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Press Start and Get in the Game with the Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing https://ift.tt/2LFsf4g PRESS START. These two words, which routinely appear on the title screens of video games, present both a prompt and a promise. You won’t advance until completing this simple command, but once you do, a world of adventure awaits. You can “press start” on a brand new CMWorld experience by scrolling down and clicking into our Ultimate Guide to Conquering Content Marketing. Prepare to explore new stages and levels with a host of top players in the content marketing game as we unlock the secrets to success in 2018 and beyond. Get in the GameWhen the going gets tough, gamers can navigate to the options menu and turn down the difficulty level. How convenient! Marketers, of course, don’t have that luxury, which is unfortunate because right now we face steeper challenges than ever in a crowded and rapidly changing environment. Consider these statistics, from the 2018 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report (the B2B version includes largely similar numbers):
Needless to say, there is no shortage of pitfalls along the way to reaching our goals. That’s why we enlisted some of the field’s foremost leaders and experts to help provide guidance. You’ll find plenty in our new guide, which features exclusive tips and tricks from a diverse range of perspectives. With the help of this guide, you’ll learn how to craft a content strategy that fits together like Tetris blocks falling perfectly into place. You’ll rattle through your objectives like Pac-Man gobbling dots. And your reach will grow like Mario with a mushroom power-up. Thank you to all of our experts for sharing their top tips for helping marketers win the content marketing game. Inside, you’ll gain insights from marketers including: Robert Rose, Nichole Kelly, Tim Washer, Ellie Mirman, Peter Krmpotic, Tamsen Webster, Amanda Todorovich, Courtney Cox, Eli Schwartz, Jay Acunzo, Carla Johnson, Heather Pemberton Levy, Zari Venhaus, Andy Crestodina, Ann Handley, Melanie Deziel, J.P. Medved, Mitch Joel, Michelle Park Lazette, Pam Didner, Dave Charest, Ian Cleary, Lee Odden, Vishal Khanna, Juntae DeLane, Doug Kessler, Joe Pulizzi, Justin Levy, Heidi Cohen, Christopher Penn, Mathew Sweezey, Michael Brenner, Michael Pratt, Ron Tite and Matt Heinz. Let’s have some fun. Press start and enjoy: Expert Content Marketing Tips for SharingHave a favorite content marketing game tip from one of our talented speakers? Below are a sample of what you’ll find inside the guide. Feel free to share any of these insights to get individuals within your network in the game! Flip your strategy from being the on-demand creator of content to the proactive editorial strategist. @Robert_Rose Understand where the white space exists in your industry to create content that stands out in an otherwise crowded content marketing landscape. @ellieeille Think about ways to expose data in the content marketing process, so that the data can be acted on. @peterkrmpotic Sophisticated content planning requires historical analysis, an understanding of what’s changed and currently happening around your audience. @amandatodo Marketing needs to slow down and think about substance and context. @annhandley Give yourself permission to really focus on building great, helpful, informative, authoritative content first. It's much easier to monetize it later. @rizzlejpizzle The content creation / promotion imbalance is a big problem for marketers trying to win the content marketing game. @leeodden Content distribution for distribution’s sake is a waste of time. @joepulizzi Look past engagement metrics, to really dig into if the content is moving people towards the next stage in the buying cycle. @msweezey The Next LevelIf you’re ready to find out what awaits at the 2018 Content Marketing World conference, click here to check out the agenda. You can also keep up on the all the latest developments by tracking the #CMWorld hashtag and following CMI on Twitter. Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the © Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2018. | Press Start and Get in the Game with the Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing | https://ift.tt/faSbAI The post Press Start and Get in the Game with the Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®. Mobile Marketing via Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/faSbAI May 29, 2018 at 05:35AM
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A Legitimate Fast Shuffle https://ift.tt/2xkQ8Lh According to MultiChannel Merchant, speaking to "Shopping Experience" reported by Daniela Forte, "as a consumer navigates her way through the purchase journey to the checkout area of a website, retailers are close to closing the deal, so it's imperative that they provide a seamless experience at this crucial point in the buying process Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 28, 2018 at 10:35AM
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How Contextual User Experiences Are Optimizing Services https://ift.tt/2sgbXFO In this interview, CEO and co-founder of Talla Rob May discusses how his company is using big data and artificial intelligence to help businesses improve the user experience for their consumers As technology and its applications have expanded, so have consumer demands for streamlined user experiences and workflows. One major way that businesses can provide easy-to-use services is by automating the management of their content, but sometimes how to do so isn’t clear. Enter Talla, a New England company dedicated to helping businesses more efficiently make use of their data by outsourcing the handling of it to artificial intelligence. In this interview, also available as a podcast, CEO of PSFK Piers Fawkes speaks to Rob May, CEO and co-founder of Talla, about how his company uses a smart knowledge base to automate content for business as well as how it is implementing machine learning and natural language processing techniques to create a chatbot that helps new workers get up to speed and be more productive. Piers: You’ve been pioneering the use of data through AI and other technologies to create contextual user experiences. What are some of the broader