Recently, the Content Marketing Institute published a compilation of content marketing experts’ predictions for the content marketing industry in 2015. Nine content marketers offered their thoughts on the future of content marketing, but most responses focused on two things: quality and analytics.

Let’s take a closer look at some of their predictions (you can follow the link to read all of the details about their 2015 content marketing predictions).

Quality and Content Marketing in 2015

Kirsten Knipp, Marketing Director at Hubspot, says, “I foresee a continued focus on quality. Over the last five years, marketers have figured out that content is the core engine that drives search on the web. But as more companies become publishers, there’s a real need to ratchet back that volume and increase quality.”

Bill Flitter, CEO and Founder of Dlvr.it, says, “What’s next? Filtering the noise. Remember, noise is relative. Noise is just a lack of relevance. How do we connect the consumers to relevant content and answer their questions? Right now, the push is all about creating content, but is all that content being created really addressing your customers? Are your customers discovering what they need, when the need it?”

David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist and blogger at WebInkNow.com (syndicated through Newstex Authoritative Content) predicts the future of content marketing is about, “Real time. It’s about instant.”

Mark Chatow, Vice President of Marketing for Servio, says, “What we are seeing now is content post-Google Panda. Panda put into black and white that content has to change. It’s not about throwing anything you can on your site. You need to create content that’s engaging and unique, and ultimately shareable and linkable.”

I refer to that “shareable and linkable” content as “shareworthy content” in my book, Content Marketing for Dummies. This is the high quality content that authoritative publishers create. It’s the type of content that adds value to the audience’s lives and makes them want to talk about it and share it with their own audiences. It’s this sharing that helps build brand awareness, recognition, loyalty, and advocacy, and that’s where the long-term power of content marketing comes from.

Analytics and Content Marketing in 2015

Stan Woods, Managing Director of Velocity Partners, says of content marketing in 2015: “The content marketing ninja of 2012 and beyond is someone who knows what great is, but also understands through analytics how to measure and optimize it.”

Kirsten Knipp, Marketing Director of Hubspot, says, “Marketers need to become more analytical. More and more marketers need to go back to Excel 101 and Testing 101. They need to refine their ability to look at data, extract what matters and ‘pivot table’ it.”

April Dunford, Vice President of Marketing for Huawei Enterprise, says, “There is an ever-increasing focus on measurement and monitoring to ensure that we are tying results back to our business objectives (and more specifically, revenue). I hope that this will help us get away from producing crappy ‘click-bait’ that might drive short-term traffic and eyeballs but doesn’t result in revenue.”

Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, Inc., says, “We have to become more accountable about how we measure things.”

Other Content Marketing 2015 Predictions

A few other topics were mentioned in the predictions for content marketing in 2015. Mobile and video will play important roles in content marketing in the coming years. As Rebecca Lieb, Digital Marketing and Media Analyst at The Altimeter Group, says, “Mobile is fast becoming a critical channel.”

I was happy to see that integration was the other hot topic in the 2015 content marketing predictions. The best marketing plan is a fully-integrated plan and that includes content marketing strategies and tactics.

Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, Inc. discusses integration from a different perspective — she sees the need for integration of content marketing activities. She says, “Today marketers look at their activities in a compartmentalized fashion. Lead nurturing is over here. Blogging there. E-book over there. All these things are considered in pieces. Marketers need to figure out how to integrate everything into a cohesive whole rather than focusing on ‘this marketing campaign’ or ‘that webinar.’”

What do you think of these content marketing predictions? Is your content plan ready to leverage upcoming trends?

Image: Hilde Vanstraelen

People who create and publish online content, particularly Authoritative Content publishers, have to continually come up with ideas to create that content. Writer’s block is common and some days it’s hard to get motivated. That’s where a new infographic from Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com can help!

I might be biased because Brian wrote the forward to my book, Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps, but he really knows his stuff when it comes to creating compelling content. His infographic, 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue, was created to show people three specific things:

• How to repurpose existing content in a different media format.
• How to get more bang from your archives.
• How to reach new and different audiences in the process.

