As the economy continues to digitize at an unprecedented pace, why don’t we see faster economic growth and productivity increases? The answer is that the diffusion process of technologies from the New Digital Economy—characterized by rapidly increasing spending on cloud computing, data analysis, and other services in a world of ubiquitous, Internet connections – has only […]

Is content marketing is dead?  This question was on many people’s minds at the Social Media Marketing World 2016 conference (#SMMW16) a few weeks ago.

Although the vast majority of speakers at the event made it clear that we’re nowhere near the death of content marketing, concern is understandable.   More content is being produced now than ever before, but the effectiveness and readership of that content is declining.  Consider a few troubling statistics:

Only 30% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is effective, down 8 percentage points from last year — yet 76% say they will produce more content in 2016. (Content Marketing Institute) 50% of B2C marketers say they plan to increase their content marketing budget in 2016 but only 37% report having a documented content marketing strategy. (Content Marketing Institute) Chartbeat, a firm that calculates engagement on websites, has reported no correlation between social shares and people actually reading the content they shared. And according to Sirius Decisions, 60–70% of B2B content created goes unused.

Moreover, in one of the SMMW16 sessions, social media guru Mark Schaefer declared, “The economic value of content that isn’t seen or shared is zero.”  A lot of heads nodded in agreement.   It seems as if the content in content marketing is being subordinated to the marketing.  In other words, what your content is seems to becoming less important than whether or not it is shared.

This troubles me.  As someone who relies almost solely on thought-leadership marketing, content is the lifeblood of my efforts to become known, be considered for, and get booked for speaking and consulting engagements — and it’s the primary way I try to cultivate and add value to my business relationships.  I invest extraordinary amounts of time and energy producing (what I hope is considered to be) quality content.

I put less emphasis on the marketing and sharing of my content.  Of course, I actively promote my content on Twitter and I regularly publish an e-newsletter to an exclusive list of executives.  I sometimes post about my content on Facebook or LinkedIn and I curate a Pinterest board.  My website and all of my social posts incorporate SEO and include sharing buttons.  And I do strategically select contributorships and byline opportunities based on the shares they usually produce — but even in those cases, I usually favor quality over quantity of sharing.

But I don’t advertise my content on Facebook or any other platform; I don’t do any search engine marketing; I don’t use marketing automation or link bait.  I’ve resisted publishing breezy free e-books like many of my colleagues do because I’m more committed to providing substantive content than simply generating awareness and followers.  I even bristle at the thought of writing headlines or content with the primary objective of making them search-engine friendly.

I’ve understood the consequences of these choices.  I don’t have nearly the awareness or following that I would like and I’m working on improving.  But I also know I have a limited amount of bandwidth and I’ve always thought it’s better to spend it on the actual content.  Said another way, I believe that the economic value of content depends more on the content and less on the marketing.  I believe if content has staying power, is compelling to its primary target audience, and can stand up to scrutiny, it has more lasting value than a quick content blast.  It’s like the difference between a $1.50 burger from McDonald’s and a $5.00 one from Shake Shack.  The former may cost less, but the latter satisfies way more.

Three recent events have confirmed this belief for me:

When Prince died, he left behind a vault full of unreleased music.  The vault was just opened by Bremer Trust, who was appointed administrator of the estate following the musician’s death.   And inside they discovered enough unreleased music to release a new album every year for the next century.  Marketing-focused observers are probably shaking their heads over what Prince missed out on by not releasing this content.  Just think of all the accolades, not to mention royalties, he could have accumulated — how many more fans he could have reached, right?!  But others understand that Prince was even more private than he was prolific and he deliberately released the content he wanted to release.  He, as the content creator, remained the arbiter of what would be shared and the ultimate judge of its value. Chris Anderson and the folks at TED posted the video “TED’s secret to great public speaking.”  In it, Chris reveals the one thing that all great TED talks have in common:  an idea.  He says, “Ideas are the most powerful force shaping human culture.”  He goes on to describe how to build an idea, culminating in the final point:  Make your idea worth sharing. “Ask yourself ‘who does this idea benefit?,‘” he advises, and be honest with the answer.  If the idea only serves you or your organization, then, “It’s not worth sharing.  But if you believe the idea…has the potential to change someone else’s perspective for the better or inspire someone to do something differently, then you have the core ingredient to a truly great talk. One that can be a gift to them and to all of us.”   Given that TED is all about “ideas worth sharing” and over 2 million TED Talk videos are viewed every day, this reinforces the power of inherently share-worthy content. To fulfill a quick client request, I purchased a small number of copies of my book, What Great Brands Do, from a third-party seller on Amazon. (Like most published authors, I do not get free copies of my books so I have to buy them and I usually buy them through Amazon.)  When the books arrived, I discovered that they were from an unauthorized printing done in India.  The pages and dust jacket were of lesser quality (thinner, smaller pages, off-color jacket, etc.)  To most people, the book probably appeared fine and all the content was accurate, but the book was not up to my or my publisher’s standards, so I returned them and my publisher is investigating the matter so that the remaining copies can be destroyed.  While this might mean that fewer people have access to my book, I don’t want a sub-standard book/book experience out there.  The book is a reflection of me, after all, and I’m guessing authors who care about their “personal brand” would agree.

