Abridged with the author’s permission from his blog.

“Our customers don’t pay attention to content, so why should we pay for someone to create it for our business?”

Believe it or not, I heard this statement a few weeks ago from a company I interviewed. They didn’t believe content was worth focusing on as an element in their marketing mix.

Well, according to eMarketer, 73 percent of businesses rely on their own, branded content, and 41 percent make use of user-generated content and/or reviews. Content shouldn’t be an afterthought or something business can ignore — it’s an important piece of any company’s strategy.

If you need to convince someone, here are three benefits of content in any company’s marketing mix.

Content Marketing Helps You Make a Personal Connection

Many businesses I talk to say they don’t need help with content. Why not? The reasons they give include:

• “We can just write something about ourselves and it will work.”
• “Our customers don’t really read much anyway.”

Wow. It’s funny to hear things like this.

According to research from the Custom Content Council:

• 68 percent of consumers like custom content because it’s tailored to their interests
• 55 percent said they would be more apt to buy another product from a company who provides them with custom content.

Content not important? I think not.

Content Marketing Helps Prospects Find Your Business

Usually, when a savvy buyer has a problem, they “Google it” to find a solution, right? So for a business looking to increase its rankings and become more visible to potential customers, quality search content is key. Consider these suggestions:

• Creating and regularly updating a blog
• Writing articles for online trade publications
• Writing guest posts for established blogs
• Creating presentations that solve a problem and posting them on sites like SlideShare.net
• Publishing an email newsletter online through social sharing services

Content Marketing Closes the Deal

As prospects go through each stage of the buying cycle, they need content that’s right for each stage. This includes the end stage, or “closing the deal.”

For instance, how would a prospect know your product or service is in their range, or what other customers say about your business?

• Look at writing case studies and white papers and posting them to your website in PDF form
• Add content available online and at in-person events such as seminars or conferences
• Create ROI calculators to show prospects their return on investment
• Create pricing guides highlighting your “sweet spot” offers

Content is everywhere, and learning how to effectively use it in your marketing mix will only benefit your business. So, don’t skimp on the content — use it, and use it wisely, before your competition beats you to it.

George Passwater enjoys helping businesses succeed with online marketing strategies. You can find him blogging at georgepasswater.com or sending out online marketing tips in his marketing email newsletter.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from {grow}

I’ve recently graduated from college, moved to New York City, and started my job as a professional event planner. As I have immersed myself in this new “young-professional” role, I’ve been noticing some social media trends among my twenty-something peers that you might find surprising. What’s hot? What’s useful?  What do we not give a crap about?

Here are some intelligent and good-looking opinions on the platforms that we loathe and love:

Twitter: Among young professionals, Twitter is becoming the holiest of holy. The exclusive and elite. The smart and creative. You can be witty, you can be hip, #YouCanComeUpWithHashtagsThatAreSoBrilliant. And best of all, grandma — who is all over Facebook — doesn’t know about it. Twitter is the world without the politics and drama of Facebook and it is the coolest of the cool right now.

LinkedIn: Every day I receive new notifications from my classmates. FINALLY. Hop on board friends. It’s been a realization for my group that not only is this a tool we need while looking for our jobs, it’s also necessary to keep movin’ on up.

Facebook: No, we’re not leaving Facebook.  My generation will never really let go of Facebook. We’ve gone through too much together. Too many photos, too many exes to stalk, too much history together.  But we have also trudged through all of the constant change Facebook has put us through and frankly, it’s exhausting.

Among my peers, there are two classes of people on Facebook — those on Twitter and those who aren’t. Those who are “Twitter-less” continue to post their lives, their trials, their tribulations on FB. But those of us on the 140 character machine, bitch openly on Twitter and “family-friendly filter” on Facebook. Twitter is the conversation. Facebook is just a place to archive photos and post lame jokes. We can have Facebook open at work because we’ll never post anything incriminating there. Twitter is where the juicy stuff lives.