The infographic offers some ways to come up with content ideas that you may have thought of already (and even tried) as well as some more creative ideas that can really get you inspired. For example, have you ever thought of what your favorite superhero could add to your content? Brian suggests a blog post title such as, “What Batman Can Teach You about Blogging.” You can do the same thing with television, movies, or books.

As Brian explains, there is nothing wrong with repurposing existing content as long as you add value to the repurposed content. The 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue infographic is the perfect example. The content in this infographic isn’t new. It was originally published in a written guest blog post on Brian’s blog nearly a year ago. With some creative thinking, that content is getting a second life in the infographic shown below.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

Cross-promoting your content on various social media sites is a great way to build your audience and drive traffic to your best content. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the Big 3 of social media marketing and content cross-promotion, but what about Tumblr and Pinterest? These are the two hot social sites that have everyone talking, and they can both be effective tools to expose your content to wider audience.

In Pinterest vs. Tumblr: Which Is Better for Brands, I outline the differences between the two tools as well as the audiences that currently use them. Did you know that Pinterest skews more heavily to a female audience and Tumblr is popular among younger audiences? Clearly, these two sites might not be right for every content publisher, but for some niches, they’re perfect.

Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking site where users save images and videos that they find online on virtual pinboards. Tumblr is more like a multi-media microblogging tool where people publish images, audio, video, quotes, or text in a blog style. Both sites allow sharing and both offer a method for commenting, although Pinterest’s commenting tool is more robust than the one found on Tumblr.

You can use Pinterest to share images from your articles and blog posts that link back to your original content. Create pinboards categorized by the type of content you publish. For example, if you write a blog about state politics, create pinboards for images from events, pinboards for specific political parties, pinboards for areas of government, and so on. Get creative in how you repurpose your content to expose a new audience to it on Pinterest.

On the other hand, Tumblr is handy for publishing multimedia content. For example, you could publish a full article on your website or blog and then share an image, video clip, or quote from that article on Tumblr with a link back to your complete article for people who want to read it. If you publish a podcast, share an audio snippet on Tumblr with a link to the complete podcast for those who want to listen to the entire thing.

It’s important to keep in mind that Pinterest is still very new and you still need to get an invitation to use it. Tumblr has been around for a longer time and already has established its place in the online content and social media world. Both offer great opportunities to spread your content, so request an invite or create a free account and start poking around. Both are easy to use and can be addictive.

You can get all the details about Pinterest vs. Tumblr for brands on the Sprout Social Insights blog, and you can check out my pinboard of brands doing cool things on Pinterest for inspiration. For Tumblr inspiration, SocialFresh put together a list of 60 brands on Tumblr.

Despite what might be happening in the lead-up to the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, there is one thing Americans agree on regardless of age, race, gender, or political party. They think 15-seconds is the acceptable amount of time to be required to view an online ad before they can access free content.

According to a poll of a representative sample of Americans, Poll Position found that 54% of Americans think 15-seconds is the sweet spot for online advertisers and publishers to deliver ads without losing content views. Specifically, survey participants were asked, “When you go online to view free content, what do you think is the acceptable duration of an online advertisement you must view before seeing free content?” The breakdown of results is as follows:

• 54% believe 15 seconds is acceptable
• 12% believe 30 seconds is acceptable
• 4% believe 45 seconds is acceptable
• 3% believe 60 seconds is acceptable
• 27% have no opinion

Poll Position cross-tabulated the results by age, gender, race, and political party, and 15 seconds came out on top for every segment of the survey respondent audience (you can see the poll cross-tabs here).

It’s important to point out that 15-seconds was the shortest duration offered as a response to this poll. It’s safe to assume that had 10-seconds, 5-seconds, and 0-seconds been included, the results would be more interesting. However, for authoritative content publishers, the results of this study are important. If you want people to see your content but also want to put a monetization barrier in front of that content, make sure that barrier is one that visitors are willing to accept and wait through.

How many times have you been on a major media site, found a link to a video that looks interesting, clicked on that link, and been presented with a 30-second or 1-minute ad? It happens to me all the time, and you better believe I need to be extraordinarily interested in the video behind that monetization barrier or there is very little chance that I’m going to stick around. The publisher might make some money, but they’ve lost the chance to keep me on the site, further engage me, and improve long-term results.