This post itself may or may not get shared as much as a shorter, pithier piece with lots of links, images, and quotes.  But I wanted — needed — to write it in order to convey the economic value I ascribe to it, to make it a gift to my readers, and to serve as a positive representation of me.

related:

Building Brands by Creating Content (slideshow) Marketing Like It’s 2001 GoPro Shows How to Win by Losing Control

The post the death of content marketing and the economic value of content appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

What does it take to drive more sales in a young business? Find out when you watch this fun and inspiring conversation with Brian MacMahon, CEO of Expert DOJO, a premier community of thousands of entrepreneurs in California!  

This week, PR expert Becs Miller shares her 6 simple public relations steps you may follow to boost your visibility and position you as an expert in your field. Take it away, Becs! *** Picture this: You have a continuous stream of new followers landing on your website who already know…

In recent weeks it’s been hard to avoid the digital versus TV war that looks set to dominate marketing.

At the start of May, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki fired first when she told advertisers that YouTube was now reaching “more 18 to 49 year-olds during prime time than the top 10 US TV shows combined”. A day later Joan Gillman, Time Warner’s COO, hit back with the results of a study showing that if YouTube were a TV show it would rank 354th in the nation for audience share.

So who is telling the truth? Crucially, it all depends on your definition of what constitutes an audience. If you look only at reach and ignore time spent or use the “digital views” approach that claims an audience member as soon as they encounter three seconds of a partial, soundless video like Facebook or Instagram, then digital video is the clear winner.

If, however, you dive deeper and measure an audience on a minute by minute basis and then publish the average figure for the duration of the video the results change dramatically. Gillman’s relegation of YouTube to 354th is accurate if you measure audiences on how many you captured per minute rather than how many momentarily glanced your way at any point.

Until recently these distinctions did not actually matter. Digital video used their system and the TV channels used theirs. But as the digital ambitions of the social media platforms have grown and their appetite for big brand advertising has become bigger, the battle between TV and digital video has suddenly intensified and, as usual in marketing, we fight over metrics.

I’ve always assumed a certain questionable quotient with all viewing numbers. Even from the earliest days of BARB the difference between room population and an actual advertising audience was always a bit of an unreliable ratio. But this harmless handful of b.s. it sprinkled liberally across TV audience numbers has paled into insignificance versus the three forklift trucks of b.s. that now arrive, free of charge, with most digital video audience estimates.

Last October, for example, Yahoo claimed its livestream of an American Football game attracted 15 million viewers. That’s an impressive debut given the average TV game garners 18 million. But this is not an apples to apples comparison, it is an apples to oranges comparison.

While 15 million different people did indeed, at some point, briefly encounter the coverage, the average audience per minute for the livestream was only 1.6 million viewers – less than a 10th of the typical TV audience.

It was a similar story when ESPN claimed that more than 115 million people watched the 2014 World Cup from Brazil on digital devices versus a measly 4.6 million on TV. But when you hold that number up to the standard of an average audience per minute those multi-millions turn into a digital tournament audience of 300,000 or about 7% of those watching on TV.

This tells you that every time you see a digital video “audience” it is crucial to ask the metric being used to define it.

Enter Nielsen

What’s urgently needed is a media Rosetta Stone to help translate digital views into TV audiences and vice versa. It’s here that the supremely impressive Steve Hasker becomes marketing’s only real hope. Hasker is the global president of Nielsen and has spearheaded the company’s ‘Total Audience Measurement’ approach. The tool, newly launched this year in the U.S., now enables advertisers to see a complete breakdown of video audiences across viewing platforms using a single, comparable measuring system.

No news yet on what the results tell us but this is one audience associated with digital views that actually is engaged.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Latest work from Italian ad agency, Auge for Ikea Italia: Oggi è il giorno giusto per coltivare nuove idee which translates in English to “today is the day to cultivate new ideas.” The ad features the song “Don’t touch me tomato” by George Symonette.