Google+: In a word, FAIL. Seriously. We don’t give a crap about our impact on SEO. I joined and built my “circles” and there have only been two updates ever … and one is from my mother saying, “great, something else I need to update. ”

Everything that is cool about Google+ can be found somewhere else and we’re already happy and comfortable with those other platforms.

Now, let’s talk about a hot social media site for the young professional crowd and you probably have never heard of it: OK Cupid.

Yep.  A dating site.

But there is something very interesting going on here.  Once I got past the initial “creepy” factor of realizing that I’m old enough to be on a dating site, I discovered an exciting new social networking model emerging here.  It’s kind of like a combination of Facebook and Twitter for people you don’t know — people who are not currently your friends but who might become your friends, or in Cupid-terms, an “adventure buddy.”

Many of my friends are now spending more time on OK Cupid than Facebook. They are finding it fun to socialize, share restaurant recommendations, chat about music and books, etc. with new people who have similar interests.

Lauren Schaefer is a recent college grad, new NYC resident, and nonprofit event planner with an interest in all things social media. She documents her new journey as a young professional at her blog From the Fifth Floor. Twitter: @leschaef

A month ago we wrote about our perspective on Google+ . Recently we saw Drew McLellan arguing exactly the opposite point of view on his blog, Drew’s Marketing Minute, so we bring that to you too, so you can make up your own minds. Reprinted with permission.

When Google+ emerged last summer, people’s reactions were to be expected.  The early adopters were all over it. But for most people who were already suffering from social media fatigue — their response was “oh no…not another site for me to maintain!”

And many people simply opted out, not wanting to use/try yet another social networking site. All along, I have been saying that it simply could not be ignored. 

Let’s look at a timeline for those of you who aren’t familiar with how this played out.

• Summer 2011 — Google+ launches
• 16 days later — Google+  reaches 10 million users (Facebook took 852 days, Twitter took 780)
• November 2011 — Google+ launches business pages
• January 2012 — Google+ has just added three new features to its search giant (see below)

Do you think they don’t have the next move already planned?

This newest set of features makes personalization of Google search a given.  Specifically, how/who you are connected to on Google+ will impact your search results. Again — more ammo for the argument that businesses simply cannot ignore how this is changing the world of search. Here is a quick overview of the three new features.

Personal Results

These results enable you to find information only pertaining to you and your connections. They show photos and updates from Google+ that include what you’ve shared and what has been shared with you there.

You will be the only one who can access this exact data.

Profiles in Search

These results, also shown in autocomplete and regular search results, will display Google+ profiles of people you know or others you may be interested in following when you search for people’s names.

Once searched, you’ll also have the choice (if you’re signed in and you use it) to add Google+ users to your Circles from directly within the search results.

People and Pages

These results show you profiles or Google+ business pages on the right-hand side of the results page when you search a specific topic or key word/s.

I don’t think I have to paint the picture for you.   Who do you think is going to get a higher search ranking — a business with or without Google+ content?

And take my word on it — this is just the beginning.  You simply cannot ignore Google+.

Drew McLellan is CEO of the McLellan Marketing Group. Check out his blog, Drew’s Marketing Minute.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from What’s Next? Blog.

Tools for listening to social media range from free to tens of thousands of dollars, but more expensive isn’t always best.

Here are some tools that do a really good job of helping brands track, respond, and build relationships. These tools will help you learn who’s talking about your industry, your competitors, and your brand, and what they’re saying. They range from free to reasonably priced.

The bottom line is that no one tool that I’ve investigated (and I’ve tried several dozen) can do the whole job. Combining a few of these is the best way to go.

