Do you need a push to get your creative juices flowing? Could you use a little help in crafting blog posts and content that pulls prospects and the public in?

Many writers just need an idea for their working title to get on track. As David Ogilvy pointed out in On Advertising, “On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.”

With summer just around the corner, here are 50 free blog and content marketing titles with additional suggestions to provide the inspiration you need to fill your editorial calendar for the next few months.

School’s Out

1. BLANK: Did You Make The Grade? This provides a lead into how to assess your product or service without being promotional. It’s a good way to position a checklist.
2. The BLANK Report Card. Use this classic symbol of education to rate something of interest to your audience.
3. 12 Tips Every Graduate Needs. Focus this column on something related to your offering. For example, how to dress for success without wearing a suit is a great guide for interviewing.
4. 7 Things I Never Learned In College. Take seven fun tips for your target audience that you learned on your own.
5. BLANK: The Commencement Speech I Would Give. What advice would you give to college grads? Here’s what Stephen Colbert said to Northwestern’s 2011 graduates.

Holiday themes

1. Remembering BLANK. Memorial Day is a time for remembering those who lost their lives in the service of our country. Show your patriotism or let members of your community spotlight their relatives who died in service.
2. BLANK: Show Your True Colors. Flag Day is June 14^th. Offer your spin.
3. 10 Gift Ideas for Dad. Don’t forget to celebrate dad on June 16^th! This is a great way to encourage prospects to shop for Father’s Day.
4. Lessons From My Dad. Here’s a way to talk about your father or the founder of your firm. Alternatively, use this as a way to engage your community with images of their dads.
5. When It Comes To BLANK, Father Knows Best. Here’s another spin on dad’s teachings.
6. Gone Fishing: How to Vacation Without Feeling Guilty. Why not celebrate Go Fishing Day on June 18^th? (Really we didn’t make this up.)
7. 12 Quick and Easy Fish Recipes. Another way to enjoy Go Fishing Day by helping your audience do the cooking.
8. Treat Yourself to BLANK. What retailer wouldn’t want to encourage patrons to observe National Splurge Day on June 18th?
9. O Canada. Salute your Canadian friends and social media colleagues on July 1st.
10. BLANK: Hooray for the Red, White and Blue. Here’s a spin on the Fourth of July. It can be used for anything that can be shown in different colors.
11. 50 States of  BLANK. This is an oblique reference to Independence Day.
12. Get Your Independence From BLANK. This can be used for a wide range of activities from parents to debt.
13. BLANK: Viva La Difference. Since July 14^th is Bastille Day, use this opportunity to play up a French aspect of your business.
14. Let Them Eat Cake. This is another option for Bastille Day. It comes from Marie Antoinette’s famous phrase. In fact there are several bakeries that have adopted this phrase as their name. Use this to share images of cakes or recipes.
15. BLANK: Frankly Speaking. Celebrate National Hot Dog Day on July 23^rd. This is a serious approach to any topic. Of course, you can just show hot dogs and relish the conversation on social media.
16. Frank Talk About BLANK. Another option for National Hot Dog Day. (We couldn’t resist!)

Summer activities

1. How To Get Your BLANK Ready For Summer. Adapt this for your niche. It’s great for pets and home repairs.
2. How to Summer Proof Your BLANK. A timeless hook for getting your home, office, car or pet ready for the summer. Extend its life with a checklist.
3. 10 Apps To BLANK This Summer. Review the latest apps your audience will appreciate. You can modify this title to another product.
4. Summer Styling. Useful to show your prospects and customers how to use the season’s latest clothes, hairstyles and makeup.
5. How To Survive Your Family This Holiday Weekend. This is a classic how to get along with the people you love.
6. 7 Tips To Succeed At Your Summer Internship. Help the student in your life get more out of their summer job.
7. Camp Packing List. This is great way to promote your products without sounding promotional. Include pictures and fun ideas.
8. Travels With My BLANK. Summer is family vacations time. Use this as a hook to spotlight your product. For example, the supermarket chain, Stew Leonard’s has a bulletin board with photographs of their customers carrying their plastic bags around the world.
9. Fun Car Trips. This is a good travel article. Use a special theme such as kids or wine.
10. Summer Movie Guide. Give your viewing recommendations. Use this year’s crop or review oldies with summer themes.
11. BLANK: The Heat Is On. What’s hot in your niche and why should your audience care?

Food-related

Today everyone’s a foodie at heart. Use this association to build your connection to summer foods.

1. The Never Fail Barbeque Guide. Since Memorial Day and July 4^th are known for family barbeques, why not take advantage of this story hook? You can focus on food, cooking, supplies or safety.
2. How To Plan A Picnic. Honor National Picnic Month this July. Use it to spotlight targeted product, romance or family outings.
3. 7 Summer Cocktails. What’s your favorite adult beverage?
4. 31 Unusual Ice Cream Recipes. July is also National Ice Cream Month. It’s a great excuse to provide a new approach to ice cream and related creations. Alternatively, you can offer a list of ice cream flavors you’d like Ben and Jerry’s to create as a spin on Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream.
5. Chocolate Dreams. Who wouldn’t want to pay homage to Chocolate Day celebrated on July 7th? Share photographs and recipes for chocolate related fun. Don’t forget to give your loved one chocolate kisses.
6. Life’s A Bowl Of Cherries: How to Avoid The Pits. Here’s a fun spin on a summer fruit.
7. Berry Nice to Meet You. Pick your favorite berry and offer related recipes, photographs or other uses.

Wedding bells

Since June is the classic month for getting hitched, here are a few options.

1. 10 Last Minute Wedding Gifts. Offer your readers some fun alternatives to the classic cash gift.
2. 12 Wedding Toasts We Wish We Gave. Many people are afraid of being asked to give a toast. Help them out with some advice.
3. The Mother of the Bride Survival Kit. Have fun with this advice column.
4. How To Avoid Being A Bridezilla. Okay it’s your day but no one wants to deal with a cranky bride. It’s a fun way to get tips from your community.
5. The Social Media Wedding. You can use this to talk about your favorite social media platform or how to socialize your wedding. (BTW—don’t forget to create a hashtag for your wedding.)

On the beach

Summer means fun in the sun at your local beach or pool.

1. BLANK: Life’s A Beach. This is a how-to that can be applied to any topic.
2. Ride the wave of BLANK. Another approach to the hot topics in your field. Of course, there’s always the surfing angle.
3. Beach Reads. Summer reading is a classic activity. What would you recommend to your readers?
4. 7 Classic Pool Designs. This is a hat tip to Marcus Sheridan who built his pool business with his blog.
5. Hot Time, Summer In The City. Let your readers know what to do when it’s 92 and you can’t get to the beach.
6. Best Beaches in BLANK. Give your review of the local sandy havens, whether you love Montauk or Malibu. It’s useful for travel blogs.

While everyone else is heading out to the beach this summer, it can be difficult to get inspired to write your best content. Use these titles to brainstorm posts that work for your target audience.

What other titles would you add to this list and why?

Wishing you a happy and safe Memorial Day Weekend. Please note that we won’t be publishing this Sunday and Monday. Enjoy!

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: ©2008 Heidi Cohen – All rights reserved. 

50 Free Summer Titles For Blogs & Other Content Marketing – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 24, 2013.

