Posts Tagged "video"
5 Tips to Improve Your Visual Content
As the purchasing landscape increasingly skews younger, you need to think about how to improve your visual content to satisfy buyers’ preferences.
Highlights:
- Audiences increasingly prefer visual content.
- Optimize visual content for search engines by including text.
- Use graphics to make data pop.
Digital natives, who make up the majority of today’s B2B purchasing landscape, are highly steeped in online content. And, it may come as no surprise, they overwhelmingly prefer visual presentation, whether in video, infographic, animation, or gif format. What does this mean? Supply chain marketers need to adapt or be left behind.
Good content marketing is all about presenting information in a story format. Great content marketing also packs emotional resonance. Click To TweetWhile this doesn’t mean that text-based marketing is a thing of the past, it does mean that all your branded content — from blog posts to infographics to case studies to video — needs to be design-minded and visually appealing. These five suggestions will help improve your visual content game.
5 ways to improve your visual content
1) Optimize for search engines.
The biggest downside to visual content such as videos and infographics is that they aren’t searchable in the way that text-based content is. But this doesn’t mean that you need to lose out on the SEO benefits when publishing this type of content.
First off, it pays to post a text transcript with video or accompanying explanatory text with infographics and images. It’s also important for you to categorize and organize your visual content, which means labeling visual assets like logos and images with relevant keywords. When publishing them, be sure to tag images with keywords.
2) Make data interesting.
Common sense tells us that reading a bunch of numbers is far less compelling than seeing numerical data presented graphically. B2B marketers are in a prime position to make use of attractive data presentation, such as charts, graphs, animated images, or other formats to display your numerical data.
3) Create reusable graphics.
If you’re investing in visual content creation, it pays to consider how it can be reused. For example, when creating an infographic, consider how you can break it up into multiple graphics, each containing a set of statistics or other information. This way, you can add these smaller graphics to other pieces of text content, boosting engagement and adding visual appeal.
Additionally, keep in mind that visual snippets are ideal for posting on social media, as teasers, or even self-contained Instagram or Facebook Stories.
4) Keep your branding consistent.
A key point with visual content creation is consistent branding. Your brand’s visual presentation includes fonts, colors, font sizes, image styles, and anything else that is a visual indicator of your identity.
The first step to consistent branding is to document visual guidelines clearly and to distribute them to all content creators, along with samples for their use. Each time you publish visual content, make checking against the guidelines part of your editorial process.
5) Use visual content to tell a story.
Good content marketing is all about presenting information in a story format. Great content marketing also packs emotional resonance. When creating visual content, start with the idea of telling a story. Ideally, you’re presenting data in a way that communicates a feeling and elicits an emotional response from the viewer. If your data is impactful, your viewers will forge an emotional connection with your brand.
How are you trying to improve your visual content?
Related posts:
- 5 Secrets to Creating Infographics that Will Wow Supply Chain Buyers
- Infographic: How Digital Natives are Changing B2B Purchasing
- 6 Content Marketing Trends for the Supply Chain in 2019
Posts Tagged "video"
Video: SEO and Video Posts – What You Need to Know
Video is cost effective and easy to produce, but with growing popularity, it’s harder to get ranked on search results. Here’s what marketers need to know about SEO and video posts.
Highlights:
- When choosing your video hosting platform, it’s important to consider the reasons why you want your videos to rank, such as lead generation or brand awareness.
- Spend time crafting an engaging video title and description and make sure to use keywords audiences are actually searching for.
- Don’t solely rely on optimizing your video to receive placement on search engines. It’s just as important that the rest of the page is optimized for SEO.
Video transcript:
I’m Ulrika Gerth and I’m the Content Writer and Strategist at Fronetics. Today I’m going to talk about what you need to know about SEO and video posts.
So video SEO is simply optimizing your video to be indexed and rank on the search engine results pages, like Google.
In the last few years, video marketing has become more and more popular among businesses and it’s easy to see why. It’s cost effective and easy to produce. But with the explosion of video, it’s also become much harder to get ranked on universal search results.
Here are a few ways to optimize your videos.
1. Pick the best platform.
When choosing your video hosting platform, you need to consider the reasons why you want your videos to rank. Are you optimizing your video to gain traffic and generate leads? Or are you more interested in thought leadership and brand awareness?
2. Make the Video Engaging
The video thumbnail is what searchers will see when your video is indexed, and therefore it plays an important role in whether they will click on your video.
3. Pay Attention to the Title and Description of Your Video
Just like they do for a blog post, the title and description play a role in ranking videos. Spend time crafting an engaging video title and description. Make sure you do keyword research so you use keywords people are actually searching for.
4. Ensure the Rest of Your Page Is Relevant to the Video and Optimized for SEO
You can’t rely only on optimizing your video to receive placement on search engines. It’s just as important that the rest of the page is optimized for SEO, or the search engines won’t bother to crawl it in the first place.
For more information, visit fronetics.com.
Related posts:
- 3 Quick SEO Tips to Improve Your Blog Right Now
- Writing for SEO: People Are Changing How They Search
- Should Your Business Be Using Linkless Backlinks to Increase SEO?
