Content marketing

Five celebrity social search takeaways for your content strategy

I spent the best part of the last three years focused on assisting editorial teams in driving traffic through celebrity searches.

It was fast paced, breaking, and quite often absurd. It is also possibly the most transient search vertical of them all, with the fickle nature of celebrity appeal rising and falling in rapid media driven spikes.

In such a rapidly changing and often odd market, you need to be prepared, so here are five celebrity search takeaways that can translate to real life. 

Four ways publishers can address ad blockers

Major internet companies like Google may pleased that the French government told a major ISP that it must stop its automatic filtering of ads for subscribers.  

However, make no mistake about it: the dispute over Free’s ad blocking is a reminder of what’s at stake as more and more consumers seek ways to opt out of online advertising.

Ad blocking software, of course, is not new. Publishers have watched its popularity rise over the years, and while there is debate over just how much revenue publishers lose each year to ad blocking, it’s widely seen as a significant threat.

17 digital marketing and ecommerce trends for 2013 by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein

Following are my personal thoughts on what will be interesting and important in the world of digital marketing and ecommerce for 2013. As is traditional for my trends, there are around seventeen of them.

I haven’t spent too much time on giving extensive justification for any of these; they are based largely on the many conversations I have with industry influencers and practitioners.

Many are really just notes, or bullet points, but I’ve tried to give links to further information if you want to delve deeper. They are in no particular order though I’ve started with the more ‘strategic’ stuff.

As ever, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts, or feel free to post a link to your own trends or predictions. 

Six key questions to ask your prospective SEO agency

Over the last three years I have been involved in many pitches to win new SEO clients and we are often asked how we can really tell if what an agency says it can do is actually true. 

With this major question in mind I thought I’d share with you some of our thoughts and experiences that we think might help you if you do find yourself looking for a new SEO agency. 

This check list is a good list of questions to ask prospecting agencies when in the process of selecting your new SEO agency partner.

Getting started with agile content marketing

Content marketing doesn’t have to be ardous and expensive, agile content marketing makes the content marketing challenge look a whole less daunting.

Content marketing is how the modern buyer comes to know you; you may not know it but your customers are becoming increasingly savvy about your industry and your competitors.

This is mainly due to content marketing, your content isn’t just the copy that appears on your website, it can be found in a variety of guises i.e., social, blogs or meta titles and descriptions within search results.

Build relationships, not links, for SEO in 2013

Having worked in Search marketing for around 7 years now, 2012 felt like the year of ‘blogger outreach’ to me and there were some great examples of how to do it and which brands were doing it well

Here at Confused.com we learnt in 2012 (as did many other brands I’m sure) that outreach is about building relationships not links and with that in mind we hosted a small event in December from which I thought I’d share some of our findings:

Social media in 2013: the year we finally go “beyond the like”

Social media is not the new kid on the block anymore but it’s still a growing channel and 2013 will see a number of changes – or so our industry experts think. Brands are starting to realise the importance of this channel and are looking for real numbers to back up the claims of agencies and social media experts.

The continued growth of content will affect how people use and interact with social media and the beands using it. And now that we can collect more specific and individual data through social media, this content will become even more effective.

The continuing growth of integrated marketing in 2013

With JUMP coming up in New York on January 30, 2013, we’re very interested in what is happening in the world of integrated marketing.

We’re tired of companies working in independent silos and not having the conversations that can save them time and money, as well as create a better customer experience and help grow their business.

The year of content discovery?

You won’t have to travel far in this or any 2013 trend prediction piece to find that some of the most insightful thought leaders are proclaiming “content is King” when it comes to driving success in a digital world. I’m not buying that.

I don’t think content is King. I actually believe that we will in a digital world where convenience is King and content, is, in fact King Kong. And the link between the two is a powerful tool called Discovery. 

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Free Facebook Webinar aimed at MENA marketers as Facebook usage soars

Econsultancy is running a free Facebook webinar for Middle East marketers this week to help companies seeking to embrace the fast-growing social network as an effective marketing tool. 

Research published by Socialbakers last month stated that Facebook grew its user base by 29% in 2012, adding over 10 million new users during the year with 21 new registrations per minute across MENA countries. 

2013: the year of paid content?

Paid content is and has been a big business — if you’re in the right market.

Unfortunately for consumer-oriented news organizations, the right market isn’t their market.

But could that be changing?

19 tools to improve your content marketing strategy

As we wave goodbye to 2012 and say hello to 2013, there’s a good chance, you, like many other people, have been working to put together a content marketing strategy for the new year.

No doubt you’ll have the objectives in place, created a well thought out strategy and work plan as long as your arm.  

It’s that last element I want to help you with in this blog post, by sharing a clutch of tools and services which will save you time, improve your results and give you the freedom to work on the creative aspects of your campaign.