The Next Generation of Content Marketing: 6 Insights About Intelligent Content

The Next Generation of Content Marketing: 6 Insights About Intelligent Content:

By MICHELE LINN

In a few of the interviews I have done recently, people have asked some variation of the question: What gets you most excited about content marketing these days?

While I’m constantly interested in and thinking about content, one of the ideas that excites me most is intelligent content and the conversation that surrounds it.

Yes, it may seem like the company line, as Content Marketing Institute recently purchased Intelligent Content Conference, but I’ll be honest. When I heard the acquisition news, I wasn’t all that excited. I thought the topic of intelligent content would be boring – not to mention that it wasn’t immediately evident to me how it tied in with content marketing. And, to be even more frank, I was a bit hesitant to dive into a world that I thought would be very technical and heavily focused on things like DITA and XML.

But you know what? The more reading I do and the more I talk to people, the more excited I become. Yes, I’m a content nerd by nature, but I truly believe that intelligent content is “next generation content marketing.” It’s an ideal way to get smarter about the content we spend so much time and money to produce.

Intelligent content addresses a key content marketing challenge

Before we delve into what I find so fascinating about intelligent content, I think it’s important to understand why CMI is so passionate about this evolution. Joe Pulizzi recently shared:

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"People don’t buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives, so localize the pitch and keep it simple." -Guy Kawasaki

"People don’t buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives, so localize the pitch and keep it simple." -Guy Kawasaki
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Studies Confirm the Power of Visuals in eLearning

We are now in the age of visual information where visual content plays a role in every part of life. As 65 percent of the population is visual learners, images are clearly key to engaging people in eLearning courses. 

Moving and still images have been included in learning materials for decades, but only now has faster broadband, cellular networks, and high-resolution screens made it possible for high-quality images to be a part of eLearning visual design. Graphic interfaces made up of photos, illustrations, charts, maps, diagrams, and videos are gradually replacing text-based courses.

In this post, we will dig deep into some statistics and facts to further convince of why eLearning developers should embrace visuals when creating their courses. 

1. Visuals Stick in Long-Term Memory

Both the short-term and long-term memory store information in chunks, but the former is limited. One of the easiest ways to ensure that learners store information in their long-term memory is to pair concepts with meaningful images. Research has found that this tactic increases recall better than when courses deliver information through aural or textual form. Visuals help people make sense out of the content and direct attention, increasing the possibilities that the learners will remember.

According to Dr. Lynell Burmark, education consultant who writes and speaks about visual literacy: “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information (plus or minus 2) […]. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”

Furthermore, this effect increases over time. One study found that after three days, a user retained only 10-20 percent of written or spoken information but almost 65 percent of visual information. Another study showed that an illustrated text was 9 percent more effective than text alone when testing immediate comprehension and 83 percent more effective when the test was delayed. 

Infographic: How Often Should I Post on Social Media?

Infographic: How Often Should I Post on Social Media?:

It seems like a great portion of the social media research we do at Buffer often comes back to a few big questions for social media sharing.

How do I get more followers?

What should I share?

When should I share it? 

And how often should I be sharing?

Social media frequency is one that we’ve enjoyed experimenting with a lot at Buffer. How many times per day should we posting? Is it different for individuals versus companies? I personally share to Twitter four times per day, and we share to Buffer’s Twitter account 14 times per day. Do these frequencies make sense?

Fortunately, we’re able to check in with a bunch of great research on frequency to get a baseline for what might be best practice for a social media schedule.

We’re incredibly grateful for our friends at SumAll for placing all this awesome research into a beautiful infographic that makes the question of “how often to post” a breeze to answer.

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5 Steps to Increased Visual Content Engagement | SEJ

5 Steps to Increased Visual Content Engagement | SEJ: "5 Steps to Increased Visual Content Engagement | #Infographic"- Jonathan Long : Sorurce HERE

Visual content performs better because the average consumer absorbs more of what they see than what they read. While we tend to only remember 20% of what we read, we remember 80% of what we see. Visual content creates more engagement, and the longer you can hold someone’s attention, the greater the chance of them converting – whether that is a list signup, a download, a phone call, or a sale.

In order to engage your audience you need to create very good visual content. So, what does “very good” mean? You need to make sure you have a topic of interest your target audience, then match it with great colors, an awesome design, and a well thought out plan for promotion.

The infographic below was created to help you create awesome visual content, and develop 
a plan that results in a positive ROI.

