21st Century Learning and Teaching

An excellent website is an invaluable tool for an inbound organization because an inbound organization starts the buyer journey by creating a website that provides education first. An inbound organization’s website functions as an online portal for actively first attracting, then engaging, a target audience and persona.

One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make is thinking that a website is only an expense and not viewing it as an asset.

Remember, your company website is your very first impression for most contacts. Your website communicates your brand message, engages your audience, and should act as a digital salesperson.

Too often companies cut corners. They don’t use the best tools to accomplish their goals or refuse to hire the best talent to manage their web presence (sorry, but your geeky nephew might not be the BEST choice). Many companies believe that if you build it, they will come. So, once their website is up and running they just set it and forget it.

A part of this mindset is the idea that a quality website is a one-time expense. The idea that you have a big expenditure of resources once and then the website should stand on its own is flawed. A great website can be within any company’s reach as long as they optimize for user experience. A part of good optimization is creating content consistently over time so that your website grows in a meaningful way. An Inbound Organizations website becomes a better resource over time.

As a result, an Inbound Organizations website is an asset, not just an expense.

With that in mind, here are some concrete suggestions for improving your website so you can keep me, and all the other prospects like me, engaged.

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In 2018, content marketing will continue to influence marketing and business in a bigger, and more impactful way. 2017 saw us become remarkably more sophisticated in the types of content being offered and the level of depth and strategy being used.

As we move into 2018, factors such as more widespread adoption of marketing automation, the massive shift to video marketing, and the precipice of AI and real personalization in content marketing being behind us, the pace of change certainly isn’t going to slow down.

Which means the challenge for all of us is to keep up.

The push behind making content better – more engaging, richer content that resonates with the content consumer like it was made for them – is being driven by dozens of content marketing influencers who are sharing their insights, experience and knowledge of how to do content well – really well.

If you want to make your content marketing better in 2018, tap into the minds who have been cultivating this area of marketing for years.

Onalytica recently shared their list of the leading content marketing influencers (with me exclusively) for 2018.

Their data reveals what’s being discussed more than any other area of content and it also identifies the most influential voices, based on how much engagement they are driving, how much they are talking, number of followers, and how much they are referenced.

Yours truly is happy to be named on this list, and I have to say I’m excited to keep the conversations going with all of these great minds. Can’t wait to see what we’re doing by the end of this 12-month ride around the sun!

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/curation-the-21st-century-way-to-learn-on-its-own-pace-and-to-organize-the-learning/

So you want to do content marketing – and in a big way. This isn’t going to be a tentative test. You’re making an aggressive, committed, all-in push to create and engage an audience for the long-term.

First of all – good for you! Content marketing is effective, and increasingly more effective than advertising. And as it gets harder and harder for advertising to work, we expect more companies to make serious, committed shifts like this.

But now that you know you’re serious, you’re going to need to hire people. This assumes, of course, that you’ve decided to keep this thing in-house rather than hire an agency.

I think that’s smart. Here’s why:

Good content marketing involves the entire company – sales, customer service, management, even accounting and development. An in-house team will always have better communication channels with those departments than an agency will. You’ll see each other in the elevator, at the Christmas party, and at any other company-wide function.

There’s no question of everyone being “on the team” with an in-house content program. This isn’t always so with agencies. There are sometimes lingering questions about what an agency’s priorities really are.

Great content marketing rises up from your company’s DNA. Your brand voice, your value proposition, your understanding of your customers… these are so core to your company that I worry about hiring an agency to define it for you.
With the agency thing settled, you now need to go build your team. The question becomes: What are your goals? What’s your budget? Those answers will inform how big of a team you’ll need and who you’ll hire first.

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What is content curation?

Content curation. The term has been used to cover many different things. Most marketers are familiar with the practice of sharing other people’s content on social networks, what we’ll refer to as social content curation. Content curation actually covers much more than just social sharing, and can help your content marketing results in ways you don’t imagine. 

Furthermore, content curation can help other departments of your company to share knowledge or reinforce training programs.

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Découvrez quelques bonnes pratiques pour utiliser la curation de contenu dans le social game de votre entreprise !

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European Data Journalism Network website.

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There are many reasons for publishers to reconsider developing a curation service.

1. Their journalistic firepower is dwindling. In the US alone, the traditional journalism workforce has been halved from its peak in the 1990s. The ability to cover the news broadly and in depth is at its lowest point (paving the way for historical misses, such as the strength of the Trump electorate).

2. Symmetrically, the pool of sources has never been greater. Expertise is now widely available in every field — but it can be hard to find and to evaluate.

3. Publishers, old and new, tend to underestimate the power of their authority. A link suggested by a trusted source is invaluable for readers; far from abandoning their referral, they tend to come back to their valued news source.

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/?s=curation

Getting started with content marketing can be tricky. Do you know what's the minimum investment required to prove the value of content?

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The Biggest Content Trends in 2018, According to 11 Experts
Reaching the members of your audience through a content-cluttered landscape -- and their ad blockers -- will be harder than ever in 2018. Fortunately, there are new technologies and techniques that can help.