• SamePoint is a somewhat geeky but remarkably thorough conversation search engine that tracks — in real time and historically — and categorizes social media mentions, discussion points, bookmarks, wikis, networks, groups, microblogs, reviews, podcasts, documents, video, images, news and websites. Accounts range from free to $1,000 per month.
•  Spiral16 is a paid service with a human-guided data-validation process and 3D visual mapping, which allows clients to get comprehensive data in a visual format. Spiral16 picks up data from social media, reference sites, directories, and non-traditional trade publications. Pricing starts at $500.
• PageLever “If you think Facebook Insights leaves something to be desired, you’re not alone,” says PageLever.” If you’re responsible for managing a Facebook page, PageLever puts Facebook’s own weak analytics on steroids. The demo video will show you how it works. Prices range from $34 to $250 a month.
• SproutSocial creates a dashboard for monitoring social media relationships across Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages), and LinkedIn. You can search, monitor and cross-post to networks, schedule messages to be posted, as well as track links and referrals. Prices range from $39 a month for up to 20 profiles, up to $899 a month for the enterprise version and unlimited profiles.
•  Vitrue is a social media content management system for brand pages in Twitter and Facebook. You can create and schedule messages for Twitter and Facebook, and you can use Vitrue Apps to create custom videos, photo slideshows, polls, surveys, coupons and other marketing tools for Facebook. Month-to-month licenses in three price plans begin at $300 a month.
• Besides letting you upload videos to multiple sites simultaneously, TubeMogul has recently developed a rich set of metrics that let you see stats on how many people have watched your videos across various networks. In real time, you’ll get a dashboard showing views, audience geography, time spent, embeds, referring sites, search terms and lots more. And it’s free.

A sampling of CRM Database Management Tools

Once you’ve got a picture of who’s talking about your brand, you can engage with them with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database tools:

• Assistly lets you create a desktop dashboard of all your customer service conversations. You can collect, prioritize and respond to them all in one well-designed, easy-to-use space. Every employee can use Assistly to provide customer response by phone, email, Twitter, or chat. You can try it free.
•  Batchbook neatly combines Facebook, Google, and your contact database. It lets you view blog posts, photos, tweets, and more alongside your customer contact history. Prices range from $14.95 to $149 per month.
•  If you use Google Gmail, Rapportive will show the contact information for the person whose email you’re reading, just to the right of your inbox. Instead of ads in the right column, you’ll also see links and details from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and numerous other social sites that the writer uses.

The bottom line: engaging with your customers in social media channels is simply an updated version of fishing where the fish are.

B.L. Ochman is publisher of What’s Next Blog, contributor to Ad Age DigitalNext and Sr Creative Technologist for AFS Intercultural Programs, a global, non-profit foreign exchange program for high school students. She has been helping Fortune 500 companies incorporate emerging media into their business strategies since 1996. She is co-founder of Pawfun.com.

The New Year is here, and with it an avalanche of predictions about what 2012 will bring. Here are a few from some of our favorite marketing blogs. The short version? It’s time to get mobile.

PostAdvertising lets us know why mobile will rule the world in 2012. Katie Edmonson touches on the explosive growth of Instagram, the fact that NBC plans to use Foursquare to map the presidential campaign, and our coming ability to leave wallets at home and just shop with our phones.

The Search Agents blog collects predictions from several members of its staff. Most of them foresee sharp rises in mobile marketing. Keith Wilson even claims that “Mobile search will exceed 20% share of search queries by the end of 2012″.

Heidi Cohen offers seven broad predictions. She agrees that mobile marketing will be a high priority, but also argues that email marketing will remain relevant; that social media will extend beyond marketing to touch market research, customer service, post-sales support, and investor relations; and that content will remain the most important element of all.

Drew McLellan interviews Ann Mack, JWT’s Director of Trendspotting, and highlights a few surprising trends for 2012, including the increasingly entrepreneurial mindset of those in their 20s and the rise of bargain alternatives to a wide range of products and services.

