Is Print Dead or is it that the Strong Survive?
Is print dead? Perhaps we are simply witnessing a Darwinian evolution of the print species. The question is, what strategy makes a publication survive and can it be adopted by the weaker?
Picture Perfect Partnerships
When brands band together, multidimensional stories emerge. Each brand needs to understand what it brings to the main story and to its more focused story. Strong partnerships create efficiencies. A brand gets more bang for the buck and garners a more engaged audience by letting consumers choose to see what they want to see behind the curtain.
Home Depot Should Build a Sturdier Foundation for Video Content
Many brands have been creating content and have an arsenal on various social media platforms. Those brands should now be looking to evolve that content or the platforms on which it resides to maximize the investment and realize its potential.
Big Companies Can Cross-Pollinate Their Brands
Our concept of brandscaping encourages complementary brands to unite in order to amortize content creation costs and realize greater reach through multiple points of distribution. What about the companies that produce a varied assortment of products, like Unilever or P&G? … Continued
What can a superhero chef, a makeup brand and a paint company bring to Comic-Con?
Big brands often pave the way in marketing and smaller companies try to ride the wave or emulate on a smaller scale. However, recently there have been examples of marketing initiatives executed on by big brands that are easy for a small brand to replicate and build upon. The Gap Styld.by campaign is a great example, as is Neiman Marcus’ outreach for a fashion photographer at SXSW. But, let’s try it with Comic-Con.
Bloggers and brands can build valuable relationships
Blogger and brand relationships can be tricky to navigate. Oftentimes brands choose to sample products and donate items to bloggers for feedback, reviews, exposure — only to find that nothing comes of it or that the response was not favorable. Bloggers want to remain editorially sound, which means that brands looking to crate meaningful relationships with bloggers need to have a definitive strategy and dedicated resources who are focused, disciplined, and track against concrete goals. Recently I’ve seen a few examples of how blogger and brand relationships have evolved and become more meaningful initiatives.
What’s Hot @Houseswares 2012
As a first-time attendee of the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago, I was immediately enthralled by the breadth of offering from inventive manufacturers looking to build diverse product offerings at retail.
Capitalize on Consumer Spending Patterns
Consumers spend a lot of money when buying a home, so how can brands get into their consideration set right from the beginning of a home build or purchase project?
Wednesday Video: Stacy DeBroff on influencing the influencers
Stacy DeBroff, CEO of Mom Central Consulting, on how companies should approach amateur influencers and what that can mean to their bottom line.
Wednesday Video: The $52,000 Customer Explained
Andrew Davis explains how one company spent $52,000 to convert just one brand advocate with their recent television campaign.
Wednesday Video: Bernie Borges on B2B Content Marketing
Bernie Borges, SEO expert and author of Marketing 2.0, on how content marketing can work in the Business to Business arena.
Wednesday Video: David Meerman Scott on Publishing a Great eBook
David Meerman Scott, author of Real-Time Marketing and PR (featuring Tippingpoint Labs) talks about strategies for publishing a successful eBook.
Wednesday Video: Where Your Dot Com Fits Online
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer at Tippingpoint Labs, explains how your dot com relates to the rest of the web.
Wednesday Video: Joe Pulizzi on Creating Successful eBooks
Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing blog Junta42, talks about strategies for publishing a successful eBook.
Wednesday Video: How to Find Your Business Niche
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer at Tippingpoint Labs, explains the importance of finding your niche using the phenomenon of Fish TV.
Wednesday Video: Why Traffic Sucks To Gauge Success
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer for Tippingpoint Labs, talks about why it sucks that CMOs use web traffic data to determine their success online.
Wednesday Video: Diane Hessan — Using Twitter to Build Offline Relationships
Diane Hessan, President & CEO of Communispace tells Tippingpoint Labs how online interaction can lead to offline action.
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Wednesday Video: Why Give Online Content Away?
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer for Tippingpoint Labs, answers the question “Why should I just be giving away my great content for free?”
Wednesday Video: Content Marketing for B2B and B2C
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer for Tippingpoint Labs, answers the question: “Does online content marketing work for B2B companies as well as B2C companies?”
