Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.
Infographics can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends and this is what made them a powerful marketing tool for businesses.
Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.
Infographics are easy to understand, to consume and to share. On Twitter, LinkedIn und StumbleUpon Infographics get more retweets than other content.
Marketers love Infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about the company’s products and services.
B2C and B2B also love infographics as they explain sophisticated facts in a very easy understandable way.
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
The most popular Infographics are about business with about 12.7%, technology with about 10% and social media with about 9%.
As infographics are able to explain sophisticated topics in an easy way they are very popular for technology.
Infographic: The State of Infographics
What are your experiences with infographics? Tell me in the comment box below.
Content and social media have become successful ways to get attention from future buyers.
Content creation, marketing and content distribution in social media are proven ways to make interested people aware of your business.
Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.
When people want to buy products and services they turn to the web, to search engines like Google, Yahoo, social media and their friends and relatives to get information and recommendations about products and services.
Original content builds you trust, customer loyalty and can position your business as trusted experts in your field. It offers the so called value ad for customers
Content marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers to their products and services.
By publishing interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites and content curators will link to you which increases your Page Rank and improves your search engine visibility also!
So when you publish expert content on the web you will be recognized as an expert in your field.
On the web you are what you publish… Think a minute what do you publish on the web and in social media? … Exactly! That’s what you are on the web!
If you miss the opportunity which content marketing offers to you, your business will vanish in the dust.
The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog.
Recent and future customers can interact this way with your business. You show expertise and offer valuable information to solve your audience’s problems. This gains trust.
Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:
1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads
A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!
When I communicate in Facebook and Twitter, then I like to share interesting and valuable content.
Sometimes there are users in my network who make the impression they are bothered through this information. Social media is for connection and for communication. People who don’t want to be “bothered” by information which they don’t like for this moment should take into account that maybe this information they don’t like at this moment can benefit other people.
Social media is a democratic way of communication and this means that everybody is free to publish any information which can benefit others.
Not each piece of content which a business or a private person publishes in the social media channel is of interest or value for all. But the more content and information is published the higher are the chances that under this mass of content parts exist which benefit other people.
To publish and to share content is a sign of generosity. And if there is content or any information you don’t like than you are free to express your personal opinion on this, but keep in mind your opinion must not be universally applicable.
Content sharing is an essential part of knowledge and communication and improves the online reputation.
Infographic: Social Sharing Trends
What do you think, how does content sharing in social media benefits you?
We live in a customer centric time powered through social media and the rules of marketing and PR has dramatically changed.
The customer chooses by himself through research on search engines like Google, with the help of friends, relatives and his social networks which product to buy and which not.
Then it counts what and if he can find your business on the web.
Marketers need to understand that most people do not go online to buy something. The primarily go online to research for products and services. This is valid for B2C and B2B!
Businesses who publish and share content on the web do not only increase the number of “digital outpost” but moreover increase their visibility and build trust with the future customers. Trust is the main motivation to buy. When your audience trusts you, then you they are willing to do business with you.
Trust can only be build with a long term approach, because what you publish reflects what and who you are.
With great content you position your business and the people of your business who create the content as trusted experts in your field. Content Marketing is great to build your online reputation.
Here are some marketing tips you can use right away.
Give away free content
Give away free content in form of a corporate blog where you write about topics your audience is most interested in. You can get great ideas for blog articles when you go through email and support requests. This will give you a ton of possible blog article topics.
You can also take a camera and explain a task, for example how to use one of your machines and what to take care of. Or you can use photos and testimonials of satisfied customers and publish them too.
You need to invest time/ money to produce content
To find the time to produce remarkable content is the most common problem business face. But as you need to spend time for your business you also need to understand that marketing and content creation is an important part of your lead generation. Therefore you need to set time free to produce remarkable content which will attract new customers to your business.
No matter if you do it by your own or you hire an Inbound Marketing Agency, content marketing is not free. You have the choice, do you want to invest your time or do you want to set a marketing budget and hire a professional Inbound Marketing Agency.
Give away GREAT content
Great content is valuable. It is worth reading and sharing it. Therefore you need to be specific with information which should benefit your future customers. Don’t be afraid to give away “secrets” because this kind of content attracts the most people. And be the end you are the professionals and the future customer will turn to you when he is ready to buy.