trends that you see happening in the industry? Rob May: We work in the AI industry and the bot industry, and the rise of big data has made it possible to give context to things that didn’t have context before. Now you can do a lot more personalization. You can know a lot more about somebody. You can understand information in a situational manner and in real time. I think those are important trends. People are always looking to improve decision making, prediction and automation, which AI can do. I have talk that I give sometimes at conferences called the PAC Framework. It stands for Predict, Automate, and Classify. Those are the three most common things that people do with AI deployments. A lot of it is made possible because we have big, unstructured data, which is allowing us to predict things with better context. What are people trying to get out of this? I’ll give an example. We have a customer called MongoDB, the database company. Mongo used our product to create a contextual chatbot for its human resources team. When people have a question about benefits, for example, we have access to a lot of their data repositories that explain these processes and procedures, how to do certain things and what the policies are. We know some things about the different employees there—we know their office location, their status, if they are full‑time or part‑time, etc. We can take that information and then we can pull the right information from their benefits policies to give them an in-context answer. Maybe an engineer in Dublin and an accountant in San Francisco have different benefits based on different factors including the legal structure of those companies and the countries or offices they’re in. We can factor a lot of that in and give people better answers rather than making them dig through a pile of information to figure out what’s relevant to them. How do you describe the service you offer, and what are the benefits? We offer two things, really. We offer a knowledge base that is much like Confluence, or Google Docs, or something like that that you would put information into. The difference is, when you put information into ours, we understand it. We have artificial intelligence in there that can apply context to the data. We can do inference on the data, which means we can answer questions about it that aren’t explicitly stated in it. Then we have a bot platform that wraps around that. What that allows you to do is create bots that do things based on the information that you put in the knowledge base. You can automate certain pieces of your work and you can use them for information retrieval—to answer basic questions. People use them for things like onboarding new employees. Anything that’s an information‑related task or a communication‑related task that you want to automate is where we specialize. Is there any particular approach you have that keeps people’s data secure, and any other thoughts about what’s happening in that space? One of the things that we’ve done from the beginning is acquire a certification called SOC 2, which says that we have certain procedures and processes in place that we follow that do a lot to protect the data. We use all the best practices around security. The challenge for artificial intelligence, context and data and privacy is that you need this data to train your neural network model. What’s interesting is you can’t get the data back out of the model. If I use a big pile of data, and I train a model, and then I get rid of the data, the model is dependent on the data but I can’t get the data back out of the model. One of the questions that we had to navigate early on is when a person stops being a customer or wants us to not have access to their data anymore. Do we need to delete their data from the data set, and then retrain our model? Or, can we just delete their data so that nobody has access to it, but we can continue to use this model that was partially trained on their data? It’s a really interesting conundrum for some companies. A lot of it depends on what your model does and what you’re trying to do with it. In general, companies have been pretty OK about letting us keep derivatives of the data. There aren’t a lot of industry standards on it at the moment. It’s a problem if you’re going to train models on certain data because you have to keep a trace of how you did that and what you did. Then, the model also has to be interpretable. Where’s the next big opportunity when it comes to the use of data to create contextual services? One of the theories behind Talla is that if you think about the work that a worker does, you can divide it into three parts. At the bottom part, you have work that you could script away. Much of that has been scripted away by software. At the top you have complex, cognitive, strategic, creative work, which, depending on your view of artificial intelligence, machines may never do. Or even if you think machines will do them, it’s decades away. Then in between, you have a bunch of tasks that we think a machine could do if we had a data set around it. I think one of the trends that you’re going to see is in enterprise interface software design. I think the last two waves were about moving everything to the cloud and then making everything more consumer-friendly—making it more social, allowing tags, avatar, etc. I think the next wave is going to be about capturing small pieces of data that are going to allow you train machine-learning models. That’s going to allow you to provide more context. That’s going to allow you to build smarter tools. This trend that you’re going to see is interface design in ways that help you capture more data about why somebody did something, at least on the enterprise side. On the consumer side, I think you might see the reverse. You might see trends where consumers are going to start being more serious about access to their data. Those interfaces might even move in the other direction. Or, if they continue to capture more information, they might move to models that at least have tighter consumer control over what can be done with that data. For more from Rob, listen to our podcast. For information about other ways that businesses are optimizing and streamlining their services by improving the user experience, read PSFK’s newsletters and download our reports. Lead image: chatting online messaging stock photo by rawpixel.com on Shutterstock Mobile Marketing via PSFK http://www.psfk.com/ May 28, 2018 at 07:01AM
