Category: Curated Content

A lot has been written about the importance of email marketing.

And that’s for good reason: if we look at the ROI, email is the best-performing channel, with much higher conversion and retention rates than social media.

Email marketing is like a headed cabbage. It might seem like a simple concept, but it has many layers. Anyone who wants to become great at email marketing has to understand multiple concepts and juggle many skills at a time.

In this post, I’ll walk you through 10 areas of expertise that are essential to email marketing, and give useful tips for each one.

I’ve also prepared a special bonus for over-achievers at the end of the post, so be sure to read all the way through to the end.

1. Deliverability

If your email doesn’t get delivered, it doesn’t get opened. If it doesn’t get opened… well, you know the rest.

Making sure your emails get to their final destination is the first ess… Read More

Digital content marketing is reaching maturity. Companies have a pressing need to ensure that their content marketing strategies and campaigns keep up with the times.

More importantly, it is necessary to remember that great content is great content. The kind of technology you have in place, or the systems you implement, don’t matter if your content is not resonating with your target audience.

Digital marketing is advancing and evolving, just the same way traditional publishing evolved decades ago. Content marketing will follow the same trajectory. The only significant difference is the speed at which things will change. Many digital brands, in a bid to be more efficient, forget to be human.

Whether you write on stone tablets or papyrus scrolls or are using augmented reality to pass your message; it must be relevant and interesting enough to motivate a desired reaction from the customer.

From a branding perspective, generating and distributing compelling content via social media is not just important but necessary. The key to creating a bright future for content marketing on social media is to use modern approaches that embrace being human.

Below I … Read More

Social media is constantly evolving.

It’s no longer just a place for your family and friends to share old and embarrassing photos of you every Thursday.

As a marketer, you need to learn how to properly leverage these platforms to your advantage. Being active on social media is huge, and it’s absolutely necessary for your survival.

But that alone won’t automatically make you successful. You also need to stay up to date with the latest marketing trends and apply them to your business.

Today, marketing and social media go hand in hand. As we near the midway point of 2018, I’ve taken the time to identify the top social trends of the year to date.

I analyzed data from previous years and determined what trends saw a steady incline. Plus, even though the year isn’t over yet, I was able to see which new developments were the most prominent in these early months.

I predict that these trends will continue in the coming year. It’s important for you and your brand to stay on top of things right now.

1. Live video continues to thrive

Live video content made big waves in 2017. In one of my previous blog posts, I explained that you should jump on the live video bandwagon.

It should come as no surprise that this continues to be a popular trend in 2018.

In fact, live video content has become so popular that roughly 95% of brand executives say it will be a crucial part of their 2018 marketing strategy, according to … Read More

Wondering how to create more effective Facebook campaigns? Have you considered including customer success stories in your Facebook ads? In this article, you’ll learn how to create a Facebook ad funnel using case studies and customer testimonials. Why Use Case Studies and Testimonials in Facebook Ads? In Facebook marketing, people often make the same mistake: […]

This post How to Build a Facebook Ad Funnel Using Customer Testimonials first appeared on Social Media Examiner.

… Read More

Posted by willcritchlow

It should be quite obvious for anyone that knows me that I’m not a lawyer, and therefore that what follows is not legal advice. For anyone who doesn’t know me: I’m not a lawyer, I’m certainly not your lawyer, and what follows is definitely not legal advice.

With that out of the way, I wanted to give you some bits of information that might feed into your GDPR planning, as they come up more from the marketing side than the pure legal interpretation of your obligations and responsibilities under this new legislation. While most legal departments will be considering the direct impacts of the GDPR on their own operations, many might miss the impacts that other companies’ (namely, in this case, Google’s) compliance actions have on your data.

But I might be getting a bit ahead of myself: it’s quite possible that not all of you know what the GDPR is, and why or whether you should care. If you do know what it is, and you just want to get to my opinions, go ahead and skip down the page.

What is the GDPR?

The tweet-length version is that the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is new EU legislation covering data protection and privacy for EU citizens, and it applies to all companies offering goods or services to people in the EU.

Even if you aren’t based in the EU, it applies to your company if you have customers who are, and it has teeth (fines of up to the greater of 4% of global revenue or EUR20m). It c… Read More