Tag Archives: content Blog

LeEco Comes to US With New Level of Integrated Content, Services and Hardware

LeEco–a mega-Chinese content, services, and hardware company–launches in the US with ambitions that include everything from phones to movies to self-driving cars–all integrated in ways heretofore unseen. They’ve got the chops and the chutzpah, but will US consumers respond?

If you were to take Apple, Amazon, Paramount Pictures, Tesla, Uber, and Netflix, and combine all of those companies, you get what LeEco does in China …

Read full article: http://cnet.co/2e3acp5

Facebook’s Newsfeed

Businesses have gone to great lengths to set up Facebook ‘pages’ and get ‘Likes’ to expose prospects and customers to their goods and services. Such is what marketing is all about. But understanding how to use these devices to get consistent results can be daunting. In this new realm of marketing, we have little control, or so it seems. The following article from TechCrunch illuminates the workings of Facebook’s Newsfeed — the stream of posts users see when they’re on the service.

Understanding how the Facebook algorithm handles content helps us produce more valuable posts, which will then be shown to the people we want to reach. The article also references a section that will be updated whenever they change the algorithm. The last few paragraphs provide simple guidelines for creating content that performs well and gains greater reach to help achieve business goals.

The best tactics for appearing prominently in the News Feed end up being quite straight-forward: share things that are interesting, authentic, and resonate with your audience. That typically means visually compelling media, funny or emotional content, and important news that’s fascinating to a wide audience … [People] just want to be stimulated. Do that, and Facebook will share what you have to say.

Read full article: http://tcrn.ch/2cfw5B3

User-Generated Content Resonates With Consumers

Stock photography has long been a staple on most websites. It’s used to create visual appeal and connect companies and products with website visitors. But the rise of social media and reality TV has created a media-savvy generation that no longer relates to staged, stock imagery. Instead, modern consumers are beginning to lean towards genuine and authentic media. Hence, we’re seeing the increasing use of user-generated content on websites.

Typically these campaigns are featured on the home page or product pages and are feeds from the company’s Facebook or Instagram accounts showing real people using actual products in real life. Some of the content can be quite clever and creative, especially when posts are short video clips or GIF animations (check out Starbuck’s Frappuccino site for examples). And the authenticity apparently creates a much stronger bond with customers.

Content needs to be authentic for marketing campaigns to succeed, which is why user-generated content has emerged as a priceless resource … A Bazaarvoice survey revealed that over half of Americans trust user-generated content more than any other information on a company website. Eighty-four percent of millennials report that user-generated content on company websites has at least some influence on what they buy.

Taking advantage of user-generated content helps brands build trust and creates a stronger connection between the brand and the consumer. When people see images on a website or in an ad campaign that are recognizable, the brand does not seem cold and faceless … It seems like a company that understands them — their life, likes and dislikes, and needs. This sense of understanding leads to engagement and loyal fans.

Incorporating an Instagram or Facebook feed on the website is becoming a powerful tool for companies looking to connect with customers. It’s time to start investigating how to bring user-generated content into the content mix.

Read full article: http://tnw.co/1QjUfEy

Content From a Visitor’s Point of View

Website content is the vehicle site visitors take to decide if your offerings meet their needs. Writing web content requires a style fit for the medium. Web users are busy and rely on the Internet for convenient access to information. Effective communication requires understanding what motivates your users, how they use the web, and how to speak to them on their terms.

Web users are primarily online to solve a problem. The sites they visit must quickly and clearly state how they can solve that problem, or the visitor will move on.

Because of the sheer volume of information available, web users initially read as little as possible. They will search, click to a site based on the descriptions in the search results, scan the home page, and then judge whether or not this site can solve their problem. “Scannable” page elements include headings, subheads, photo captions, and bullet lists. These are the first things that visitors use to determine the site’s value to them.

If a visitor finds something of interest, they will click to go deeper and read in more detail. But it cannot be expected that a new visitor will wade through lengthy paragraphs for the information they need when it’s so much easier to click to another site that may be more useful.

Web content also benefits visitors by focusing on information rather than “sales-speak.” Glossy, adjective-laden prose serves the company, not the visitor, and visitors have no patience for it. What visitors want is solid, factual information that helps solve their problem. The sooner their problem is solved, the sooner visitors can stop searching, delve deeper into your site, and become customers.

Brief Is Better

Because reading on computer screens takes energy and visitors are busy to begin with, web content must be brief. Short paragraphs and sentences with plenty of white space make textual content more inviting. Cutting the word count almost always improves the user experience.

But web pages are not only read by people. Search engines read websites to learn what they have to offer and then list them appropriately on search results pages. The content that search engines find is the main factor in determining these rankings. Therefore, web pages should be written for humans but with search engines in mind as well. Placing keywords in a page’s META and TITLE tags, headings, image ALT attributes, and page copy can improve search engine rankings.

Finally, content should motivate visitors to act. “Action” is the natural response of visitors who believe that what they’ve learned on the website is a solution for them. Content can include links that enable visitors to go to the next step towards the desired goal, such as making a phone call, filling in a form, or making a purchase. Giving users the ability to act on information is a key difference between the web and other media and should be fully utilized in any web-based sales scenario.

More …

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Content Strategy

Search, social, penguin, panda. Websites today require a content strategy and someone to oversee it.

People have been using the web to find information since day one. It’s amazing that content hasn’t gotten the premier position it deserves until now. But that’s what social media has done. Sharing content through social networks increases that content’s value exponentially through the power of recommendation. If a user says something is good, it carries much more weight than if a brand, media outlet, agency, or salesperson says the same thing. And content can be anything, whether it’s hot off the presses or exhumed from the archives. A creative touch can put value on anything, and it becomes content.

“A head of Content Strategy, Creation and Distribution … should be at least VP level and report to the CMO. It makes sense that this person lives in marketing, but they are going to have to build relationships and bridges to every part of the organization and teach companies to think about all published materials as content. Very importantly, they must evangelize the importance of content in driving business results and help the entire company think about whether or not a piece of content is worth sharing.”

Soon all the social networks will want to use your likeness and words to place implied recommendations on anything for sale. The more your content is shared, and the more shareable it is, the more social power will come into your selling. Today’s marketing requires every website to have a content strategy and someone to drive it. Think “content.”

Read full story: http://bit.ly/1a0tCBM