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Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling https://ift.tt/2H02zvG Pardon me for telling the same old story once again ... Storytelling is a fundamental staple of content marketing. This isn’t news. It has become a central talking point throughout the business world, and one we’ve discussed quite frequently here on the TopRank Marketing Blog. Compelling narrative is impactful for fairly obvious reasons: it captivates a reader, keeps them engaged, and tends to leave a lasting impression. The psychological power of storytelling has endured from ancient times, and outweighs any new technology or tactic that comes along. But one of the less-discussed benefits of storytelling might be among the most important in today’s context: it builds trust with your customers and prospects. Today, we’ll examine how this dynamic works and why every marketer should be on board. Storytelling Was Abraham Lincoln’s Greatest Strength“Four score and seven years ago…” With these six words, Abraham Lincoln launched the Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous speeches in American history. He set up a persuasive argument in favor of human equality by calling to mind the nation’s origins, and the principles that formed its foundation. Last year at Quartz, Dacher Keltner wrote about how good leaders tell stories that make people trust them with power, citing Lincoln as a prime example. Keltner suggested that the 16th president’s “ability to shape moving narratives about the Civil War and the organizing principles of the United States was … crucial to navigating the fractious politics of his presidency.” Modern marketers are not tasked with bridging a divided country, but we do face an uphill battle in this crowded, fractured digital setting. And with trust toward media, organizations and institutions diminishing, stories present an underrated vehicle for fostering connections and establishing credibility. Lisa Saffran, who teaches Storytelling in Public Health at the University of Missouri, explains that storytelling injects an element of humanity, which might be particularly helpful for B2B companies:“Human beings are primed to tell stories but also to listen for the person behind a story being told. Storytelling, whether it’s reporting the news or writing a memoir, involves the active selection and ordering of some information and the omission of other information. Principles of selection inform what questions we ask and which answers we might receive. This directing, ordering and selecting reflects a human consciousness at work, a person with beliefs, assumptions and suspicions.”Everywhere you look, the tactic is becoming more ingrained. [bctt tweet="With trust toward media, organizations and institutions diminishing, stories present an underrated vehicle for fostering connections and establishing credibility. - NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing #Storytelling" username="toprank"] Stories Are Growing More UbiquitousEvery content creator should consider themself a storyteller. When we write, we are invariably sharing a story: about our solution, about our customers, about the pains we can help solve. And the integration of narrative is extending beyond marketing copy. Sales professionals are incorporating stories into their presentations and pitches. Companies use stories to attract quality talent. The video marketing movement is largely driven by storytelling and its innate resonance, reflected by the rapid growth of ‘Stories’ on social media platforms. When people hear or see stories, their brains light up in different ways, tapping both the rational and emotional areas. Tying multiple pieces of information together in a coherent, chronological, and — above all -- relatable way makes the message far more affecting. The content suddenly becomes experiential instead of merely educational. It’s also what an audience craves. As Rachel Gillett wrote for Fast Company:“Our brains are insanely greedy for stories. We spend about a third of our lives daydreaming–our minds are constantly looking for distractions — and the only time we stop flitting from daydream to daydream is when we have a good story in front of us.”We can satiate this appetite by putting a good story in front of the people we want to reach. But it’s not that simple. When it comes to building influence through storytelling, there are a few considerations worth keeping front-and-center. [bctt tweet="Tying multiple pieces of info together in a coherent, chronological, & relatable way makes the message far more affecting. The content suddenly becomes experiential instead of merely educational. - @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing #Storytelling" username="toprank"] How to Maximize Storytelling as a Trust-Building ToolStories serve many purposes in marketing. In our current environment, building trust may be the most vital among them. If this is the goal, make sure you adhere to these imperatives.#1 - Be Genuine, Authentic, and TransparentLincoln didn’t gain the nickname “Honest Abe” for nothing. Despite his physique, the gangly 6-foot-4 politician didn’t have a reputation for spinning tall tales (at least not in misleading ways). Storytelling backfires when it strikes people as false or disingenuous. Share real anecdotes and back them with third-party evidence or quotes. Telling hard truths, even if it means acknowledging a shortcoming in your business, can be tremendously beneficial in the long run. Even more than being true to the facts, you must be true to yourself, and your brand. In his book, All Marketers are Liars, Seth Godin lays this out this first tenet of telling a great story:“A great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on.”