How To Develop Online Video Strategies

By Bill Drolet, Senior Vice President of Video Platform Sales at NTENT

It’s often said that content is king and distribution is queen, but platitudes are a “moral without a fable.” That’s because relevance is actually king. Consider that there are now over 188 million unique monthly viewers for online video in the U.S. alone. Not every viewer is appropriate for your brand, and your message isn’t relevant to everyone. It’s important to define your audience, position ads accordingly, and to plan an effective distribution strategy.

Identify and reach your audience. An audience is a specific group of buyers within your target market. It is defined by demographics, personal interests, social media platform preferences, online behavior, or the relevance of your product the hot buttons of the group. Once an audience is identified, the next step is to determine how to reach your audience.

A distribution strategy is a plan to place your video content -- paid, owned or earned – where your audience is online. The market for online video now rivals prime-time television, and at least one Nielsen ISG survey finds that it offers brands greater recall of an ad. So, there’s an opportunity for your strategy to get broader reach than possible through traditional online advertising media or search engines.

Read the full story - How To Develop Online Video Strategies

The Secret Behind Your Mobile Concierge: Semantic Search

Imagine that you’re visiting South Philadelphia for the first time. You probably know that there are great cheese steaks nearby, but what about your other culinary preferences like Italian or Vietnamese. Luckily, your smart device has a sense of all the local flavors around you and notifies you based on your geo-location and historical foodie preferences. The power of pairing of semantic search, social preferences and geo-location is already making that deep level of localization possible.

Smartphones and tablets are an excellent resource for getting the most out of the world around you. Apps like Yelp and Vurb can find popular local restaurants, and some search engines have enhanced local content. However, it’s still necessary to know what you are looking for, and isn’t optimal for today’s on-the-go consumers.

That’s beginning to change as new search technologies take into account social preferences and mobile specific data. Apps, like Jybe (acquired by Yahoo in 2013), are leading the way in this new personalized world. Imagine, someone who’s walking the streets of New York could immediately receive a recommendation notification and know that they are close to a top Indian restaurant, a street fair, or that there are discounted tickets available for a Broadway play nearby. How is this possible? Semantic search technologies are taking into account various data points and your geo location in order to push out and deliver “personalized” results: your preferences based on your items you have liked via your social profiles, your friends preferences (as indicated on your social profiles) and actions within applications like Fandango, Yelp, Open Table and your calendar, etc.

Those scenarios enrich the user’s lifestyle, and are the perfect opportunity for advertisers and search engines to personalize the web experience.

Semantic Search Today

Semantic search, which uses machine intelligence to determine user intent by deciphering the meaning of words in real-time. It’s already enhancing the world’s leading search engines so that users can receive answers instead of a list of results. It’s not yet augmented reality, but the concept is similar: machines understand the context of words so that they can serve up highly relevant content for the end user (including sponsored messages). The inclusion of Geolocation data dramatically broadens those capabilities.

Semantic and location based technologies will become more important as consumers demand access to relevant information in real-time in a format that is specific to the type of device they are on while intelligently utilizing personal preferences. That’s not a new trend, but now search technology providers are racing to provide smarter content experiences to meet consumer demands. Whether you are in app or chatting on your mobile device, it’s about exposing the most relevant and meaningful content to the user.

New Monetization Opportunities

There are big revenues at stake as mobile ad spending is expected to increase by over 50% this year and with a staggering projection of 200 billion mobile queries to  be performed worldwide over the next five years. Mobile devices are quickly moving to become the main platform through which consumers access the web. Whoever can control the query will have a better chance of controlling the revenue generated via mobile search. Advances in search are presenting marketers with an alternative to ineffective banner ads, which may not be relevant to what the user wants or where they are located at a given moment in time. Banner ads are very unpopular with end users – especially on mobile devices – and make little sense to be included with augmented reality apps. It’s really about empowering the user and super serving them based on known interests and preferences.

That is where personalized content discovery and relevant experiences  come into play. Localization, paired with personalized content, increases the odds that the consumer will be engaged. Ad tech providers that position brands where their content is relevant, based on what consumers are engaged with, will be winners, and so will applications that offer the same value proposition through paid services.

