He created “Breaking the Chain of Infection,” designed with the help of Carol Navarro, a registered nurse, and spoke with multiple doctors to vet the information. To maximize impact across the globe, the infographic was translated in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Portuguese, and Spanish.

You may not have seen Gude’s infographic before now, but you’ve definitely seen story after story about COVID-19 over the last few months. Turn the television to your preferred news outlet, stream a press briefing, read the latest article online, and you’re likely to be bombarded with an overwhelming amount of facts, figures, statistics, scientific data, and medical advice sprawled across the screen.

When done right, infographics and other types of visual content can be an antidote of sorts during the news cycle. There are many different types of visuals proving successful in relaying important content to audiences: infographics, data visualizations, charts, maps, cartoons, animations, illustrations, simulations, even GIFs.

Best of all, they simplify complex details and give learners a chance to process a lot of information.

More than just eye candy

Today, we’re seeing the most reputable sources relying on visuals to spread their messages—The Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, local hospitals, city municipalities. These visuals aren’t just eye-catching, but studies have shown that they actually increase the audience’s ability to retain important information.

“Editors have always said that graphics make great entry points for stories,” Gude said. “They’re great at attracting interest to more information about that topic.”

According to Wiley Education Services, it takes far less time to process symbols than text alone. “In fractions of a second, the brain can process symbols and attach meaning to them (Thorpe, Fize, & Marlot, 1996). Because infographics associate concepts and ideas with iconography, they naturally tap into this processing power and can help students engage more deeply with your content.”

Hundreds of studies and experiments have shown that pairing visuals with text helps people comprehend and remember information more effectively than just reading or listening. The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, and a lit review published in Educational Technology Research and Development found that including illustrations with text instructions helps people perform a task 323 percent better than those who read the instructions without visuals.

“The human brain evolved to be sort of like a visual processing machine,” said Alberto Cairo, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at University of Miami and director of the visualization program of the Center for Computational Science. “A huge part of our brain is devoted to processing information that is gathered through our eyes.”

Cairo cited a Washington Post story from March about why outbreaks spread exponentially, which is full of interactive graphics and quickly became one of the site’s most popular stories of the year. “It’s a model of how an epidemic changes and expands. That visual simulation [was] the most viewed story…. That says something about the popularity of these images.”

Digging through the data

As the senior program manager for the 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Mac McComas works with large data sets every day. Some of that big data gathered from public sets, or through various data use agreements, ends up being displayed through visuals.

“A lot of the research we do is on everything from housing, economic development issues, transportation, small business development, education and health outcomes—and how public policy and the private sector shape that,” McComas said.

Naturally, that research turned to COVID-19, specifically observational analysis of trends in Baltimore.

The 21st Century Cities Initiative has started by comparing data points from the first four months of 2020 to the same time period in 2019. The goal is to examine how COVID became a “shock to the city,” as McComas put it. That means examining behaviors like how often people go to grocery stores, purchase plane tickets, and even commit violent crimes.

“Visuals serve as a great entryway to get people thinking about some of these deeper research questions, but they’re never intended as the end point,” McComas said. “We always hope that they generate discussion and get people to think.”

That’s a key point stressed by everyone I interview. In a hurried society, audiences are spending less and less time with your message. Understanding the limitations of that can be helpful when communicating through a visual medium.

“Really try to do some detective work, and make sure you’re understanding the full limitations of what the graph or visual is actually saying,” McComas said.

In some cases, that abstraction can get away from the creator. Take this tornado of a graphic posted by an Oxford professor, which was later mentioned in a Financial Times article titled “When data viz goes psychotic.”

Not exactly easy to read. In other COVID-19 coverage, I’ve seen charts are comparing the number of virus deaths in April 2019 to April 2020, which obviously isn’t the whole story.

“The challenge is not just to show the numbers to people…. but it is important to add, what we call the annotation layer,” Cairo said. “The annotation layer is the words (either written or spoken) that you put on top of your charts to emphasize, explain, and highlight what they mean, why they matter, [and] what it is they are measuring.”

Creating credible infographics

Making appealing and trustworthy infographics doesn’t require an art degree, but understanding basic design concepts is key.

“Designing with the end-user in mind informs your graphic, and focuses your research,” Gude said, of his eight-step process for making infographics.

For example, handwashing graphics for children might use bright colors and cartoon illustrations. Graphics showing the scientific effectiveness of handwashing in healthcare facilities might provide more detailed instructions, stats, and text.

As far as getting started, there are some free or freemium options like Canva, Visme, and Infogram worth checking out. (Canva touts itself as the “non-designer’s secret weapon.”)

In addition to knowing your audience, another important step is minimizing the amount of info you include. Not all of your extensive research has a home in that particular graphic. Many artists make the mistake of drawing visuals first before they have all pertinent information, which is working backwards.

No matter what type of visual content you decide to use for your message, one thing is for certain: Infographics and other data visualizations are excellent tools in delivering information. In the midst of a global pandemic, media outlets of all kinds have learned on visual content to reach the public with vital information. It’s not an exaggeration to say they’re saving lives as we deal with COVID-19.

As a final piece of advice, Gude always returns to a helpful quotation from painter Hans Hoffman when encouraging new infographic creators: “Eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary can speak.”

The post Why Infographics and Other Visual Content Are Saving Lives From COVID-19 appeared first on Contently.

Money affects everyone. Finances can dictate what we do, where we live, and how we make decisions. It’s a wide umbrella, spanning everything from consumer banking, investment banking, credit cards, fintech, insurance, and more. The fact that many finance organizations try to reach B2C and B2B audiences simultaneously adds another factor to the equation.

Financial services content is also incredibly complicated. Understanding how to pick the right insurance or save for a mortgage can literally change someone’s life. Companies in this space have a unique opportunity to build meaningful relationships with consumers.

To capitalize on that opportunity, finserv companies allocated an average of $23.3 million for their content marketing budgets in 2019, per Contently research. This number includes content creation, distribution, technology, and talent.

Finserv companies are doing a decent job getting a bang for their buck. However, there’s still room for improvement.

To help marketers be more efficient and effective, Contently created this new report that examines the state of financial services content marketing. The first part compares finance against other industries and highlights content benchmarks. The second part explores tips and strategies marketers can use to stand out from their biggest competitors and create content that performs.

Brands spend large sums of money on content marketing. It’s time they made the most of their investments.

[If you prefer to view a PDF version of the report that’s easier to print, we’ve got you covered here.]

Report Methodology

Data for this report was compiled in November 2019. The industry benchmark statistics in the first part of the report came from an internal dataset of 86,270 pieces of content across all industries, measured by Contently’s content marketing platform. Of that sample, 25,544 pieces of content came from financial services companies.

Data in the second part of the report came from StoryBook, Contently’s content strategy tool, which measured top-performing topics, formats, social shares, and more for 2,292 pieces of content from financial services companies.

Key Findings

For visual learners, here’s a high-level breakdown of what we found:

Part I: Financial Services Benchmarks

Competition for attention has never been higher in content marketing. Legacy firms are battling against each other while trying to hold off a surge of new fintech competitors and startups. Consumers, meanwhile, want financial guidance; they’re just not sure who to get it from.

According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, financial services ranked last out of 15 industries. On a positive note, trust in the industry is on the rise, increasing 8 percentage points since 2014. This means there’s an opportunity for finserv companies to step up and support their customers. Content is a key tool in those efforts.

Financial services vs. all other industries

Recently, finserv companies have made noticeable progress with content performance. In 2018, audiences spent an average of 1:26 seconds with financial services content. A year later, average attention time jumped to 1:51 seconds, which marks a 29 percent increase

Over that same stretch, though, average engagement rate (the percentage of people who spend at least 15 seconds with a piece of content) and finish rate held stagnant. On one hand, the average finish rate in our data set is impressive in comparison to Chartbeat’s scroll depth benchmarks for all content. Brands are creating longer content, but there’s still room to improve the finish rate.

Financial services companies also took strides compared to brands from other industries. Average attention time for all other industries in our data set only moved from 1:32 seconds in 2018 to 1:34 seconds in 2019. However, the other industries like travel, technology, and healthcare boasted a better average engagement rate (70 percent) and finish rate (60 percent) in 2019. Finish rates in fields like travel and tech may be higher because their topics aren’t as technical as those found in finance.

Consumer Finance vs. Institutional Finance vs. Wealth Management

Next, we examined engagement benchmarks for the three of the biggest subcategories in financial services content: consumer finance, institutional finance, and wealth management.

Consumer finance covers personal money tips and financial literacy, like this Bank of America article about getting the most out of your checking account.

Institutional finance content spans B2B coverage about investment banking and global markets, like this Goldman Sachs report on geopolitical risk.

Wealth management concerns individual portfolios and investing, like this Morgan Stanley profile of a female financial advisor’s philosophy.

To compare the effectiveness of the three subcategories, we looked at average attention time, average finish rate, and average social shares.

Consumer finance, unsurprisingly, dominated the social metrics with an average of 2,046 shares per story. When done right, helpful budgeting and saving tips can go semi-viral because they’re more universal than content from the other subcategories.

However, personal finance advice is also a saturated space. It’s harder to stand out with unique advice since many companies recycle the same topics, headlines, and themes. That may explain why average attention time registers at just 1:18 seconds, almost a minute shorter than the average benchmark for institutional finance.

The success of institutional finance content goes to show that B2B marketing doesn’t have to be dry or boring. There’s a real need for that expertise. And generating 190 shares, on average, is very respectable for B2B content of any kind. These numbers suggest that companies cornering the institutional finance beat are finding creative ways to tie their analysis to relevant news and trending topics people care about.

Lastly, we see that wealth management has room for improvement, particularly the 38 percent finish rate. Marketers creating content about wealth management may not need to drive a lot of social shares, since it’s tailored for a niche audience. Yet there’s still an opportunity to create more fluent and accessible content that holds people’s attention and builds trust.

With that in mind, let’s move to the second part of the report and explore ways financial services companies can build better trust and drive more engagement.

Part II: 5 Keys to High-Performing Financial Services Content

The benchmark data raised a few big questions. First, what are the most valuable financial services companies doing to differentiate themselves? Second, what tactics can financial services marketing pick up from them, regardless of budget? And third, what recommendations could we offer to help finance marketers improve in areas they weren’t doing so well?

To answer those questions, we used Contently’s Storybook technology to analyze 2,292 pieces of financial services content from Fortune 500 brands. Here are our biggest takeaways.