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The Often Forgotten Viral Content Marketing Tactic Written by Jeff Bullas

Written by Jeff Bullas 

It was a grey, cold and dreary day when I flew into London. It had been a long flight. I was tired and needed to shower because 20 hours of plane travel was pushing the boundaries for other humans within adjacent nostril range!

But I needed to check traffic and approve comments on my blog, as a blogger’s journey requires keeping up with the daily tasks, habits and rituals of online publishing. Being always on in a connected 24/7 world is often relentless.

It was a surprise to find when I checked my traffic that the blog post I had published 24 hours earlier had “gone”viral”. The article was titled, “30 Things You Should Not Share On Social Media“. It received over 122,000 views, was retweeted over 6,000 times and was shared on Facebook over 3,500 times.

A week later I posted it’s positive alternative, “20 Things you Should Share on Social Media“. The question in the back of my mind was…”would it receive the same viral traffic?”

The simple analysis after posting revealed that the positive version received only 16,000 views. Good but not great. And there lies a lesson that I have not forgotten.

Negative headlines work!

That was my first experience of viral content on my blog.

How are Lawyers Using Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Shea Bennett on Feb. 20, 2015 - 3:00 PM

Did you know that a recent survey found that 62 percent of law firms maintain a presence on social networks, up from 55 percent in 2012? 78 percent of lawyers themselves manage one or more social networks for professional purposes, with those in litigation, commercial law and employment/labor most prominent.Around 1.7 hours per week is spent using social networking sites, and slightly more than one third (35 percent) of lawyers have obtained clients from these channels.

Check the visual below for more insights, which comes courtesy of MyCase.

The INSTAGRAM Song (Put A Filter On Me)

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Social Insights with Adam Pisoni CTO and Co-founder - Yammer

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Social Update #14: Facebook's Threat Exchange, Linkedin on Wall Street, ...

Sta

This week on Hootsuite's Social Update we look at Facebook's new mini social network for security analysts, Linkedin's growing influence in the workplace, Facebook testing craigslist style features and an Instagram case study from Foot Locker.

Google Acquires Odysee, An App For Private Photo/Video Backup And Sharing, Team Joins Google+ | TechCrunch

Google Acquires Odysee, An App For Private Photo/Video Backup And Sharing, Team Joins Google+ | TechCrunch: "Google may be soon adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service. It has acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos and videos taken on their cameras or tablets to their home computers. It also let users set up private, automatic sharing with other people, and it had an API for integrating the service with other apps (read our longer article about it here). The app will be shut down effective February 23, with the team behind it joining Google+ to “continue to focus on building amazing products that people love.” 




The acquisition was announced via a note on Odysee’s home page, as well as through a notification being sent out to app users. In it, the startup thanks users and also notes the details of the shut-down process. Essentially, after Odysee ceases backup operations on February 23, all photos and videos already passed through the service will be available as a downloadable archive. We’re embedding the full note below.



Furthermore, we’ve found that Odysee the app is no longer available in Apple’s App Store and in Google Play; and it looks like the account for its maker, Nimbuz Inc., has also been pulled.

We have contacted Odysee, Nimbuz Inc. and Google to see if we can get any more details about the acquisition and the decision to sell rather than remain a standalone service. It’s unclear how many users Odysee had attracted in its lifetime, or whether it had managed to attracted more investors beyond the $760k it had raised in seed money. Previous investors included Ed Han, a repeat entrepreneur, including as founder of Tiny Prints (acquired by Shutterstock) and Alex Shubat, the CEO of food tech company Goji Food Solutions, among other things.

For now you can see where the acquisition makes a lot of sense for Google.

There have been rumors swirling that Google might launch the Photos as a standalone service, independent of Google+. Adding in options to save photos offline, and more features to better control how you share pictures, are logical additions that would give Google Photos service a more rounded offering, and help differentiate it more from other competing photo services. Others in the crowded space of online photo services include Facebook/Instagram, Yahoo’s Flickr, Dropbox and many more.

And even as a part of Google+, considering how wary some people are these days to giving over more data to Google’s cloud — or any other could-based service like Dropbox or iCloud, for that matter — it makes sense to enhance Photos with offline features for that reason, too.

Odysee, which let people log in with Facebook or by creating an account, was an app created by Nimbuz, co-founded by Raghavan Menon and Shiva Javalagi.



As Sarah wrote in a profile of the app last year, both founders have a background in networking, algorithms, caching and embedded software. Menon previously co-founded chip designer Ingot Systems, which was acquired by Virage Logic (and later acquired by Synopsys).