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If you could only had one social media option to support your business goals which one would you choose? Chances are you said Facebook without a second thought. As the 800 pound gorilla of social media, it should be a no-brainer but is it really the best for your business?

Roughly half of the respondents named Facebook as the most important social media platform in Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which surveyed a cross section of businesses using social media in their marketing mix.

As Syncapse research revealed, Facebook drives revenues. Besides, there’s something to be said for a large audience of engaged users. Actionable Marketing Advice: Create a Facebook presence and be active there. 

What’s interesting about Social Media Examiner’s data is how the other social media venues measure up.

• 16% of respondents considered LinkedIn to be their most important social media platform. LinkedIn is building out its content marketing offering but that’s probably not part of respondents’ consideration. As UMass Dartmouth Inc 500 research revealed and LinkedIn financials support, many businesses use LinkedIn to support their human resources efforts cost effectively. Additionally, LinkedIn is useful to expand and develop professional relationships with suppliers and distributors that result in sales. Actionable Marketing Advice: At a minimum, polish up your presence and participate regularly on LinkedIn. Further, check out SlideShare, its sister site focused on presentation-sharing, that is gold for generating business leads.
• 14% of respondents considered blogging to be their most important social media platform. Blogging helps achieve most key social media goals. Since blogging is an owned media entity, this makes sense. Hubspot research showed that blogging at least twice a week helped increase sales leads. Also, blogs support building your email housefile and reduce search optimization costs. Actionable Marketing Advice: Establish your blog and create fresh content at least twice a week.
• 12% of respondents considered Twitter to be their most important social media platform. Twitter is useful for building your thought leadership and engaging in the social media conversation. Businesses like Comcast have leveraged the power of Twitter to respond to customer service inquiries. That said, Twitter doesn’t allow the breadth of information that LinkedIn or a blog does. Actionable Marketing Advice: Develop your Twitter following by regularly curating relevant content. Otherwise, you’re talking to yourself!
• 4% of respondents considered YouTube to be their most important social media platform. YouTube is often underestimated as a social media platform because it’s often categorized as a video platform. That said, Orabrush and Blendtec, with limited investments, have built their businesses based on the power of their video series. Many businesses overlook the fact that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. Actionable Marketing Advice: Create a set of videos to represent your business. Understand that just like potato chips, you can’t view just one.
• 2% of respondents considered Google+ to be their most important social media platform. Despite its association with Google, Google+ still lags expectations. While Google+ shouldn’t necessarily be your only social media platform, it should be a significant aspect of your social media marketing mix. Actionable Marketing Advice: Build your Google+ presence and following to ensure that you’re prepared for it’s eventual growth. Also interact on the site regularly.
• 1% of respondents considered Pinterest to be their most important social media platform. Pinterest has been the visual darling of the social media world. It’s scrapbooking gone social. For many businesses, it’s still in the testing phase Actionable Marketing Advice: Offer visually engaging content and make it easy to pin. Also, test building relevant pinboards on your key topics to build your brand. It’s breaking out of its consumer-only focus.
• 0% of respondents considered Tumblr to be their most important social media platform. Tumblr is the social media platform that few marketers knew about before yesterday’s announcement of its sale to Yahoo. Tumblr  is a visually engaging, microblogging site whose sweet spot is the 12-25 year set. Actionable Marketing Advice: Test the platform by starting a visually engaging Tumblr.

The bottom line is that while Facebook draws its power from the number of people who regularly engage on the site and its evolving targeted advertising offering, you still must have a social media home base that you own. As MySpace and earlier incarnations such as Friendster showed being the top dog of social media doesn’t guarantee your presence for the long term. A blog is a social media entity that provides ownership and control of your content and interactions without the risk of disappearing.

Understand that your social media marketing isn’t a desert island where you can only bring one platform. Establish your blog as your home base and engage on a variety of social media venues.

What’s the most important social media platform for your business and why?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Register Now for MarketingProfs University and save with your discount code:  JAYBIRD

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Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoshanah/2179405498/

The Most Important Social Media Marketing Platform – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 23, 2013.

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For small businesses, branding is like having a super power; it makes your firm stand out in a message-laden ecosystem.

Many small businesses mistakenly think branding is expensive and leave it out of their core business plans. They miss the opportunity to position their firm and reinforce the attributes that set them apart from their competitors with each social media interaction, email communication and face-to-face meeting.

The reality is that by not branding your firm, you’re not controlling your corporate identity. Instead, your customers, competitors and the public define your organization. A lack of consistency can be confusing to your target audience and their influencers, resulting in lost business opportunities.

Branding matters for small businesses because it provides shorthand symbols representing a combination of tangible and intangible elements that give you a super power – the power to affect peoples’ feelings in a certain way. Once your brand is established, prospects, customers and the public quickly recognize your firm and emotionally respond to your message. Therefore you need to determine your brand attributes and consistently use them everywhere to build trust.

To develop to your organization’s brand identity (aka your super power), answer these ten questions.

1. What’s your company name? Is it identified with a specific person and/or place? What initial impression does this make on prospects? How does it affect your business’s memorability and  findability on search engines, social media and in real life.
2. What does your business do? Specifically, what products and/or services do you sell? Think benefits. What specific customer needs do you meet?
3. How is your product priced? This is an important attribute of your positioning and is an integral part of your branding. Are you the low price supplier or do you charge a premium for special services you provide?
4. How do you define your niche? What keywords would prospects use to find your business in a search directory? What sets your company apart from others selling the same offering? This can be based on your location (although this is less of a distinguishing factor with the Internet), your product quality and/or your target audience.
5. Who is your target audience? Consider everyone who influences the purchase such as the buyer, the influencer(s) and the end user. How do you want to be positioned in their consideration set? To this end, develop a marketing persona for each market subsegment.
6. What is your company’s history? Think corporate once upon a time. While you should stick with the facts, you can select the ones that you want to emphasize. As Tim Gunn of Project Runway says, make it work. (If you need some help, here are twenty-nine corporate stories you can use.)
7. Who are your competitors? Don’t underestimate how much your firm can be defined by your competitive set. In my experience businesses tend to narrowly define their competitors while their prospects consider a broad range of alternatives including substitutes that are different offerings altogether.
8. How do you want your firm to be known? This strikes at the core of your organization’s values. What’s important in terms of product, service and public perception? This doesn’t require a ten-page treatise. Simplify it to three words that represent your organization. They should be an integral part of your mission statement. This should represent how you conduct your business.
9. What are your employees like? For most small businesses, this means the owner. What’s your passion and world view? How do you treat your prospects, customers and employees? Are you an active member of your community? People are part of the extended Ps of marketing.
10. Where’s the proof? Customers look for validation, often in terms of ratings and reviews. The value of a brand is the consistent customer experience you deliver. Consider how you can integrate this information into your marketing promotion.

Collectively, these attributes provide the basis for your brand identity, that acts as your super power across platforms, devices and real life. Take the time to document your answers to ensure that there aren’t any inconsistencies (otherwise your customers and the public probably won’t consider you much of a hero). Address areas where your aspirations for your business differ from reality. Remember that, like a super hero, you want to make a lasting impression by setting your firm apart from your competitors.

