Ayaz Nanji says, “The most popular days and times that brands post content to various marketing channels aren’t necessarily the most effective, according to a series of reports from TrackMaven.The data came from a research series released last year by TrackMaven, including a Twitter report (based on 1.7 million tweets from 1,423 brand accounts), blog report (1.2 million posts from 4,618 brands), email report (93,000 emails from 2,000 email lists), Instagram report (accounts of Fortune 500 companies), and Facebook report (1.5 million from nearly 6,000 brand pages).Key findings from... [...]

Brian Clark says, “Now we tackle the eternal question: how do you get traffic to your curation site so you can build an email list? Should we start building a war chest for advertising?Not yet. First we’re going to apply some creativity and sweat into driving traffic. Some of these methods are tried and true, but need to be executed a certain way for a curation project. Others are seemingly a little “outside the box,” and yet they complement a curated email newsletter perfectly.In this 22-minute episode Robert Bruce and I discuss:What makes curated content shareable and linkableThe... [...]

Eric Murphy says, “According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2B and B2C benchmark reports, less than a quarter of marketers are able to prove content marketing ROI. Measurement is a key area of difficulty: 49% of B2B and 51% of B2C marketers were challenged with measuring content effectiveness in 2014.While definitions of effectiveness may vary by team, it should at least be simple to figure out if you’re successful once you define what “success” means. Here are two simple steps to establish a baseline for content effectiveness and prove if it’s failing (or not).Step... [...]

Jerod Morris says, “Talk is cheap. So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to content marketing strategy, simply talking about it is not enough.That is the big takeaway from the 2015 benchmarks, budgets, and trends study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, sponsored by our own Rainmaker Platform.According to the study, only 39 percent of B2B small business marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. The rest either have a strategy that they have only talked about (47 percent), have no strategy at all (12 percent), or are unsure (1 percent)”.Data... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “Creative trends can be fickle. Remember those super glossy CTAs that used to be on every website? Now, flat, minimalistic design is in.Whether you’re a seasoned or amateur designer, no marketer should be in the dark about the latest design trends. So what’s in store for 2015 in the creative world? Using their impressive collection of video clips, music tracks, and over 47 million images, Shutterstock created an infographic that predicts this year’s up-and-coming design trends.Check it out below to learn what trends are on the up-and-up around... [...]

Jason Miller says,I’ve had the invaluable experience of growing up fast as a marketer alongside a marketing industry maturing just as quickly in the digital age. When I first made the move to the B2B marketing space in 2009, there was a shift happening: Social media was starting to take off. Suddenly, marketers were faced with a whole slew of new platforms and technologies we had to master to do our jobs.What I’ve learned over these last six years has served me well as I’ve taken on the role of senior content manager at LinkedIn. The main message I’ve taken away?Being a one-dimensional... [...]

Devesh Khanal says, “How do I get influencers to share my content? Content marketers are forever seeking an answer to this question.You know that successfully partnering with influencers in your field could turn your great content into viral content. But too many of us never connect with influencers because we’re stuck on this nagging question: “How will I ever get this famous/busy person to give me the time of day?”The answer, of course, is: Add value. But we’ve heard that answer too many times. The real question is how do you add value?“.How to Use Seed Content to Build... [...]

Ian Cleary says, “Content marketing can be time-consuming. With a good plan you can become more effective, and using the right tools should be an important part of that. These seven tools will help make a big difference in your content marketing productivity.1. SEMrush – Identify how your competitor is ranking on GoogleSEMrush is a great tool to help you assess the traffic a competitor gets on Google and the keywords for which they are ranking”.7 Content Marketing Tools to Improve Your ProductivityContent Marketing Institute [...]

Jesse Mawhinney says, “Each year in mid-January, when all of last year’s research has been published, we like to read through some of the major reports on inbound marketing, content marketing, social media and online behavior.At the risk of sounding like a broken record, honestly, it’s amazing how fast things can change in twelve short months and 2014 was certainly no exception.While reviewing this year’s research two major trends emerged and both highlight the effectiveness of visual content marketing. As you will learn, this year’s data reveals that marketers who are leveraging... [...]

Rebecca Lieb says, “How many major brands want to create their content marketing in-house? One hundred percent.  That isn’t a made-up statistic. This was an actual finding a couple of years ago when I was conducting content marketing research, interviewing senior executives from over 50 brands such as Nestlé, GE, Adobe, IBM and Coca-Cola.The next finding was even more interesting. We asked these brands what type of agency they were likely to select for content creation: an ad agency, PR agency, social media agency, or one of the much smaller breed of storytelling agency (e.g., Story... [...]