1. Create social videos and infographics
2. Invest in paid distribution on Facebook
3. Develop buyer enablement content to drive conversions
4. Focus on employee education and advocacy
5. Get creative with compliance

1. Create social-friendly videos and infographics

Marketers default to creating written content because it’s easier and cheaper. But brands that rely on churning out generic blog posts are failing to give people what they want: visual content.

Our industry analysis found that videos and infographics outclassed other content formats in terms of average social shares. In fact, video drove eight times as many shares as articles. Infographics, meanwhile, saw twice as many shares as articles. (We’ll get to social distribution trends in the next section.)

(Note: Our dataset excludes LinkedIn shares, because LinkedIn has closed off their API from all third-party analytics tools.)

Most people working in marketing today understand there’s value in video, but many are hesitant to invest in the medium.

When done well, it’s worth it. Visual content is the most effective way to simplify complex technical information, especially for visual learners. One of the most budget-friendly tactics is to produce short explainer videos optimized for social channels. Mint, for example, launched the WTFinance series a few years ago, breaking down major personal finance concepts in 45-second clips that are easy to digest.

If you get the green light for video, the last thing you want to do is stock your YouTube page with clips of two people talking on stage for an hour. To produce videos that resonate with your audience, pay attention to these three areas.

2. Invest in paid distribution on Facebook

Reports are Facebook’s demise are largely overblown. It still attracts over 2 billion people every month, and remains the most effective social distribution channel for both B2C and B2B content.

According to Instapage, the average CPC on Facebook for financial services ads is $3.72—more than double the average ($1.72).

However, this pales in comparison to the CPC on Google for top finserv keywords.

Using SEMRush, we found the average CPC for 10 of the most popular content-adjacent search keywords in financial services for comparison:

Here, we see an average CPC of $16.39 for paid search, meaning Facebook is almost five times cheaper. Not only does referral traffic from social posts help organic search rankings, but you’re also likely to drive additional traffic from the “social lift” of people resharing that content on Facebook.

3. Develop buyer enablement content to drive conversions

When done right, content marketing impacts the entire customer journey. To tie content to revenue, your stories should eventually spark an action—filling out a form, opening an account, signing up for a credit card. In other words, your work assists the customer until they’re ready to make a smart decision related to your company.

We used StoryBook to analyze the most shared content by topic. The most engaging topics—such as reducing risk, insurance 101, and tax planning—tie back to buying decisions. Some news content related to mortgages and insurance also finished near the top of the list.

It’s fitting that content about risk and planning resonated enough for people to share. This kind of advice tends to be practical and applicable to a large audience. State Farm, for instance, drove thousands of shares by packaging together “a collection of articles to help your teen be a safe driver.” The series includes insurance advice for students, info on the costs of certain driving violations, and tips for driving in different conditions. State Farm also includes a calculator tool at the bottom of every article to get a quote, creating a clear path to purchase.

Focusing on enablement content helps brands invest in evergreen financial tools like calculators. These tools empower buyers, letting people navigate a complex decision without explicitly selling to them.

For example, Bank of America built a dedicated page to hold 25 user-friendly tools and calculators that cover retirement, investing, college planning, and personal finance. Creating this kind of content typically doesn’t require a lot of money or time. Take a look at the after-tax return calculator above, which only asks users to fill out two fields before giving them a personalized report.

4. Focus on employee education and advocacy

The success of financial content depends on trust. A blog post full of uniquely insightful 401(k) tips can miss the mark if it doesn’t come from the right source.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling found that only 25 percent of U.S adults would turn to a bank or credit union if they needed financial guidance, a number on the decline in recent years. However, 35 percent of adults would have no problem trusting a financial planner or accountant.

The same study revealed that 76 percent of U.S. adults said they could “benefit from advice and answers to everyday financial questions from a professional.” The data highlights a sizable gap of people who may not receive the answers they need simply because they don’t trust big financial organizations.

When looking at share of voice results from our research, a related trend caught our eye.

State Farm was dominating in terms of social shares, driving 70 percent of all social shares among 10 companies including Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, and Wells Fargo. Did State Farm have some incredible content marketing secret weapon?

It turns out the answer is yes—although when we started to look around, we saw it wasn’t much of a secret. A lot of their social activity was seeded by company’s insurance agents. For most of the last decade, State Farm has used a tool called Hearsay Social to make it easy for thousands of agents to find and post relevant content on Facebook. This system led to a snowball effect for social sharing.

Marketers love to talk about personalization, but their plans fall flat because of logistics. It’s hard to justify spending a lot of money to create content for a specific audience. That’s how finserv companies end up with general listicles meant for a general audience.

State Farm, meanwhile, incentivized agents to share content by arming them with specific stories that could subtly remind people of the benefits of being insured. According to our research, a short interactive article titled “Frozen Pipe Losses Up in 2018” has generated almost 13,000 Facebook shares.

The article offers clear tips for avoiding frozen pipes and calls out the states with the most frozen pipe water insurance claims. It’s not going to win a Pulitzer, but it’s a helpful piece of content ideal for increasing share of voice.

5. Get creative with compliance

Marketers find few things as grim as compliance. So before we get to the keys of compliance, let’s talk a little bit about death. (Trust me.)

When a famous person passes away, The New York Times can publish a detailed, reported obituary immediately. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, the Times had a 3,500-word article up within an hour. The obituary writers don’t possess other-worldly typing speed; they’re just well prepared. While covering Jobs’s death, for instance, the writing started in 2007. When the time came to let the story go live, all they had to do was give the article a final check.

Mastering the content approval process isn’t as fulfilling as writing an important longform article, but it’s important nonetheless. And with some creative thinking, it doesn’t have to be a headache that gets in the way of your job. You can still publish content at the speed of news.

In highly regulated industries like finance and insurance, you can’t just publish whatever you want, whenever you feel like it. Brands have to deal with oversight groups like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). You can, however, work with your compliance team to find reasonable solutions instead of always treating them like a nuisance.

In financial services, savvy companies tweak their workflows to avoid approval timelines that can last upwards of three months. If you meet with compliance at the start of the project, they’ll at least be aware of what you’re working on and can flag potential issues ahead of time.

An adjusted workflow might look something like this:

Marketers have started to figure out how to build better relationships with compliance teams. If you’re looking for more efficiency, here are a handful of help exercises that can help you increase productivity.

As a final piece of advice, it helps to use some sort technology platform when figuring out compliance. Given that compliance issues often result from a lack of transparency or communication, relying on manual processes doesn’t always work. Technology can handle the logistics, freeing up marketers to focus more on the creative parts of their job. Additionally, it’ll automate certain things like record-keeping, version control, and workflows if you need to review anything down the road.

Conclusion

In 2020, capturing attention is only going to get more competitive in the financial services industry.

The good news is there’s still an opportunity for companies of all sizes to create meaningful content and build long-term relationships with customers. People need financial advice. They crave that expertise. They’re just looking for it to be delivered in a thoughtful way.

The companies that want to stand out and lead the industry need to concentrate on the entire content lifecycle. They have to put as much energy into content distribution, compliance, and sales enablement as they do the creative process. It takes time to build a high-performing content program, but if they put in the work now, their investment will pay off.

If you’re interested in creating high-performing content, click here to set up a free consultation with one of our content experts.

The post Financial Services Content Report: Industry Benchmarks & 5 Keys to Success appeared first on Contently.

It was incredibly frustrating to hand someone a cupcake and deliver my spiel about the play, only to have them say, “Oh, that’s cool” through a mouthful of icing and walk away. “It took forever to mix that icing. It’s vegan buttercream,” I’d grumble, not realizing that I had botched lead generation and had only barely spread brand awareness.

Infographics, as we all know, are the vegan buttercream of content marketing. If data is your sugar, then your visual metaphor is your coconut milk, and any imbalance in your ingredients will come out unappetizing and strange. Each infographic takes a lot of time to produce. Once copy has been delivered to the design team, your marketing department is in for several rounds of tweaking little details.

If you’re hoping to use your infographic as a lead generation tool, you don’t want your audience to simply look at it and walk away. The digital marketing blog Spiralytics just released a pretty meta infographic about crafting lead generation infographics, and it’s full of statistics and tips that we shared below.

Among other things, notice that LinkedIn is your optimal spot for gathering leads from infographics. According to data from Hubspot, the Content Marketing Institute, and five other sources noted in the infographic, 65 percent of marketers see leads coming in from the professional platform.

If you use all this data to optimize your infographics, you’ll hopefully nab a few interested parties when you share your visual content online. Don’t just let them take the cupcake and walk away. After all, you have a show to promote.

The post Infographic: How to Use Infographics for Lead Generation appeared first on Contently.

According to a 2017 study from Arkadium, which helps brands create interactive content, 78 percent of respondents prefer text to incorporate multimedia components. (The number rises to 87 percent among millennials.) Those components could include everything from photography and infographics to GIFs and video.

But which content formats will work best for your company? And once you choose another format, how can you make sure each piece of content supports the rest of your work? If you invest in quality, listeners who find your podcast on iTunes or see your infographic on Reddit will seek out your company to find more.

So while you may start with blog posts to build a foundation for potential customers to find, that doesn’t mean every member of your audience wants to read a 600-word article. Once you research whether your customers are into videos or white papers, you can start giving the crowd more of what they like.

1. Infographics

Good infographics are like Sesame Street segments for grown-ups. They’re colorful, insightful visualizations that can break down data into a language that anyone on the internet can understand. They’re also a great tool for illustrating your content with metaphors.

The upside to infographics is they typically bring in a larger audience than a regular old blog post. The downside, of course, is they require design fluency. They’re more expensive to produce than strictly written content, and they typically take more time.

Even more daring than a garden variety infographic is an interactive one. If you have the team to pull one off, well, what are you sitting around reading a blog post? For inspiration, check out dumpark’s plastic pollution infographic or The Economic Policy Institute’s visualization of how systemic economic inequality works.

2. Shortform social video

Some marketers call short social videos “snackable content” if they’re sociopaths. You may know them from your Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn feed: the punchy clips optimized for mobile, often watched with the sound off. Shortform tutorials are popular, as are quick recaps of timely information or personality-driven updates from a company.

Short videos are a lot like improv comedy—a more immediately accessible form for amateurs, which means there’s a lot more of it out there. It’s also usually the first kind of content that comes to mind when a media company says they’re “pivoting to video.”

An effective shortform video should focus on a single memorable actor or subject and be optimized for social sharing. When Netflix needed to drum up fan excitement for the fourth season of Orange is the New Black, the streaming service’s marketing team and hi5.agency had the dramedy’s likable cast act out clips for Facebook and Instagram. The resulting clips used only non-diegetic music, and the social campaign won a Shorty Award.