What else would you add to this brand identity list and why?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fynes/325461368/

Small Business Branding: What Is Your Super Power? – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 22, 2013.

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No longer marketing’s shiny new object, social media has become an indispensable tool to achieve key business goals since prospects and customers spend at least one out of five online minutes using these platforms. This makes social media too big to ignore.

The challenge is leveraging the power of social media to achieve your organization’s key objectives in a measurable way.

“Whether you work for a big business or small one, one thing is clear from this research.  Social media marketing is here to stay.” – Mike Stelzner, Founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, a survey of a cross section of businesses using social media as part of their marketing mix, highlights nine benefits of social media marketing. 

89% increased exposure

What this means: Businesses use social media to build their brand recognition. (Need help with your organization’s branding? Here’s how to build your brand.)

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Share your content across social media platforms. Regularly distribute content across venues. Remember social media isn’t a one-way conversation. As a rule of thumb, share your content once for every ten pieces of other people’s content. While you can automate this process, it’s more effective to hand craft your messages.
2. Include social sharing on your website and blog. Encourage visitors to share your information with their social media colleagues. Make it easy for visitors to use or you’ll hurt your results. Don’t forget to add social sharing to your product pages as well.
3. Respond to prospects and customers on social media venues. Businesses are notorious for not answering inquiries on social media. Stand out from the pack by answering customer questions. Let your connections know when you’re active on social media.

75% increased traffic

What this means: For many businesses, traffic is the top of the purchase funnel. Social Media helps drive unqualified prospects to your landing pages, microsites, blog and website.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Link to information on your blog and website in your blog posts, SlideShare presentations and social media interactions. Offer a mix of links to your owned media (blog and website) and third party sites.
2. Write guest blog posts. Offer your best content to other blogs to leverage the reach of other people’s followings. In addition to building your brand, this helps your search optimization. (BTW—you don’t need to have a blog to do this!)
3. Pimp your products on Pinterest.  Show your product off with great visuals. Think longer images. Include styling and how-tos. Make sure that all of your images are pinnable.

69% gained marketplace insight

What this means: Businesses find social media platforms useful as listening posts to learn what their prospects, customers, fans and the public are talking about with regard to their products. For smaller businesses, this can be a low cost way to conduct market research.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Understand what your competitors are doing. Many businesses underestimate the value of observing their competitors. Think direct competitors as well as large players such as Amazon, eBay, Apple and Walmart.
2. Ask open-ended questions on social media. Engage with your fans and others. This is easy-to-do on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs.
3. Nudge customers to rate and review your products. While many executives would love to hide their heads in the sand rather than hear what their customers are saying, you’re better off listening and assessing what needs to be fixed. Understand that today’s consumers are savvy. Just because you don’t offer the information doesn’t mean that they can’t get it easily online. (BTW—According to word of mouth expert Ed Keller, most word of mouth happens face-to-face.)
4. Encourage customers to share their photographs and stories. Create customer photo galleries. Patagonia created a Tumblr where customers talked about their favorite item with now and then photos.

65% engage with your raving fans

What this means: Businesses leverage the power of social media’s structure to interact with their fans and nourish their community. Recent research by Syncapse showed that, on Facebook, loyal fans drove revenue post-purchase.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Spotlight your customers. Offer one of your customers their fifteen minutes of fame. Highlight them using your product on one or more of your social media platforms. Oreos does this on Facebook.
2. Provide perks. Give your most loyal fans the royal treatment. Think backstage passes. Offer them specials such as early looks at new products.
3. Make them feel special. Provide your fans with special knowledge and the tools to get the word out.

61% generated leads

What this means: Social media, as a form of inbound marketing, helps attract and qualify prospects.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Answer customer questions. This is the Marcus Sheridan secret sauce for blogging. Make a list of your customers’ top questions and respond to each one.
2. Explain how to use your product. Think fun learning by using blog posts, SlideShare, and YouTube. Of course, don’t forget to link to your product pages.
3. Educate your market. Use videos, Twitter chats and Google hangouts to engage with your prospects and let them know more about your product. This doesn’t mean promotion!
4. Respond on forums and Q&A sites like Quora. Help people by answering their questions on forums. Your goal should be to supply information not corporate-speak.

58% Improved search rankings

What this means: Social media provided alternative ways for businesses to appear on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Don’t overlook the fact that some participants ask their social media colleagues for their recommendations. Lastly, YouTube is the second largest search engine.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Optimize your social media profiles. Incorporate your keywords into your profiles. Don’t forget to include your business’ location, phone number and email address so prospects can find you.
2. Build your blog publishing empire. Make blogging part of your social media routine. Write posts focused on a keyword phrase and include at least one internal link and one external link.  (Here’s the low down on blog SEO.)
3. Show your face. Take advantage of the power of photographs and images but make sure you associate appropriate text with each one. This applies across most social media venues.
4. Claim your authorship and location on Google. Here’s how to get Google authorship.

54% grew business partnerships

What this means: Social media connections extended offline. This is incredibly powerful, especially for small businesses. It’s power networking that drives results.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Reconnect with colleagues and friends. Build on your past relationships.
2. Take social media offline. Meet your social media contacts in real life. Use Meetups and conferences to get out from behind your computer.
3. Think win-win. Just like real life networking, you can’t suddenly reach out and ask people for a favor. You need to build relationships and pay-it-forward.

47% Reduced marketing expense

What this means: This is a no-brainer. Don’t assume this means social media marketing is free. Rather social media allows you to reach more people with less expensive forms of distribution and communication.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Establish a robust content marketing editorial calendar. Social media runs on content. Therefore, it’s critical to have a continual flow of information and engagement.
2. Build owned media platforms. Establish your presence on one or more social media platforms where you regularly engage and where your customers are. Also, develop your blog as an owned media entity.
3. Test social media advertising. With an ever-growing number of social media advertising options, it’s easier to supplement your social media presence cost effectively with highly targeted advertising that’s relatively low cost.

43% Increased sales

What this means: Businesses can track revenues to social media activities. This is understated since social media often happens at different points in the buying process.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

1. Incorporate a social media call-to-action. Encourage your visitors to take action. Make your calls-to-action contextually relevant.  
2. Create a Sale of the Day Tweet. This is one place where you can be promotional on social media. BUT you can only make one offer per day!
3. Provide recipes and patterns that link to your product pages. Give prospects and customers guidance for using your product. Entice them with step-by-step instructions. Even better, include a shopping list linked to your product!
4. Show customers how to style your products. This is another way of presenting how-tos. Demonstrate how customers can use your products. This is particularly useful for clothes, makeup and interior design products.

The bottom line is that social media drives measurable results to achieve a variety of business objectives. To succeed, set concrete goals, understand your target audience and establish metrics to track your progress.

What is your business’ objective for using social media? What tactics do you use to achieve this and how do you assess your progress towards your goals?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Register Now for MarketingProfs University and save with your discount code:  JAYBIRD

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Photo Credit: http://www.noupe.com/freebie/50-free-social-media-icon-sets.html

31 Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips Based On Research – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 21, 2013.

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Content marketing is about attracting the right target audience and getting them to take appropriate action as a result of engaging with your content. Content marketing metrics is about measuring the results.