Marketing moves fast, and working in this industry means you've got to get comfortable with change. At the drop of a hat, new marketing tools can change how we create and distribute our messaging, emerging technologies change how we track ROI, and trends can impact our decision-making processes.

Earlier this year, I made my own predictions for some of the biggest social media trends and content marketing trends brands should prepare for in 2018. To help us all get a more thorough understanding of what the future holds for content marketing, my team and I reached out to 11 marketing leaders for their predictions about the biggest trends in content in 2018:

1. Audience experience will become more important than ever.

2. High-quality content clusters are the future of search.

3. Content strategies will expand.

4. Channel experimentation will be critical to reaching your audience.

5. Brands will need to think like media companies.

6. Dynamic content will continue rising.

...

Read more in the article!

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Every business values their company blog for different reasons, but in order to accomplish any worthy goal, you need to ensure your blog has a high level of engagement with readers. Having said that, are you doing everything possible to increase blog engagement with your readership?

Increase blog engagement in 5 easy steps
Blog engagement is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it allows you to reach your target audience and have considerable influence over them. Secondly, it enhances your SEO standing and enables you to prove to the search engines that your content is valuable and worthy of prime real estate in the search results.

“Google notices whenever blog visitors leave comments and posts as well as when they post a response,” SEO Service Agents explains. “For the search engines, they will see that your blog is active and very much alive.  Not to mention the fact that your rankings in the SERP’s will benefit from mentions of your content on social media platforms.  The end result is that all of this will generate more visitor traffic. And that is exactly what you are looking for.”

But what exactly is the goal? In other words, what does it look like for a blog to have high levels of engagement? From a big-picture perspective, you want blog visitors to read and engage with your posts, comment and share on social media, and return to your blog regularly to check for new content.

The big question is, how? How do you get readers to do these things on a steady and ongoing basis? While there are numerous strategies you can use to get the desired results, here are a few keys that leading brands have discovered over the years.

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Virtually every marketer has heard the phrase – “the money is in your list.” So why aren’t your email marketing campaigns gaining momentum? The two biggest reasons are:

The leads you attract aren’t very interested in your offer.
You aren’t generating enough traffic to your opt-in pages.
Refining your content marketing strategy can be the best way to address both of these problems. Here are some ways content can push your list building strategy into overdrive.

Build a personal brand

Why do people subscribe to your email list? It’s not necessarily because they think you will give them free stuff but rather VALUE. Depending on your business, that value may come in the form of monetary discounts or insight to help them in some way. Building your personal brand gives people the confidence to know that you are knowledgeable in a specific area and that there’s value in subscribing to your email list.  

Find social platform. Are you a chef? You should be creating amazing Instagram posts of your food. Motivational speaker? Facebook videos should be your daily activity. Digital marketer? I should already be in your funnel.

Collaborate with other personal brands. While you’re making a name for yourself it’s critically important to collaborate with other personal brands to expedite your follower growth. Identify thought leaders in your space and create content together. If you’re a digital marketer, that could mean going on their podcast to share insights from recent campaigns that their audience will find valuable.

Read more in the article...

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/curation-the-21st-century-way-to-learn-on-its-own-pace-and-to-organize-the-learning/

Does your content marketing need an upgrade?

If you’re like most content marketers, it does. Because many content marketers still struggle to get a positive return from their content marketing. And even the marketers who are getting good returns – they work hard for those results.

In fact, one of the reasons they’re doing well is because they’re always on the lookout for how to do things better.

Know why so many content marketers struggle? Well, because content marketing is hard.

You heard it. I said it. Content marketing is hard.

Here’s why:

You’ve got to understand your audience

Get smart about your business needs

Develop content that meets both the requirements of your business and of your audience

Plan all that content

Optimize all that content

Promote all that content

Measure all that content

Update and republish all that content

And plan more content based on what’s working
Rinse and repeat. Month after month.

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There are so many pitfalls in content marketing. Here are 5 content marketing mistakes that scream amateur.

Your goal should be to create content that is instantly helpful to the reader. Make their life better in some tiny way. By giving them an instant return on their time, they’ll continue to invest time reading your content.

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The article itself, as a form of writing, has been devalued to the point where its essential value is zero.

...

Chasing page views is a losing battle. Building a stable of committed, enthusiastic subscribers is the only way to sustain a news product in the Internet era.

Journalists who are able to help do this will become increasingly valuable. A reporter who can pull in 1,000 paying subscribers is more than paying their salary.

For some reason, I keep seeing news organizations hire reporters for continuous news desks or breaking news beats. Their job is to populate the website with articles throughout the day. At the national level, this makes sense. You can build a business with enough scale where a page view play is achievable.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/journalism-code-and-data

Social selling.

If you’ve never heard the word before, you might think it’s some strange new technique devised as an icebreaker for networking events, or perhaps just a new name for Tupperware parties.

The reality is much simpler – and much less awkward. Social selling is just using social media to generate relationships, leads, and eventually, sales.

Here’s how LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions team defines it:

Social selling is about leveraging your social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately, achieve your sales goals.

The term has become more popular in recent years. Surprisingly, it’s actually more widely used than even the term “content curation”.