3. Longform video

Just about any longform video will require significantly more planning and a higher production value than a shortform creation. That’s why it’s important to outline your longform goals and strategy before you head into production.

Last year, a number of web series began streaming on Facebook Watch only to crash and burn. According to data analysis firm Canvs, the businesses that fared worst on Watch were in the travel, TV criticism, and educational STEM fields. The videos weren’t watched as often, but more importantly, users tended not to react using Facebook’s “emotional” buttons (like the heart or the “sad” tear-stained face). In a span of two weeks, videos in less-successful genres struggled to earn more than 50 reactions.

However, the same report revealed that companies in education, gaming, and horror entertainment managed to pull off successful Watch series. These videos racked up 4,000 emotional reactions in the time it took others to nab less than fifty.

It’s not all about Facebook Watch, though. In 2017, the financial app Square produced a short film about Yassin Terou, a falafel chef and Syrian immigrant to the United States, as he used their app to run his small business and support his family. Through its short documentary, Square communicates their brand’s values and identifies itself with an entrepreneurial, wholesome spirit.

4. Print

A successful print publication is a bit like a unicorn, yes, but if you work in travel, hospitality, design, beauty, fashion, or lifestyle, even a quarterly print publication can upgrade your brand engagement. Print magazines released by media companies need to prove a return based on subscriptions and ads, but when brands put out their own print publications, the experience doesn’t have to be as transactional.

Ideally, that leeway should help brands be more creative and thoughtful with their approach. Most airlines now produce magazines which they simply make available on flights. Cosmetics company Lush hands out free, lightly scented catalogs detailing new products and how they’re constructed.

It’s not just for the tastemakers either. There are so many examples of successful, branded print work in industries including finance and transportation, and early studies have shown a direct correlation between engagement with print media and brand awareness, familiarity, and trust. Amtrak’s American Way boasts incredible writing; AirBnb’s The Magazine cues travelers into a local, alternative-feeling lifestyle; and fashion line Acne’s Acne Paper associates influencers with the brand by profiling them and dressing them in products for photoshoots.

5. Event content

When Refinery29 unveiled its pop-up art gallery and Instagrammable festival 29Rooms, it had the digital media world’s rapt attention. Years before, Tavi Gevinson’s teen girl blog-turned-media-company embarked on a live tour called the Rookie Roadtrip, which built a lasting connection between content creator and fan.

Of course, your company’s pop-up shops or events might look more like a booth in a trade show, but that doesn’t mean your enthusiasm should dwindle. To make the most out of event marketing, content teams can produce a whole new body of work, from Powerpoint decks and landing pages to flyers and giveaways. Your company’s messaging should be consistent and creative across all those forms. (That goes for B2B just as much as B2C.)

6. Podcasts

A note of caution: Because they’re free to download and comparatively easy to launch, podcasts are a dime a dozen. Actually, they’re more like a penny for three dozen, so think very carefully before you launch your company’s take on Serial.

That being said, it’s hard to replicate a podcast’s fervent brand engagement. Podcast listeners are loyal, dedicated creatures of habit who find content through word-of-mouth. If your company produces a podcast, whether narrative or episodic, with a target audience in mind, you can assume that your loyal listeners will vocally support your content.

The highlights of branded podcasts include GE’s The Message, Slack’s Variety Pack, Sephora’s Lip Stories, and Tinder’s DTR. At their best, branded podcasts encourage storytellers to explore topics integral to a company’s mission, placing them at the center of a conversation audiences care about.

The post Beyond the Blog Post: 6 Content Formats Your Audience Wants appeared first on Contently.

For context, I am the head of digital marketing at Daxx, a technology company that helps brands build remote development teams. Olga is the CMO at Chanty, a startup producing an AI-powered messenger for team communication.

We’d both seen successful examples of co-marketing over the years. Uber and Spotify collaborated on a campaign that let customers pick music on their rides. Airbnb and Flipboard teamed up to create some multimedia content for four cities. These partnerships often came down to growing both user bases and improving brand awareness. The more we tossed around the idea, the easier it was to see how it could simultaneously benefit both companies.

So we decided to take the plunge. Here are three ways you can too.

Sharing Articles

Consistently creating engaging content is hard. One way to lighten the load is to get a non-competing company that has expertise in a field that your audience cares about. You can work out the topics ahead of time to fill in the blanks in your coverage and then swap bylines.

At Daxx, we care about remote hiring for developers across the world. We’re headquartered in Amsterdam but have other offices in Europe, Israel, and the U.S. At the same time, Chanty is building a tool designed to foster remote team collaboration. The brand’s blog posts often focus on collaboration, corporate communication, and the rise of chat apps. Even though Olga and I already knew each other, there was a natural fit between our companies that just made sense.

Having allies is one way to do more with less.

When we met that fateful day for coffee (our offices are only five minutes apart), we decided to take the next few weeks to each write a blog post on remote work. My article was an insider’s look at all of the major platforms SaaS businesses can use to hire software developers. Olga, meanwhile, drafted a list of tips on how to improve collaboration among remote teams. Better yet, she also included an original infographic.

The result was a co-marketing win-win. Chanty’s guest post, for instance, brought in above-average engagement and 11 backlinks for our site. And since Daxx has a higher domain authority, Olga had access to a new subset of potential customers.

Sharing Credibility

When marketers focus too much on creating more, more, more, they forget that a huge part of successful content is conveying expertise. If you already have enough credibility to influence your audience, you can get away with only sharing your own perspective. But for most brands, especially those in the earlier stages of content marketing maturity, you’re going to need a list of suitable experts to help get your points across.

In my experience, connecting with these people is a crapshoot. Establishing a rapport with the right company or expert is incredibly time-consuming. Your message can get buried under dozens of other requests. Also, some companies have great expertise but may be skeptical of any overlap between audiences.

Just imagine how much easier this task gets when you already have a long-term co-marketing partner who doesn’t need to compete against you. A few months ago, my marketing team was working on a guest post about branding tips for young tech startups. We needed to include expert opinions to back up the advice. So our team turned to Chanty.

For a young startup, Chanty’s branding is both unique and consistent. Their website and assets have a colorful, modern, and fun aesthetic that stands out. Additionally, Chanty’s founder used to be a graphic designer who worked with world-class companies like Apple and Adobe. So it was an easy decision to reach out to them for the piece. The move saved me time while giving Chanty more exposure to a different audience (Lucidpress, in this case).

Sharing Visuals

Infographics, graphs, and other visuals are often effective investments because they can be repurposed over time. They’re also more likely to encourage sharing compared to text-heavy content. The problem, of course, is they take significantly more budget and time to create.

Producing an infographic requires writing, editing, design, and possible data analysis. That doesn’t even include promotion. If you spend four figures on one asset, you need people to see it. So you also have to factor in time spent on PR. But if you have a co-marketing partner, all of those responsibilities no longer seem as daunting. Another company or publisher could handle part of the creative process if you team up on a project. They’ll also be able to double the outreach when you’re looking for coverage. And at the very least, you’ll establish a relationship with an ally on a deeper level than if you just swapped guest posts.

A few months ago, Chanty published a guest post of their own on another website that featured an infographic we created about software developers in America. The website in question belonged to Foundr, so we viewed it as an opportunity to connect with entrepreneurs and founders who read Foundr’s blog. Chanty saved resources on graphics and added some gravitas to the blog post. Again, it wasn’t a tough decision.

When you find the right partner, you also have plenty of other ways to experiment—releasing a joint newsletter, co-hosting a webinar, helping with an event. Because of the nature of our companies, Olga and I have placed a huge bet on collaborating in the future. We’ve gotten to the point where we frequently offer constructive criticism on works in progress, even if we’re not going to swap them.

The co-marketing formula here is simple, but I hope it helps to see it in action. Marketers sometimes seem hesitant to work outside of their operations. Perhaps they’re afraid of sharing state secrets. But having allies is one way to do more with less. And regardless of what your budget is, being more productive without needing to spend a lot is always a good thing.

The post The Art of Co-Marketing appeared first on Contently.

If we learned anything from last year, it’s that marketers are striving for accountability more than ever. They’re no longer just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Budgets have a purpose. Strategies get developed with long-term vision. And results need to be tangible.

As content marketing continues to transform in 2018, here are 24 predictions that will keep you one step ahead.

1. “Content marketing” will cease to be thought of as just a top-of-funnel activity for building an audience. Instead, marketers will realize content is the golden thread that connects every experience in the customer journey. Great stories aren’t just crucial for articles and videos; they’ll be necessary for case studies and sales decks as well. (Tweet this!)

-Joe Lazauskas, director of content strategy

2. Less quantity, more quality. Smart brands will reduce the amount of content they produce, using that budget to improve the production value of everything they create. (Tweet this!)

-Shane Snow, co-founder

3. For a while now, brands have tried creating their own podcasts without much success. This year, I think brands will sponsor individual episodes of existing podcasts that are already popular. (Tweet this!)

-Alli Manning, director of talent and editorial services

4. Content marketing initiatives will become table stakes for marketers to compete in their fields and keep their jobs. (Tweet this!)

-Greg Merson, sales operations manager

5. Brands will make much better use of persona research and buyer’s journey stages when planning and executing their content strategies. (Tweet this!)

-Kelly Wenzel, CMO

6. B2C companies will take more of a public stand on key topics, especially social issues, which will be reflected in their content. (Tweet this!)

-Cyrus Park, implementation manager

7. Paid distribution will lean heavily toward video as content marketers add YouTube and Facebook video to their list of most important channels. (Tweet this!)

-Felicity Blance, manager of distribution services

8. To prove their value, marketing teams will put a lot of effort into creating content that can be used across all departments. (Tweet this!)

-Luke Maloney, senior sales executive

9. The past few years have focused on the mechanics of content marketing—how the sausage is made. In 2018, brand leaders will return to a fundamental question: How good is the sausage? (Tweet this!)

-Erin Nelson, senior managing editor

10. Content marketing and revenue are going to become great friends. As marketing systems get more integrated, marketers are going to be able to prove their content marketing initiatives drive meaningful revenue. With that quantified data, the pressure will be on to consistently increase the number. (Tweet this!)

-John Fernandez, VP of revenue marketing

11. To stay relevant but avoid adding to the noise of shortform video, brands will experiment with animation, motion graphics, and other advanced forms of multimedia. (Tweet this!)