As businesses continue to move a greater proportion of their budget to content marketing, marketers must associate results with this investment that are aligned with their goals. To this end, measure what matters, not just what’s easy-to-track.

Start by determining your business and marketing goals for your content marketing. Then select the metrics that are most effective to track your progress towards achieving these goals.

Here are 53 actionable content marketing metrics broken out by content marketing goal.

Content Marketing Goal 1:  Build your brand

Branding is an integral element of content marketing; it enables your audience to recognize your content based on a number of unique, identifiable attributes. For organizations with limited marketing budgets, it’s critical that your content increases brand recognition. Brand-related metrics tend to be indirect requiring  surveys to determine results.

1. Do visitors recognize your brand based on your content marketing?
2. Does your content marketing improve brand recall?
3. Does your content marketing enhance brand favorability?
4. Does your content marketing increase prospects’ intent to purchase?

Content Marketing Goal 2:  Attract new prospects

Driving traffic to your website (as well as your microsites, blog and other content) enables people to learn more about your products and services

1. How many visitors do you have? Is this number increasing, staying the same or declining? This metric reveals the effectiveness of your content marketing.
2. How many unique visitors do you have per month or other time period? How has this number changed over time? Is it increasing steadily or is there a seasonal pattern?
3. What is your bounce rate? Do people find  your site by accident when they’re looking for something else? This may mean that your content is targeting the wrong keywords and questions.
4. Where are your readers physically located? This matters if you’re selling advertising and/or your product requires shipping or delivery and other operational logistics.
5. What type of devices do readers use to consume your content? Since over half of the US population has a smartphone, understand how and where your prospects seek your content (including location, phone number and address.) Also, don’t underestimate the proportion of your target audience that uses a tablet to consume content and shop. This is important for determining your information format as well as the specifics of the information.
6. Do visitors register for emailings? Get visitors to sign up for your emailings to stay in contact.
7. Do visitors sign up for feeds? Understand that this tends to be a more experienced online group.
8. Do visitors request other business or purchase information via email, chat or contact form included with your content?
9. Do readers call your business? This assumes you’ve included your phone number and/or handle wherever you’ve posted content. (You can use different phone numbers or codes to track results.)

Content Marketing Goal 3:  Increase customer engagement

Driving consumer interaction with your content marketing helps eliminate obstacles to sales and building customer relationships.

1. How much time do visitors spend with your content? Does this vary based on the day of the week and time of the year? What proportion of your readership is returning visitors?
2. How many pages do visitors read on average? Do readers spend more time on specific articles or topics? Are these areas related to the products you want to promote?
3. Do your readers share your posts via email? This is particularly easy for readers who receive your blog’s emailings.
4. Do readers share your content via social sharing? Does your content marketing drive earned media impressions via social media shares? The most popular options are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.
5. Do readers comment on your content? Most people will consume the content without taking any further action.

Content Marketing Goal 4:  Improve search optimization

One content marketing objective is to create information around your top keywords to help your organization rank better in organic search.

1. Do your content marketing URLs use meaningful words rather computer generated IDs?
2. Do you use a variety of media formats like video, audio, e-book or other content?
3. Are your images (and other non-text content) optimized for search? Do they use descriptive words in their filenames, have title tags and alt tags to improve optimization?
4. How many sites link (in-bound links) to your content marketing? How influential are these sites?
5. How many outbound links does your content have? Has this helped get attention of experts in your field?
6. Does your content link to other relevant business information (internal links)?
7. Has your organization’s ranking for its top keywords improved?

Content Marketing Goal 5:  Build thought leadership

Developing a thought leadership platform is important for supporting your brand, business and reputation.

1. Is your content gaining traction? Don’t just look at point in time data. Examine performance over time.
2. Which content clicks with your audience? This includes the type of articles people like and the categories that resonate with readers. Are you meeting unmet information needs?
3. Do other thought leaders link to your content?
4. Do other thought leaders engage with you in the comment section of your content or on social media?
5. Do you get media requests for your insights?
6. Do you get requests to contribute to your content offering?
7. Are you asked to contribute to other content in the industry?
8. Do you get asked to present at industry events?
9. Do you get work requests you can attribute to your content marketing? Ideally, these leads come through a form or link in your content marketing.

Content Marketing Goal 6:  Increase lead generation

Leverage the power of your content marketing to drive new sales leads. To this end, it’s important to include a relevant a call-to-action to get readers to take the next step, a promotional code to help track results, and a targeted landing page that uses the same wording and branding.

1. Do you get leads or inquiries from your content marketing?  This can be downloads, form completions or other appropriate metric. This relates to specific lead generation targeted content. It may require targeted content marketing follow up.
2. Does your content marketing help build prospect relationships? This relates to keeping leads warm through on-going communications such as email.

Content Marketing Goal 7:  Drive sales

Depending your business and its focus, the specific content marketing related revenue metrics may vary.

1. Can you track sales to your content marketing? Include links to relevant product pages. Also link to your content from your product pages.
2. Do you support sales with how-to and specific product information? Track product page print outs, targeted promotion codes used and click-throughs to purchase or place in cart.
3. Does your content marketing reduce time-to-purchase? Do you link to it from your emailings and other websites?
4. Does your content generate advertising sales including banners, Google Adsense and sponsorships? Just because you’re not a media company doesn’t mean you can’t create advertising revenue streams. Amazon sells advertising on its product pages.
5. Does your content marketing generate affiliate sales?

Content Marketing Goal 8:  Increase customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is important for encouraging customers to make repeat purchases and being brand supporters.

1. Does your content reduce returns with post-purchase support? Help buyers by offering instructions and other information for using your products.
2. Do your customers buy additional or related products after consuming your content? Encourage this behavior with links to your product pages.
3. Do your customers share your content with their family and friends? Include social sharing buttons and a call-to-action.
4. Do your customers contribute content in the form of ratings and reviews on your website? Use post-purchase emailings to persuade customers to submit reviews.
5. Do your customers share photos or images using your product? Ask customers to share their photos and stories on social media.

Content Marketing Goal 9:  Reduce costs

Depending on your organization, senior management may use content marketing to provide information to an array of publics including prospects, customers, and others, more cost effectively than other alternatives.

1. What are your content creation costs? This includes both internal and external expenses. To this end track the number of hours each contributor spends developing content and their hourly rate. Make sure it’s fully loaded to account for relevant overhead.
2. What are your content marketing design costs? Are these one time or on-going?
3. What are your editorial support costs? Does someone edit and proof each piece of content?
4. What are your technical costs? This includes uploading content, adding in links, image resizing and placement and on-going site maintenance.
5. Has your content marketing reduced customer service inquiries?
6. Has your content marketing decreased the cost of search optimization?
7. Has your content marketing reduced your other marketing expenses such as third party advertising, or transferred those costs to less expensive advertising?

To ensure that your content marketing achieves your business goals, define your objectives as concretely as possible through the use of target numbers, and select appropriate metrics to track your progress.

What metrics do you track to assess your content marketing success?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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53 Actionable Content Marketing Metrics – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 20, 2013.

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While many bloggers think that blogging is about lovingly crafting each post, the reality is that you need to promote your content to ensure each post reaches its widest possible audience. To this end, think outside the blog.

Since social media feeds on a never-ending stream of content, it’s ideal for accomplishing this goal.