Of course, major media sites need to make money, and smaller publishers do, too. The trick is finding the right balance between monetization and continued visitor engagement. What’s the opportunity cost of showing that 30-second ad before the clip of the cute kitten playing piano? Would a 15-second commercial deliver better all-around results? These are the questions publishers should be asking.

With that said, the problem falls back on advertisers who prefer to keep costs low and simply repurpose ads from other media. Until advertisers realize that they’ll get a better return on their investment by changing their ad content to match the online audience behaviors related to pre-roll video ads and other barriers to free content, publishers that need to make money from ads will still display those 30-second ads.

What do you think? How long are you willing to watch an online ad before accessing content that you’re lightly interested in? How about content you’re heavily interested in?

Here’s my answer — if I can Google the topic and get the information faster that way than watching a 30-second ad, you better believe I’m not going to watch that ad just to see the content behind it. 5-seconds, I’ll definitely watch it. 10-seconds, I’ll probably watch it. 15-seconds, I might or might not watch it. 30-seconds, I’ll very rarely watch it. More than 30-seconds, forget it.

Image: Flickr

In a new article, marketing speaker and author David Meerman Scott (whose content is syndicated through Newstex) discusses the practice of “buying” content when its “price” is low and re-selling it at a higher price in what he calls content arbitrage. David defines content arbitrage as follows:

“Content arbitrage involves finding information in one place and revealing it in another to take advantage of temporary differences in the knowledge level of people in those two markets.”

To further explain the concept of content arbitrage, imagine you find breaking news in your industry on a blog. You can quickly write about that news on your own blog, add your expert viewpoint and opinion to it, and share it via Twitter, Facebook, and so on. In other words, you used another person’s content as a tool to communicate and support your own opinions and knowledge.

People do this all the time — both online and offline. Whether you’re verbally sharing a piece of news you heard with friends at work and add your opinions into the discussion or you’re sharing online content in a blog post or other social media update and add your opinions to it, you’ve participated in content arbitrage.

David warns there is a catch when it comes to profiting from content arbitrage. He explains, “With all forms of arbitrage, the potential to profit only exists as long as there’s an exploitable difference between simultaneous markets. It’s real-time data.”

When you think about it, isn’t that how news organizations work, particularly 24-hour cable news networks? They all hear about a breaking story either from mutual sources or through each other’s news reports. The content arbitrage profit for these news organizations comes from adding more details using their journalistic resources or spinning the story to appeal to their specific target audiences. For example, when one news organization breaks a story from the White House,  you can guarantee that all news networks will carry that story, but Fox News will put a very different spin to it than MSNBC will. There is an exploitable difference that news organizations use to their advantage.

Most content publisher leverage content arbitrage opportunities, but as David explains in his article, timing and differentiation are key to getting positive results from it.

What do you think about content arbitrage? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Today, Advertising Age reports that Ladies Home Journal is leveraging the crowdsourcing trend to create content, but the magazine is going about the process in the opposite way that every other brand and company is doing it.

Instead of just leveraging the crowd to create content on the Ladies Home Journal website, the magazine will republish content in its print magazine that visitors originally publish on its website. The goal of the new strategy is being hyped as an effort to attract a younger audience to a print magazine that’s in a very mature market and has a reputation of being for an older audience.

The new strategy will debut with the March 2012 issue of Ladies Home Journal when the magazine’s editors will curate most of the publication’s content from the posts that visitors publish on DivineCaroline.com (a website owned by the same company that owns Ladies Home Journal, Meredith Corp.). Customer stories from that site, the Ladies Home Journal website, the Ladies Home Journal Facebook page, and “other digital channels” will make up the bulk of the print magazine’s content going forward.

The leadership team behind Ladies Home Journal is confident that the reverse crowdsourcing for content model will be a success, and predicts that other print magazines will follow with similar strategies. However, there is growing speculation outside the walls of the Ladies Home Journal offices about how effective this strategy will actually be. For example, how will the content in the magazine be selected? Is it misleading to say the magazine is written by readers if the editors still choose that content in order to fit their agendas (i.e., selling more subscriptions and attracting advertisers)?