The smart mobile experience is on the cusp of becoming more in tune with the lives of users and eventually, their surroundings. Search technology that understands user intent and location services will power the coming generation of apps and will complement whatever is next.

 

How is content marketing useful for B2B?

The buyers’ journey continues to evolve.  In a recent report by Harvard Business Review: Winning at Sales in a Buyer-Empowered World confirms what many already know:

“Prospective buyers in business-to-business settings have completed 57 percent of their due diligence work before engaging with your sales representatives.”

Where is all this “due diligence” happening? Online of course and if your online presence consists primarily of content explaining the features and benefits of your offerings, you are missing the evolution.  Today you have to be in the business of creating informative, educational AND engaging content that supports all areas of your customers’ information journey.  If you do it right, you will position yourself as the expert in your field and become a sought out resource for your industry.  When creating content that is geared for the B2B marketplace, there are some important things to keep in mind.

Be Relevant, Dive Deeper

You should make every effort to produce quality content targeted towards a specific topic that will showcase your expertise and foster interest amongst your audience. In other words, the content should dive deeper and be more “educational” than in a typical B2C approach. 

B2B Content Creation Tips:

• Focus your content creation on core issues facing your marketplace and address it thoroughly


• Start with the problem, then provide actionable solutions that are backed up by research, theory or real case studies


• Be aware of the different stakeholders (buyer personas) within your target audience and craft messaging that appeals to each of them


• Create an editorial calendar with varied ideas and topics that address both the buyers’ and customers’ journey

Extend Your Reach

Now that you have laid the foundation for your content generation activities, next work on a game plan for how to extend the reach of your content outside of the properties that you own.  An obvious place to start is LinkedIn, as it is the perfect B2B setting where people are actually looking for new content to read, engage and debate with.  Even if you have been using LinkedIn for a while, here are some important points to keep in mind:

• Take another pass at your company page, make sure you have a compelling profile and that you are taking advantage of all social platform features


• Discover relevant groups and join the conversation to make deeper connections with industry influencers


• When you are ready to post, do so in an educational fashion, not a blatant self-promotional way


• Be sure to leverage the network of your employees on LinkedIn by encouraging them to repost your articles; this is not only good for the company, but also for their professional profile

Another great place to turn to gain additional reach for your content is to establish relationships with leading publications in your industry.  Why? Because this is where your customers are already going to educate themselves on the latest information impacting their industry, and by having your content/brand associated in these environments you’ll gain tremendous “brand rub”.  Many of these publications also use content marketing platforms that place your articles adjacent to relevant content on the publisher’s site. The best part about these services is that you can quickly get your content promoted to a targeted, engaged audience with minimal effort.

Time to Dive In

The primary goal of implementing a B2B content strategy is to create a supply chain of content that feeds your industry and positions your organization as the thought leader and the “GoTo” source for insight.  If you do not take this leadership position, it is likely that one of your competitors will fill this information void – so do not be afraid to take the leap!

8 Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

There are many things to think of when creating a marketing strategy—it takes careful planning to do it well, and by avoiding these simple things, you’ll surely increase your chances of content marketing success.

1. Avoid content that has been done millions of times. Although it may look like it worked for a few other companies, it has already been done. The last thing people want to do is read the same article twice! Be original and tailor your content to what your specific audience wants to hear or know.

2. Avoid moving forward without an idea of what’s ahead (Do your research!). If you dive into a pool without knowing how deep it is, you may end up getting hurt. Don’t create content if you haven’t done your research. Plan ahead and see if there is a spot in the vast Internet for your content, if not, rethink your strategy.

3. Avoid useless content. It needs to be entertaining and useful. People don’t want to read something that doesn’t give them some sort of benefit. The benefit can vary depending on what the content tries to do, but it should aim to be informative, entertaining and actionable.

4. Don’t forget your audience—create a persona. Knowing and understanding who you are talking to can make your content marketing that much more effective by tapping into what resonates with your audience. You can communicate on a more personal level with them. Take this concept a step further by creating a persona or personas. You build trust with your audience in this way because it is easier to trust a person, than a faceless company.