-Brian Maehl, manager of talent and editorial services

12. CMOs will become increasingly obsessed with transparency across lines of business, different campaigns, and executive teams. (Tweet this!)

-Adrienne Todd, communications specialist

13. Content marketing platforms will begin to consolidate as larger software companies look to make acquisitions. Expect these big companies to include content marketing offerings as a standard part of their marketing cloud solutions. (Tweet this!)

-Dillon Baker, product marketing specialist

14. Marketers will opt for more a strategic approach to content creation, delivery, and optimization that is powered by artificial intelligence. As a result, they will automate personalized customer experiences across the entire content journey like never before. (Tweet this!)

-Priyamvadha Ramakrishnan, content distribution associate

15. Organizations will get more sophisticated and truly look to measure ROI in meaningful ways. (Tweet this!)

-Rob Haber, director of customer success

16. Brands will look at how their systems connect to make it easy for anyone in the entire organization to access any content that’s created. (Tweet this!)

-Alicia Phuah, account manager

17. We’ll see more content marketing connected to the internet of things. The internet of things is all about providing convenience, and anything brands can do to make their customers’ lives easier is a win. (Tweet this!)

-Ann Fabens-Lassen, chief of staff

18. Enterprise brands will start embracing the “center of excellence” approach we have been preaching for years. For marketers to succeed in the age of digital transformation, their approach to content marketing and marketing content must mature and evolve. (Tweet this!)

-Henry Bruce, VP of product marketing

19. Brands will talk a lot about delivering a frictionless content experience to their consumers by analyzing online and offline behavior. But the key phrase here is “talk a lot about” because the majority of brands are years away from successfully tackling this challenge. (Tweet this!)

-Syd Alperowicz, senior product manager

20. There will be an excess of founders posting thought leadership videos on LinkedIn. A lot of it will sound vaguely Vaynerchuk-ian, and a lot more will sound like two-minute TED talks. (Tweet this!)

-Colton Cox, outreach associate

21. As Fortune 1000 CMOs learn of the successes achieved by the likes of RBC, Morgan Stanley, Manulife, and IBM, they will accelerate the shift of marketing dollars from traditional marketing channels into content marketing. In particular, these executives will leverage content marketing platforms to drive this shift. (Tweet this!)

-Gavin Power, VP of finance

22. So many of us believe multimedia will rule, yet brands shy away from investing because of the sticker price. However, there are big payoffs to prioritizing social-first videos and graphics that deliver your messaging in a relatable and shareable way. (Tweet this!)

-Ines Tamaddon, content strategist

23. The smartest marketers will have an increased desire to completely understand the ROI behind their content programs. (Tweet this!)

-Marc Schraer, SVP of sales

24. Hot takes will cool down. Even though creators will keep manipulating algorithms and peddling clickbait, I think we’ve finally reached the threshold of fatigue. Companies that treat their audience with intelligence will gain a huge advantage when customers are ready to make a purchase. (Tweet this!)

-Jordan Teicher, editor-in-chief

The post 24 Content Marketing Predictions for 2018 appeared first on Contently.

However, those protagonists didn’t really need luck. When we break down their victories, we can see that they channeled all of their effort into preparing a strategy that would help them be successful.

Such preparation applies to everything from boxing to intergalactic warfare to content marketing. (You saw where this was going.) As brands increase their content investments, it will only get harder for them to outperform competitors. B2B brands already spend an average of one-third of their marketing budgets on content. In 2017, 39 percent of brands plan to increase this investment, making it that much harder to separate yourself and drive ROI.

As companies prepare to kick off their content programs in 2017, it’s important to look at the strategic levers that could impact their investments. Since luck will only get you so far, here are five factors to consider for the upcoming year.

Don’t underestimate infographics

Brands tend to fixate on blog posts—and for good reason: Text articles are an efficient way to communicate complex ideas and expertise. With the right research and tone, they can be an important differentiator for brands. However, if you invest too heavily in text, you miss out on the opportunity to stand out by trying other mediums.

When Contently’s data scientists dug into the numbers from over 3,200 pieces of client content, the results were surprising. Infographics reached 54 percent more people than blog posts. Not only did they reach more people, but the median cost to reach one reader was significantly cheaper—$0.04 for infographics versus $1.77 per blog post. Infographics also had a 73 percent completion rate while blog posts hovered around 66 percent. The largest percentage of infographic traffic came from “internal” sources, which means audiences were coming to this type of visual content after previously poking around on a site.

This doesn’t mean you should abandon blog posts. The lesson here is to think about how infographics can enhance the user experience for your audience. While infographics may, depending on the design, cost more to produce upfront, their effectiveness often makes them a savvier investment.

What happens inside downloadable content matters

Let’s say you’re developing an e-book with a $4,000 budget that will cover the costs of freelance talent, social distribution, and email and webinar campaigns. Your marketing team will probably measure the e-book’s ROI by looking at clicks, leads, and sales generated by signups from the gated form.

If you’re an executive, you’re interested in those end results. But for the people focused on content creation or marketing distribution, these triggers don’t reveal much about which parts of the asset resonated most with readers. What topics garnered the most attention and highest engagement rates? What pages did people return to or skip over?

The next step in the evolution of downloadable content is to understand exactly what happens when someone reads that e-book. This insight will give more context to those high-level ROI metrics. At Contently, we use our Document Analytics tool to look at engagement on a granular level by tracking time spent per page and relying on heat maps for clicks and mouse placement.

Tech should support your editorial workflow

A workflow moves a piece of content from ideation to publication. We recently wrote about why workflows are vital to the editorial process, ensuring quality remains high while limiting unnecessary bureaucracy. The big difference in 2017 will be the way brands capitalize on technology to enable this process.

Instead of waiting for a vague email from the next person in the chain of command, workflows managed on one platform will allow each person to clearly understand her step in the production process—with attached deadlines to hold people accountable. At Contently, I know a writer will be knocking at my door if I sit too long on a story. The same goes if I have to get an image approved by design.

While we often think about technology taking the human element out of processes, it can have the opposite effect. The right technology brings order to the publishing process, freeing humans to do what they do best: create.

Algorithms will redefine talent selection

While most brands know which topics they want to cover and how much they want to spend, finding the right contributors for a content program can be overwhelming. On the Contently platform alone, there are over 100,000 freelancer profiles. That’s why our data science team realized the only scalable and sustainable way to pair brands and freelancers was to build an algorithm that could act as matchmaker.

After the data science team combed through thousands of talent profiles, using algorithms to search for key SEO terms and parsing them out by industry and topic, it became much easier to narrow down which contributors would be best suited for particular publications. (From here, contributors can also be filtered by location and experience.)

Aside from reducing the time it takes to complete an assignment, talent algorithms can help ensure you find the person who is the best fit for a specific job, something that will be crucial in 2017 as more companies pursue content marketing.

Tone analysis is important for brand governance

Tone isn’t just about deciding what to sound like or a tool to differentiate a brand from industry competitors—it becomes a mechanism to ensure content remains on-brand.

On TCS, we’ve started using an internal tone analyzer to track this consistency. The site’s tone has remained steady over the last three years, even as we’ve brought on new writers and editors.

This doesn’t mean our posts lack diversity. A piece on Facebook Live is very different from a story about headlines. We’ve just had a reliable balance of different voices and perspectives, all while making sure our coverage stays within the confines of our long-term strategy.

The big takeaway here is there’s no magic fix that will make you a great content marketer. A little luck won’t hurt, but to succeed in 2017, you’ll have to plan ahead and, ultimately, make sure you’re supported by the right tools and strategy.

The post 5 Factors That Could Impact Your Content Strategy in 2017 appeared first on Contently.

While these subjects sound like Netflix documentary recommendations, they are, in fact, the focus of some of our top stories from Contently clients in 2016. This year, we worked with brands that reached new levels of sophistication by hiring journalists, building video newsrooms, and telling ambitious stories on a global scale. Here’s some of their best work.

ENI: “Life is changing…”

ENI, an Italian energy company, set the bar high with this short documentary that profiled five humanitarian projects in Mozambique. The 14-minute video takes a tour through the country’s northernmost towns, highlighting the experience of five villagers who have access to ENI’s health, education, employment, and energy services. Thoughtful interviews and beautiful cinematography give it a high-quality sheen that wouldn’t feel out of place on National Geographic.

Babbel: “9 Language Boy Meets 6 Language Girl”

In “Nine Language Boy Meets Six Language Girl,” two polyglots eat croissants while they discuss the essence of tango and exchange a Bengali book. As the philosophical conversation progresses, Babbel reveals how learning languages can open professional doors and provide a new lens for looking at the world. Even if I hadn’t written a story on Babbel’s content strategy, I still would’ve watched this clip on repeat.

Barilla: “Passion for Pasta”

In the last few years, gluten has been under attack. Once hipsters adopted plant-based alternatives into their daily regimen, pasta companies everywhere had to adapt. Barilla responded with a health-focused campaign that demonstrated the ways gluten products, like pasta, could be part of a well-balanced diet. The project, “Passion for Pasta,” is best represented by this infographic that offers a template for developing nutritious pasta dishes. (Italian restaurants everywhere rejoiced, we think.)

Shutterstock: The ’90s Campaign

In 2016, the ’90s had a revival of sorts: A Clinton running for president. Tarzan in theaters. Millions of people catching Pokémon. To capitalize on this neon-colored nostalgia, Shutterstock, a stock photography and videography company, developed a three-part video series that parodied classic commercials from three decades ago. Shutterstock invented the products in the commercials, but all of the footage and editing features were part of the company’s product offerings. The result is a video that combines affinity for ’90s culture with satire targeting millennial trends.

Morgan Stanley: “When Presidential Politics Comes to the Mall”

It’s standard procedure for brands to avoid political commentary, which is why Morgan Stanley’s October 2016 research on the varying outcomes of Clinton and Trump policy proposals was particularly refreshing.

In the article, Morgan Stanley cites original research to report on the way each candidate’s minimum wage, immigration, health care, and trade initiatives could impact consumer spending and the economy at large. The story presents unbiased research and, like any reputable news publication, relies on experts to forecast impending results. (Morgan Stanley also covered sustainable investment, including research on green bonds.)

Brown Brothers Harriman: Women & Wealth Magazine

In 2015, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) found that women were often overlooked in conversations with their financial advisers, even if they had higher incomes or more wealth than their partners. To give better attention to female consumers, BBH launched the Center for Women & Wealth with an accompanying magazine.