Here are thirty-three tips for using social media to expand your blog’s readership by driving traffic from an array of platforms.

1. Claim your name on various social media platforms. Where appropriate, register your blog’s name separately.

• Complete each social media profile. Let people know who’s behind the avatar. Also, include at least one personal detail.
• Link to your blog in each social media profile. Include your blog address (aka URL).
• Use blog keywords in your social media description. Enhance your social media optimization by consistently employing your top keywords.
• Continue your blog’s branding. Make your social media profile is recognizable by incorporating your logo and/or blogger headshot.

2. Include social media sharing buttons on your blog. Make it easy for readers to share your blog content. If they have to jump through hoops in terms of remembering passwords or signing in, you’re hurting your content’s sharability.

• Add social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of your post. Reduce reader hurdles. Don’t make readers scroll to the top to share your content.
• Thank fans publically. Make social connections who share your blog posts feel good by giving them a shout out of recognition on social media.

3. Make an appointment to engage and share content regularly on social media. Don’t leave your social sharing activity to chance nor let it consume hours of your time.

• Create a social media sharing schedule. Set a time and mark it on your calendar to check in on what’s being said on social media and to share information. Make this part of your daily work routine to streamline your activity and be consistent. This is a good activity to do when you have small chunks of time such as commuting and between meetings. (Here’s the lowdown on creating a social media editorial calendar.)
• Aim to show up on social media at least once a day. Use this time to share and/or schedule content. Even better is to stop by three times a day such as morning, noon and close of business.
• Keep your blog-related social media time separate from your personal social media interactions. One easy way to accomplish this is avoid personal use of social media during your work hours.

4. Give your social media shares the personal touch. While you can set up automated social shares, it’s more personal to provide contextually relevant commentary to information you share.

• Provide contextually relevant social sharing. Tailor your social shares to the social media platform and avoid the cookie cutter approach.
• Use the power of your community to help spread the word. For this, Triberr is useful.

5. Leverage the power of images on social media platforms. Images are powerful tools to draw prospects into your blog posts.

• Use images to attract readers. Include at least one image per post. This is most important for Facebook and Pinterest.
• Create tailored, shareable images. Ian Cleary of Razor Social recommends using PicMonkey to incorporate text into your image.

6. Respond to social media comments related to your blog posts. Encourage followers who’ve shared your content by answering comments on the appropriate social media platform.

• Thank people who share and comment on your blog posts publically. This is a great way to build your community.
• Let people know that you’ve referenced them in your blog posts. Give them a social media shout out.

7. Be a good social media citizen. Participate on social media beyond sharing your own content.

• Engage in social media activities. Become part of the community. Be selective and interact in one or more social media forums. One benefit is that, once people get to know you, they are more likely to share your content.
• Help others on social media. Answer other people’s questions and where appropriate, share a link to a relevant blog post.

8. Avoid the “Me, Me, Me” on social media. Mix up the content you share. Don’t limit your social media activity to promoting just your own content.

• Curate other bloggers’ posts to help establish your authority in the field. In Peggy Fitzpatrick’s words, “Being generous with other’s content helps your own content and your social media karma.”
• Space your social media shares over time. You don’t want to fill up other people’s social media streams with your blog posts in a short period of time since this will tick them off.

9. Test different strategies. Don’t just continue to do the same thing because it’s what you’ve always done.

• Monitor what other bloggers are doing on social media. Keep an eye on other bloggers’ social media activity to get ideas for how to expand your own use of these platforms. Understand that social shares aren’t necessarily the best measure of success.
• Modify your social media approach. Test using different forms of content and posting times.

10. Track your results. Don’t just guess what’s working, really measure your progress.

• Use a social media call-to-action. This helps prod readers to read and share your content.
• Measure blog activity related to your  goals. Count actions that contribute to sales. 

To maximize the readership of each blog post, use social media consistently and effectively but avoid excessive self-promotion.

What are your favorite tips for using social media to distribute your blog posts?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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33 Blogging Tips to Maximize Social Media Reach – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 19, 2013.

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With its mission, “To boldly go where no one has gone before,” Star Trek has built an enduring brand around amazing content.

Content marketers can learn a lot from this on-going science fiction franchise that includes five television series, twelve feature films, hundreds of novels, comics, games, figurines and more.

Here are ten lessons content marketers can learn from Star Trek.

1. Keep your mission in focus. While Star Trek has continued to reinvent itself and evolve, at the heart of the franchise has been its mission of promoting progressive ideals and mutual understanding through innovative storytelling. Each addition and enhancement to the Star Trek catalog has consistent core attributes while specific characters or time periods may change. Similarly, as  a content marketer, you need to remain loyal to your overall business objectives.
2. Listen to your audience. In the first three television seasons, Star Trek received mediocre Nielsen ratings. When NBC threatened to cancel the series after the second year, a viewer mail campaign forced the network to keep it another season. In today’s media landscape, you must listen to your audience including your prospects, customers and fans as well as to your naysayers to discern what they really want from you.
3. Leverage the power of universal story arcs. Across the Star Trek oeuvre, traditional story themes and character archetypes are employed often with references to well known works, such as Gulliver’s Travels and the Odyssey. Therefore, while viewers may not be familiar with the specific tropes of science fiction, they can still relate to the story. To bring your content marketing up to warp speed, integrate universal story plots into your brand that your audience can connect with and remember. Where appropriate don’t underestimate the power of classic fiction.
4. Be human. Underlying the Star Trek story are human feelings and emotions. Entire story lines revolve around half-human characters, such as Data and Seven of Nine, discovering how to be human. Bottom line for marketers: Skip the corporate Borg speak and talk like a living person.
5. Understand your story’s context. The original Star Trek television series broke new ground with a multi-racial, multi-national cast. Star Trek  adopted naval metaphors that viewers understood although the show was distinctly anti-war in outlook. The core team in the original series consisted of a captain, a science officer and a medical officer – a concept borrowed from the Science Fiction classic, Forbidden Planet. Lesson for marketers: we live in a real world with real problems. If you don’t acknowledge this in your content marketing, your stories won’t connect with your audience.
6. Use a variety of content formats. While extending Star Trek from a television series to other television series and feature films may seem like allied content types, it’s also been transformed into animated cartoons, books, comics, games, figurines and live events. Consider the different options you have to transport your existing content into other formats that appeal to new audiences and enhance your relationship with current fans.
7. Explore new worlds. Just as the original Star Trek series tested the boundaries of acceptable broadcast standards, the franchise has continued to pioneer and push new ways to re-imagine their story by testing new formats, creators and talent. To keep your brand and company fresh, continue to try new ways of presenting your content and adapting to new methods.
8. Enable fans to participate and extend your brand. Star Trek embraced its loyal fans, lovingly known as Trekkies, who’ve made the brand part of their identity. The franchise extended beyond household television viewing to conventions where fans dressed up as the characters in homemade costumes. Over the years, the cast has shared their love for the series with the fans. If you’ve got a brand with died-hard fans, consider how you can support their love for your brand and products. Hint: It’s not about money! It’s about being a part of the experience and creating new ones.
9. Maintain control of your brand. Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise started in 1966 by Gene Roddenberry. Note that Star Trek is broadly positioned to enable its owners to continually expand its reach with new formats and stories while staying true to the brand. Having sold Star Trek product, I know that they maintain strong control over the rights and ensure that the brand is used consistently.
10. Measure your results. Through all of the Star Trek series, the captain’s log was used as a narrative device to position the story for the audience. Further it served as a record of each journey measuring their progress towards the overall objective. Similarly with content marketing, you must track your results back to your initial goals. To this end, it’s useful to incorporate a call-to-action.