One of the interesting things about Odysee — “especially designed for people who take a lot of videos and would like the option of saving them at their full quality” — was that it shifted the storage option to your own computer rather than any public cloud. At the same time it had developed a caching feature that let users access those pictures even if the computer was offline or working on a slow Internet connection.

“Odysee keeps copies of recently accessed photos and videos online at high quality. Odysee keeps copies of photos and videos that are unlikely to be accessed (it predicts what is likely to be accessed) online at lower quality similar to that on Instagram or Facebook,” the company noted in its FAQ. “You always have a version of everything online.”

Another feature that set it apart from other photo services was the apps’s approach to sharing with others. It had its own “follower and following network” that was based around the idea of adding a small group of close family and friends who would also be on the app, with the option of sharing more pictures to “non-Odysee users” by way of URL links rather than embeds.

Like other many other apps, Odysee was built around a freemium model: free for the first year, and then $5/year thereafter. The founders had at one point estimated that they could keep the business sustainable if they reached 3 million users."



Source: HERE



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3 Insights for Travel Brands on Twitter | Social Media Today

Frederic Gonzalo Owner/Partner, Gonzo Marketing
@gonzogonzo
3 Insights for Travel Brands on Twitter | Social Media Today: I like to think of Twitter as the best “other” social media around. I mean, whenever a discussion comes up about the best network for business purposes, professionals and/or a B2B setting, most people will agree that Linkedin is the go-to platform. Then perhaps Twitter.

Many people like to get their news via Google alerts or perhaps through Facebook’s trending feature. Then perhaps Twitter.

Facebook and YouTube are fighting it off for video consumption supremacy, while Instagram and Vine are competing for shorter, 6-15 seconds-long videos. As Vine belongs to Twitter, well, perhaps we don’t talk about it just as much.

Yet whenever a big event comes around, i.e. Super Bowl, Oscars, breaking news, it’s through Twitter chatter that we sift. So why aren’t there more travel brands making the most of Twitter yet?

Where travelers engage 

A recent study by Twitter and Millward Brown found that Twitter was indeed a much-used tool by travelers, especially in North America. In fact, here are three insights that can help travel brands understand the potential that lies within Twitter."

A recent study by Twitter and Millward Brown found that Twitter was indeed a much-used tool by travelers, especially in North America. In fact, here are three insights that can help travel brands understand the potential that lies within Twitter.

1. Tweets happen before, during and after a trip

Sure, we tend to tweet mostly during the travel experience, from the airline to hotels to attractions and restaurants. In fact, 39% of travelers use Twitter while on a trip. So travel brands ought to listen, as some travelers now tend to voice their concern or discontent directly via Twitter rather than at the front desk.

Interestingly enough, travelers also tend to tweet prior to their trip (21%) as well as after their trip (28%), meaning travel brands have the opportunity to engage prior to arrival and continue the conversation long after the trip ended, turning satisfied travelers into potential brand advocates.

2. Twitter boosts brand favorability

Back in 2013, a study had found that 70% of comments left on brand accounts on social networks (Facebook and Twitter, mostly) where left unanswered. In other words, only about 30% of brands answered comments and questions left on their Facebook wall or Twitter feed. Surprising? Yes and no. It aligns with other stats that tell us that about only 32% of travel brands listed on TripAdvisor actively manage reviews, which means responding to guest comments among other things.

Dutch airline KLM understands the importance of customer response on Twitter, highlighting waiting time to manage expectations.

According to Millward Brown, we learn that while 40% of travelers have engaged with a travel brand on Twitter, only 28% of those received a response. Which isn’t so bad, right? 28% out of 40% actually represents a 70% response rate. But here’s the kicker: of those travelers that were answered to, 73% felt more positively about the brand afterwards. Thus, there is true opportunity here to make a difference and get better perception for our brand by actively engaging and responding to customer tweets.

3. Twitter content influences travelers

Since Twitter has its own jargon and user base, it tends to attract different folks than those found on other social networks. Perhaps this explains why travelers are 44% more likely to learn about a new travel brand on Twitterwhen compared to Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and Tumblr.

So if you are churning quality content on your corporate blog and newsletter, why not amplify it through social networks such as Twitter where there are many travelers seeking this kind of content? In fact here are the tweet content travelers most want to see:

1. Exclusive discounts (46%)
2. Last-minute deals (41%)
3. Contest and promotions (30%)
4. Funny content (30%)
5. Travel ideas and stories (27%)

Check out the complete infographic below for more details on this recent study.