Creative Credits:
Advertising Agency: Auge Headquarter, Milan, Italy
Executive Creative Director: Federica Ariagno, Giorgio Natale
Creative Director: Federica Ariagno, Williams Tattoli
Copywriter: Niccolò Bossi
Art Director: Veronica Ciceri
Agency Senior Producer: Cecilia Del Favero
Production Company: (H)Films
Director: Pensacola
Post Production: Edi

Over the past months I have read quite a bit of speculations about Apple’s iWatch, and I am cautiously optimist about the its launch. No doubt the company has launched products which have reshaped the market landscape, but it has also been spinning out several ‘not very different from the previous one’ products. However, every single product launch sees an amount of buzz which is the envy of its competitors. There has been so much buzz about iWatch too. Seeing the past trend one may wonder if the iWatch is just going to be a ‘watch like something’ coming with iOS optimized for a smaller screen! The internet is abound with both optimistic and pessimistic speculations, and I am not going to add to the speculation grind mill with less than few hours to go before the launch. In this blog I am going to tell you what I, a strategic designer, will be keenly looking for as details of the iWatch are unveiled today.

How is Apple handling fashion, which is very much about self-expression?
Apple recently hired British luxury watch designer Marc Newson and it had hired Paul Deneve, formerly the CEO of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent some time ago, to work on “special projects”. Over the last two days, a news about Jonathan Ive‘s remark that the iWatch may screw Swiss watchmakers, has drawn quite some attention on the internet. The hiring of people from the field of fashion, and Ive’s remark, point to the fact that when it comes to form design, iWatch may be a fashion accessory (in addition to being other things), and a fashion accessory is essentially a medium for self-expression. Since each one of us is different in some way, innumerable variations in fashion accessories exist. I am curiously waiting to see how even when going the fashion accessory route to design, Apple will enable people (if at all) to express themselves uniquely through the iWatch. Perhaps the iWatch could come in a few different colors and form factors. Or perhaps, Apple could go a somewhat unexpected route and create many variations of iWatch by tying up with several renowned watch-makers and co-designing the interface with them – something similar to what Apple did with automobile makers for its CarPlay.

How does the iWatch go beyond the hype of quantified self?
Amazon recently added wearable products to its online marketplace. The below picture shows the main categories of products being sold on Amazon.
Interestingly, most of the products are meant to ‘track’ things – from tracking your activities to tracking your pets. iPhone already tracks many things and Apple is known to have hired several medical and bio-sensor experts, such as O’Reilly’s chief medical officer Michael Masimo and Vital Connect’s vice president of biosensor technology Ravi Narasimhan, for its “special projects”. I am expecting some kick-ass fitness applications. But there are already so many tracking devices which inundate us with data. So what I am waiting to see is how Apple puts all the data together and make the iWatch tell new stories about us. Can iWatch go beyond the ‘quantified self’ hype and tell us things that really help improve the quality of our lives?

Does iWatch introduce any new meanings in wearable category?
We have seen cell phones being used for controlling objects (locks, thermostats, light etc.), enabling transactions and tracking our activities. But perhaps there is a completely new need which the iWatch could address through a feature which is unique to the wearable medium. If iWatch does so, it will be introducing a new meaning for the medium itself. For example, Alessi gave a whole new meaning to kitchenware by infusing playfulness in them. I am waiting to see how radical and/or how nuanced meanings Apple will introduce by addressing our needs which others have not paid attention to.

How the iWatch will handle fashion, which is all about self-expression? How the iWatch will make use of all the tracked data to tell a story about improving the quality of our lives? And how (if at all) the iWatch will introduce new meanings to the category of wearables? These are some of the questions at the top of my mind with less than few hours to go before the launch of iWatch. Is there a special angle that you will be looking for in today’s unveiling of iWatch? I am curious to know the questions in your mind.

Update: Here’s the video of ‘Apple Watch’ being introduced by Jony Ive.

To stay tuned with me  Follow @nbhaskar888

Ben’s publicist reached out to me a while back when he was in Vancouver with Lionel Ritchie. She connected the two of us which lead to this interview. It was fascinating hearing Ben’s story of how he got the gig playing with Lionel Ritchie, Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, John Fogerty, Tony Braxton, Don Felder and many more. I will hint that it had something to do with playing all the open mics and jam nights in NYC. Equally as interesting is hearing about how he is pursuing a parallel solo career as an independent artist.

We talk about how he got into music, the importance of practicing, getting the right type of support, persistence, playing out, remembering your beginnings, attitude, personality, learning the hits and how it has affected his personal career, as well as life on the road and his new album.