While not every brand can achieve the Star Trek franchise’s level of success, take a page from the Star Trek operating manual and integrate these ten lessons into your content marketing efforts to expand your engagement.

What is your favorite Star Trek learning that can be applied to content marketing?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: Image from Star Trek: The Original Series episode Is There in Truth No Beauty? © 1968 Paramount Pictures.

Note: All of the Star Trek links are to Amazon affiliates.

Star Trek: 10 Content Marketing Lessons – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 17, 2013.

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Social media like many businesses operates under a set of unstated rules. That said, like employees, participants are expected to know these rules and to act appropriately.

When businesses engage on social media platforms, they’re tried in the court of public opinion. For those who don’t follow the guidelines, the verdicts can be harsher than a court of law as Amy’s Baking Company has recently experienced on Facebook.

To prevent your business from wandering in the social media desert, here are ten commandments to get on track.

1. Thou shalt listen to the social media conversation. Social media is a multi-directional communication. This means that everyone who participates on these platforms engages in multiple conversations with one or more people both concurrently and with a lag. No one person or organization owns the conversation. Actionable Marketing Tip: Consider how your communications may be received before you rush to respond. If a comment or mention gets you emotional, take a time out to ensure that you don’t say something that may be misconstrued.
2. Thou shalt know your business objective. As with any business-related tool, know what you’re trying to achieve by engaging on social media. Are you trying to build your brand, acquire new prospects, increase sales, support post-purchase or engage your fans? Actionable Marketing Tip: Make your goals as concrete as possible including metrics to track your progress. (Recent research shows that Facebook fans generate value!)
3.  Thou shalt understand your audience. On social media, know that your followers extend beyond your prospects and customers. It includes your naysayers, competitors, the media and the public. Actionable Marketing Tip: Take the time to understand your target audience on social media by creating a social media persona.
4. Thou shalt get C-level buy-in and support. Social media is strategic in outlook. As such, it requires senior management buy-in and support. Don’t think that you can hire a college student to do it. Actionable Marketing Tip: Get your C-level executives to participate on social media. Research shows that it helps your firm. This doesn’t mean that they should spend their day on Facebook. Rather they should be strategic in when an how they participate such in social media venues such as a Google hangout. (BTW, the CEO of Hubspot paid to take over the firm’s Twitter account.)
5. Thou shalt mind thy manners. Good old fashion courtesy goes a long way. Remember that the people with whom you communicate on social media may not speak your language. Further without seeing you face-to-face they may miss some of your body language. Actionable Marketing Tip: Don’t rush to respond if you’re not sure of the circumstances or potential issues. Not all publicity is good publicity.  Further, on social media, everyone has a social responsibility.
6. Thou shalt not use social media as a promotional broadcast channel. Unlike traditional media, social media is about engagement. From a marketing perspective, you should use your sites to build interaction with your most avid fans who in turn promote your content and brand. Actionable Marketing Tip: Offer an occasional exclusive deal to your followers to make them feel special but don’t make it a practice or it will cause your followers to flee. The major exception to this advice is a deal-of-the-day page where you post one deal per day.
7. Thou shalt offer useful information to your community. Transform content about your brand, products and company into information that meets your target audience’s needs. This requires a different mindset from continual Me-Me-Me promotions. Actionable Marketing Tip: Answer customer questions, show how to style using your products, provide patterns and recipes and offer fun how-tos.  Don’t limit your content to text. Use images and video to portray your information.
8. Thou shalt pay-it-forward on social media platforms. Social media isn’t a “What’s in it for me” medium. Participants use social media for personal reasons, namely to keep up with their friends and family. As a business, your goal should be to interact and help your prospects and customers. Actionable Marketing Tip: Train your staff to be as helpful as possible to those who engage with your organization. Provide useful information and respond to questions without being blatantly promotional.  
9. Thou shalt respond to interactions in a timely fashion. Research shows that only 30% of businesses are responsive on social media. On social media, participants, prospects and customers have different service expectations. Actionable Marketing Tip: Post on each social media platform when visitors can expect your organization to engage with them. If your customer service representatives manage your social media profiles, ensure that they’re comfortable and understand the systems.
10. Thou shalt measure results. Social media drives results. You must plan for this when you start your process. Select metrics associated with your business goals. Make sure you can track them over time.  Actionable Marketing Tip: Use a call-to-action to guide prospects to the next step in the getting-to-know-you process. Understand that your call-to-action should make sense in the context of your social media eco-system. Generally this doesn’t mean sending them directly to a shopping cart. Rather it’s a registration for something like an email newsletter or an e-book.

Social media is increasingly an important element of every business’ marketing plans. Understand that the conversation is about your community not your brand or business.

What challenges has your business faced on social media? What recommendations do you have for other businesses?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_079.jpg

Social Media: 10 Commandments for Business – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 16, 2013.

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Location, location, location, the real estate cliché, has additional meaning in terms of devices, computers, smartphones and tablets.

Like place, one of the 4Ps of marketing, your business’s findability influences the prospects and buyers you can reach.

When it comes to small business, your target audience must be able to find you regardless of the device(s) they use. You must think mobile and local!

5 Mobile marketing research insights for small business [11 Charts]

Based on a local search study conducted by comScore for 15miles/Neustar Localeze, published in March 2013, and other research by Nielsen Life360 for Google in 4Q2012, here’s how consumers use devices, particularly smartphones and tablets, to find businesses.

1. Mobile and tablet searches increased roughly 20% from March 2012 to December 2012 according to the comScore research. Tablets have experienced a steeper growth curve than smartphones.  This means that businesses must have a presence on these devices to ensure that their target audience can find them when they’re looking.

2. Consumers use different devices for different purposes. PCs tend to be for work and research intensive information gathering. Consumers are looking for purchases with longer time horizons and search for product details and retail store hours. Tablets tend to be personal devices and owners are less mobile with them. Therefore tablets get used for couch commerce. Depth of content matters for PC and tablets. Tablets are most important for seeking promotions and ratings & reviews. Smartphones are the “I’m looking for your store” device when customers are seeking directions to your nearest location. Think maps and driving instructions.

3. Roughly 40% of respondents interact with local businesses on social media based on comScore’s findings. About two-thirds of these social network users are passive  – meaning that they “liked” a business. Facebook dominates over the other social media platforms for engagement. It’s important as a branding tool, especially if you’ve got loyal fans. Don’t write off social media since half of the one-third of active participants check ratings and reviews and about two out of five write reviews. (Here’s additional information on the value of a Facebook fan. This Facebook research also shows that Facebook engagement happens post-purchase!)

4. Mobile search drives action, both online and offline according to Nielsen’s findings. Each mobile search generates almost two follow up actions, both at home and away. These mobile searches generate even more follow-up when they are for products or shopping. This implies that, when prospects using mobile are looking for additional information about your products and business, they are highly likely to take the next step towards purchase. 55% of mobile searches result in a purchase related conversion in one hour and 84% result in a follow up action within five hours.  