Taking a slightly different tack, Sarah Moraes of Vertical Measures lists six internet marketing books worth reading in 2012. While not a prediction per se, that’s basically just another way of telling us what will be important in 2012, which isn’t radically different from 2011: social media marketing, SEO, and using analytics to test your content. The reading list from TopRank Blog looks similar: books on mobile marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing.

And perhaps most optimistic of all, MarketingProfs collects marketing New Year’s resolutions like “care about content first” and “more experimentation and testing.”

Abridged with the author’s permission from Interact Media’s Content Marketing Made Simple Blog.

Blogs, unlike newspapers and magazines, have a unique capability to interact with their readers. If you are looking to make your blog more user-friendly, here are five things to try:

1. Enable and respond to comments. Yes, it takes a bit of time to moderate these comments. Yes, you’ll sometimes get spam (though you can filter it with tools like Akismet). But allowing comments tells the readers that their opinions are important to your company.

You also need to respond to their comments in a timely manner. No one likes talking into the wind. Let your readers know that someone is reading what they wrote.

2. Provide more than just text. A great blog allows readers to read, listen, and view relevant content. If you’re not using videos and audio, you’re not maximizing your potential.

3. Use comments to generate blog content ideas. According to the Content Marketing Institute, a blog post with a lot of comments shows that you’ve happened on a topic that strikes a chord with your readers. Producing more content about that subject will keep readers engaged and returning again and again.

Questions, too, can be good fodder for blog content. Addressing an issue that’s mentioned repeatedly in comments can help establish your company as an authority in your field.

4. Solicit user-generated content. According to Search Engine Land, user-generated blog content (that is, content written and submitted by readers) not only helps your blog rank better with Google, but shows your readers that you value their input and gives your blog a greater depth by allowing different points of view.

Remember: you don’t have post every submission and you can edit the posts for style and grammar.

5. Make it easy to share content. If your readers enjoy a particular post, make it easy for them to share. Place buttons to share posts on Facebook or other social media sites as well as an “email this article” function.

Making your blog more user-friendly is a process and one that won’t happen overnight. Still, with a little effort and attention, you can make your site not only an authority on your topic, but a welcoming place to visit as well.

Sandy Mitchell is a content marketing writer for Interact Media, a website content provider.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from Neuromarketing.

Could social media ads, or at least ads on Facebook, outperform similar ads on television? It seems the answer is “yes.” That surprising outcome was reported in the same study that showed ads on the social media giant being more emotionally engaging than the same ads on NYTimes.com or Yahoo.com (see Facebook Ads Most Engaging in Neuromarketing Study).

The study, conducted by NeuroFocus, presented the same Visa ad in three viewing contexts: a typical televison ad “pod,” and as an embedded video on a Visa website and Facebook. The subjects’ brain activity was monitored using EEG technology to assess three metrics that are part of the Neurofocus analysis: attention, emotional engagement, and memory retention. As shown by the chart below, the results were a little mixed.

If we accept the Neurofocus measurements at face value, it seems that both websites scored better in attention, with the ad doing best on the contextually related Visa corporate site. Echoing the website comparisons, the socially-oriented Facebook context provided the best level of emotional engagement. Surprisingly, although television was the worst performer in the first two categories, it was tops in memory activation. Neurofocus combined the metrics and declared Facebook to be the best overall performer.

Not So Fast…

Before shifting most of our ad budgets to Facebook, there are a few limitations of this data. First, we are relying on the idea that NeuroFocus can accurately determine “memory retention” and the other metrics from the flood of digital data that pours out of their EEG headsets. (These headsets measure minute electrical field variations at the subject’s scalp.) Second, if we grant that NeuroFocus has enough data and experience to back up those claims, we don’t know that an individual advertiser’s business goals will be achieved by scoring high in those metrics. (Of course, it’s hard to argue that attention, engagement, and memory are bad things.) Finally, the online video ad presentations may simulate real world viewer behavior somewhat less well than the TV simulation; while live TV viewers may have no choice but to passively view ads, web browsers seem more likely to find ways to avoid unwanted video ads. (Still, as consumers access increasing amounts of video content online, the opportunities to insert ads that can’t be readily bypassed are growing.)