Posts Tagged "video"
6 Content Marketing Trends for the Supply Chain in 2019
Content marketing is no longer optional. It’s essential in creating brand awareness, educating audiences, and building credibility. Here’s a look at the biggest digital marketing trends for 2019.
Highlights:
- The content marketing industry is expected to be worth more than $400 billion by 2021.
- Video is currently the most popular form of content being consumed online today.
- Peers and colleagues are the third most influential source of information for B2B purchasing, right behind online searches and your website.
A recent article by Forbes on content marketing notes: “As recently as a few years ago, marketers handled content mostly as a side project. It was more of a bonus than an essential role — something you did when you had time because it took a backseat to more traditional marketing projects and responsibilities. That’s changed.”
Boy, has that changed. The content marketing industry is expected to be worth more than $400 billion by 2021.
The content marketing industry is expected to be worth more than $400 billion by 2021. Click To TweetThe 2018 report from the Content Marketing Institute shows just how prevalent digital and content marketing is, and how essential it has become to creating brand awareness, educating your audience, and building credibility and trust with your customers.
Supply chain & logistics marketers: Trends to watch
So, where is content marketing headed in 2019? Marketing budgets are still on the rise, and supply chain and logistics companies are increasingly seeing the value in moving to an inbound marketing strategy driven by original content.
These are the six notable trends to consider when planning your 2019 content marketing strategy.
1. Video
Video is currently the most popular form of content being consumed online today, and video marketing will continue to have substantial value in 2019.
Smart supply chain marketers should start the new year by developing a visual storytelling strategy that offers consistent delivery of valuable content.
What’s your best bet? Be helpful and teach your audience something worthwhile to them.
2. Chatbots
The rise of chatbots – automated computer programs that simulate human conversation in messaging apps – is expected to continue in 2019. Business Insider recently reported that the number of people on messaging apps surpassed the number of users on social networks!
Chatbots are just one of the ways artificial intelligence will shape the content marketing landscape in 2019, but their ability to drastically increase customer engagement puts them on the short list for a major trend to watch in the coming year.
3. Voice search
Voice search is becoming an increasingly prevalent means of attaining information. Statistics vary, but it’s expected that anywhere between 30-50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. A recent report by NPR and Edison Research found that the rise of smart speakers is substantially changing consumer routines and purchasing behavior.
A good content marketing strategy for 2019 should consider how your customers might use voice search in your industry, and what you can do to maximize your content’s ability to respond.
4. Long-form content
I love this one, because it harkens back to humble beginnings of content marketing and the desire to put informative, quality content in front of a targeted interested audience.
Long form content – white papers, case studies, and lengthier blog posts e.g. – will have a resurgence of renewed appreciation in 2019. Why? Because many industries, including supply chain and logistics industries, are saturated with tons of mediocre short form content. People are increasingly looking to weed through it all for substantial quality posts from trusted sources. In addition, search engines will favor longer posts in results rankings.
Cheers to 2019 being the year of quality over quantity!
5. Brand ambassadors
We wrote about brand ambassadors as we headed into 2018, but they are worth mentioning again as we look forward to 2019. Brand ambassadors are employees that influence the B2B buying decisions of others, and they are an often-overlooked resource with more traditional marketing tactics.
Peers and colleagues are the third most influential source of information for business to business (B2B) purchasing, right behind online searches and your website! And there’s nothing more credible than a friend who speaks highly of their company’s product or service.
Definitely consider how you can help make brand ambassadors out of your employees in 2019.
6. Market Influencers
The final trend to watch in 2019 is influencer marketing, a form of marketing which focuses on influential people rather than the market as a whole.
Basically, marketers identify individuals who might have influence over potential buyers and create marketing campaigns and activities around these influencers. In many ways, this works similarly to a brand ambassador, where a single person influences their network of friends; in this case, however, the market influencer has a large network and a lot of “friends” who listen.
Influencer marketing will be a huge trend in marketing for 2019, and it would be worth considering who might be an influencer in your industry in the coming year and what your company might do reach them.
So, there you have it. As we head into 2019, these are the trends to watch and plan for in content marketing space.
The B2B buying climate is growing longer and more complex, and content marketing is so effective throughout the entire sales cycle if it’s done well. The end of the year is a great time to revisit your marketing strategy and make any necessary changes for the coming year.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
Related posts:
- How Long Should My Blog Posts Be? A Case for Long-Form Content
- What Does Automation Mean for Supply Chain Marketing and Sales?
- 3 Ways to Encourage Employees to Become Brand Ambassadors
Posts Tagged "video"
Infographic: 4 Strategies for Supply Chain Marketers to Build a YouTube Audience
If you’re trying to build a YouTube audience, you’ll need equal parts strategy, creativity, concision, and valuable subject matter.
Highlights:
- Strategy and creativity are top priorities.
- Keep content short and sweet for maximum impact.
- Offer value to your audience rather than a sales pitch.
An increasing percentage of search traffic is perusing YouTube for information, advice, and education. That makes the platform ideal for getting in front of prospects looking for products and services like yours.
But I’ve seen a lot of B2B marketers getting YouTube wrong. The good news is that the problem is usually that they’re trying too hard — and not in the right ways.
