Content marketing customer engagement is crucial for any business. Imagine a business without any customer engagement at all and you know that it will go bankrupt in a short period of time. So it is important to keep your prospects and customers engaged.
However a content marketing strategy is not about producing content that you think you need to have. It is about creating content that is useful and relevant as relevance drives consumption. These are essential attributes content marketers must deliver on, in order to be successful.
Engagement in itself can be a rather vague term but Dave Chaffey bring clarity from content marketing customer engagement perspective by saying it is the –
“Repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand”.
In this article we take a look at content marketing customer engagement from non-profits and airlines to Google and current social media trends. We also look at how businesses can create better customer engagement with their content. This courtesy of tips and tricks from a few industry experts.
Content Marketing Media: Content Marketing Customer Engagement
Let’s kick things off with a look at latest content media happenings.
Game of Thrones: The Musical to Promote Red Nose Day
While the cause of red nose day is a worthy one it does present a content marketing customer engagement challenge. Especially since the cause is to raise money for children in impoverished places. While there have been a number of content marketing tactics and challenges this approach to Red Nose Day is at the very least funnier. NBC, the cast of Game of Thrones and Coldplay got together to produce a 12 min musical.
Published on may 21st the video has garnered more than 8 million views. No word as yet as to its effectiveness in terms of being able to raise funds.
Delta’s Latest Meme-Packed Safety Video Is Marketing Gold
It seems that unusual and perhaps outlandish airline safety videos have become a ploy to drum to up online views. Following the trend of Virgin America, and Air New Zealand, Delta has published its version which includes just about every meme in recent memory, lovable pets and special effects to ensure its virality. The video has gained over 5.5 million views in the week it has been published.
Google just made YouTube ads shoppable
Google announced a new feature called TrueView for shopping which will allow users to shop via an instream video ad by clicking on the banner in the video ad. With 50% of traffic coming from mobile views it plays nicely on mobile devices.
TrueView will provide a list of product cards beneath the video ad to direct viewers to where they can buy the product. According to VentureBeat, the new feature integrates with existing ad products, according to a blog post from Google:
TrueView for shopping enables advertisers to scale the manual process of connecting individual products with individual videos. Thanks to the first-ever integration of the Google Merchant Center into video ads, advertisers need only connect their campaign with a Merchant Center feed to dynamically add products to their in-stream videos, customized for each user through contextual and audience signals like geography and demographic info.
What you need to know about Facebook user behavior
Discover more about Facebook user behavior in this post which covers data like:
- More than half of Facebook users visit the platform more than once per day which is more than any other social media platform.
- Facebook users use on average around 4.15 social media networks which means they spend a fair bit of their time on social media.
- 9 out of 10 Twitter and YouTube users also have a presence on Facebook. Compared to this only 40% of Twitter and YouTube users use Pinterest as well.
Social Media Marketing Trends Gaining Traction in 2015
Social Media Examiner has released their latest industry report. However here are five trends worth taking note of:
1. Internet Retailers 2015 social media 500 says that in 2014 social commerce sales that could be tracked to social networks hit 3.30 billion which is up 26% form the previous year. With such trends online shops will be the preferred place for shopping over physical stores.
2. Emarketer says that which US adults have switched social activity from desktops to mobile it predicts that by the end of 2015 more than half of all social networking activity will occur on mobile devices. Businesses that can provide their offers simply and without much filling in of forms are likely to capture more sales.
3. Edison Research and Triton Digital released “The Infinite Dial 2015” in which they found the monthly podcast consumption grew by 18% from 39 million users in 2014 to 46 million users in 2015. This research found that 38% of podcasts are free from any sort of brand advertising and so untapped advertising opportunities may lie in this content medium.
4. Gigya reported that in Q4 2014 Facebook was the provider of 61% of social logins and 72% of ecommerce social logins. Google+ was in second place with 22%. Pew Research also says that Facebooks engagement rate is much higher than any other social channel with 70% of its users engaging with the site on a daily basis.
5. With Facebooks continuing trend of releasing new mobile features and Facebook’s free features, users seem to be happy to use the platform in exchange for sharing their buying intent, demographics and more. In other words Facebook will be seen as offering the most targeted and valuable audience to advertisers. It is not unexpected that Facebook would charge a premium for advertising as a result.
How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media
According to a survey in the United States by Clutch, almost half of small businesses do not actively use social media and 25% say they are unlikely to do so in the future. The infographic below provides more insights into how small business are using social media.
Some key findings that stand out are:
- 30% of businesses that use an outside agency/consultant for social media plan to decrease spend in 2015, compared with 12% that plan to increase spend.
- 30% of respondents expect an increase on social media advertising spend this year, and 25% expect spend to remain the same as before; 21% expect a decrease in ad spend.
The small businesses that do not see the value of being on social media can benefit from learning about the long-term gains, including brand awareness and reputation management. Ken Braun, the founder and chief creative officer of Lounge Lizard, explains how the purpose of social media has been lost among some small businesses.
“For the small business person, we personally have seen a decline in social media spending and here is why. The smaller business owner wants to see a return on investment very quickly. We’ve had several small businesses that have come to us to handle their social media as far as their Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. They like to see the activity and all the social media promotions that we’re coming up with, but they want their phone to ring every day. They want the immediate results from social media. The problem with social media is, it’s not short-term; it’s really more of a long-term brand awareness strategy. My experience is that the small business owner doesn’t really understand this with social media because they want the immediate sales right away, and that doesn’t happen.”
— Ken Braun, Lounge Lizard
Content Marketing Know-How
The 6 Easiest Video-Editing Tools for Small Business Marketers
Leslie Belknap provides insights into how we can utilize video production apps to create compelling videos as part of your overall visual content marketing mix.
She covers Nutshell, Magisto, Animoto, Videoshop, iMovie App, and iMovie for Macs with great infographics and how-to videos like the one below for NutShell.
The Web Marketer’s Guide to Landing Press
Ryan Stewart takes us through the evolving trends of SEO and how online PR has a bigger role to play in the scheme of things. He goes through how to land media coverage and the tested methods to do just that.
SEO in 2015 – new methods in optimizing content
Brian Honigman provides his perspective on Traditional SEO and the reason why it can be considered dead or useless without quality content.
How Photo Filters Affect Online Engagement
According to a Yahoo Labs report photo filters do boost engagement. After looking at 7.6 million public Flickr app photos, researchers at Yahoo Labs and the Georgia Institute of Technology they found that
Filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on.However, not all filters affect engagement equally. Filters that increase contrast and correct exposure can help a photo’s engagement, and filters that create a warmer color temperature are more engaging than those with cooler color effects.
The Ultimate Copywriting Crash Course, as Taught by Mad Men
Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers compiled the best copywriting lessons from Mad Men in the form of an infographic.
Five Tips to Make Your Email Marketing Pitch Perfect
Campaigner inspired by the movie Pitch perfect provided this infographic in order to help you create email marketing campaigns that hit the right notes.
25 Entrepreneurs Confess What They Wished They’d Known Before Founding Their First Startup
Let’s wrap things up with some words of wisdom from experienced entrepreneurs.
Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy given the struggles and tough decisions that need to be made. Read this article to glean the advice and wisdom from 25 entrepreneurs.
Cool Tools I Have Discovered
VeriShow: A live chat and customer support tool that also lets you launch a web meeting with a website visitor on the spot.
Blossom: An intuitive online project management and collaborative tool.