Infographic: The Rise of Content Marketing
Six great reasons to consider content marketing to generate more business
Companies who operate a corporate blog on frequent base get …
…up to 55% more Traffic than companies who do not blog
…up to 97% more Inbound Links than companies who do not blog
…up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines than companies who do not blog
…up to 25x times more business leads than companies who do not blog
Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.
Every businesses which ignores these facts will vanish in the dust of today’s networked and quick economy and that’s good.
As many marketers and businesses I use Slideshare, DocStoc and other document hosting sites to upload content to make it available to different audiences.
For a couple of years now I used DocStoc to upload more than hundred documents for the reason of content marketing which in exchange brought me a small amount of interested visitors to our website and blog.
Today I went again to upload information to several document hosting sites and also on DocStoc. After I have done my upload successfully I discovered that only thirty documents are visible in my documents library.
I try to research what happen with the other documents which I have uploaded in the past years. Because all documents uploaded on other document hosting sites are still there, visible and deliver targeted traffic to our blog and website.
I was not able to find my remain articles so I decided to send an support request to DocStoc to clear what happen with my document where I have put time and effort to produce ant to upload to DocStoc.
Here is the email I have sent to DocStoc:
Several hours later I received a response mail from DocStoc:
Yes, you read it right. By the way you are able to read, obviously “Jane” from DocStoc was not…
DocStoc deleted my account!
Nobody asked them to do so. “Jane” from DocStoc didn’t answer my support request but deleted my work.
When I started out with document hosting sites, my first choice was the market leader Slideshare, which has been acquired from LinkedIn several weeks ago. After some research I discovered further document hosting sites and registered there to spread the inBlurbs content, like whitepapers, articles and press releases.
We use a paid Slideshare account which offers also a lead generation and analytics feature. As I used Slideshare and the other document hosting sites like issuu.com and scribd.com I never discovered any problems.
Marketing Tip: Ensure that sources where you invest time and effort to spread content are reliable to not waste your time.
Did you had the same experiences with DocStoc?Post them here in the comment section below.
——————————————————————————————-
UPDATE 06/22/12:DocStoc Restored my account. Thanks DocStoc.
Generation Y, young, digital-savvy consumers, are the 18- to 34-year-old age group which has grown up with internet and social media. They communicate about product and services with their friends on social networks. They read and write online reviews and are more likely to recommend products.
They have higher wages and are more likely to spend their money on luxury goods as well.
A survey done by American Express Business Insights find out that Generation Y increased their spending 31% in 2011 over 2010.
Famous brands have discovered this trend and are more active their where Generation Y is around on the web. This is about B2C.
But how about B2B and what can they use this information for?
As Gen. Y goes older they will get more influential jobs and positions in companies and this is what makes them interesting for a B2B approach.
For you if you are in B2B, you should follow the examples of the big consumer and luxury brands and establish your outposts on the web and in social media.
As those Gen. Y users actually do not have influential positions they are an interesting community for you and your human resources to get new talent for now. This also gives you the opportunity to play
You should build a strong network all over the coming years, establish your business as a trusted and reputable source and grow awareness for your B2B activities.
This will let you enough time to learn their interests and to learn their way life, so you can speak their language when it comes to do business with them. This knowledge and the existing connections will make you business much easier within the next twenty years.
Your today’s activities will be your investment in your businesses future. In the first step you improve your human resources and get in touch with talent where they are around on the web and in social media. And for second you learn a lot about their interests and what they appreciate and what they do not like.
Infographic: WHO ARE THE MILLENNIALS?
Marketing takeaway tip: Improve you online presence by become active in social media. Start publishing valuable target content through a blog, video, eBooks, and whitepapers. Improve your website and make it a great marketing hub to communicate with your audience and to attract Gen. Y job seekers for your business.
An increasing number of companies like Intuit, Sysco, Cisco, GE Healthcare and AT&T are using social media for effective business lead generation.
A recent study from Sagefrog Marketing Group shows how companies have learned to leverage social media. Leveraging social media for branding and building awareness helps B2B companies.
4 Ways how companies can leverage social media:
• Increase brand awareness
• Humanize B2B companies
• Establish as thought leader
• Connecting with customers and prospects
What sites, tactics and strategies are B2B marketers including in their social media outreach?
To do their social media outreach B2B marketers include professional networking sites like LinkedIn which have proven to be an effective way to generate business leads. Furthermore they utilize social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also which are helping them to reach customers in new ways.
“67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.” “47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.”
Online Marketing strategies like banner ads have been replaced through proven buyer persona oriented content creation which also brings better ROI than pay per click marketing (PPC).
