Day: December 29, 2013

Content: The Content Marketing Forecast: 10 Predictions for 2014

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English: A business ideally is continually see...

English: A business ideally is continually seeking feedback from customers: are the products helpful? are their needs being met? Constructive criticism helps marketers make adjustments to their products and services to adapt to the changing needs of their customers. Source of diagram: here (see public domain declaration at top). Questions: write me at my Wikipedia talk page or email me at thomaswrightsulcer@yahoo.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Content Marketing Forecast: 10 Predictions for 2014

Red-bull1
2013 was the year of Red Bull. At every marketing conference, not a panel went by without a shout-out to the content marketing geniuses based in Santa Monica and Austria.

But as an industry, we owe it to ourselves to demand more and to look forward. 2014 is the year when the content marketing category finally matures and newer players in the space — brands, agencies, startups — help us achieve real scale.

The new year will also be a year of debate. We’ve seen unprecedented creativity in advertising and marketing, but is this amounting to real ROI for brands? Can brands continue to capture the attention of information-savvy consumers who demand instant gratification? Can marketers and investors navigate the confusing sea of content marketing startups, agencies and vendors? Spoiler alert: The answer to all three questions is “Yes.”

Here’s a look at what else is in store for 2014, when content marketing finally has wings:

1. Content will be its own role or department.

I talk to CMOs and agency heads all the time, and they’re all looking to hire new roles with content in the title — it’s a gaping hole in many org charts. We’ve seen many journalists already go into various companies and agencies to run editorial of late, but in the year ahead, Content Marketing Manager, Director of Content or even Chief Content Officer will start popping up more than ever before.

2. Regulations around native advertising will increase.

Last year I was concerned with how copyright issues could emerge as a problem for brands sampling content for their various digital platforms, so I speculated that licensing would become even bigger business. In 2014, I predict more regulationsto come down around native advertising and its balance between being informative or deceptive to consumers.

3. The CPV native bubble will burst.

In 2013, brands jumped on the native advertising bandwagon and were satisfied with measuring “native views” (cost-per-view, or CPVs) of their brand content on publishers’ sites. However, in 2014, CMOs will want to start seeing real ROI, which means we’ll move from CPV to CPA (cost-per-action) models, where native content will be used for lead generation.

Look to see native articles with lead forms embedded, or native articles that drive to demand generation landing pages.

4. Marketers will be more accountable for ROI than ever before.

2014 is the make-it-or-break-it year for proving the value of content and social marketing.

2014 is the make-it-or-break-it year for proving the value of content and social marketing.We’ll start seeing content marketing platforms offer full integration with customer databases and CRMs.

 

This will allow marketers to target prospects in different stages of the funnel, with customized content in each channel. With marketing and sales goals more closely aligned, marketers will finally crack the ROI of content marketing.

5. Brands will streamline vendors and move to a single platform.

With relatively low costs and little IT knowledge required, a lot of marketers blindly signed up for a plethora of vendors and startups they believed could help them capitalize on the trend of content marketing.

In 2014, brands will seek out a clearer, more cost-effective strategy that requires fewer logins and enables them to see the whole picture of their content marketing efforts in one tool. Say goodbye to spreadsheets and manual processes — 2014 will see the emergence of a class of cloud-based, end-to-end content marketing platforms.

Some of this will be the result of overall consolidation: Smaller seed-funded startups may run out of cash, resulting in some shutting their doors, while others will get picked up for relatively cheap prices by the market leaders. For the leaders, we won’t see any major acquisitions in the space, although a few smaller exits similar to the Oracle/Compendium deal should get people excited.

6. LinkedIn will be a go-to news source and a go-to distribution channel.

LinkedIn is here to stay. Not only will it give business publications a real run for their money, it will also capture the majority of distribution budgets for B2B marketers.

With more than 259 million members and 142 million unique visitors a month, LinkedIn is a veritable news site. And with Dan Roth leading its content efforts, we’ll see it continue to dominate. As a result of the size of its audience and the targeting capabilities offered, marketers will continue to pour their distribution budgets into LinkedIn’s sponsored posts product.

7. Everyone will invest in mobile, and it will have to strongly reflect brands.

Recent studies show that 

56% of American adults have a smartphone and 91% have a cellphone

56% of American adults have a smartphone and 91% have a cellphone. Consumer phone usage and smartphone adoption is clearly continuing to rise, and in 2014, content marketers will need to ensure that the massive audiences they’ve built online feel that they’re getting the same brand experiences on smaller screens as well.

 

Brands that haven’t adopted a “mobile-first” mentality will fail, as they’ll miss this enormous, marketable audience. According to Latitude, 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.

8. Europe will get the content bug — big time.

People often ask me what content marketing is like in Europe and the UK, and I can safely say that in 2014 we’ll see exponentially more European companies and agencies tapping into content marketing technologies and solutions.

When you Google “content marketing in Europe,” you get a rather small 178 million returns with very little in the way of best practices, stats and developed content. Now, the same search with “in US” at the end garners 748 million returns with lots of rich content results.

