Ayaz Nanji says, “How long should should content pitches to media outlets be? Should they include fully formed assets or, instead, opportunities to collaborate? Do publishers value exclusive research? What are the biggest mistakes people make when pitching? Fractl recently set out to answer such questions by surveying 500 writers, editors, and publishers on what they look for in pitches. Respondents came from a wide range of digital publications, including those that cover general news (such as CNN.com, Reuters.com, USAToday.com), business and technology (Forbes, Mashable, Business Insider),... [...]

David Moth says, “I probably don’t need to convince you of the value of content marketing as much has been written on the topic in the past few years. However it can still be difficult to measure the precise ROI of content marketing, as one can’t simply point to a blog post or YouTube video and say it definitely led to someone making a purchase. However there are methods of proving the value of content marketing to an organisation, as highlighted by these case studies”. Six case studies that prove content marketing ROI isn’t fictional ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Sharon Hurley Hall says, “I don’t know about you, but I love infographics. I’m not talking about hastily put together images with some random stats to ride the infographic craze. I mean infographics that are heavy on the info, with some real meat to them. Recently, I’ve been trawling the interwebs for additional information on content marketing. Here’s what I found. 1) Hubspot and Smart Insights have teamed up to create Seven Steps to Success Competing with Content Marketing. The infographic looks at how what brands need to communicate meshes with what customers want to find out. It... [...]

Erik Devaney says, “The year was 1997, and all the cool kids were watching MTV. Meanwhile, over on VH1, a new series was just rolling out; a series that was actually aboutmusic … and the musicians who made it. That groundbreaking documentary series? Behind the Music. The first musicians featured in it? Milli Vanilli and M.C. Hammer. (Hey, the show had to start somewhere.) And almost 20 years later, the series is still alive and well. Taking a cue from VH1’s Behind the Music, we’ve teamed up with our pals at LinkedIn to bring you Behind the Content. In this new guide, we... [...]

Petr Palas says, “A few months ago, we conducted a content marketing survey that found 74% of those who surf the Web tend to trust the non-salesy content that businesses post on their corporate, social, and other sites to educate prospects and customers and, hopefully, draw them into their communities and customer channels. The figure may be surprisingly high, but our survey also showed it doesn’t take much for content marketers to break that trust: 29% indicate that even if 99% of a blog post is compelling, valuable, and objective, all a content marketer has to do to kill her credibility... [...]

MarketingExperiments team says, “Content marketing determines how your customer gets to know your company and your product. It’s your chance to break through the inner monologue of your customer’s decision-making process and create a dialogue. However, marketers often fail to capitalize on the total potential of content on a blog, social media or site pages, which causes leads to leak out of the sales funnel. How can you turn your content into a true lead generation tool? In this Web clinic, the MECLABS research team made three key observations from a recent experiment where one company... [...]

There are several different formats for graphics. Over 20 years ago, the BMP file was invented by Microsoft. Not long after came the JPG file (invented by an industry group not wanting to be tied to Microsoft). This is all techy stuff we can mostly ignore, but one graphics style has a special use, the GIF file. Unlike all the others, not only can it show a picture; it can also show a moving image. And it does it very efficiently. This means that you theoretically can use a GIF to show a short screen capture or other video. Besides the small file size (important for fast websites), a GIF file is... [...]

Isla McKetta says, “In a post-Hummingbird world, we all know content matters. But many SEOs are still trying to work around this update because we think we don’t have the tools to gauge content quality.  If you’ve said, “I’m not a writer,” or, “How do I know what will resonate with my audience?” And even, “Content is hard and takes time; do I really have to?” You might be suffering from content anxiety. Content quality anxiety can come in many forms: What is content, really?”. “But How Do I Know if It’s Good?” How... [...]

Anna Rodriguez says, “If your company has not yet shifted to content marketing, chances are you are losing your audience and missing out on a lot of opportunities. The adoption of the practice is on the rise with a staggering 93 percent of marketers focusing on content, according to a 2014 research by the Content Marketing Institute. The study also revealed that 42 percent of business-to-business or B2B marketers actually think they are good and effective at it. Content marketing is more than a fad but also the future. Econsultancy’s first Content Marketing Survey Report showed that... [...]

Rebecca Lieb says, “How should content be measured and analyzed? Let us count the ways (or at least begin to). This column is intended to be an informal sounding board for ideas. Summer’s over and it’s time to get cracking on new research. Next up (in my capacity as a research analyst): content metrics. My goal on this next project (which I’m undertaking with fellow analyst Susan Etlinger, a specialist in data and analytics) will not merely focus on how companies are measuring the most obvious content marketing goals, such as ROI, or increased sales, leads and conversions. We’re... [...]