Content marketing, social media & more at the DSD14

Content with a purpose:

For the content-obsessed, we got a little taste of best practices, many of which were reminders and others which were total eye-openers. But we also encountered the "content is dead" party; if you've been part of the Internet community, you know by now that trends change faster than the speed of… Flash.

Here are some useful tips:

• Build a relationship. It's all about that trust. "People are the most powerful marketing tool in the world," Joe Fernandez, co-founder of Klout.
• Customers are using digital content to discover and make purchasing decisions. Your purpose is to be at each stage of the customers' journey.
• 2014 is the year of personalization: people want to see the newsletters addressed to them, catered to their likes or the information they are interested in.
• Formula for creating content: story-telling. Listen, observe, and gather insights. Become part of the conversation; don't just talk about yourself to your customer.
• Make sure that the content you are publishing is well distributed to all channels. Analyze the impact of the content and re-purpose or re-evaluate your content as needed.
• You can find content in your promotions, infographics, presentations, white papers, blogs, videos, and other materials that you already have. You can also find a lot of content ideas in your employees – they should be your first brand-loyal fans.
• Your content should be aligned with your products or services.
• Ask yourself: "What are the on-page behavior metrics telling us about the human engagement with our digital channels and content?"
• Multimedia, like including videos in your emails, increases engagement, views, open and conversion rates.
• Even press releases should be on the website and have backlinks.
• Web pages should have 200 words or more.
• Google will penalize your content if you don't follow their best practices, according to Arnie Kuenn (photo, next page), president of Vertical Measures, an agency who specializes in strategic search and content marketing services.
• Be agile, delightful and unexpected.

Managing your reputation:

• "You are always being judged," says Andy Beal from Trackur. Even if you're not in the social media conversation, there are conversations going on about you on social media. How to counteract? Have a social media presence and show your audience your value.
• Train your staff in handling the messages going out on social media and remind them to always, always, always use the right social media account.
• Be present. Social media is never offline. Make sure to monitor your channels and if there's a specific event, make sure your scheduled posts are not embarrassing or insulting (in any case, adjust your posts during that "crisis" time.) "Don't fake it," Beal says.
• Nurture loyal fans. They might become your brand ambassadors.
• You can use social media to listen to your customers/clients/audience.
• Take your brand seriously – monitor and police your brand and don't let people use images that are ugly or not aligned with what your brand is.
• Don't be a bragger or feel like you have to fill the silence. And don't "humblebrag."
• Know your audience: what they will tolerate, what they won't, and ask questions like, "what would like to see from us?" 

Some interesting stats:

• 5 out of 6 people connect with companies via social media, according to Skye Sant, consultant and user experience strategy director.
• 84 percent of internet traffic in the world will be video by 2018, according to Steve Kilberg from SKRP media.
• 82 percent of people on Facebook and 71 percent of people on Twitter have expectations that their questions will be answered the same day, some even within 30 minutes, of posting them to your profiles.
• People remember 80 percent of what they see, 10 percent of what they hear and 20 percent of what they read. Make sure you have interesting visuals, like infographics, as part of your content, or relevant photos that complement the content.
• 50 percent of the digital life of people is spent on games and Facebook.
• 40 percent of people who look at Facebook in a day are seeing it through a mobile device.
• A video should not be longer than 30 seconds. Most people seem to stop paying attention after that mark.

I know that this is a lot of information, but that's why you have us here at LifeHealthPro, to help guide you through this new world of the digital age and social media.