A corporate blog has become the number one content marketing tool for companies. The importance of blogging is growing and people are adding nearly 3 million blogs per month. [Technorati 2011 State of the Blogosphere Report]
In this report, Technorati shows that 8% of the corporate bloggers which responded to blog full-time as part of their job or are contracted to blog full-time for a company and that 13% of entrepreneurs responded to blog for a company or organization they own.
Studies show that companies who operate and update a corporate blog frequently have 55% more website visitors. From those companies 57% which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.
There is no question content marketing, corporate blogging, is definitely a revenue driver for B2B companies.
Content Marketing has become a significant part of online marketing strategy. Content Marketing has proven to be the best and most cost effective way to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers.
The most popular ways of Content Marketing are blogging, social media and video. Studies show that 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog get customers through their blogging effort!
4 Reasons to start a corporate blog:
1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads
Social Media Marketing has become a powerful tool to spread remarkable content to reach a wide audience.
For companies who engage in social media and show presence in these channels can open wide opportunities to get in touch with their audience. This leads to an increase of credibility and unfiltered feedback of the target audience and can lead to an improvement of products and services.
New studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media. Studies also show that companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.
7 Reasons to start your social media marketing:
1. Increase customer perception in the marketplace
2. Build long term relationship with customers and partners
3. Can respond to customers in real-time
4. Taylor products and marketing campaigns based on customer preferences
5. React and resolve on negative buzz in real-time
6. Decrease costs of marketing
7. Improved time to market for products and services
Most people think they need to be Steven Spielberg to make a video to put it online to get a positive impact for their business. But this is not true.
You do not need fancy equipment. The only thing you need is a video camera and for the beginning it can be the one from your smart phone.
The most successful video examples come from ordinary people who could not even be considered amateurs. To become successful with your video marketing, with video content, there is only one secret: Just go and do it, do as many video as you can. Publish it and let your audience judge.
6 Reasons to start your video marketing:
1. 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors
2. 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor
3. 3-minute average time spent on pages with videos
4. 157% increase in search engine traffic
5. 100% increase in unique visitors
6. 63% increase in page views
Infographic: Content Marketing
—What do you think about content marketing? Are you doing one or all three or other content marketing strategies?
Studies show that people surf on websites for about three hours from their mobile devices compared with one hour from their personal computer. Studies also show that actually about 260 million mobile devices are in use globally and this number is growing in a strong pace.
There is no question that growth in the B2C sector is much higher than in B2B. But keep in mind; consumers are also employed in companies can also be future B2B client. But only when you give the opportunity to know you and your company, means to offer a way to access your company information from a mobile device.
Now the question occurs how companies who are B2B oriented embrace these facts and how they plan to tune their marketing to stay competitive by simply being accessible through mobile devices, being accessible mobile for actual and future customers who research from their mobile devices for products and services your business also has to offer?
There are several indicators to keep an eye on the mobile marketing way.
1. The mobile marketing spending is increasing.
2. Smartphone’s have become state of the art and are dominating the mobile world.
3. Tablet pc demand is also increasing.
4. Mobile website optimization becomes more important.
5. Location based mobile marketing has become a powerful way to connect with customers.
6. Customers demand accessibility of information’s when they want and where they want.
Mobile usage is increasing and marketers must understand how their target audience is researching for information on the web. And they should create content to meet the needs of consumers which research the mobile way
Some stats:
- It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. (Source: CTIA.org)
- There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs. (Source: Jupiter)
Infographic: Mobile Marketing B2B
– How do you deal with the increasing damand of customers to access your website on mobile devices? I am looking forward to your comment.
The average internet user is watching 30 minutes of video online daily! These people mostly lookout for entertainment.
This opens wide opportunities for your business to get your products and services in front of potential future buyers when they are looking.
The use of online video is growing as people also increasingly watch videos from their mobile devices.
Videos made as product pitches are not a good bet to attract interested people. Also image videos do not work as a potential viral marketing tool.
Your business should use online video to inform and to entertain your audience. Take care to also optimize your video for mobile. As the smart phone use grows you should keep in mind that these users are also able to see your videos on their mobile devices. Here is an interesting article about video sizes.
Smartphone Trends Infographic:
For information / education: You can show your products in action or explain product features in a more understandable way through video. Let your satisfied customers talk about your products and publish and market those videos everywhere on the web.
Watch this video:
For communication: You can do a video blog, where you instead of to write articles can do videos. Steve Garfield’s video blog.
Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the Internet’s first video bloggers, Garfield began experimenting with the technique in 2002 and launched his own video blog on January 1, 2004.
For entertainment: Nobody says that a product video needs to be boring! You can be creative and do an entertaining product video which people like and share.
Watch this video:
If you have a lack of ideas just crowd source your video to your audience, for example to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
Do a contest for the best crowd sourced video! So you can create a buzz on the web, get a lot of attention from your target audience, a ton of creative videos online which mention your brand and can lead further interested people to your business.
Online Video Facts Infographic:
The easiest way for you to profit from online video for your business is to do videos by yourself and publish them in your corporate blog on Youtube, Facebook and other videos channels on the web.
You can simply start your video by using the camera you already have. This can be the cam from you smart phone or any other cam you have. Start doing videos of your company and your products. Ask your collages to explain one of your products in plain English and upload, add a descriptive title, tag and describe this video to help search engines to index it and your audience to find it.
Embed it to your website, write a blog post about the video topic and embed it in your corporate blog. Market it on your social media channels and ask for comments and opinions.
Than do the next video and so on.
Don’t try to do a perfect video. There is no such thing like a perfect video on the web!
With the time you will get a better routine and your videos will become better and better. But this will only happen if you start doing them.
— How do you use online video for business? I am looking forward to your comment below.
Groups can be a great place to get In touch with your audience. But which groups make sense and which are a simple waste of time?
Most social networks offer groups where you can become a part of the conversation. But do you need to be a part of every conversation and every group?
Today I got some updates from my LinkedIn Groups I am participating and one group is about venture capital.
Especially in venture capital groups are many people who offer financing and in the past I often have posted the question “does anybody get any investment for their business” there?
The people who answered stated that they even did not get any response from those “Business Angels” when trying to reach them. Seems not to be a vlauble source for anything.
How do you find Social Media Groups which are usable for your business?
First of all, potential clients can be everywhere! And the best way to attract attention for your business is to be part of the conversation and to publish share worthy content!
Take your time to go through potential Social Media Groups to find out which one offers the best interaction and in which one interesting conversations are happen.
If you are a member of a group where not much conversation is happen than look further and leave this group.
There is a simple rule: The more people are in a group and the more interaction is happen the better are your chances to participate and to get seen!
Check how many members are in a group. The more the better. Look out for groups of about 300+ participants.
Register with this group and listen to the conversation. If you have something valuable to contribute than do your statement.
If the group you are member of is not very active, than look out for more active groups, where you can increase your visibility and leave this one.
During the time you will learn which social media groups are valuable for your business and which are not. Simply invest your valuable time there where you get the most out of it.
What are your experiences with social media groups? How do you choose your groups?
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Today the Iconix Brand Group, have announced ‘PEANUTS’ launches major digital and social media expansion. They are expanding into mobile gaming, e-books, Facebook and digital apps worldwide.
With his move the Iconix Brand Group want to reach his consumer market where they are around. The offer this kind of freemium games for smart phones and tablets based on the ‘PEANUTS’ characters.
Here the ‘PEANUTS’ show your business how to reach your target audience laser targeted in social media through mobile gaming, e-books, Facebook and digital apps.
The ‘PEANUTS’ have accompanied generation of fans and are famous worldwide. Now you maybe think “my brand is not known worldwide” and maybe this is true but when you do not expand your marketing and communication to social media where your target audience is “worldwide” you will not evolve with your brand recognition in the future.
What Iconix Brand Group is doing here is to be there where there target audience is in social media with the set of digital tools to fit into any taste of possible users out there.
They offer ‘PEANUTS’ related mobile gaming for people who enjoy playing with the ‘PEANUTS’, e-books to read about them, Facebook to connect with likeminded and digital apps to interact!
That’s what they simply do is to engage with their audience and get attention. The mobile market and mobile gaming are growing massively and studies show that users are about three (3) hours active on their favorite social media through mobile devices compared with one (1) hour on their pc.
EBooks are enhanced content and content marketing is a way to reach target audiences the smart way. Furthermore eBooks can become viral by be given way from one to another person. So the brand message is spreading in a powerful way.
Facebook has about 750 million users at the time of this writing this post. Facebook is not anymore a playground of college students only. It has evolved to an effective way for brands to reach and to interact with their target audience.
The possibilities of digital apps are limitless. Facebook apps are an inexpensive and reliable way to get the brand in front of the target audience. They encourage community interaction and can be used to measure the brand impact.
