Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

I used to get a lot of pitches by agencies and solo marketers when I was running Social Media for a client. I would get emails and sometimes pitches on Facebook. Very few were legitimate. And they charged a lot of money for doing nothing. One client recently left me for someone because she was the typical small business owner who gets caught up in spin. It is why Marketers rank with Politicians and Used Car Salespeople for trustworthiness.

So what can you do to see if they are on the level? Here are a few very simple tips that will expose them....

Coca-cola finds online buzz has no measurable short-term sales impact, but digital display ads work about as well as TV.

Study finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales, but online display ads work about as well as TV, said a company executive in a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think 2013 conference in New York today. It's a stunning admission for a company who's flagship brand has 61.5 million fans, more than any other brand on Facebook.

But Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, isn't giving up on buzz just yet. And he cautioned against reading too much into the research, noting that it covers only buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media. But when Coca-Cola put buzz sentiment data into the same analytical framework it uses to evaluate other digital media, Mr. Schmidt said, "We didn't see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales."...

Have you noticed the recent proliferation of “content marketing agencies” popping up on the scene? You may be wondering why, but this trend has been building...

... I had a recent conversation with an SEO executive team, and they were seriously contemplating taking the entire company in a new direction… to content marketing. Why? Their reasoning was (besides pure SEO budgets drying up) that the value they used to provide to customers (which used to be immense) simply wasn’t there anymore. Hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO agencies are in the same position.

I’ve seen a few — such as TopRank Online Marketing and Vertical Measures — make this transition incredibly well. Others have simply put the “content marketing” moniker on their SEO content production service and called it content marketing. Yes, they’ve added such services as infographics creation, video production, and blog content creation, but content production is only one small part of the content marketing process. Strategic planning aspects of mission statement creation, audience persona gathering, internal content integration, and measurement outside of content consumption metrics are often absent.

The lesson for brands: A holistic content marketing strategy includes up-front planning and multiple goals, which in turn must bring in non-digital channels (such as print and in-person vehicles). SEO is just one very small part that covers a few marketing objectives. Make sure your content marketing strategy goes beyond top-funnel considerations....

There’s no such thing as a stupid questions, only stupid answers.

Faced with pressure to generate pageviews, content managers have gotten into the habit of being a mile wide and an inch deep in their coverage. Trading depth for breadth and playing to the lowest common cultural denominator. We have to, right? Because today’s content consumer is pressed for time and brain cells and will probably only scan your headline and your bolded keyphrases before they will largely blindly like, Tweet or pin your just-another-post-in-the-sea content.

Except that that’s not true. Despite what people might say, society is not getting dumber, we’re getting smarter. We want better information faster....