This is an interview that a lot of you that are working hard to get the big break you’ve been waiting for will find inspiring and insightful.

This episode was edited by Andy Warren of www.applesandchocolate.com

Aaron Bethune.

Music Specialist. Creative Collaborator. Author. Musicpreneur.

Take a lisen to the interview here.

By Cecily Joseph, VP, Corporate Responsibility & Chief Diversity Officer, Symantec Corporation Symantec’s vision is to make the world a safer place, and to accomplish this we need a team with the diversity of expertise and experience to protect against threats, both known and unknown. I believe that diversity helps us understand our customers better, […]

Here’s my latest “brand book bites” post!  Today I’m featuring LinkedIn Daily Dozen: 12 Things You Can Do Every Day On LinkedIn to Grow Your Network, Build Your Business and Make More Sales by Phil Gerbyshak.  It includes easy yet important LinkedIn tips. 

Phil is a popular speaker, trainer, and writer on social sales and social media — and you can listen to my conversation with him about his new book to learn:

how LinkedIn has changed and how big it is now the #1 mistake that people make on LinkedIn how to make connection requests that people respond to what is social selling and how to use LinkedIn to do it

Since LinkedIn Daily Dozen is a short e-book (which you can get here for free with subscription:  http://socialsellingdailydozen.com), I thought I’d forego the usual “brand book bites” format and share some of my own tips on using LinkedIn.

I need to make a disclaimer/explanation first, though:  I am not super-active on LinkedIn.  I do have over 2200 connections and I regularly request and respond to requests for connections.  I also use the platform to do research on people and companies that I interest me.  But I usually don’t participate in discussions, I operate in “private mode” (meaning I can’t see the people who have looked at my profile/content and people can’t see if I’ve looked at theirs), and I usually only read people’s posts if they’ve been promoted on Twitter.  This is because I’ve made Twitter my primary social network and Facebook my secondary — LinkedIn comes in third.  I just don’t have the bandwidth to actively participate on multiple networks and prioritizing your participation is my #1 overall tip for social networking — that is, I believe you make more impact, make better connections, and have a better experience in general if you actively participate in fewer networks than if you spread out your activity and dabble everywhere.

With this in mind, I feel I should only provide recommendations for the primary way I used LinkedIn — making connections.  So here are 5 recommendations for making connections requests:

Make it personal. Nothing says “I’m lazy” or “I don’t value you enough to make an effort” than the generic message “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”  In fact, I rarely accept these impersonal connections requests (exception:  if I know someone very well or just met/connected with them elsewhere — even so, I would still prefer a short personal note.)  If you want to connect with a stranger, address them by name and tell them why they should accept your request — e.g., who you are, why you’re interested in connecting, what you might offer to them, etc.  Not only is a personal request more likely to be accepted, but it also makes a positive and impactful first impression.  Your request message may be the one and only time you get the person’s attention — use it wisely. Find common ground. Reference connections you have in common, groups you both belong to, or some other thing you have in common.  This can help to convey the value of connecting with you — and again, it makes your request more personal. Do it right away. Make a connection request as soon as you’ve met the person or connected with them in some other way.  This will help keep your LinkedIn connections list current and accurate, which is particularly important if you are trying to build your email list.  It will also help you stand out and be remembered more. Follow up. Once someone accepts your request, send a short, direct email message as follow-up.  Just a quick “thank you” or “nice to connect with you” will do.  Even if you don’t have a specific next step, a short note will further your personal connection and also ensure you have a direct email connection if you need it later. Start offline, when appropriate. When requesting a new connection through an existing one, sometimes it’s best to send a direct email to your contact first.  I’ve found that some people use a different email address on LinkedIn from their main one, so a LinkedIn request could get delayed or lost before it reaches your contact or your requested connection.  Also many people are connected to others that they don’t know, don’t feel comfortable making a connection to, or have some other reason why they don’t want to make the introduction.  If you contact them directly, you can discover these dynamics and adjust your plan without putting them in the sometimes awkward position of officially declining your request.  You also can be more forthcoming about your desired connection and they have the option of giving you insight about the person — all without exposing your exchange in the LinkedIn messaging chain that will eventually reach your desired connection.  Finally if you reach out to your contact directly, sometimes they might just put you directly in contact with the person you’re trying to reach, which is what you really want.

I hope the combination of these tips along with those in Phil’s ebook are helpful. And please share your own tips in the Comments section below.

The post brand book bites from linkedin daily dozen appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.