5. Mobile searches, both smartphone and tablet, are more likely to result in a sale than computer based searches according to the comScore research. Businesses take note that tablet purchases tend to be higher in dollar value. Therefore make sure that your prospects can view your product related content via a tablet.

5 Actionable Mobile Marketing Tips

Businesses must be findable across all devices – computers, tablets and smartphones. This is particularly important for small businesses that tend to have a local focus.

Consumer buying behavior has changed as they’ve acquired new devices and developed different content consumption habits. As a result, if your prospects can’t find you when they look for your business, there’s a good chance they’ll use a local competitor.

Here are five actionable mobile marketing tips to help your small business get on track.

1. Ensure your business information is accessible across platforms. Post your address, phone number and store hours on your website’s front page and social media platforms. Also, check that your website is mobile-friendly.
2. Provide mapping ability where appropriate. When searching with a smartphone, prospects are most likely to be looking for your location and directions to get to you.
3. Stake your claim on social media. At a minimum, create a Facebook page. While only a small proportion of consumers use Facebook for local search, they tend to be more socially active. As a result, they’re more likely to be your word of mouth promoters. Also, claim your business’ location on Google Places and associate it with a Google+ account.
4. Invest in mobile search. Web and mobile search buys are separate. Therefore, you need to have budgets for both. This is particularly important for local businesses, especially restaurants.
5. Be ready to close a sale whenever your prospect is ready. This means have a website, phone number and retail establishment location available to meet your prospects’ purchase location preference.

Ensure that your small business is findable by your target audience, especially if it’s local. This means being visible on computers, smartphones and tablets.

What have you done to make your business more findable across devices?  What are your biggest hurdles?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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5 Small Business Mobile Marketing Tips [Research] – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 15, 2013.

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Content marketing is an on-going process not a one-time campaign. It requires a continual stream of new information in a variety of forms presented across different platforms to fulfill your business’s goals and customers’ needs.

The key to cost effective content creation is to develop similar content at the same time regardless of weight since each new piece of content must be re-imagined, not just reposted.

To fill your content marketing editorial calendar without breaking the bank, plan your content creation to ensure that all associated content is developed concurrently to maximize resource use and eliminate planning and overhead.

Fill your editorial calendar cost effectively – 21 Types of content

Here’s a cheat sheet to help you plan your content marketing development.

How To Fill Your Content Marketing Editorial Calendar Cost Effectively
With 21 Types of Content By Weight

©2013 HeidiCohen.com – All rights reserved

7 Actionable marketing tips for cost effective content creation

Here are seven actionable marketing tips to ensure that your content development is as cost effective as possible.

1. Plan major content efforts ahead of time to coordinate with your promotional calendar.  As part of your planning, fill out your content marketing’s editorial calendar to ensure that you’ve got your information needs covered.
2. Gather content ideas from across your organization. Where appropriate get different members of your firm to help create content.
3. Cross-train your content creation staff.  Let your creative resources test out other formats. Also, tap into the different perspectives within your organization.
4. Create all similar content together. The goal is to use the same resources and prevent one-off content efforts. This is particularly important if your content utilizes special talent or external resources.
5. Use branding consistently across all of your content. Keep the same colors, images and voice so that your audience recognizes it as yours.
6. Build a content repository where you keep your organization’s content assets. The objective is to be able to use content again as the basis for new content or as part of a different campaign. It should be based on your annual content audit.
7. Measure the effectiveness of your content marketing. Determine which pieces of content resonate best with your audience and which are most profitable.

By planning your content creation in advance, you’ll be able to minimize your costs. Ironically, smaller firms with less resources are often less able to take the time needed for this strategic perspective.

What are your secrets to cost effective content creation? What are your biggest challenges?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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How to Fill Your Editorial Calendar Without Breaking the Bank – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 14, 2013.

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Mobile marketing is at the top of every marketer’s to-do list but most of them don’t really understand how their target audience uses smartphones and tablets. At the heart of the problem is the fact that mobile marketing sounds new and expensive despite the fact that most of them own one or more of these devices.

When it comes to mobile marketing, most consumers are way ahead of marketers in their use of their smartphones and tablets. They’ve developed a variety of habits to deal with the on-going avalanche of content.

To get your marketing on track, here are twenty-five research charts explained in plain English.

Mobile devices

The mobile marketplace continues to expand. It’s no longer just smartphones and tablets. Here’s the variety of devices as tracked by Prosper Insights as of December 2012. Android and iPhones dominate while Blackberries are a dying breed.

Mobile grows

Smartphone penetration, through 1Q2013, is about 60%. Three out of five cellphone owners have smartphones according to comScore via MarketingCharts. 

According to Adobe’s The State of Mobile Benchmark 2Q2013, iOS and Android dominate the smartphone operating system market with over 90% of smartphone traffic. Therefore, ensure that your content can be read on both types of systems.

In terms of tablets, iOS dominates with over three-quarters of the market based on visits according to Adobe. This makes sense intuitively given that Apple created the market and continues to introduce new iPad versions with increased functionality. Over time others will gain a greater share of the market as has happened with smartphones.

Tablet owners visit 70% more pages than smartphone owners according to Adobe. Tablets have overtaken smartphones in terms of the number of pages they drive. This makes sense since it has a larger screen and is easier to see.

UK owners, followed by US owners, are most likely to surf using a tablet. By contrast, Japanese owners are more likely to use a smartphone according to Adobe’s research.

Mobile owners use both smartphones and tablets for a variety of activities. Tablets dominate when it comes to shopping.  

When it comes to mobile activities, texting and email still dominate with snapping photographs coming in third according to Prosper Insights. What’s  not on this list? Voice since it’s not available on tablets.

Mobile reads

According to Adobe research, there’s been a 200% average growth in digital publishing app readership from August 2012 to February 2013 .

75% of reading sessions happen on tablets, 23% on smartphones and the rest is a combination of ereaders and other devices. Tablet readers open their apps twice as often per month and read three times as many pages each time they read.

Mobile gets social

Mobile is where social media engagement occurs. This makes sense since a large portion of social media interaction can occur without requiring much time. It’s a great snacking behavior or something you can monitor while you’re working on something else as a break.

One-third of Facebook likes happen via mobile according to research by Adobe. Leverage this power by making mobile offers on your social media pages.

Facebook’s mobile monthly active users (aka mobile MAUs) account for over three-quarters of total monthly active users worldwide. 

Mobile search

Based on mobile search research by Google and Nielsen Life 360, mobile search is always on. It increases after 3:00pm when people start thinking about their post-work plans and peaks during prime time. 

Mobile search is used everywhere including when a computer is available because it’s easier or it’s for personal use. 2% of mobile search occurs in a store.

Mobile search varies by context. It indexes highest for food and shopping when users are checking out product information and comparing prices. 

Consumers use mobile search for a wide variety of topics. Note that no one category dominates. 

 81% of mobile search is driven by speed and convenience. 

45% of all mobile searches are goal oriented. 

Mobile is local

Mobile buyers use store locators sixty-three times for each mobile
commerce order.  This means that if you have a local retail establishment it needs to be findable on mobile search! (By contrast, one-third of web-based searches has local intent.)