Any business can profit of going piggyback with social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and several other social networks.
Several companies like Goupon have proven that connection to social media directly relates to their business growth.
The content marketing strategy is an emerging and proven one to reach target audience the sustainable way. Good content in form of EBooks, Blog Articles, Pictures, Videos, Infographics, etc. can spread like a wildfire and attract attention for business.
So what can you do to reach your audience more effective on social media?
Do you have any idea? Yes or no? But your customers are telling you daily how to reach them.
Go through your support requests and customer emails and you will discover how you can utilize social media for your business.
Read carefully which kind of problems and obstacles your customers face daily and offer a solution. This can be an eBook, a video series or a Facebook app!
Jumpstart your creativity and you will come up with a great digital tool which solves your target audience’s problems.
Make yourself relevant to your audience!
Gain trust and credibility by just being there where they are and to help when they need you!
Marketing takeaway Tipp: The more of your target audiences problems you solve the more they will talk about you and this will attract more interested prospects to your products and services like a magnet.
Studies show that personalized campaigns bring better results. This is not new but most companies still ignore this fact.
Sure it is more effective to speak to a buyer persona more personally than to fire a “one size fits all marketing message” in the hope one bullet will hit the target.
When you talk to your leads than you have to talk to them personally if you want to make a deal, right? You do your conversation in a friendly personal way. So why not start with this kind of friendly and personal way when doing your lead generation campaigns?
EMarketer and EPISERVER studies shows that campaigns done personal have the best results.
Also this Studie show that most of the asked marketers are planning to increase their campaign personalization efforts to increase their visitor to lead and the lead to customer ratio.
Some great ways to personalize your marketing efforts are the use of personalization features in your email management system. Also you can include in your set of share buttons on your blog an option to ‘email this article’, only to name some of them.
As those studies also show what marketer are already doing and what they plan to do in the future, you should also set your plan for campaign personalization to increase your lead generation and conversion quote.
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If somebody has a 100% guranteed way how to achieve this, I would be glad to learn about it.
As I know there is actually nobody which such an easy and effortless way to achieve this. Because nobody knows what Google is doing except Google self.
So you need to use other ways to get in front of your audience when they are researching on the web to get found!
When I talk to people and they comply to me that they have used the best keywords and done SEO all of the search stuff but did not achieved their goals and still suffer of a lack of traffic, I always ask which kind of keywords they used an I am able to discover quickly that they wasted their time simply on the wrong keywords and the wrong doing!
It is no rocket science to pick the right keywords. Simply go to the Google Keywords tool and use your website link to generate a list of possible keywords. Now look which have about 500-1000 searches per month and the lowest competition. Of course they should fit into your business. Take care to pick long tail keywords (2-3 words) and build remarkable content around them.
Keep in mind with your keywords picking: Focus on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer. Choose keywords your target audience research online in the search engines.
One great strategy to get found on Google is blogging!
Blogging increases your chances with every SEO optimized blog post to get found on Google. Blogging is a great way to build trust and credibility with your audience.
Companies who blog get:
Up to 55% more Traffic.
Up to 97% more Inbound Links.
Up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines.
Studies show that the critical number to increase the traffic and leads of a company are about 300+ blog posts. The more blog post you write the more traffic you will get.
Include in each blog post a call to action which leads your buyer persona to a landing page to capture them as a leads to follow up with them and to convert them to a paying customer.
Promote your blog posts in social media. Social media like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are also indexed from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. The more you communicate in social media the more you increase your chances to pop up in the search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing as well.
This is a number game where you also need to have the quality facto, because nobody is interested to share crap.
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I often hear, how much time does it take me to do inbound marketing the right way to gain results for my business?
My answer is this depends on you and how interested you are to work smarter not harder.
As you can imagine it is not an easy task to manage all the inbound marketing activities which include:
• SEO
• Blogging
• Social Media
• Landing Pages
• Lead Generation
• Analytics
…with different tools!
For a business it can become overwhelming to do so and to control all those tasks as well. But to do exactly this is essential for your inbound marketing success and to increase your revenue!
So why not do all of these tasks the smart way instead of the hard way?
Technology is there to help you to achieve your revenue goals, and there is technology which can tremendously improve your results and save you a lot of time and a truckload of money by increasing your revenue at the same time.
We have put together a report to show you how such a technology can help your business.
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inbound marketing - SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing
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What exactly are infographics?
