Scary Good Creative Video: ‘Carrie’ Promo Spooks New Yorkers – It may be a little early for trick or treating, but a new campaign rolled out of the proverbial pumpkin patch this week and tricked one of the most cynical consumer groups, New Yorkers. The video reached 25+ million+ views in just a few days. With the creative juice of Stephen King and Hollywood behind it, the Sony promo for the upcoming Carrie remake is the biggest thing to scare up that many views since The Blair Witch Project. CommPro
More Sharing on E-mail Than Facebook, Twitter – Email beats social networks Facebook and Twitter combined as the top medium for sharing online coupons and other offers, according to new research from SocialTwist, a company that specializes in giving consumers incentives to share deals online. AdAge
Study: How B2B Marketers Use Twitter – Industry media sites are the most common source of content shared by B2B marketers on Twitter, accounting for 62% of all content shares, according to a recent analysis by Leadtail and DNN Software. MarketingProfs
Use Images on Twitter to Get More Retweets – Based on a data set of more than 400,000 tweets, those with images uploaded to pic.Twitter.com were nearly twice as likely to be retweeted while the use of Twitpic increased the odds by just over 60%. On the other hand, Tweets that used Facebook or Instagram links were less likely to be retweeted. Dan Zarella, Hubspot
How Twitter’s Ad Business Went From Zero to $500 Million in Less Than Four Years – Remember when Twitter didn’t want to be in the ad business? With an eye on Facebook’s struggles in the last couple years, Twitter has also made a point of noting that the service is in large part a mobile service, and that its ads have always worked for mobile users. AllThingsD
New Study: A Typical Small Business Advertiser Wastes Money on PPC – A new analysis of 500 small and medium business Google AdWords accounts determined that they were wasting 25% on average due to poor keyword selection, suboptimal ad relevancy and quality scores and lack of time or expertise for optimizing PPC, Search Engine Watch
The World’s Most Influential CMOs – The number of influential CMOs has increased nearly 50% from last year. For the 2013 CMO Influence Study, research was expanded to include the top 500 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 list. Of those companies, 66 have CMOs who are engaged in influential conversations. Forbes
Editorial Unease Rises As Content Ad Links Proliferate – For many editors — especially those who don’t interact much with the business side of the house — the feeling is that the revenue generated by link generators is not worth the sacrifice of editorial dignity. Too often, the suggested content has nothing to do with the lead story. Digiday
A Scientific Guide to Effectively Saying ‘No’ – “I can’t” and “I don’t” are words that seem similar and we often interchange them for one another, but psychologically they can provide very different feedback and, ultimately, result in very different actions. In other words, the phrase “I don’t” is a psychologically empowering way to say no, while the phrase “I can’t” is a psychologically draining way to say no. Lifehacker
How Small Businesses are Dropping the Ball on CTAs – The “Small Business B2B Call to Action Study” of 200 websites found that companies routinely fail to include special offers and related incentives. Even basics, like Contact Info and a phone number are not prominent. Here are some highlights. Online Marketing Coach
7 Tools for Finding Great Content to Share – Finding and sharing great content is an essential part of social media. These tools will help you find content to share and save you a lot of time. Discovered a few new tools myself. MarketingProfs
5 Ways to Increase Customer Engagement Using Science – With digital marketing and loyalty programs, we have the tools to drive customer engagement in a way that’s empirical and scientific. We can draw upon the techniques developed by BF Skinner, called “operant conditioning,” to fine-tune our marketing program for maximum effect. Here are five modern marketing techniques that you should use and the science behind their effectiveness. Direct Marketing News
Samsung’s Curved Smartphone: Big Innovation or Novelty? Analysts predict a small group of early adopters in the U.S. will favor the Round’s distinctive look, but only at half that price. ComputerWorld
The Story Behind 118-year-old Brand – In its 118-year history, John Deere’s The Furrow has become something of a legend in two exceptionally disparate communities: agriculture and brand publishing. For farmers, it’s the agrarian version of Rolling Stone. For brand publishers, it’s a thing of wonder — a brand magazine born generations before the term ‘content marketing’ was coined, which sees its back-issues fought over — fiercely — on eBay. Contently
8 Important e-Commerce Stats – Like most large industries on the Internet, the e-commerce space has become more competitive as new businesses, platforms and complimentary services enter the market. Data analysis of over 18,000 small to medium e-commerce sites help paint a picture of current marketing and consumer behavior trends in the e-commerce space; and one that will give store owners a better chance to reach their business goals. Kissmetrics
Where to Place 30 Elements on Your eCommerce and Why – The product detail page is where the magic is supposed to happen. When a product detail page does its job two things happen: (1) the consumer has his/her need fulfilled and (2) the retailer achieves its goal and acquires a happy customer. Read these recommendations to gain a solid starting point. eConsultancy
Google On Original Content Related to Product Descriptions – Google will try to show users the appropriate version that matches what they think the user is looking for. So in some cases, the original source of content is not always the most important thing, demonstrating the growing importance of context for SEO. Search Engine Roundtable
6 Tips for Finding Prospects on LinkedIn – Social selling produces better results than cold calling and allows you to easily reach the decision-makers. To be successful, strive to offer value and build credibility. Following these six steps when integrated into your business strategy will set you apart from other LinkedIn members. Social Media Examiner
3 Google+ Power Users Reveal their Secrets – If you’re still in the dark about value proposition of Google Plus, prepare to be enlightened. Here are just three people among the hundreds who spent the time to make a positive contribution to the conversation, left lengthy comments and have provided real insights as to the power of Google+. Jeff Bullas
From the Online Community
On “10 Content Marketing Tools for Creation, Distribution and Analytics,” Cara Posey said, Lee, this is a great list. Some tools I know, some I’m trying out (like Little Bird) and others I have yet to try. I will humbly add ExpertFile to this list…another platform that is great for finding experts and reviewing expert content as well as a platform for companies and individuals to share their own content. We also just launched our new visual dashboard, helping B2B marketers and agencies with content marketing analytics and assessing ROI for expert content marketing efforts as well as identifying new opportunities. I hope you’ll check it out as a potential tool that adds additional value to your list above
On “Digital Newsletters as Content Marketing,” Sarah Bauer said, Great post! Some takeaways from your examples:
1. Consistent branding for digital newsletters is key. The logo/colours need to be instantly recognizable as the brand, and so should appear above the fold on the newsletter.
2. Before diving into a topic, it’s important to outline what readers can expect from the newsletter. A simple table of content at the top of the page can suffice.
On “5 Habits of Digital Marketing Agencies That Get Results,” Ava Christi said, While the digital revolution has given marketers great new ways to be creative, it has also demanded that they become more statistical and analytical in order to prove ROI, which has proved difficult in the past. But help is at hand.
Episodeone.com said, All these characteristics which you have talked about here are very important for success. Well! Success in digital marketing is often the result of a mashup of tactics and technology from multiple sources, which means marketers need to think beyond their role, team and hierarchy to embrace the ideas, and, in some cases, the expertise of others.
What’s Your Take?
Was a Scary Carrie video good content marketing even if it was a trick? For e-commerce sites, do you have a continuous improvement process in place? Is your CMO an influencer in your organization.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
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