You can rely on us to keep you up-to-date on the latest digital marketing news, best practices, and industry trends. Following are the ones we found most interesting today.
Content Marketing
Content strategy – Plan content so that it meets business needs, understand your audience’s needs and wishes, and share your strategy with your team and organization. (source: Search Engine Watch)
Books – Improve your content marketing knowledge and gain inspiration with peer-recommended books:
- 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating ‘Competition-Free Content’ that Stands Out and Gets Results (2018) by Garrett Moon
- The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters (2006) by Joseph Sugarman
- The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (2015) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Jessie C. Stricchiola
- The Art of the Click: How to Harness the Power of Direct-Response Copywriting and Make More Sales (2018) by Glenn Fisher
- Book Launch: How to Write, Market, & Publish Your First Bestseller in Three Months or Less AND Use It to Start and Grow a Six-Figure Business (2015) by Chandler Bolt
- Born to Blog: Building Your Blog for Personal and Business Success One Post at a Time (2013) by Mark Schaefer and Stanford Smith
- Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships (2012) by Andrew Davis
- Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen (2017) by Donald Miller
- Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing (2018, 5th edition) by Andy Crestodina
- The Content Code: Six Essential Strategies to Ignite Your Content, Your Marketing, and Your Business (2015) by Mark Schaefer
- Content Design (2017) by Sarah Richards
- The Content Driven Product Launch: How B2B Businesses Can Use Content Marketing to Power New Product Launches (2016) by Michael Passanante
- The Content Formula: Calculate the ROI of Content Marketing & Never Waste Money Again (2015) by Michael Brenner and Liz Bedor
- Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses (2015) by Joe Pulizzi
- Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) that Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (2012) by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman
- Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project (2012) by Margot Bloomstein
- Content Strategy for the Web (2012) by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach
- Content that Converts: How to Build a Profitable and Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy (2016) by Laura Hanly
- The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change (2016) by Bharat Anand
- The Elements of Content Strategy (2010) by Erin Kissane
- Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less (2013) by Joe Pulizzi
- Everybody Writes: Your Go-to Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (2014) by Ann Handley
- How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding (2004) by Douglas Holt
- How to Shoot Video that Doesn’t Suck (2011) by Steve Stockman
- Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost into Profit (2017) by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose
- Practical Content Strategy & Marketing (2017) by Julia McCoy
- Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Formulas of a Conversion Scientist (2012) by Brian Massey
(source: Content Marketing Institute)
Marketing
Books – Increase your general marketing knowledge with peer-recommended books:
- Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (2018) by James Clear
- The Choice Factory: 25 Behavioral Biases that Influence What We Buy (2018) by Richard Shotton
- Contagious: Why Things Catch On (2013) by Jonah Berger
- Conversation Marketing: How to Be Relevant and Engage Your Customer by Speaking Human (2018) by Kevin Lund
- Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2014) by Steve Krug
- Experiences: the 7th Era of Marketing (2015) by Robert Rose and Carla Johnson
- How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie
- Illuminate: Ignite Change through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols (2016) by Nancy Duarte
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006) by Robert Cialdini
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (2007) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
- The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, Newsjacking, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly (2017, 6th edition) by David Meerman Scott
- People Buy You: The Real Secret to What Matters Most in Business (2010) by Jeb Blount
- Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers (1999) by Seth Godin
- Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends (2017) by Martin Lindstrom
- Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2011) by Simon Sinek
- Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (2012) by Ryan Holiday
- The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic (2011) by Dan Ariely
- Webs of Influence (2017) by Nathalie Nahai
- The 1-Page Marketing Plan (2018) by Allan Dib
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (1994) by Al Ries and Jack Trout
(source: Content Marketing Institute)
SEO
BERT optimization – “Write naturally,” was what Google’s John Mueller recommended following Google’s implementation of the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT, as it’s usually known) algorithm, which has worried digital marketers lately. Mueller also warned against “keyword stuffing.” Marketers need to focus on relevance signals rather than keywords. (source: Search Engine Journal)
Keyword tracking – Monitor your set of keywords and how they progress over time, track at a high level as well as granular level, and impress your C-suite stakeholders. The three most common metrics include visibility, position, volume, and page. Consider three tracking methods: single-list keyword tracking, category-split keyword tracking, and keyword funnel tracking. (source: Search Engine Journal)
Social Media Marketing
Marketing style – Develop your own style for your Instagram feed that will evoke emotion and that your audience will instantly recognize and feel motivated to interact. Tips include:
- Instagram aesthetic – use the same 2-3 fonts, specific color palette, strong images and videos, theme (e.g., minimalist vs. colorful)
- Mood board – put together collage to help in making post decisions (e.g., colors, photos, videos)
- Style-aligned visuals – take and edit high-quality pictures and videos that follow theme
- Preview feed – play with feed layout, then batch and schedule posts (source: Social Media Examiner)
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