Its Summer Issue 2016 offers investment advice by delving into a macroeconomic issue that disproportionately impacts women: caregiving. Interviews focus on teaching men about caretaking and feminism, as well as how to cope with the added costs of a sick parent or spouse.

athenahealth: “Understanding the Opioid Crisis”

Athenahealth’s mission is to find insights in millions of medical records into that can assist physicians and improve patient care. In this longform piece of data analysis, the electronic healthcare company looks at the way prescription patterns can play a role in correcting the U.S.’s current opioid epidemic. The findings, which come straight from athenahealth’s research network, were also displayed with helpful visual content, such as this infographic, which breaks down opioid regulations by state.

Coca-Coca: UK ParkLives

In the last four years, Coca-Cola’s blog, Journey, has grown from a small newsroom in its Atlanta headquarters to a global operation active in over 25 countries. This expansion was part of the beverage company’s goal to localize its marketing efforts, showcasing Coke’s involvement in communities around the world.

Coca-Cola’s ParkLives initiative built on that momentum by telling stories about health and sustainability through a local lens in the UK. Journey documented the project through a series of compelling blog posts and videos, encouraging people to participate in free activities from Zumba to donkey grooming at nearby parks. The programs led to a consistent stream of compelling stories about individuals who accomplished personal feats, such as Melissa, who discovered that Nordic walking was actually pretty fun, and Sue, who used outdoor running as a way to build confidence and spend more time with her grandson.

JPMorgan Chase: “From the Ground Up”

In 2015, JPMorgan Chase showcased its storytelling abilities with the “From the Ground Up” series on community developments in Brownsville, Brooklyn. This year, the company took “From the Ground Up” to the West Coast, in Boyle Heights, California, where its four-part series chronicled first-generation graduates, growing women’s organizations, the fight for affordable housing, and the role of small business in the community.

The project proves just how in touch big banks can be with underserved communities. Video, a big 2016 initiative for JPMorgan Chase, was the perfect platform for people who don’t normally get to have their voices heard.

The post 9 Standout Stories From Our Clients appeared first on Contently.

Suddenly, my menu was no longer determined by drunken noodle cravings. I started to classify food by value. I organized components into categories—protein, fats, grains, and vitamins—that would provide enough nutrition and energy to help me through the day. I hated to admit it, but after two weeks, I felt pretty damn good. My brother was right.

In many ways, developing a content plan mimics this same process. You don’t want to produce content that only superficially fills your audience. You also don’t want to offer them the same thing for every meal. In order to truly satisfy your audience, you have to serve a variety of stories in diverse formats on different channels.

To guide our customers (and ourselves) in this process, Contently’s data scientists tracked the behavior of our clients’ content over the last year. Here’s what they found.

Blog post fatigue

Many brands currently invest in content, but most tend to fixate on one format: the blog post. Over the past year, more than 60 percent of Contently clients were exclusively producing blog posts, which is an unhealthy figure.

Sure, articles let brands talk directly to customers about solving problems, like how to save for a home while paying off student loans, for example. Blog posts have relatively low overhead compared to, say, a national ad campaign or video product release, and in some industries such as finance, they are necessary to edge out competitors trying to capture the same audience. But a content plan with only blog posts is like a diet that consists solely of bananas. Sure they provide some value and it’s safe to eat one per day, but without diversity you’re going to become malnourished.

The problem for many brands is they don’t have the data to justify alternative approaches that may cost more than a 600-word article.

When our data scientists examined 3,200 stories produced on the Contently platform over the last year, they found that a different type of content outperforms blog posts across most industries:

• Infographics reach 54 percent more readers than blog posts.
• The median cost to reach one reader for an infographic was $0.04 versus $1.77 for a blog post.
• Infographics have a 73 percent completion rate. Blog posts have a 66 percent completion rate.

HubSpot tells us that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by up to 80 percent, and the Nielsen Norman Group asserts infographics help people retain more information than a typical article. These Contently statistics also show content programs with infographics have a clear advantage in both audience growth and engagement.

While infographics might—depending on the amount of design involved—cost more to produce upfront, when you factor in their reach, there is significantly more value per reader compared to a blog post.

The dark side of infographic distribution

The next question is, if infographics are shared more and have higher engagement rates than articles, where are readers coming from?

This chart from our data team slices the channels that drove both article and infographic traffic:

Since infographics reached more people than the blog posts, it would be natural to assume that this boost largely came from social, where infographics could serve as highly sharable visual content. As it turns out, Contently articles significantly outperformed infographics on social. Infographic traffic instead came from other “internal” sources—from another page on the company site—and from direct traffic.

The percentage of internal traffic suggests that readers are interested in infographics once they already know who you are. Perhaps people will come to your blog from an article shared on social, then click on an infographic that catches their eye once they’re on your site. It’s also important to point out that these readers aren’t just skimming and bouncing. They’re finishing infographics at a higher rate than blog posts.

While not many of our clients’ readers access infographics on social channels, they could still be sharing them directly with colleagues and friends. It’s impossible to fully know where this direct traffic comes from without setting more specific parameters, but chances are these readers were coming from “dark social“—which occurs when a URL gets shared in an email or chat. (Email traffic in the chart above refers to newsletters, not one-to-one correspondence.) The prevalence of chat applications like Slack and Google Chat has only increased dark sharing.

This type of communication, while harder to track, can still be beneficial. For example, users are much more likely to check out a link if it comes from a trusted source. And that direct communication doesn’t have to compete with jumbled social feeds. For these reasons, it’s crucial to not just consider the upfront cost of a piece of content, but how that content will provide value over time and across different channels.

Judging by the data, advocating for a content plan that includes infographics is not only going to make your website and marketing assets more visually appealing, but it will allow you to reach more people and have the budget to create more appetizing content for the long haul.

The post Here’s Why Infographics Outperform Blog Posts appeared first on Contently.

My experience matches up with a new infographic from OnlineCourseReport, which indicates that email open rates peak between 9 a.m. and noon. The infographic also indicates that emails are most often answered between Tuesday and Thursday, which makes sense—on Monday, we’re planning our workweek, and on Friday, we’re putting things off until next Monday. In between, we’ll try to give your email a thorough read and a thoughtful response.

You may not get that response, however, if you don’t come with a strong subject line. If your email subject line reads “Last-Minute Gift,” for example, we might just archive without opening. For the most part, emails with salesy jargon in the subject line get ignored more than 85 percent of the time. Conversely, the subject lines with the best open rates were fairly straightforward, with company names and relevant dates.

Interestingly, the infographic also includes data on response rates relative to the number of times you try to reach someone. If you email us more than once, we might respond—in fact, 30 percent of responses come after a second attempt. But if you email more than three times, we probably won’t. Nobody wants to be nagged by their inbox, and it’s much easier to make emails we don’t like disappear.

Take a look at the rest of the infographic below to learn more about email open rates, top-performing subject lines, and how to optimize your email campaigns. Will you send your next important email on Tuesday morning? After seeing the data, maybe you’ll give it a try.

Source: OnlineCourseReport.com

The post Infographic: How to Perfect Your Email Marketing appeared first on Contently.

Despite my inexperience, I thought the class would be a breeze. I’d put the brush to canvas, paint a couple beach scenes, hang one in my apartment, and feel creative and accomplished by the end of the semester.

But I soon discovered that painting—painting well, that is—wasn’t nearly as easy as I imagined. Week after week, we’d hang up our art for the professor to critique, and each week, he would stop at mine and say, “I know who did this one,” before moving on.

It was a humbling experience that taught me a valuable lesson: Just because something looks easy doesn’t mean it is. Just ask my sad interpretation of Warhol’s Marilyn, who will tell you through her lopsided mouth that getting halfway there means you’re not there at all.

Sometimes it seems like brands and publishers approach infographics the same way I approached painting—and readers are moving on just like my professor.

What an infographic should do is pretty straightforward; it’s right in the name. It is a graphic that—get ready—displays information. But while its function is simple, executing a great one is deceptively difficult. A well-made infographic tells an in-depth story that elicits an emotional response the same way a well-written article would.

Let me be clear here: Putting a number in a large font with a pretty illustration next to it is not an infographic. At the very least, it’s not a good one.

If you want it done right, it’s probably best to work with a visual journalist—someone who can tell a story, knows how to present data in an interesting way, and is willing to do the research the same way a writer or reporter would. You can also pair a journalist with a graphic designer, combining both of their skills to create compelling content. (After all, even Warhol needed Basquiat every once in a while.)

Here are some elements that smart, shareable infographics should all have.

A clear angle

If you can’t sum up your project in one sentence, rethink what you’re doing. If you know exactly the conclusion you’re trying to make, it will stop you from putting a bunch of random stats and charts together. Once you know what the angle is, find a way to make it stand out.

Case in point: an infographic from Gates Notes, Bill Gates’s blog, titled “World’s Deadliest Animals.” Mosquitos are awful and kill way more people than sharks, which you can very clearly see by the giant deadly red zone at the bottom.

Accurate data

To stand apart from the crowd, good infographics show reputable data in a clear way and put information in a broader context that doesn’t distort the original statistics. The key here is not to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of visual appeal or unsubstantiated claims.

It’s easy to fool people with charts and images to tell the story you want. Don’t do it; don’t let your infographic artists do it. And know how to call bullshit when you see it from other brands, organizations, or political campaigns.

Scope

People don’t want to read an article inside an infographic; they want a clear way to take in complex information. For a great example of that, check out “The Science Behind the Most Popular Infographics,” produced by Siege Media, which offers up clear, useful data points about the 1,000 infographics that had the most social shares over the last year.

Flow

Don’t just throw information at the reader; take her on a journey. Know your audience, know your angle, and walk them through how you got there. Nature, for example, brilliantly explained why landing on a comet is so damn hard in the infographic “Landing on a Comet: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perilous Descent,” which you can see and download as a PDF here.

Oh, and don’t forget your logo

After all, if it’s good, it’s going to be shared. Hopefully, when your audience says, “I know who did this one,” it turns out better than my painting.

The post Why Good Infographics Are More Than Just Pictures and Numbers appeared first on Contently.

And that’s exactly what Siege Media is serving up with its new study, The Science Behind the Most Popular Infographics. In partnership with Buzzsumo, Siege analyzed the 1,000 most-shared infographics of the past year to find out what they had in common—and what advertisers can use to make their multimedia assets more shareable.

So, what did the agency dig up? Let’s just say this: Before you start stressing over the actual content of your infographic, there are easy format and distribution tips you can use to make your infographics pop.

For instance, on average, the most popular infographics include 396 words and are 3683 by 804 pixels wide. The most popular color for infographics is blue, and the most common colors across the business, health, and entertainment industries are blue, green, and red.