Also, a different study by Innerscope Research showed that TV ads were more engaging than online ads (see Study: TV Branding Beats Online.) The Innerscope Research was funded by Fox Broadcasting, while the NeuroFocus work was done for Facebook.

Good News for Social Media

Even given the above limitations, I find the data encouraging for Web ads in general and for social media sites in particular. The emotional activation that occurs from engaging with friends and family seems to confer a halo effect on ads presented in that context. I’m eagerly awaiting more work in this area that validates and extends these interesting findings.

Roger Dooley is a marketing speaker, the founder of Dooley Direct, a neuromarketing and digital marketing consultancy, and author of the upcoming book Brainfluence (Wiley, November 2011). Twitter: @rogerdooley.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from the SuccessWorks blog.

Last week, a prospect asked what I thought of his site copy.

I took one look and resisted the urge to say, “Um, how much did you pay for this?” The writing was…bad.  Picture a 500-word, below-the-fold paragraph with no hyperlinks, no call-to-action…and what’s worse…

All of the copy was italicized. All of it.

Imagine reading that on a mobile device.

The prospect knew that something seemed “off.”  But he thought, “I hired someone who specializes in SEO copy. Well, maybe the copy should be that way.”

Not by a long shot.

Life is too short to pay for bad copy. If your SEO copy sucks, that means that it’s time to send it back to the writer and get her to fix it.

Here’s how to separate the stupendous from the sucky:

• Read the copy out loud and hear how it “sounds.” If your content sounds clunky – or if the keyphrases stand out like a sore thumb – send it back to the writer. Over-optimized copy will not do you any favors – and you don’t want your readers bouncing out of your site the second that they arrive.

• Do you have the urge to bring out your red pen and slice unnecessary words? Smart SEO copywriting is tight – which means that the writer is using as few words as possible to bring the point home. If you feel like the content is “fluffy,” send it back for editing.

• Does the copy make your company’s benefits “pop?” Or is it all focused around features? One tip: Review how many times the writer used the words “we” and “our company.” If you find that it’s focusing too much on features and not enough on benefits, send it back.  If the page is live, try out this fun “We-We Calculator” for feedback.

• Is the copy focused around one single keyword? Good SEO copywriting focused on two-to-three keyphrase variations. If you’re seeing the same word repeated over and over, have the writer rewrite it.

• Are there spelling or grammatical errors? Granted, your writer is human – and things happen. But if you are seeing multiple errors and you’re finding yourself correcting the document, stop. That’s what your writer is supposed to do for you.

• Is there a call to action? This could mean linking to a sales page, another blog post, or encouraging folks to sign up for a newsletter. Your writer needs to weave your site’s (and your page’s) conversion goal into the copy. If they haven’t, it’s time for a rewrite.

• How is your page title? (That’s what appears as the clickable link on the search engine results page.) Does it include the page keywords? Is it enticing? Or is it a bunch of keyphrases separated by pipes? If you’re thinking, “Hmm, I don’t think I’d click on this result,” send it back to the writer.

• Is the page easy to read? Long, scrolling paragraphs are visually overwhelming—especially on a mobile device.  If the paragraphs are long—and you’re not seeing any subheadlines that break up the text—have your writer check out these Web writing tips before they rewrite the copy.

What happens if your writer revises the content – yet your SEO copy is still crap? It may be time to let the writer go and find someone else who better suits your needs. Better to take the loss now and move on, then upload crappy copy and suffer the consequences.

Heather Lloyd-Martin is the president of SuccessWorks, which specializes in content marketing strategies, premium copywriting services and training in-house and freelance SEO copywriters. She also certifies copywriters through the SEO Copywriting Certificate program, the first Certification program for SEO content marketing professionals.