Wednesday Video: Making Content Relevant to your Audience
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer for Tippingpoint Labs, answers the question: “How can I make my content more relevant to my target audience?”
Wednesday Video: David Meerman Scott Talks Online Content
Tippingpoint Labs is featured in David Meerman Scott’s latest book: Real Time Marketing & PR. A while back, we interviewed him about the value of producing high quality, relevant, and frequent content online.
The $52,000 Customer
I’ll be honest, it’s not always easy to convince VPs and CMOs that digital content marketing is much more effective than mass reach ad spends. It can be daunting to reverse the course of traditional thinking. However, if you’re armed with real-world examples, you’ll probably be more successful.
Your Workforce is Your Social Media Policy
The democratization of knowledge is a real phenomenon — thanks to the internet. Your company should be playing on this field in a big way. You should be mining your entire workforce for content and promotion. Don’t close your employees off from social media, empower them to do social media right.
14 Things Everyone Should Know about Writing for eCommerce Sites
1. Understand: the web is not print Writing for the web is different from writing for other media. Different types of sites have different types of goals. On an eCommerce or catalog site, users have two main goals of use: … Continued
So Much Content, So Little Time
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 18 years since Bruce Springsteen lamented that there were “57 channels and nothing on.” Back in 1992 when the song was released, such a huge cable lineup was unfathomable, and the frustration he experienced trying to navigate the sudden increase of content caused the Boss to write that he bought a .44 magnum to blow away his television– Elvis style.
Today, when you consider the explosion of content online, 57 channels seem as limiting as choosing between french fries or mashed potatoes. Consider the statistics offered by social media think tank, Socialnomics.
* You Tube hosts more than 100 million videos.
* Users post 153 articles to Wikipedia per hour.
* There are over 200 million blogs and more than 54% of bloggers post new content or tweet daily.
* Hulu went from 63 million streams to 373 million total streams in one year.
* Facebook users share more than 1.5 million pieces of content every day.
That’s a lot of content, too much to navigate on your own. So how will one navigate content online? The same way we do offline world– we’ll get referrals.
The 40-Hour Content Marketing Challenge
We were recently asked how we would craft an online content strategy if we only had 40 hours a month to do it. It’s an interesting idea. The most important thing is identify, identify, identify.
Do You Really Need a Gimmick?
If you’re creating great content, there’s no point in trying to trick people into consuming it. Distraction is one type of attention, while engagement is quite another.
Brian Solis’s Conversation Confusion Prism
Let me start by saying something very important. We like Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas’s The Conversation Prism. It provides a very comprehensive view of the web content distribution world. It was developed to address a number of issues that … Continued
Online Marketing Is for Everybody!
Budget Strategy and ROI (Part 5 of 6) This series asks the tough questions about evolving marketing strategies and the benefits and returns you should expect and plan for. Who’s in charge here? When I speak to potential clients about … Continued
Sowing the Seeds of Promotion
Your most targeted promotion will be directly through your personal network. Interpersonal content promotion is more likely to result in a conversation through comments or an e-mail exchange. You may even invite contacts to participate.
5 Questions to Test Social Media Expertise
Ask these five questions as you consider working with any social media ‘expert’ — the answers will give you the necessary insight to judge any social media strategy.
Begetting the Love Child of Social Media and Custom Publishing
Today’s social media strategies are heavy on the social and light on the media. It’s mostly about getting on a site and getting followers. Or responding to every mention of your company. It’s only a fraction of the overall picture of what social media ought to be.
An Organic Alternative to Cropdust Marketing
Budget Strategy and ROI (Part 2 of 6) This series asks the tough questions about evolving marketing strategies and the benefits and returns you should expect and plan for. If somebody told you that you could reach nearly every potential … Continued
Hey Social Media Agencies — Alpo or Eukanuba? The Choice Is Yours.
Whether you’re a social media agency or not, your company should be producing content that reflects your goals and supports your claims. Period.