Speaking of industries, infographics about health do best on Facebook and Pinterest, while infographics about social media are shared more on Twitter. Additionally, you might be able to get away with wordier infographics on Twitter, seeing as the most-shared infographics on the platform average of 442 words.

To find out more for yourself, check out the infographic below. Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering, “The Science Behind the Most Popular Infographics” is exactly 396 words and 3683 by 804 pixels wide. So meta, much clever.

The post Infographic: The Science Behind the 1,000 Most Popular Infographics appeared first on Contently.

Last fall, I found myself in an editorial meeting at the office of a large brand. The company was relatively new to publishing, and its family-focused finance content had performed respectably so far, but the employees were still a long way from reaching the goals they’d set months before.

With the holidays approaching, we saw the opportunity for a timely piece of content: an infographic about the exorbitant costs of holiday travel for families. We suggested a slick production design with an accompanying article offering tips for saving money when visiting grandma. It was, we said, the type of content that could easily go viral. I showed the employees this list of the 10 most viral infographics and pointed out that they all racked up hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. If we approached this project the right way, other personal finance blogs would pick it up, as would mommy bloggers and travel sites.

An awkward pause ensued. Across the table, noses crinkled. Shoulders rolled into noncommittal shrugs. “I don’t know,” their marketing director said. “Aren’t those expensive?”

Yes, we explained, but the ROI can be huge.

Another stakeholder piped up: “OurFictionalCompetitor.com doesn’t do infographics.”

With that, the idea of doing an infographic died. In its place, they opted to do a listicle. It was called “10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With a Pumpkin.” And even if you wanted to find it, you’d have to struggle through page after page of similar-sounding Google results to do so.

No risk, no reward

For traditional media outlets, one of the most critical channels for building a readership is the old-fashioned “exclusive”. They get the coveted interview. They publish the big scandal before the other guys. In short, they have something no one else has. Brand publishers aren’t breaking news (yet), but they have a similar opportunity to earn seismic readership gains by giving the audience something they can’t get anywhere else.

But like the pumpkin publisher above, many brands shy away from going for the home run, preferring instead to play small ball, grinding away with slap singles and hoping to win by pure volume. This strategy is destined to fail, and no one explains it more effectively than Moz’s Rand Fishkin:

The vast vast majority of links and shares and amplification signals of all kinds are going to only the top five or 10 percent of content that gets put out. There’s not a whole lot of value in writing a decent blog post anymore. [There’s not a lot of value] unless you can be pretty extraordinary. Ask [this]: If they’re searching for an answer to a question, would they rather reach your piece of content than anything else on the Internet right now? Unless the answer is a slam dunk, “Yes, this is 10 times better than anything else out there,” I’m not necessarily sure it’s worth publishing.

In short, if you’re publishing unambitious content, you’re throwing your money away. There’s no ROI for being just another voice in a crowd.

Excuses, excuses

Even though brands have a financial incentive for producing creative, original content, too many still insist on churning out mediocre work. They tend to justify that mindset with three typical reasons.

-It’s hard. When I show publishers great examples of branded content, like Land Rover’s outstanding “The Vanishing Game” or NVIDIA’s delightful debunking of lunar landing conspiracies, they often assume that marquee content is outside of their grasp. But with the right creative talent, this sort of thing is very doable. Look at what Contently accomplished with the team at Marriott Traveler. Sure, standing out can be challenging, but it’s far from impossible.

-It’s expensive. In fairness, content like “The Vanishing Game” is indeed a little spendy. But taking a chance and creating something exclusive doesn’t have to break your budget. As Amanda Walgrove recently pointed out on The Content Strategist, the old fashioned article remains the most effective type of branded content. It’s also one of the easiest to produce. Video is a close second in effectiveness but remains substantially more difficult to create. The lesson here? Put some effort into creating outstanding articles that give your readers something they can’t get elsewhere, and watch the wins roll in.

-It isn’t being done by competitors. This facepalm-worthy comment crops up more often than you’d believe. As I’ve noted previously, when brands enter the content game, they’re not just competing with the other brands in their industry—they’re competing with every other established media brand out there. This realization alone should spur brands to create truly ambitious content. It’s a crowded field, and you’ve got to stand out to win.

The pumpkin publisher offered up each one of these flimsy excuses, some more than once. But even though its content was unambitious, its goals were anything but.

No substitute for a good story

A few weeks later, the company published the pumpkin piece, along with a few others, all of which were similarly worthless. A month rolled by, accompanied by more unfocused, uninteresting content. The executives expected slow, organic growth and gradual development of an owned audience. It wasn’t happening. In fact, almost no one was reading their content. Few viewers arrived, and almost none stayed.

“Give it time,” the marketing director said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

At this point, we know what was coming. We also knew that letting it happen would be the only way we’d convince them to be smarter about their content. When the quarter came to a close two months later, they’d missed their content goals—every metric, from pageviews to engagement—by nearly 75 percent. This, we thought, would be our opportunity. But before we could even suggest doing better content, the stakeholders decided that pouring money into distribution would be their magic bullet.

We sighed. And then we waited.

At the end of the next quarter, little had changed. Despite tens of thousands of dollars spent on distribution, their content was still underperforming—and not by a little. At this point, they were ready to throw in the towel. “Maybe content marketing isn’t right for our industry,” they said.

Our response? “Give it another quarter. And give us a chance to do something great this time.”

Three months later, their content had surpassed all of their goals. Their audience was growing, sharing, and engaging. But we didn’t give them a magic bullet. There is no secret to why their new content succeeded where their old stuff failed.

All it took was great stories.

We gave their audience thoughtful, useful content they couldn’t get anywhere else. We made it interesting, and we made it unique to their brand. We started with the stories themselves, and everything else fell into place.

Ryan Galloway is the Senior Managing Editor at Contently.

The post Why Ambitious Content Is the Only Content That Matters appeared first on Contently.

This week, we’re bringing you yet another infographic on infographics, courtesy of OneSpot. And this isn’t just any infographic on infographics: It’s a super ultra mega meta infographic. As you could probably guess, it features a tsunami of statistics on why infographics work and why content marketers should use them.

According to Google Trends, there are 62 million results for the search term “infographic” as of April 2015. That’s a lot of info, and a lot of graphics. It makes sense: Color images increase willingness to read by 80 percent, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.

If these statistics have left you chomping at the bit to create an infographic of your own, do not despair—this infographic also has information on the various types of infographics, tools to help you make them, and even design rules like how many colors to use. Check it out below.

The post Super Meta Infographic: Why Infographics Are Content Marketing’s Secret Weapon appeared first on Contently.

Visualized information as a whole has increased over 9,000 percent since 2007. It makes sense: The visuals help cut through the information overload we get from carrying humanity’s collected knowledge (and a ton of cat pictures) in our pockets. In fact, as the chart shows, we’re receiving about five times as much information now as we did in 1986. Images help us drill past this noise since it takes minimal time to understand a visual—only 1/10th of a second to be exact.

Visuals are also a great way to communicate with your readers, since they increase the willingness to read in the first place. That information will also have staying power, since they’ve been shown to help with reader comprehension.

There are a lot of reasons to be crazy about infographics, so treat yourself to a scroll through this one—you’ll even learn why exactly you couldn’t resist clicking on this story.

The post Infographic: Why Your Brain Loves Infographics (And Your Readers Do Too) appeared first on Contently.

These days, statements that SEO is dead are common, along with predictions that content marketing and social media are poised to replace it entirely. The truth is, SEO isn’t what it used to be—but it’s not going to disappear altogether.

In the early days of digital marketing, those who understood and implemented SEO techniques based on how search engines ranked websites were ahead of the curve. Today, search engine optimization is the standard, not the exception.

And with the increasing attention to visual content—from infographics to video, photos, and presentations—as a part of a successful content strategy, it’s ever more important that content marketers embrace SEO as a means of supplementing their visual content strategy. Here are several simple techniques to consider:

Using Search Data to Position Your Visual Content

It’s often difficult to come up with new ideas for your visual content, especially after agonizing brainstorming sessions yield few results. Content marketing is a large investment in relation to traditional marketing techniques, so it’s important your efforts don’t go to waste with half-baked ideas and poor execution. A good place to start finding ideas for engaging content is Google’s AdWords Keyword tool. Despite the fact that their tool is tailored for AdWords keyword bidding, it can give you meaningful insights into what topics people are interested in and help you find new ideas for content creation. This will help you ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ as you’re not only finding a general topic to cover but you’ve already found a keyword to optimize your webpage towards.

After you’ve narrowed down a keyword, do a quick search in Google and review some of the current listings to further ensure you position your content in the correct manner.

On-Site Search Engine Optimizations

After determining the topic for your next piece of visual content, it’s important to ensure you check off the list of standard search engine optimization best practices. There are thousands of sources on the web to find out what those are, but let’s consider a few techniques that fall outside the scope of traditional SEO and are tailored specifically for visual content.

1. Text transcripts

Search engine spiders (the robots that scan the web and index webpages) can’t crawl (read) text embedded in an image, or any rich media content for that matter. Search engines use textual data on the page to form an idea of what that page is about. Pages that feature visual content usually don’t have much text on the page that search engines can use to effectively formulate judgments of the page’s content. In order to allow the search engines to better (and more accurately) analyze your page, place a transcript of your visual content on the page.

You probably already have the transcript readily available in the form of the copy you sent to the designer. If you don’t and you can’t find the time to manually transcribe the content yourself, consider outsourcing the job. oDesk and Elance are good services to use if you have a couple of assets to transcribe, but if you’re dealing with high volume, consider setting up a HIT (Human Intelligence Task) on Amazon Mechanical Turk. It’s a great crowdsourcing platform designed to handle high volume tasks.

Hopefully, in the near future search engines’ OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities will be sophisticated enough to directly read text from an image. Until then, it’s important to assist search engines with this task.

2. Embed code strategy

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam Team, has publicly stated that links included within embed codes may in the future be “discounted to a degree.”

The rationale is this: when someone wishes to repost your visual content on their website, they grab the embed code and place it into the HTML of their page. When a link is added into the embed code—often an optimized anchor text link—they may not realize it’s there, according to Cutts. Their goal was to repost your infographic, not necessarily endorse it.

The best solution is to simply to ask for a backlink. Most reputable site owners will include one anyway; asking for one will remind them to link back and help you get a more natural link. If you insist on including a backlink in your embed code, be sure to add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link tag.