Of course, it’s a business first, so naturally, making money comes first. However, there’s a better argument against the reverse crowdsourcing for content model that the Ladies Home Journal is pursuing. What’s the benefit of buying a magazine with content that’s already been published, discussed, and shared online? What added value does republishing reader content from the website in the magazine deliver to customers who purchase the print magazine?

Only time will tell if this business model holds works. Desperate times often call for desperate measures, and the print media industry is certainly desperate. Let’s wait and see a year from now if the Ladies Home Journal strategy to attract a younger audience to its print publication works or ends up going down in media history as a desperate effort that failed. What do you predict?

Image: Manoj Jacob

In a great year-end series, VideoNuze gathered predictions from tech and media experts about the future of online video in 2012.

So far, over a dozen experts have offered their online video predictions for the new year. You can browse through all of them here.

Following are some highlights from well-known companies and the experts behind their online video strategies.

Suzie Reider, YouTube & Google Display Head of Ad Sales

1. Every day will feel like the Super Bowl. YouTube and video-sharing give anyone a ticket to online video success.
2. People will choose the ads they want to watch. Therefore, relevance and creative should improve.
3. More people will watch video on mobile devices.

Read more about Suzie Reider’s predictions.

Ran Harnevo, AOL Senior Vice President of Video

1. Video ad-networks will drive an artificial race to the bottom and cut CPM rates.
2. Cross platform will be the new king. Mobile, tablet, and connected TV will capture more video views overall.
3. Original online programming will finally create real franchises with more large and small players entering the market.

Read more about Ran Harnevo’s predictions.

Erick Hachenburg, CEO of Metacafe

1. Hulu’s ad load will plateau and greater focus will be placed on delivering both advertiser value and a positive user experience.
2.  We’ll finally learn whether YouTube is a real media company. 2012 will be the year that YouTube has to step-up its game for online advertisers or step-out of the media race.
3. Ad networks will become more publisher-friendly.

Read more about Erick Hachengurg’s predictions.

Dave Otten, CEO of LongTail Video

1. The barriers for entry for monetizing online video will continue to fall.
2. Mid- and small-sized sites will play a big role in driving growth in video advertising.
3. Apple will continue to dominate mobile video.

Read more about Dave Otten’s predictions.

Bill Lederer, CEO of Kantar Video

1. Social video solidifies its place in the media mix.
2. The “video agency of record” or agency “video center of excellence” will emerge in 2012. Marketers need help with all aspects of online video and start-ups will emerge in 2012 to provide that help.
3. Video paid content creators and providers will embrace advertising revenue like never before, and more aggressive monetization will lead to a greater need for analytics.

Read more about Bill Lederer’s predictions.

What do you think of the experts’ online video predictions for 2012? What do you predict will happen with online video in the new year? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the future of online video.

Image: stock.xchng

A new research report from LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell tells us that lawyers are creating social media accounts but most of those accounts are practically abandoned after they’re created. In other words, law firms are protecting their names and creating social media presences, but they’re missing the opportunity that social media offers to build relationships and attract new clients.

Of the 110 law firms from around the world who participated in the research study, 85 had created LinkedIn Company Pages. However, a significant number of those firms had created LinkedIn Company Pages and never updated them again. LinkedIn was reported as the most popular social media site for law firms, so the statistics continue to decline as you look at other sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The full breakdown of the number of law firms using social media channels of the 110 firms that responded to the research survey follow:

1. LinkedIn = 85 law firms (77%)
2. Twitter = 35 law firms (32%)
3. Facebook = 32 law firms (29%)
4. YouTube = 12 law firms (11%)
5. Blogging = 9 law firms (8%)
6. Social Media Integration = 8 law firms (7%)

You can see the full infographic below (click and click again to view the image in a larger size) or view the full report here.

It’s important to understand that the law firms that participated in the survey were primarily international firms. It’s highly likely that smaller law firms and independent lawyers are doing a much better job of leveraging the tools of the social web to build their businesses.