Curiosity is location-agnostic, as is creativity, and we’re excited to see what comes out of the best and brightest in Europe in 2014 and beyond.

9. Agencies will productize content.

In 2014, agencies will be even more organized about their content marketing efforts. We’ll see agencies partner with marketing software vendors to help productize their brand newsroom offerings and provide technology-based solutions to their customers.

Agencies will still manage the process and the tools on behalf of brands, but we’ll see the top agencies use real software to power content creation, distribution and measurement.

10. Distribution budgets will get consolidated.

Distribution is not half the battle; it’s the whole battle. The best content in the world won’t generate a positive ROI without real investment in distribution.

In the past, distribution budgets were separate from content budgets, with media agencies controlling the former. In 2014, I think we’ll see this workflow problem resolved, with agencies and brands getting smarter about consolidating content creation and distribution budgets, making it easy for everyone in the ecosystem.

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Communication : The Negative Effects of Facebook on Communication

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English: Infographic on how Social Media are b...

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Graph of social media activities

English: Graph of social media activities (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Data from April 2011 Editor Survey th...

English: Data from April 2011 Editor Survey that lists Social Media activities (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

facebook

facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)

Among the negative effects of Facebook is how the social networking site is changing the way we communicate. Before I get into that, let me start with a quick story.

In 1963, Ray Kroc appeared on national television to proudly serve up McDonald’s one billionth hamburger. By the time he died 21 years later, just 10 months short of the sale of the 50 billionth burger, he and his company had forever changed the way we eat by bringing fast food to American families.

Recently, another behemoth company forecasted a similar milestone,Image albeit with significantly less fanfare. In April, Facebook indicated in its Form S-1 that it expects to have more than a billion users by year-end. In the same filing, the social media giant also reported that its 901 million existing users post more than 300 million pictures and a staggering 3.2 billion comments every day.

Numbers like these boggle the mind and are just one indication of the fundamental shift that social media has brought about in terms of how people interact and share information. Just as the Big Mac and other fast foods forever changed how and what we eat — and sadly not for the better — Facebook and other social media channels are redefining how and what we communicate with potentially equally neg ative consequences.

Down the Path of the Golden Arches: A Closer Look at the Negative Effects of Facebook

Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has become a popular distraction for some and a bonafide time waster for many, with Americans spending more time on Facebook than any other US website. In fact, according to a Nielsen study, the average American spent more than 14 minutes a day on Facebook in March. That may not sound like much, but over the course of a month it adds up to more than seven hours. Similar to how fast food became habit forming (as addictive as heroine some reports note), social media sites like Facebook appear to have grown into something that we crave just as much if not more.

No matter whether you’re addicted, in a 12-step recovery program, or among the few who have managed to abstain altogether, we are all impacted by the behaviors that companies like McDonald’s and Facebook encourage in our society. In Mickey D’s case, that has meant coming to value convenience, low cost, and potentially taste, over nutrition, with enormous consequences for the health of our country. For Facebook and other social media channels, by contrast, it has meant fundamentally shifting, perhaps even bastardizing, how we communicate.

There’s no lack of examples of how communication has changed as a result of social media. We’ve seen sentences communicating complete thoughts devolve into esoteric sound bites laced with a dizzying array of fragments and acronyms. We’ve watched emoticons replace words as a tool for expressing feelings. Perhaps most importantly, we are witnessing how social media is helping to foster a society that values frequent communication more than meaningful communication. That phenomenon is what has helped Justin Bieber, with his more than 21 million Twitter followers, garner a higher Klout score than the President.

We are now also communicating different types of information that are often are far more personal in nature. We freely like or dislike anything and everything, provide an array of details and images from our private lives, and overshare a variety of information that was once unthinkable for public consumption. Most recently, our friends at Facebook have even given us the ability to share our organ donor information. Just as we’ll gobble up any new item on the menu at McDonald’s, with little regard to what we’re actually eating, we’ll seemingly share any information that Facebook gives us a new and novel way to communicate no matter how personal.

Want Fries with That?

The net impact of these changes remains to be seen. For communicators and content marketers, however, they have at a minimum heralded a paradigm shift in strategy. For example, today our communications need to be shorter and more frequent, since people increasingly value quick hits that allow them to glean important information and then quickly move on. Similarly, our communications need to be far more visual to capture our shrinking attention spans, a reality that is playing itself out in the form of infographics, viral videos, and picture-oriented social media sites such as Instagram. Our content also needs to be more personal to appeal to a new generation that has come to expect access to more intimate information.

These aren’t necessarily bad things and in fact some of them are actually quite good. But then again, I’m sure back in 1963 no one really thought about the implications that a hamburger chain would have on the health of a nation. As social media continues to alter our communication, the long-term implications, particularly for those young enough to never have known anything different, could be significant. Maybe as with fast food, the solution lies in moderation.

So, the next time you’re at McDonald’s, consider passing on the fries. And, the next time you’re on Facebook, think about paying a bit more attention to what you’re communicating and how. After all, the negative effects of Facebook may be far greater than you realize.

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