3. Source transparency

Visual content, infographics in particular, have a bad rap in regards to presenting factual information. This is mainly due to the obfuscation of their sources. Some infographics include a list of source URLs in the footer of the image itself. This isn’t helpful to anyone. Place those links on your actual webpage—there is no reason to be stingy with links, especially if the content of those links is directly related to your content. This will allow skeptical readers to easily factcheck on their own terms and will provide some relevance flags in the eyes of search engines.

David Kohreidze is a digital marketing specialist at Visually. He is currently pursuing a computer science degree at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Want your business to tell great stories like this one? Contently gives brands the tools and talent to tell stories that people love. Learn more.

The post How to Hack Your Visual Content for SEO appeared first on Contently.

Editors, marketers, and content strategists put so much time and effort in creating visual content, yet when it comes to using it, it’s often a one-and-done affair. They publish it, then let it languish.

Let’s take a look at some smart ways to repurpose images, posters, video or other visuals you already have and make them shine the second (and third, or even fourth) time around.

1. Use static visuals to create animated videos

Hootsuite created an infographic last year comparing social media networks to the competing houses (or families) from the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. In a clever twist ahead of this year’s season premiere, the Hootsuite team used the old visual as a springboard to assemble a new video riffing off the show’s opening theme song and graphics.

2. Liven up your next email campaign

Don’t assume that everyone on your mailing list visits your blog or follows you on Twitter: feel free to cross-pollinate! Let your visuals do double duty by featuring one or two in your next email blast, so they’re seen by as many people as possible.

With Google recently introducing a visual way to preview emails in the Promotions tab—the feature is still in beta—the advice below is more relevant than ever before.

• Don’t overdo it. How many images you choose to insert in your email will depend on your product or service. Retailers or restaurants can get away with image-laden email more than a business consultant whose services don’t rely on visual appeal.
• Watch your analytics. Check the bounce and click-through rates of emails that include visuals to see what impact they have on your overall campaign strategy. Be ready to change tactics if your customers don’t respond well.
• Make sure your visuals are mobile-friendly. Keep the overall layout of your emails simple. A single-column setup is better than two or more columns, for example, which may force mobile readers to scroll sideways.
• Plan for the invisible. Some email clients turn images off and the reader needs to take deliberate action to display them. Never assume that they will. Position the image in a place where it won’t look awkward if displayed as a blank white box and add a good HTML description so the recipient can read what the image is about

3. Use web and print content interchangeably

Producing visuals can be costly, so it’s always a good idea to try to repurpose existing content before absorbing the expense of creating something new. And who says web content can’t be used in print—and vice versa?

• Place static versions of your visual media where you’d normally run print ads. Short infographics make a nice change of pace from traditional ad copy.
• Make your press releases pop by including eye-catching infographics, charts, or diagrams to illustrate your message.
• Upload copies of your print ads to social media channels to encourage traffic to your website.
• Turn existing videos into animated GIFs using a free web-based service like Picasion.

4. Update existing visuals with current data

Sometimes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when simply inflating a tire will do. Rather than creating brand new visual content, you can either update an older visual with recent data, or use data you already have to whip up a new visual. For instance, a batch of slides depicting charts of holiday buying trends over the last few years can become a slick new video or interactive visualization.

The Huffington Post really ran with this idea during the recent NCAA Final Four tournament by creating an interactive, continually updated infographic for the event.

5. Build a blog post around an existing visual

One of the most obvious ways to recycle visual content is also the most often overlooked. Creating a blog post around an infographic, poster, or a video allows you to share a story with more depth than a single static image can offer.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Don’t simply repeat the data that’s already in the visual. Instead, expand or elaborate on why it’s important.
• Tell the story behind your visual. Publish a few initial sketches of the design or have the team who worked on it talk about interesting challenges encountered in the production process and how they were resolved. This can turn your visual into an evergreen learning tool that others can come back to long after it’s been published.
• Be sure to include social networking share buttons and a call to action. One study conducted in 2011 showed that total views increased by 94 percent if a published article contained a relevant photo or infographic.

Keep these tips in mind the next time you’re creating visual content. Think about ways you can reuse what you’re making some time down the line and give it a new lease on life with minimal fuss.

Featured image from Shutterstock

Lisa Hoover McGreevy is a seasoned professional writer specializing in corporate messaging, a data journalist on the Visually Marketplace, and a regular contributor to the Visually blog.

The post 5 Creative Ways to Recycle Your Visual Content appeared first on Contently.

What’s the deal with The Content Strategist? At Contently, storytelling is the only marketing we do, and it works wonders. It could for you, too. Learn more.

The post The 5 Types of Parties You’ll Go to at SXSW appeared first on Contently.

“Everyone thinks their energy bills are too high, but the fault is usually misplaced,” said Selma Tucker of Michigan Saves. “Typically, consumers will blame the Middle East, or the president, or Congress or the utility company. It’s seldom they blame themselves.”

That’s even though — sorry, people — it’s usually their own faults. Rather than wrestling for the public’s attention, Michigan Savesdecided to take the fight where it belongs—inside customer homes,launching the Avoid Energy Drama campaign to do exactly that. With a lot of humor and a bit of chiding, Michigan Saves is hoping to inspire residents to action.

Taking a jab at consumers

The campaign, hosted on the microsite AvoidEnergyDrama.com, features a series of boxing parody videos about a couple arguing over the thermostat and window sealings. The bouts are even mediated by a tuxedoed announcer with a suspended microphone and a ringside bell.

“We wanted it to be something that everyone could relate to but also showed our silliness around energy efficiency,” Tucker said.

To pull off the campaign, Michigan Saves partnered with sustainability marketing firm Shelton Group, as well as a number of statewide energy-related utilities. The partnership with the utilities was a strategic one. While public utilities are just as interested in energy efficiency as Michigan Saves, they are easy targets for people looking for someone to blame for expensive energy bills. However, a mild-mannered non-profit at the helm gives the campaign more freedom to gently point the finger at consumers’ inefficiency .

“This campaign was devised with Michigan Saves on top because we can take some more risks,” said Tucker. “But there are four of us, so there isn’t one brand that bears the brunt of the risk. There is nothing offensive here, but we did want to shock people a little bit.”

Because, after all, we’re talking about changing shower heads and caulking windowpanes here. If the content isn’t interesting, no one is going to care about caulking.

Across every channel — and into reality

AvoidEnergyDrama.com may be the campaign’s home base, but a wave of external content — including video, audio clips, banners and other static ads — was released into the the world mid-January to increase traffic. With the social effort still in its infancy, content is being pushed through online ads, television stations, YouTube and even Pandora.

“So far we’re really pleased at the response from TV stations,” said Tucker. “TV stations are approached a lot for PSAs, but sometimes the campaigns can be a little flat. If they’re going to give that time away for free, they’re going to want something cool.”

And since they have something cool, Michigan Saves is also planning to push the campaign through a channel most PSAs overlook: in-person. The Energy Drama announcer will take the show on the road to local sporting events, schools and other community spaces to give the message right to the public.

Two clicks to action

The goals of Avoid Energy Drama are tall for a small non-profit. Michigan Saves hopes to educate three million Michigan residents on their energy problems and inspire 175,000 of them to take action.

How does funny content turn into serious action? From the moment a visitor arrives at the microsite, she is exactly two clicks away from local energy efficiency resources, prompted by a series of engaging, “What’s your energy drama?” questions.

“We tried to create something that is easy for our customers to engage with,” added Tucker. “We were very intentional in trying to get people to turn their interest into action.”

Thus far, the success of Avoid Energy Drama is difficult to measure, but they’ve already been picked up by the WSJ, industry publications and local news in Michigan.Tucker hopes the positive reaction he’s received from television stations about the PSA will soon ripple through the digital public — even as the campaign points the finger directly at them.

Contently arms brands with the tools and talent to become great content creators. Learn more.

The post Brand Publishing Playbook: Making Energy Efficiency Sexy appeared first on Contently.

From August 2010 to April 2011, OkTrends posts averaged a staggering 32,500 Facebook likes and 4,222 tweets. And then, all of a sudden, they stopped.

In February 2011, IAC–the owner of Match.com–had bought OkCupid for $50 million, which sparked speculation that IAC killed the blog. But according to OkTrends’ author, that wasn’t the case.

The blog went dormant “for a couple of reasons,” comments Rudder, who still works full-time at OkCupid. “I was the person who wrote all the posts and there was just other stuff I had to do here. There were just other priorities.”

From August 2010 to April 2011, OkTrends posts averaged a staggering 32,500 Facebook likes and 4,222 tweets. And then, all of a sudden, they stopped.

“The biggest reason is that I’m writing a book, which is kind of like a superset of all the stuff I did on OkTrends,” he explains. “So that’s were all my creative energy has been focused for the last 15 months.”

Rudder’s forthcoming book, Dataclysm, is due to its publisher, Crown Publishing, in December for a fall 2014 release. Described as “a witty, provocative, visually fascinating look at how ‘big data’ is transforming our understanding of race, politics, age, beauty, sex, humor, even history, and ushering in a new era in the study of human nature,” the book deal for Dataclysm was reportedly in the seven figures.

It’s certainly understandable that Rudder wouldn’t have time for OkTrends while running a company and writing a book, but considering the incredible business value of the blog, why not just hire a top-notch writer to keep it going?

“This is just going to sound very self-serving, but I just don’t know if that’s possible,” Rudder says. “I’m in the unique position of being a founder of the site. I just know it so incredibly well…I just don’t know how you find someone out there that can do it without a shit-load of handholding, and I just didn’t have time for that.”

“The journalist might be able to write about it with energy,” he continues, “but it’s not gonna do it with a lot of analysis. Certainly a data scientist might do the analysis well, but probably isn’t going to write it very well. That’s just very, very hard position to look for.”

So Rudder plans to rekindle OkTrends this March, after he’s turned in the manuscript for Dataclysm — though OkCupid CEO Sam Yagan similarly promised a return of the blog last year to AdAge to no avail. From a business perspective, though, the blog’s return is a no-brainer.

“Honestly I think the blog–one way or another–has driven a lot of our growth,” says Rudder. “Certainly, it has driven brand awareness. It’s been the only thing we’ve ever done, other than making a great dating site, that has gotten us out there into the world.”

Seeing OkTrends true value, though, requires looking past direct-marketing metrics.

“You know we have a million readers from the post and maybe a thousand would sign up directly from OkCupid,” says Rudder. “But the analogy I use is–our office is in Times Square, and you know whenever you see the big Coke billboard, people don’t walk by that billboard and are like, ‘oh my God, I got to have a Coke right now’ and then go get a Coke. It just puts it in their mind, and then when they’re thirsty, they’re like oh yeah Coke, I haven’t had a Coke in a while…I’ll get a Coke.”