The social web offers a place where businesses (including law firms) can establish trust with people and offer helpful and meaningful content. For the legal industry, it would seem that those are areas law firms would want to build. There is a perception of the legal industry as untrustworthy. The social web is the perfect place for a law firm to stand out from a crowded field of similar providers.

Bottom-line, simply creating social media profiles and then never touching them again isn’t going to help law firms. In fact, it could do just the opposite and actually drive people away. By surrounding consumers with useful and meaningful content that they can discuss and share with their own audiences as well as directly with the lawyer who published it, law firms can massage consumer perceptions and build relationships that turn into word-of-mouth marketing and ultimately to sales. Law firms that figure this out and start publishing great content and conversing in two-way conversations across the social web will find themselves far ahead of their competitors in the very near future.

In an insightful blog post this week, Seth Godin (whose popular marketing blog is syndicated through Newstex Authoritative Content) offers his thoughts on the shifting world of media through what he refers to as the “erosion in the paid media pyramid.”

First, you need to understand how Seth defines the media pyramid. He breaks media down into four distinct categories:

• Free: The most prevalent (e.g., movie trailers and free book chapters)
• Mass: Offered for a price but that price is affordable enough that a large audience can access it (e.g., newspapers and books)
• Limited: With a higher price tag, smaller audiences pay for this content (e.g., Broadway shows and small conferences)
• Bespoke: The most expensive content accessible to only a small audience who is willing and able to pay for it (e.g., the most expensive conferences or events)

As Seth explains, free content appears at the bottom of the media pyramid as shown in the image below. It’s the most prevalent and accessible, particularly with the massive number of content creators and amount of free content available online today.

As we all know, the shift from paying for media and content to accessing free media and content is only going to continue. Seth writes in his post:

“The creators aren’t going to go away–they have no choice but to create. The infrastructure around monetizing work that used to have a marginal cost but no longer does is in for a radical shift, though. Media projects of the future will be cheaper to build, faster to market, less staffed with expensive marketers and more focused on creating free media that earns enough attention to pay for itself with limited patronage.”

He’s absolutely right. Publishers that continue to fight against the free content movement will fight a losing battle. If you read my article about the Associated Press restricting its employees from using social media, then you already know that many mass media organizations have yet to understand that they’re focusing their efforts in the wrong places.

What do you think?

Image: Seth Godin

If you’ve been blogging for a few years, then you’ll probably remember back in 2008 when the Associated Press attempted to sue the popular Drudge Report blog for citing AP articles in several blog posts (read more about that here).

Negative backlash made the AP rethink it’s position within a week back in June 2008, but the result was a fee structure that the AP planned to charge bloggers who cited AP content in their posts (read more about that here). Long story short, the entire situation created nothing but negative publicity for the AP.

Fast forward three years later, and the AP is still trying to fight against social media. This time, Twitter is the target.

According to a great article on Gigaom.com (you can read it here), Matthew Ingram shares a story about the AP admonishing reporters for publishing news through Twitter updates instead of saving it to publish in the AP news wire service. Apparently, the AP has a social media policy that prohibits staff members from tweeting about news material before it is published on the traditional news wire.

Ingram reports that the AP’s social media policy extends beyond just tweeting about stories journalists might be working on. AP reporters are not allowed to post their opinions on any social network, including Twitter. They can’t even retweet another person’s Twitter post. You can read about that story here.

On the flip side, the AP’s top competitor, Reuters, has a much more open social media policy for its employees. Ingram writes that Reuters views Twitter and social media sites as a core part of its business rather than competition for its traditional news wire.

I have to agree with Ingram’s thoughts regarding the AP’s social media policies and actions. First, if Twitter is threatening the AP’s entire news service, then the company’s problem is much larger than restricting employee social media activities can repair. Second, if Twitter is a better, faster source for getting credible news, then the AP needs to find a way to catch up and surpass Twitter rather than try to avoid it.

Let’s put it this way — Twitter isn’t going away. Just as newspapers have had to adapt to the way people access information and news as the web has grown, so do news wires. Few businesses are immune to the affects of the web and social media. The AP can’t stop progress, no matter how hard it tries to keep its employees from tweeting.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Flickr