Visit source: HERE

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8 Common Facebook Mistakes Social Media Managers Need To Avoid - Hootsuite Social Media Management

8 Common Facebook Mistakes Social Media Managers Need To Avoid - Hootsuite Social Media Management: "Among the many tasks social media managers face, one is learning how to navigate the ever-changing world of Facebook. Previously on our blog, we discussed the most common social media strategy mistakes. Today, we want to focus on specific Facebook mistakes social media managers need to avoid.

To put it plainly, there is much anxiety surrounding the do’s and don’ts of social media, especially when it comes to what social media managers should do. In light of the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm, the following are 8 common mistakes that can be avoided on Facebook.

8 Facebook mistakes social media managers should avoid

Overly promotional posts

According to the recent changes with Facebook, they will be reducing the number of overly promotional page posts in users’ News Feeds. This is as a result of an ongoing survey with Facebook users, in which the most common feedback was that people wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content. An overly promotional post is one that solely pushes people to buy a product or install an app, enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context, or reuse the same content from ads. The best way to avoid creating overly promotional posts is to leave product promotion to Facebook Advertising."



READ MORE: 8 Common Facebook Mistakes Social Media Managers Need To Avoid - Hootsuite Social Media Management:



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How To Make Social Media Data Work For You - Hootsuite Social Media Management

How To Make Social Media Data Work For You - Hootsuite Social Media Management: "In business, data is synonymous with answers—evidence, objectivity, hidden insight. This perception of data as the magic key that opens doors holding information to anything we’ve ever wanted to know makes us obsessed with the latest ways to get it: Big Data, data visualization, open-source data, data scientists. But, as marketers, are we doing data right?
While Big Data and data-driven everything have been framed as universal analytics solutions, their effectiveness can be threatened by the same issue that faces all innovative tools: if you haven’t set proper goals you want to achieve using social media data, you risk making a lot of false conclusions.
Whether you or your company are early adopters of social media data, or just looking into better ways of using this information to inform business decisions, to get the most out of the social media data available to your business, you should go back to basics. Use the following 3 questions to evaluate your perception of data and the effectiveness of your data strategies."



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Imgur Releases A Fast Video-To-GIF Converter | TechCrunch

Imgur Releases A Fast Video-To-GIF Converter | TechCrunch: "Here’s an embarrassing secret: Before today, I’d never made a GIF.

I mean, obviously I’ve seen them, laughed when they’ve been passed along, and made a note so that I could share them myself later.



I’ve even searched for them once or twice on Giphy.

But deep down, I knew I was a fraud, someone who feared the day when an editor would say, “Hey, can you whip up a funny GIF about this?” and I’d have to admit that I didn’t have any idea what I was doing.

That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when I learned that Imgur was launching Video to GIF — as the name implies, it allows you to easily convert online videos into GIFs. In fact, the popular image-sharing service describes this as “the easiest and fastest way to make awesome GIFs from videos.”

Since I haven’t actually created a GIF before (yes, it’s embarrassing, we discussed this already), I don’t know whether this is truly the easiest and fastest method (YouTube, by the way, has also been rolling out its own built-in GIF creator), but it is pretty friendly to neophytes like me.



You just enter a video URL, select the portion of the video that you want to convert, add some text, and voila, you’ve got a GIF a few seconds later.

Imgur says the tool is compatible with more than 500 video sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, and Vine.



http://i.imgur.com/fxam3Rx.gifv

Even I managed to do it. I’ll admit I had a brief moment of panic when I got confused by the various markers showing the start, stop, and current play points in the video, but nonetheless, I did it. Even if it’s a dumb inside joke (borrowed from HBO’s Silicon Valley), and even if I haven’t figured out how to make the text larger, I still feel a ridiculous sense of accomplishment. GIFs, I will never fear you again.

And if you weren’t looking for a new GIF-making tool, it’s still interesting to see Imgur expand — maybe it can turn lurkers who pop by the site into active posters. In the press release announcing the tool, Director of Product Sam Gerstenzang said the company is “democratizing GIF creation for everyone.”

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Microsoft OneDrive to Get Slew of New Features in Upcoming Updates | NDTV Gadgets

Microsoft OneDrive to Get Slew of New Features in Upcoming Updates | NDTV Gadgets: "Microsoft has announced an update for its file-sharing and cloud storage service OneDrive, with some new image sharing/ viewing features and a new Search system. It is worth mentioning that the updates, which will roll out over the next few weeks, are built upon what Microsoft demoed on Windows 10 during the recent 'The Next Chapter' event last week.
The upcoming update for Microsoft OneDrive will let users view and manage images much easily than before both on mobile and desktop devices. As a part of the update, OneDrive will also include Albums, which unlike other traditional albums, will show larger thumbnails and display images in an edge-to-edge layout. "Albums also let you bring photos and videos together from anywhere in your OneDrive," added Microsoft's Douglas Pearce on the company blog post. The Albums feature will reach the Web version and the iOS app first, followed by the Android and Windows Phone apps."