Likewise, he says, “when you’ve just got dumped or you’re just tired of being single or, what hell you want to just want to see what’s out there, you’re like, ‘Ah I’ll try online dating. What’s an online dating site? Oh yeah, OkCupid.’ ”

OkTrends attracted a lot of attention for its success, and since almost every post featured infographics, some content marketers have assumed that the infographic was OkTrends’ secret to dominance (and, presumably, a strategy for them all to emulate). But Rudder argues that, on their own, infographics are inadequate.

“To tell a story, you need words, you know?” says Rudder. “Or at the very least a moving image….With very little text, you can only make gestures at the things.”

“Let me just put it this way: if instead of doing the posts that we did, I decided to make a really quick infographic every month…nobody would care.”

And great storytelling, says Rudder, is only possible if you avoid self-promotion.

“I’ve talked to a lot of other companies about how to replicate [OkTrends],” Rudder explained. “People will get in touch with me and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re thinking about starting our own OkTrends blog and that’s the first thing I tell them–nobody gives a shit about your website. And then, lo and behold, when their first post comes out it’s all about how sweet their users are and [saturated] with their logos. It’s just garbage.”

We’ll all just have to wait a few more months, then, for Rudder to show how it’s done.

“I’m excited about starting it back up again,” he teases. “I’m definitely going to try and bring a new little twist.”

The post Whatever Happened To OkCupid’s OkTrends? (Spoiler Alert: It’s Coming Back!) appeared first on Contently.

Across the board, CMOs want to boost their content marketing budgets in 2013. It’s a top priority. But online media isn’t a free-for-alland the competition is stiff. Your target audiences are constantly bombarded with a lot of reading material. Your company needs to stand out.

Do Your Due Diligence
As the following infographic from Uberflip explains, you need to undergo the following simple steps before jumping into the content marketing craze:

1. Understand the tactics that best complement your line of business
2. Determine your success metrics

More than Just Writing
B2B content marketing is about bringing audiences knowledge, thought leadership, and industry best practices. Writing isn’t enough to accomplish that end goal.

You need a blended approach that incorporates social media to fuel distribution, a newsletter to encourage user retention, case studies to help make your business’ use cases more tangible, and in-person events to personalize audience connections. Videos, webinars, and executive-authored blogs can be key parts of a broad marketing strategy that is equal parts knowledge factory, traffic generator, and sales channel.

Look Beyond Yourself
Share the love. B2B buyers rely on social media networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for information. Like your company, they’re looking for exposure. Share the love by regularly and publicly acknowledging and communicating with customers, prospects, and fellow brands that you love on your blog and through social media. 

Focus on Leads
Leads and sales are the lifeblood of your business (obviously) and should always be clear goals in your content marketing strategy. Content marketing engages customers, attracts prospects, drives sales for your business, builds thought leadership, and educates the market. This newly engaged audience can convert into prospects. As a content marketer, it’s your job to make it happen.

What’s Missing
This infographic needs some brand examples to help illustrate B2B companies that are doing it right. Check out the following B2B brands for great inspiration:

— Crazy Egg leverages its blog to generate free trial sign-ups for its website heatmapping software.
— Grasshopper positions its blog as a tool to share valuable insight with entrepreneurs.
— Unbounce’s blog is instrumental for building a community of conversion optimization experts.

The post Creating B2B Content that Actually Rocks [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Contently.

As the following infographic from DigitalC4 put it, “content for online brand visibility needs to be well written, fluid, dynamic, and shared.”

DigitalC4 recommends taking the following steps before you hit ‘publish.’

1. Gather your sources 
Let inspiration come from everywhere via blogs, social media, and your favorite news outlets. Heck, expand your search beyond the screen — look outside your office window, interview a customer or two, or browse through some hilarious Craigslist ads. Don’t worry about finding the most unique breaking news. Focus on cultivating your unique perspective instead.

2. Curate
Think before you write, and clearly identify your theme, a blend of the unique storytelling elements that you want to mix together into the perfect story. Envision your blog post or article as a puzzle, and throw away the pieces that simply don’t fit. (That’s a more exciting way to approach it than “make an outline.”)

3. Write
Here comes the fun part. Once your plan from steps 1 and 2 is ready to go, the writing is more likely to “just flow” because of the preparation you’ve done. The more information you curate ahead of time, the more verbal ammo you have for crafting a great story — it’s a beautiful feedback loop where inspiration fuels more inspiration.

4. Publish
It’s time to unleash your 500-word masterpiece — but hitting the ‘publish’ button just isn’t enough. Distribute your content where your audience can easily find it. Social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are great places to start recruiting eyeballs and building a steady traffic stream. Remember that distribution is key to your content’s success — failing to promote and distribute is basically like leaving your content in a dark corner of the Internet.

What’s Missing?
DigitalC4’s infographic clearly outlines the planning steps necessary for a powerful content strategy. When it comes to execution and distribution, however, the audience-building picture is overly simplistic. (This happens a lot in infographics.)

Don’t kid yourself. Building an audience is hard. Ten years from now, you could become one of the world’s best bloggers, but when you’re just starting out? You’re a small fish in an infinitely vast pond. You’ll want to tear your hair out. In the brand world, this is particularly important to point out because it’s easy for rash judgments to be made about a marketing project if it doesn’t appear immediately successful.

With content marketing, you have to have patience. Keep at it. Remember that in this world, slow and steady wins.

The post The Content Life Cycle [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Contently.

‘Spray and pray’ doesn’t work for brick and mortar, so why should the Internet be any different?

Well-executed social strategies are powerful for relationship building. When your brand goes the extra mile, your customers will notice — and with social media, your customers will notice publicly.

Social & romance: The analogy

The smart folks at HubSpot have pointed out that social media is a lot like dating. If you want something to happen, you need to put some muscle behind it.

Keep the conversation going so that you can really get to know them. Then seal the deal with a personal gesture. If you love where this analogy is going, you’re in luck — here’s more: Twitter is like a party. Full of buzz and swarming with people, here’s a setting where everyone seems to be in their own worlds — until that one tweet stops you dead in your tracks.

After you’ve built the relationship and continued the conversation, you need to keep the love alive.

It’s all about people

Couples fight — and it’s okay. Especially in the world of online commerce, things can go wrong. Shipments get lost, credit cards get overcharged, and products fail to meet expectations.

What’s key is how your brand handles it. Social media is a channel to keep communication healthy. Be prompt, show that you care, and go the extra mile to make sure that your customers are happy. More important than ‘what went wrong’ is how you can make the situation better.

Let the people behind your brand shine through. Be empathetic and personable — especially if something went wrong. To your customers, that human-to-human connection will feel like a breath of fresh air.

Relationships are scalable

HubSpot points out a key fact — that social media relationships are scalable. One-to-one relationships are tough to maintain, especially once your fan community crosses the 1,000-mark. You need to build a machine in addition to the romance.

Social is hard work, but you know what? The bonds are well-worth it.

The post Social Media: A Love Story [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Contently.

You’ve seen it —  the 2-years-olds who are master photographers with their parents’ smartphone cameras and the 6-year-olds who can already type faster than most developers.

Kids these days have bedrooms jam-backed with TVs, video game consoles, and computers — they’re spending less time outside exercising and more time hanging out on the couch playing Call of Duty.  But is multimedia all bad? And how does it affect children?

The following infographic from Now Sourcing explores two important sides of this question. Is media bad or good for kids? Well, yes and no.

Is Media Making Kids Stagnate?

For good reason, 73% of parents like to limit their kids’ TV time, and 66% talk to their kids about the dangers of social media sites. Surprisingly, only a small proportion of respondents actively monitor their kids’ social presences and privacy settings — despite concerns.

Then there’s the perspective that media harms intelligence — 42% of Americans agree that in 2020, young technology users will have major cognitive problems including an inability to focus, lack of long-term foresight, and limited critical thinking ability.

Ouch.

Is Media Making Kids Smarter? 

In the classrooms, teachers perceive media and technology as invaluable teaching tools. Only a small proportion of respondents — 26% — feel that incorporating tablets in the classroom would be a distraction to learning. The rest? Well, they think tablets are just what the classroom needs.

Where teachers agree with parents is in the areas of attention span — without checks and balances, online media can really hurt a kid’s ability to focus.

As with all great things in life (junk food, play dates, and study-time), what kids need most is balance. Too much, too little — there is a fine line. To say that digital media’s kids are going to grow into lackluster adults, however? That may be a stretch.

Hats off to today’s brilliant, media-savvy kids who will inevitable pioneer tomorrow’s technology.

The post Infographic: How Digital Media Affects Children appeared first on Contently.

It’s not about selling, preaching, manipulating, or persuading. Native advertising is very much an educational, customer experience tool that prioritizes trust, substance, and value. The driving force? Multimedia and content.

The following infographic from Column Five Media and Solve Media walks you through the operational, editorial, and strategic best practices to ensure that your brand’s customers and users come first.

Why this Infographic Rocks

1. It immediately jumps into the ‘whats.’ 

Native advertising is about high-quality content, organic experiences that complement existing user interaction flows. It’s exceptionally high quality and in many instances, written by true journalists.

2. It addresses an important brand/consumer problem.

Between 2000 and 2012, banner click-through rates have dropped from an average of 9 percent to 2 percent. Consumers ignore banners because they don’t like to be beaten down by ads – which means that advertisers aren’t necessarily deriving value. Native ads are one solution that attempts to bridge this gap. After all, your customers are indirect leaders of your company. Give them something they’ll love.

3. It makes you prioritize the challenges.

Ad standards, product efficiency, user trust, and brand efficiency are all topics that brands need to prioritize when jumping into their native ads strategy.

4. It alleviates cognitive dissonance.

For marketers and advertisers (newbie and experienced alike), the concept of native advertising can be tough to grasp. So here’s what native advertising is not – sponsorships, promoted tweets, web films, sponsored stories, paid discovery, and interactive graphics.

5. It concludes with an awesome jumping off point – you and your team. 

You’ve decided that native advertising is awesome. Now what? You need to prioritize your strategy before jumping in. Engage your communication teams, boost content creation by recruiting new talent, and contract externally to boost your distribution.

Room for Improvement

List examples. Make the concept real. Which brands are rocking this strategy? What could be improved. Data and ideas rock, but at the end of the day, it’s results that count.

The post Evaluating Native Advertising in Context [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Contently.