• 95% of smartphone users search for local information.
• 61%  of smartphone users called after searching for local information.
•  59% of smartphone users visited in person after searching for local information.

Mobile shopping

Mobile owners use their devices to shop, especially tablet owners who power couch commerce. Tablet owners are three times more likely to purchase than smartphone owners. Before you rejoice, consider that it’s 2.2% (versus 3.3% with a non-mobile device) according to Adobe’s research.

Mobile coupons have no influence on over 40% of shoppers according to Prosper Insights while it has a great impact on slightly more than 10% of shoppers. Therefore, take the time to determine who needs a mobile incentive to purchase from you and only target your mobile offers to them.

Two-thirds of US smart­phone and tablet owners who attempted to make a purchase didn’t com­plete a trans­ac­tion due to checkout issues based on March 2013, US research by Harris Inter­ac­tive for Jumio, Inc.  Men and younger prospects are more likely to use a smartphone or tablet for purchases.

Roughly half of mobile owners (smartphone and tablet) didn’t com­plete an attempted pur­chase on their device due to their discomfort entering their credit card infor­ma­tion. Women and adults 55 or older are more likely to have security concerns.

• 47% of respondents said the checkout process took too long.
• 41% of respondents said the checkout was too dif­fi­cult to complete on their device.
• 23%  of respondents said the pur­chase wouldn’t go through.

QR codes

Once a marketing darling, QR codes continue to appear and have a small but loyal following, but over 60% of respondents never use them according to Prosper Insights.   

Mobile security

As a marketer, it’s important to understand that most smartphone users don’t use the same level of security on their mobile devices that they do on computers.  Roughly two-thirds don’t back up their data or use a screen lock.

According to McAfee, mobile security tends to involve mobile apps. Of these, 8% or one out of six contains malware.  

As with any new form of marketing, you need to start using it and test what works best for your audience. Understand that, whether or not your firm has specific mobile-friendly website(s), app(s) and/or email, your prospects, customers and the public are accessing your content via these devices.

What has your experience been with mobile marketing? What has been successful and what has failed?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

BTW–If your organization has mobile-related research that you’d like to share with us, please email us.

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25 Smartphone and Tablet Research Charts – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 13, 2013.

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For many people, it’s difficult to create structure where there isn’t any and blogging is no different. Unless blogging is an integral part of your job with specific deadlines, it can be difficult to show up at your blog especially when other things are competing for your attention.

Blog time management helps you to create a structure and schedule to ensure your blog becomes part of your regular routine.

My mother me taught how to manage an unstructured project such as a blog.

My mother got her Masters degree in Social Work when I was in junior high. As a result, she had to create a routine to ensure she had time to get her class work done. After dinner, she pulled her typewriter out of the hall closet and studied using the dining room table as her desk.

Later my mother started her own business applying the same type of structure to her time. She got up every day at the same time, did her daily exercises and was at her desk by 9:00 am.

Based on my mother’s lessons, here’s a three step structure to help you to establish your blog time management.

1. Personal writing: Create words for yourself

Establish your writing habits by learning what works best for your writing regime.

1. Regular writing. (Daily, preferably first thing in the morning before you’re distracted.) Writing is a habit. You need to show up at the page on a regular basis to be able to remove roadblocks. While we grow thinking that writers have a special inspiration, the reality is that it’s as much about being able to capture ideas when you have them and continually committing them to paper and structuring them. Read about well known writers and you’ll discover they’ve created routines to make time in their lives for writing, often early in the morning or late at night.
2. Feed your brain. (Daily) Most readers need continual input from other sources. This means reading and engaging widely. Ideally have ways to gather information efficiently.
3. Exercise and eat well. (Daily) Since at its core, writing is a physical activity, you need to incorporate a balanced diet and exercise into your schedule. It also provides the energy you need to keep going as well as taking you away from your writing so that your ideas can percolate.

2. Craft blog posts: Write for your readers

Develop blog posts. Organize information and content into posts. While you can just sit down and write, I find it easier to structure the piece before I start. It streamlines the process and helps avoid writers’ block.

1. Collect ideas. (Whenever you have them) Have a place where you save post ideas for future use. Jot down as much as you’ve got while it’s fresh in your mind so it’s ready when you decide to write.   
2. Organize your thoughts into a document. (Twice a week to every day) Use paper, word processor or other content tool like Evernote. I like to outline my ideas before diving in to reduce editing work later.
3. Craft your document into a blog post. (Twice a week to every day – This activity can be combined with the two above) This is where your posts come alive. If you’ve got the time, write the post and let it rest so you can see it with a fresh eye. That said, not all bloggers have this time luxury. Among the elements to integrate are: keywords for search optimization, images to attract attention and links to incorporate both to other articles on your blog and to third party content.

3. Build your blog: Craft content for your audience.

Integrate your blog posts into your publishing platform and promote them.  Understand that:

1. Build an editorial calendar. (Yearly and revise monthly) Use an editorial calendar to ensure your blog content is aligned with your business goals and readers’ needs. While you can use your blog as more of a journal, it’s less likely to attract an audience than writing content that meets your readers’ needs.
   • Determine evergreen content needed. (Seasonal, monthly or weekly) Integrate your promotional calendar.
   • Develop regular features or columns. (Weekly to daily) This provides structure for your content as well as your time since you (and/or your columnists) know about these articles in advance allowing you to plan for them.
   • Craft Just-In-Time content. (Whenever appropriate) Decide how you’ll incorporate articles about hot topics and trending issues.
2. Edit blog posts including technical support. (Depends on blog publishing schedule and writers submissions. This activity can be batched for increased efficiency.) As a publisher, your content needs to be well crafted and presented or it won’t attract an audience. Where possible have a dedicated resource or another person proofread your blog posts for spelling, grammar and understanding. If you don’t think this is important, understand that Social Media Examiner puts its columns through a rigorous four-week review. (Kudos to editor Cindy King!)
3. Promote your content. (Depends on your publishing schedule.) Blogging requires more than an on-going flow of content. It needs to be distributed and shared.
   • Share your blog posts. (Daily engagement at optimal sharing times.)
     • Distribute posts (Based on publishing schedule.) Make sure that your blog posts receive the largest audience possible. Think broadly in terms of social media and your owned media channels to maximize the reach of each article.
     • Engage on social media. (Daily) Regardless of when you publish articles, it’s critical to interact with your fans and followers.
     • Allow social sharing (Depends on readers) Incorporate social sharing buttons on every page of your site except the checkout pages.
   • Participate on other blogs. (Weekly to daily) Read and leave meaty comments on other people’s blogs as well as responding to your own readers on your blog.
   • Write guest posts (Monthly or weekly) Contribute high quality blog posts to other blogs. You should be allowed to have one link back to your blog as well as a byline.(BTW—we do not accept guest posts.)

When it comes to blog time management there’s no better person to turn to than your mom. Moms understand time management.

What are your blog time management tips and tricks?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Big hat tip to my mother for being so inspiring and always being my biggest cheerleader. I love you.

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Blog Time Management: Lessons From Mom – © 2011, Heidi Cohen. This post originally appeared on Heidi Cohen on May 12, 2013.

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