[bctt tweet="A great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. - @ThisIsSethsBlog #ContentMarketing #Storytelling " username="toprank"] #2 - Make It Meaningful to Your AudienceYou know who you’re trying to reach. Hopefully you know a fair amount about them and their circumstances. When crafting a story, you must ask yourself if there’s a relevant hook that will make it applicable for them personally. As Ashley Zeckman has written here in the past: “Your customers should be able to see themselves in the story that you are telling through content.” This dynamic makes case studies, customer testimonials, and content featuring industry thought leaders and influencers — featuring first-person perspectives from businesses very similar to the ones you target as prospects — tremendously powerful. But even beyond that, it’s crucial to outline situations, scenarios, and challenges that your audience can relate to. Empathy is essential to gaining trust. [bctt tweet="Your customers should be able to see themselves in the story that you are telling through content. - @azeckman #ContentMarketing #Storytelling" username="toprank"]#3 - Implement Recurring ThemesAs you can tell from the opening sentence of this post, and many of the links scattered throughout, this is not the first time we’ve discussed storytelling on this blog. But we only continue to focus on it because of its critical importance in content marketing today. And hopefully this ongoing emphasis helps crystallize this significance. There’s an actual psychological phenomenon behind this: our brains give preference to the familiar. Once a seed or idea has been planted through effective and memorable narrative, people are more likely to notice and internalize it going forward. In other words, telling the “same old story” isn’t such a bad thing, so long as you can find new angles and dimensions to explore. A robust, ongoing, expanding narrative has the capability to continually reinforce trust and confidence. [bctt tweet="Telling the “same old story” isn’t such a bad thing, so long as you can find new angles and dimensions to explore. - NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing #Storytelling" username="toprank"]What’s Your Story?via GIPHY As you contemplate your brand narrative and how you’ll present it going forward, I encourage you to keep these three cornerstones in mind: authenticity, relevance, and familiarity. When storytelling incorporates all three elements successfully, it can build trust in ways unparalleled by other methods. Storytelling can not only build trust, but also influence with your audience. Check out our post Cracking the Code: 3 Steps to Building Influence with Content Marketing for actionable tips and insights. At TopRank Marketing, storytelling is a core component of our content marketing approach. Give us a shout if you’d like to hear the whole story.The post Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®. Mobile Marketing via Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/faSbAI May 28, 2018 at 05:52AM Google Bests Amazon In Smart Speaker Shipments https://ift.tt/2Ls3iJc In the first quarter, Google shipped 3.2 million Google Home and Home Mini devices worldwide. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 25, 2018 at 03:54PM The Retail Firmament: Email And The Customer Experience https://ift.tt/2Lxbgku Retailers have not yet mastered omnichannel marketing, and need to improve their email, BRP finds in a survey. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 25, 2018 at 03:17PM How Brands, Media Planners Miss Out On Mid-, Lower-funnel Auto Campaign Strategy https://ift.tt/2IOiNtx As auto brands struggle against unrelenting pressure to meet margins and adapt to the massive impact digital technology has had on the consumer purchasing journey, the role of the media planner as a visionary strategist and creative has never been more critical in the arms race to sell cars. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 25, 2018 at 12:13PM
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Digital Marketing News: Preferred Platform Study, B2B Influencers & Blockchain For Marketers, & Travelers Turn To Instagram https://ift.tt/2xbzi1r Social Media Marketing Update: Preferred Platforms and Content Types in 2018 Study: Millennial travelers’ Instagram use has grown 375% since 2013 Facebook Releases Latest ‘Topics to Watch’ Report, Highlighting Key Trends A leaked look at Facebook’s search engine for influencer marketing The Best Days and Times to Post on Social Media [Infographic] Instagram Officially Launches Ability to Re-Share User Posts in Stories 2018: The year of influencer marketing for B2B brands What Blockchain Could Mean for Marketing Facebook updates Ads Reporting & introduces new ‘creative reporting’ Adobe Buys Magento for $1.68 Billion to Target E-Commerce ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at being agile, by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Try Not to Laugh: 7 Hilarious Ways to Use Humor in Your Emails — Sleeknote MoonPie’s Social Media Strategy Has a Secret Ingredient: Character — Skyword TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
Please join us once again next week, when we’ll have a new array of the latest digital marketing news, and in the meantime you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don’t miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel. Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the © Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2018. | Digital Marketing News: Preferred Platform Study, B2B Influencers & Blockchain For Marketers, & Travelers Turn To Instagram | https://ift.tt/faSbAI The post Digital Marketing News: Preferred Platform Study, B2B Influencers & Blockchain For Marketers, & Travelers Turn To Instagram appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®. Mobile Marketing via Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/faSbAI May 25, 2018 at 05:32AM The 2018 Online Consumer Behavior Study https://ift.tt/2s9urbZ Technology has dramatically changed the online experience for consumers, and, along with this, digital platforms continue reshaping the way consumers interact and engage with each other, as well as with online brands. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 25, 2018 at 05:24AM Magazine Media Audiences On Mobile Web And Video At Six-Month High https://ift.tt/2GNBo71 This is the seventh month in a row for mobile web audience growth. April's nearly 10% increase vs. a year ago is the highest increase during that period, according to MPA. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/2oB2PsH May 24, 2018 at 03:30PM |
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