2010: A Marketing Budget Odyssey
Budget Strategy and ROI (Part 1 of 6) By Andrew Davis and Scott Loring This series asks the tough questions about evolving marketing strategies and the benefits and returns you should plan for and expect. Step right up and place … Continued
Social Media Experts Don’t Understand Social Media
It seems like every time I meet with an agency, they bring along their social media experts. I’m not exactly sure what makes someone a social media expert. Perhaps it is someone who knows how to amass a lot of … Continued
Add Value on Twitter: The 4-1-1 Rule
Today, we’re focusing neither on the value of Twitter nor what you can do with it. Instead, let’s take a look at how you should be using it for maxium efficiency.
As Twitter is in the escalation phase, you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time thinking about it or using it. You should only be spending 15% of your time marketing on all escalation-phase platforms combined.
The Galilean Model: Your Website Is Not the Center of the Universe
The Galilean Model is a conceptual framework for understanding your brand’s place in the internet as a whole. Search is at the center of the web and you have to participate outside of your dotcom to engage consumers.
TippingpointLabs.com: New Look, More Changes to Come
You’ve probably noticed that the TippingpointLabs.com interface has changed. This current deployment is part of our perpetual makeover. Please let us know what you think by commenting below. Design, navigation, user experience, feature enhancements, whatever tickles your fancy. Or comment on where the … Continued
De-Fragment Your Marketing when Working with Agencies
The big three are scrambling to supply services that address this newest evolution. PR and Advertising are offering interactive. Interactive is claiming that advertising is dead. All are offering social media.
Microsoft Bing: WTF Kind of Launch Was That?!
Microsoft has spent a reported $100 million to launch their new ‘decision engine’ Bing. I can appreciate their desire to go big with this product launch, but in the process they really dropped the ball on some great opportunities (and some alternatives). Yes, I am talking about the basics of content marketing.
Don’t Let Traffic Drive You
Eighty percent of you business is going to come from twenty percent of your customers. So concentrate on quality traffic. Don’t invest in attracting everybody to your site with SEM or affiliate marketing, invest in cultivating lower volumes with higher engagement.
5 Ways Sellsumers Could Impact Your Business
Smart marketers should perk up and recognize another indicator of shifting consumer behavior. Empowered digital consumers are going around, not through, major brands. Sellsumers are highly engaged, savvy content creators changing the marketplace.
Stand Out on Social Bookmarking Sites
This week in Content in Context, we’re exploring some ways to promote with social bookmarking sites. The larger the platform on which you are promoting your content, the noisier it can be. The goal is to reduce the noise and … Continued
The Content Engine
Once you have a strategy nailed down, you need a content creation process or, as we call it, a Content Engine. The Content Engine equates to the actual tactics employed in carrying out your overall strategy — it’s the way you plan, coordinate and generate your content.
Giving It Away
You have a marketing story to tell. You’ve created valuable content. You’ve repurposed it into various formats, and you’ve exercised the foresight to create quality assets that you can repurpose infinitely. Now give it away.
What Makes Your Content Valuable?
Creating valuable content is vital in marketing online today. But when you’re putting all this content out there without substantial feedback, how do you know if it’s valuable?
12-second Cocktails Demonstrate Power of 12seconds.tv
Back in February I documented how 12seconds.tv had entered the gestation phase of its New Media Life Cycle, characterized by a small group of dedicated users embracing the new micro-vlogging platform, with overall quality remaining mediocre at best while the … Continued
The 12omercial: 12seconds Formalizes An Ad Platform
Anyone who’s met me in the last six months has heard about 12seconds.tv. I’ve also been writing about it recently, here and here. I was intrigued on Friday when I heard that 12seconds debuted a new functionality designed to push video ads to Twitter and elsewhere. After checking out the functionality and watching some of the ads, I’m slightly disappointed.
How Geico Wastes $90MM a Year on Search Engine Marketing
Stop Wasting Your Money on Google AdWords: Invest in Some Good Content Lately, I’ve engaged in the exact same conversation about buying search terms. The conversation goes something like this: Them: “We spent $1MM buying keywords last year and Google’s … Continued
Online Content Marketing Blurring the Lines Between ‘Branding and Journalism’
I read a wonderful article this morning in Mass High Tech magazine. The author, Denise de Murcie a former journalist and now brand manager, wrote a piece in the February 6th issue of the magazine entitled The Lines are Blurring Between Branding and Journalism.