To effectively build a YouTube audience that will eventually become leads and, hopefully, customers, you need to be distributing video content that showcases your organization’s expertise in an approachable way. Here are some simple rules for how to go about that (without barking up the wrong tree).
4 ways to build a YouTube audience
1) Be disciplined about your content schedule.
When it comes to publishing content on social media, when you post is nearly as important as what you post. YouTube is no different. Creating and sticking to a consistent schedule for posting new content essentially trains your audience and lets them know when they can expect to hear more from you.
Creating video content consistently doesn’t need to feel like reinventing the wheel. First off, videos should be part of your content calendar in the same way as blog posts, case studies, and other forms of content. You don’t need to create brand new material for each video. Take a high-performing blog post and re-package the ideas into video content.
2) Get creative.
Creativity for B2B companies is all about striking the right balance between entertaining presentation and informative, high-quality content. Think about approaching the information you want to convey in a different way. Can you use a different medium (like animation) or interview two subject-matter experts together if your one-on-one interviews are feeling stale?
There are plenty of technologies available today that will help you create exciting, engaging video content relatively cheaply. Or you could always consider outsourcing your videography.
3) Keep it short.
While we’ve seen recent growth in long-form YouTube content, for most B2B marketing purposes, shorter videos are far more effective. Of course, this is good news in that producing shorter videos can be less time-consuming and costly. But I cannot emphasize enough the importance of quality over quantity here.
A 1- to 2-minute video of high-quality, well-edited content will get far more engagement (and be more successful in helping you build a YouTube audience) than 15 minutes of lecturing or poorly executed, complex animation. Click To TweetA 1- to 2-minute video of high-quality, well-edited content will get far more engagement (and be more successful in helping you build a YouTube audience) than 15 minutes of lecturing or poorly executed, complex animation. If you have a lot of footage about a certain subject, consider releasing a series of shorter videos.
4) Don’t make video a sales pitch.
Content marketing is inbound marketing, and video is no different. Countless studies have shown that increasingly buyers prefer informative, valuable content to blatant sales pitches.
This doesn’t mean that your content shouldn’t be branded, but it does mean that your focus in creation and execution needs to be what you can offer your audience, rather than you’re asking from them.
Use your video content to address specific concerns or answer questions that are relevant to your target audience. It’s simple: if you give something of value, you will build a YouTube audience that could eventually become your leads and customers.
What have you been doing to build a YouTube audience?
Related posts:
- 5 Ways to Improve Your YouTube Marketing Strategy
- Yes, Video Can Work for the Supply Chain
- Seven Ways to Get More Views on Your YouTube Videos
Posts Tagged "video"
Video: For More Creative Content, Break These 4 Rules
The best way to come up with creative and engaging content is to think outside the box and sometimes, take risks. Here are four rules to break to produce truly creative content.
Highlights:
- Throw out the template approach to content and start thinking about what makes you stand out. That’s what audiences want to see.
- Don’t be afraid to showcase what you do best through different avenues, like customer or vendor testimonials.
- When you’re committed to curiosity, you naturally become a learning organization and this learning leads to more creative content.
Video transcript:
I’m Elizabeth Hines, and I’m the Creative Director at Fronetics, and today we’re talking about for more creative content, you have to break these four rules.
With over 4 million blog posts published every day, you have to be really creative with your content in order to drive traffic and win over prospects and leads.
So in order to do so, you’re going to have to break these four rules.
1. Mirror competitors
If you’re in this certain industry, then you have to cover these certain topics. You might think because your competitors are covering this certain topic or that certain topic, you should be covering it as well. Not so. You should be covering the topics that are unique to your business, that your company offers expertise in and the ways you stand out from your competitors.
2. Marketing mindset
While your marketing team has a great idea of what is going on in your, some of the best stories and the best blog content comes from your other teams. Maybe your sales team, sometimes your customers or your vendors have a really good prospective or a really good story to tell. And some of the most creative content comes from those unique prospectives.
3. Keep it obvious
It can be really tempting to do a quick brainstorm, come up with a couple good ideas, things that are obvious and things that stand out about your company. But you’re going to get much more creative content if you dig a little deeper. For example, if your first instinct is to talk about self-driving vehicles, a very popular topic right now, can you offer a new perspective on that topic? Can you talk specifically about the sensors that are involved in that technology? Can you talk about government regulations of that technology? What new perspective can you offer to that often talked about conversation?
4. Repeat success
Now this is a little bit controversial because I do encourage you to look at what’s been successful in the past and try to build on that and try to repeat that. But you should also be taking some risks when you’re developing your content calendar. Build in a healthy mix of what’s worked for you in the past, what resonates with your target audience. Then something new, something different, something totally out of left field, because you need to keep experimenting. You need to keep trying new things because your audience is going to evolve and your content should evolve creatively as well.
For more information, visit our website at fronetics.com.
Related posts:
- 3 Questions to Ensure your Content Marketing Strategy Is Sales-Focused
- Video: Six Digital Marketing Trends for the Supply Chain 2019
- 5 Tips to Boost SEO for Supply Chain Marketers: Video Short
Follow Me
