. Then repurposing it by chunking it up the best they can in a few formats. This fails to create content that has been designed specifically for each media platform. However, if you conceptualize your content creation with each user experience at the beginning, each component stands fully on its own.

Pay To Promote Becomes Standard Content Marketing Procedure

Content marketers will finally embrace paid as an integral part of their owned and earned strategy. While most marketers have resisted paying to promote free content, leaders like Todd Defren, CEO of SHIFT, have demonstrated huge success using pay-per-click and social ads promoting new and well performing content to amplify results.

A great technique to leverage tight budgets is to do 50/50. That is, use half of your budget to promote new content, and the other half to promote well-performing content.

You can spend $15 on each new blog post and digital asset when you publish using audience targeted Facebook ads. (You can have an ad promoting your blog post, that links back to your website, shown to people who work at specific companies, have a special interest, or follow a company page; like your competitors Facebook page for example.)

Then you can use the other 50% of your budget to promote ads that drive your KPIs: email signups, engagement, time on site, pages per visit, or requests for demos, etc.

About The Author
Steve Farnsworth is a Demand Generation Strategist for The @Steveology Group: A Content Marketing agency that drive sales and dominate markets for high tech B2B. You can contact Steve or connect with him on Twitter as @Steveology.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM’s Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

And a special thank you for the very cool team at Racepoint Global for their outstanding work and continued support.

Tagged: B2B, B2B Marketing, Brand, Branding, CMO, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Enterprise, Marketing, PR, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

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