By Brian Anderson, Associate Editor
New marketing trends and mediums are emerging at what seems like a daily basis. Social and mobile, however, are becoming key channels to help businesses improve relationships with partners, customers and prospects, as well as extend the life of their content marketing resources.
Yet overall, many marketers still are struggling to integrate these trends into a structured game plan for their business.
In a recent webinar, titled: Turning Trends Into Strategies: The Perfect Storm Of Social, Mobile And Content Marketing, Roger Courville, Chief Aha! Guy at The Virtual Presenter, discussed common mistakes made with social, mobile and content marketing. Courville also spotlighted key trends significantly impacting businesses’ marketing strategies.
“Two critical shifts that I think are really starting to rock our world, are the overtaking of the mobile device and content marketing,” said Courville during his presentation. “It is interesting because these are high-effort, high-relationship tactics, so it is showing how important human interaction has become.”
Mobile has outgrown its status as merely a marketing trend, as more mobile devices were sold in Q4 2012 than PCs. Courville also shared that Facebook announced on their last earnings conference call that 48% of their uses go on Facebook via mobile-only on a daily basis.
“Social and mobile can and should be addressed when we are thinking about our strategies,” Courville said. “And if you can walk away with these in your strategy, you’ll be exceeding your expectations in no time.”
Integrating social media into communication and engagement strategies can empower marketers to consistently interact with prospects and current customers. By providing relevant, as well as generating one-to-one, personalized conversations, companies can generate ongoing engagement and in turn, build trust.
Although the amount of social media sites available via the web is growing consistently, it is important that companies only focus on generating presence on sites that are relevant to their business, so managing social projects and campaigns is easier.
However, Courville recommended that companies “squat” on more “minor sites” to pull people in to their main networks. “Go sign up for a site with the goal of pulling people from your outposts — or outer network — to the places where you have stronger interests. Make sure the profile points towards your primary form of interaction. The funnel will get them to a place where you have more control, ownership and influence.”
A common mistake many marketers make is that they label content such as blog posts and articles with a specific date. Courville noted that removing an initial publish date from content lengthens its lifecycle, increasing its overall value across channels.
“When we start to think about lifecycle marketing and the nature of the content we produce, might we consider the lifespan of that content by the channel through which we are sharing or iterating it,” Courville said. “Is there a natural pattern for how that content develops? If you think about how to get more mileage — not just out of creating it once and republishing it 15 times — but also finding where people are using the content, you can get a lot out of your content by iterating the nature of how you present it.”
Click here to watch an on-demand version of the webinar.