With all the talk about content marketing lately, it’s surprising how many companies tend to skip right over the “content” part and focus all of their efforts on the “marketing” end.
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Another week is almost in the books! We hope you had a great week. Some brands had better luck than others this week when it came to PR, content marketing and social media. We’ve rounded up the good, the bad and the ugly….
LinkedIn’s acquisition of Newsle gives you the power to stay in touch
It’s easy to send that first email to a new contact saying it was nice to meet them, but how do you find excuses to stay in contact? Newsle makes it easy by allowing you to receive alerts when the person is mentioned in the news or in articles around the web. With LinkedIn’s acquisition of Newsle this week, you can automatically start following alerts for all of your LinkedIn contacts. A similar capability exists for Facebook and your email contacts in Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook and more. You can also add contacts manually.
Newsle is like Google Alerts on steroids. Not only does it have the capability of integrating your current connections automatically, but instead of delivering email-only alerts you can view updates in a user interface that looks and feels like a social media dashboard.
The fine line between “trendjacking” in social media and breaking the law
A couple of years ago, Tide missed out on a great social media opportunity during the Daytona 500 to capitalize on its product being used to clean up jet fuel that leaked on the track after a crash. The Proctor & Gamble brand has upped its social media game since then, but has it crossed a line?
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Creating high-value content is no easy task. Once you’ve taken the time to carefully select a topic your prospects will appreciate, research your topic and write it specifically for the appropriate persona, should you call it quits?
If you’re like most content marketers, brainstorming fresh topics can become laborious after a while. The good news is your posts don’t have to face a “one and done” fate. There are several tips out there for repurposing content, but many of them seem a little overwhelming for those of us who aren’t geeks (no offense, geeks).
Here are a few simple ways non-techies can revamp, recycle and repurpose content to keep the momentum going:
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Don’t put all your marketing eggs in one basket
Remember when traditional marketing was dead?
It was only a couple of years ago that everyone from the Harvard Business Review to Forbes magazine was trumpeting the demise of traditional marketing and public relations strategies. In a world of social media and online marketing, they contended, old-school tactics for connecting with customers just wouldn’t cut it.
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Congratulations! You made it to Friday. As Germany and Argentina prepare to face each other once again in the World Cup finals, it’s time for INKsights’ look back at the week’s winners and losers in the world of PR, content marketing and social media.
First, the losers: “Insensitive” was the word of the week, as major retailers got raked over the media coals for using images of historic tragedies in their sales and marketing efforts.
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I’m an attorney, and I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years. I’ve started several blogs over the years, including ones on law school, the Atlanta Braves, the business of baseball, career advice for aspiring sports professionals and the business of college sports. Now I work with attorneys and law firms on blogging and social media strategy as part of my job as a content marketer, and I find many legal blogs have the same common mistakes.
I have a law degree, and I practiced law for four years, yet I still don’t understand many of the law blogs I read. For most of you, your audience is clients and potential clients. No matter how sophisticated you think your clients are, if they’re not attorneys they aren’t going to understand legalese. In fact, even if they are attorneys, if they don’t practice in your area they likely still won’t understand you.
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Before you even go down this road, the first question you should ask yourself is, “Do I really need to outsource content marketing?” From Moz to HubSpot, there are plenty of useful tools and platforms to accommodate in-house marketing teams in publishing and promoting content. But remember, quality is king when it comes to content.
According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, the biggest challenges b2b marketers face are lack of time and producing enough content. Combine that with the fact that most in-house teams are more focused on strategy and project management than writing, and outsourcing may seem like the ideal solution, given you find the right fit. Here’s what to look for in a content marketing agency:
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Fluff belongs on your dessert – not in your press release!
Working with a professional public relations agency can offer significant benefits for both large and small companies alike. So much so, in fact, that USC’s Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center reports that 95 percent of all large public companies and nearly half of all small private companies rely on outside PR/marketing counsel.
In selecting a public relations firm with which to work, however, companies would do well to remember three words: Hold the fluff.
In media parlance, “fluff” is the term for the flowery language and effusive frippery in which some publicists drown their copy. Rather than simply stating the facts and letting their client’s product or project speak for itself, some PR reps seem to believe that applying a thick coating of hyperbole to their prose will catch the eye of that jaded reporter and score their client a primo placement.
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Happy Friday! This week has been an exciting one, with the return of HBO’s “True Blood” and the U.S. advancing to the next round of the World Cup, even after a loss to Germany. With all these fun distractions you may have missed some of this week’s notable news in PR, social media and content marketing:
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I recently participated as a panelist in a webinar by BusinessWire for public relations professionals who pitch to journalists covering sports. I was asked to be a panelist because of my experience as a sports business analyst and reporter for outlets such as ESPN, Forbes, and Comcast Sports Southeast. However, I also brought something to the table the other journalists on the panel did not: I’m also a public relations professional.
Before the webinar, each panelist was asked to think of three things public relations professionals should know before pitching to journalists. I think all three of us on the panel immediately went to some version of advising people to only pitch us content relevant to our reporting and our platform. I would conservatively estimate 60 percent of the pitches I receive are on topics or story angles I would never cover for any of the outlets where I report.
A larger problem I discussed, however, is that I miss pitches that are perfect for my reporting because I simply can’t read every email I receive. That’s why it’s imperative to hook journalists from the subject line of your email.
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