What is the single most exciting digital marketing opportunity in 2015?
Nope, it isn’t about generating great content. Neither is it mining mountains of big data, or optimizing social media channels.
Rather, customer experience is the holy grail for digital marketers this year. At least according to Adobe and Econsultancy’s Digital Trends 2015 report.
Image source
Content marketing is all the rage now.
Fueled by our insatiable need to consume content anywhere, anytime on any digital device, it is the new mantra of Search Engine Optimized (SEO) and social-media enabled marketers around the world.
Leading global brands like Apple, Coca-Cola, Oreo, Nike, Burberry’s and Zappos are using it to build brand affinity, deepen consumer interest, and drive sales.
How can small businesses compete against 800-pound-gorillas? What can they do to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of consumers?
Well, Kevin M Ryan and Rob “Spider” Graham purports that digital marketing and online advertising is the answer. Targeted at small and medium sized businesses, their book Taking Down Goliath acts as a 101 guide to the world of digital marketing, covering topics like email marketing, online advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, mobile marketing and more.
Noooo! My content isn’t spam! (Courtesy of Good Karma Host)
Are you a content marketing spammer?
There is a fine thin line between producing useful content and generating useless spam. While some of us do appreciate information that helps us to solve our problems, or increase our pleasure, others may find a continuous stream of irrelevant content interruptive and irritating.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a phenomenal storytelling entrepreneur. He is so good in what he does that Businessweek lauded him as “one of the top 20 people every entrepreneur should follow”.
Former founder of Wine Library and author of bestselling social media marketing books like Crush It! and The Thank You Economy, Gary’s straight talking shoot-from-the-hip style has won him many fans.
Image of Michael Stelzner fromSocial Media Examiner
How can you achieve success in social media marketing? Can your company achieve phenomenal growth without spending on advertising?
The answers to this and a whole lot more can be found in Launch – a guide to launching one’s business online by social media marketing guru Michael Stelzner.
AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is no longer serving us as well as she did.
At least according to Avinash Kaushik, renowned Digital Marketing Evangelist of Google.
Social media marketing is probably the most heavily written management topic on the planet. Unfortunately, many books, articles, blogs and podcasts on social media focus too heavily on the “feel good” factor of success stories. These tend to be more inspirational than instructional.
Ric Dragon’s seminal publication Social Marketology is different. Providing a methodical framework covering strategy, organisation, execution and measurement, the book provides a step by step process to managing the social media marketing function.
Courtesy of Tab Juice (via Brian Solis)
Thanks to a recent post by social media guru Brian Solis, I chanced upon this brilliant infographic on the psychology of social commerce.
According to the post, there are six heuristics or pillars in social commerce: social proof; authority; scarcity; like; consistency; and reciprocity.
Let me go through each of these in turn and give my layman’s take on what it means for us.
Published in 2009, Mitch Joel’s book on business strategy in the age of social media titled Six Pixels of Separation is a laudable effort to tie in the disparate threads of the online world for those keen to experiment in this space.
Covering a broad expanse of concepts and ideas – from crowdsourcing, community building, content creation, to platform specific strategies – the book provided a good introduction to the world of social media and digital engagement.