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Facebook Lite Launched For Low-End Android Phones

Facebook Lite Launched For Low-End Android Phones: "WASHINGTON: The social networking site has reportedly launched a simplified version called "Facebook Lite" for low-end Android devices used by customers in emerging markets. This is a very good news for the Facebook lovers to explore something new for Low-end Android smartphones.


It is just 252 KB in size and can be used by those on 2G internet connections, Techcrunch reported.


The app is based on Snaptu, Facebook's feature phone client.


It includes some native Android features such as push notifications and camera integration to make the experience a more sophisticated one.


The app has been launched launched in some countries in Asia and Africa, where it is being testing with a view to further expanding its features, the report added.


Nearly 10,000 people have downloaded the app so far, with a 4.6 rating from an initial 693 reviewers."



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True Colors: What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business [Infographic] | B2B Marketing

True Colors: What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business [Infographic] | B2B Marketing: "The most prominent brands in the world are defined by their colors. Think of McDonald’s golden arches, the name Jet Blue, and UPS’ slogan, “What can Brown do for you?” These companies, and many others, strategically use colors in their logo, website, and product to appeal to customers. As a B2B marketer, it’s important to think about how you utilize colors and what the colors you choose say about your business.



Research has found that different colors provoke very different reactions in people. Marketo choose to use the color Purple for branding because at the time Marketo was founded, purple was relatively un-used. Additionally, purple represents wealth, royalty, and richness which also has associations to leadership and revenue. Integrating your brand colors in your logo, landing pages, product, and more will help you achieve the highest impact. We put the rainbow under a microscope to find out how each color can help you connect with your consumers."



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The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing | Social Media Today

"In the past, marketers often used social media as just another channel for publishing content and listening to their community. However, to maximize the success of social marketing, today's marketers need to become adept at integrating social into their existing marketing programs and strategies.



You have to do more than social media. You have to do social marketing.

Our brand new Definitive Guide to Social Marketing shows you how to add social to every marketing activity to amplify impact and drive buyer engagement, new business, and revenue.



Download our guide and learn how to:

Staff your social media team and get your entire organization on board
Turn your customers into powerful brand advocates by engaging in peer-to-peer sharing and influencer marketing
Leverage social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest into powerful lead generation channels
Incorporate social marketing into every stage of your sales funnel
Effectively measure social marketing to determine real business ROI



Download today and make your social marketing efforts worth the time and money invested!"



The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing | Social Media Today



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Instagram or Tumblr? A Guide To Choosing The Right Photo Sharing Platform For Your Business - Hootsuite Social Media Management

Instagram or Tumblr? A Guide To Choosing The Right Photo Sharing Platform For Your Business - Hootsuite Social Media Management: "A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those words aren’t worth much if no one is listening. This is why it’s important to choose the right network dedicated to photo sharing.

Before you begin shopping around for the perfect photo-sharing network for your business, create a mission statement to determine the main goals you want to achieve with the help of this network. Do you need a channel exclusively for photos, or does it dovetail into your content marketing platform? Will it show off photos of your company culture, or show off products for sale? Once you have decided how a photo-sharing network can benefit your business, it’s time to choose your platform. To help you make the right choice, we made a chart to showcase four major networks for photo sharing: Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Flickr"



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Facebook 2014 — A Year in Review - Hootsuite Social Media Management

Facebook 2014 — A Year in Review - Hootsuite Social Media Management: "Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, and they definitely showed their influence in 2014. Massive acquisitions, big moves into other industries and big changes to their algorithm made for a newsworthy year.



Have a look at some of what kept Facebook in the headlines in 2014:

The product

The story of Facebook’s product this year was, in their words, to adapt Facebook in order to better represent the interests of the users.

When a person or business explicitly requests likes, shares and comments to increase the engagement around their Facebook posts, without actually providing any content of value, Facebook dubs these types of posts “Like-Baiting.” After a survey showed Facebook users rated these posts as 15 percent less relevant than other content with the same level of engagement, Facebook made algorithm changes to suppress like-baiting in the News Feed."



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