5. Don’t assume everyone is in the same part of the buying cycle. When creating content it is important to target the audience based on what part of the buying cycle they may be in. Some may be at the top of the marketing funnel, and some nearing the end. So by routinely creating content that appeals to each stage, you’ll be capturing the attention of a new group each time! Awareness, interest, purchase, and then repeat!

6. Don’t just use one format. (Think: videos, slides, text and more!) Not everyone learns or enjoys consuming content in the same way. Try using a variety of formats! Be creative with your content; make a video this week and a slide show next week.This serves two purposes, one it makes your content more appealing, but secondly, it repurposes it to give you more bang for your buck!

7. Don’t forget to get your content out there! You need to have a distribution strategy, of course you can put it on your website or blog, but if you want new visitors, you need to distribute your content to new mediums. Plan out how you will distribute your content in multiple ways. Think about using distribution platforms that target your audience like: StumbleUpon, Tumblr, NTENT and Ampush. These platforms will help you reach a scalable audience driving new eyeballs to your content.

8. Don’t forget to promote, promote, promote! When you hit that magical publish button and release your content to the World Wide Web, that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is going to see it—there is content everywhere! Promotion, via social media, paid advertisements or word-of-mouth will give your content the boost it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

Remember by focusing on your audience, you’ll win them over with content that they’ll want more of!

Have more to add to our list? Place them in the comments below! 

Article written by: Thomas Bourus, Marketing Coordinator

Yes, Small Brands CAN Become Video Marketing Superstars

Content marketing isn't just for for big brand budgets. Small and    medium sized businesses can also leverage it with well-    planned video marketing campaigns that resonate with audiences, and help generate awareness and boost engagement.

There are numerous examples of big companies using this tactic, but there are notable exceptions when it comes to smaller brands. A law firm in Savannah, Georgia, managed to rise above the noise of over 900 Yellow Pages listings with a viral video that’s been watched by millions and discussed in national media. The spot was controversial but generated a lot of attention in the local market.

Read the full story: Small Brands Can Become Video Marketing Superstars 

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10 Content Marketing Insights that will Shake Up Your Strategy

Marketers from all around came together on July 24^th, 2014 at the Content Reimagined event to discuss the future of content in New York City. The event showcased panels, presentations and roundtable discussions attended by today’s leading content marketers and industry experts.  The roundtable discussion, presented by NTENT, was one of the most attended sessions. During this session, marketing experts came together to stimulate and discuss ideas, share information and insights to some of the key questions facing the world of content marketing:

1. How can you get the brand message across through storytelling?


2. Where do you think content marketing will be in two years’ time?


3. How can brands build trust and engagement through social and content marketing platforms?


4. What are the best ways to demonstrate value (ROI) via your content marketing strategy?


5. What are you currently doing to help you stand out from the crowd?


6. What do you feel is your greatest challenge when formulating a content strategy?


7. Is there anything you’re currently experimenting with that you think might have some traction in the future?

The discussion revealed impactful insights about the world of content marketing:

• The key factors between making long form and short form content are that, short form can capture a reader’s attention, but long form can keep them more deeply engaged.


• There is tension between content strategy and the deeper level of audience segmentation needed for a content strategy foundation. Both of these are valuable and needed.


• The content of today is all about amplification strategy—create content that is in the consumers taste and not solely based on your own channels.


• Native advertising and content marketing are increasing faster than ever before, but traditional advertising is not going away.


• Marketing and sales are becoming more consumer guided in almost every step of the process.


• The knowing of why consumers will share content is crucial to creating content, and getting it out there.


• Data visualizations are becoming more and more popular as a great way to create content and display content.


• Soon there will be no such thing as non-interactive, non-social content, and the way they are displayed will be based on the user’s choice in devices.


• Content should be less promotional and more informative


• Present your authority, if they don’t trust the source—your content won’t be given a second glance.

Amongst other noteworthy panels at the event was a presentation by Sarah DaVanzo, Chief Cultural Strategy Officer of Sparks & Honey, with a discussion on how technology is shaping the future of content, and more. This event’s debates and discussions revealed many great insights that will benefit the entire industry! That is why we are sharing them with you today.

For a full recap of the even take a look at Custom Content Councils Blog

If you have any questions about the event, or even comments/insights let us know! We at NTENT are excited for what’s ahead in the world of content!