Content marketing, even if you’re not the one executing the work, is a major investment of your time, energy and resources. A company can’t just hire an agency and say, “Hey, go ahead and launch this thing and report back on it in a month.” It doesn’t work that way. There are so many things to consider when it comes down to planning and executing a content marketing strategy, but here are three considerations to whet your whistle. Money Let’s go ahead and start with…
Read MoreThe old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” rings true in the digital age. Tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets, and Facebook posts with images see 2.3 times more engagement than posts without them. And when it comes to blogging, articles with an image once every 75-100 words historically get double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images. With everyone and their mother adding “professional iPhone photographer” to their resumes these days, finding great photography for your external…
Read MorePerformance data for specific channels will help you gauge how engaged your audience is, based on the type of action they’re taking. However, tracking, analyzing and reporting marketing campaign success can be tricky. There’s a wealth of data you can pull from your website, blog and social channels. So instead of leaving your team to guess which metrics are important, use these KPIs as a guide for earned, owned and paid content. Paid social media metrics Social advertising platforms have become increasingly informative. Marketers can…
Read MoreYou know your organization or brand should be pushing out content to your audience and followers, but getting over the hurdle of what to post can be a challenge. We’ve talked about generating content for Twitter, but let’s take a step back and see how you can generate ideas that can be used across all of your platforms. Role Play First, think of the adage about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. That is typically a healthy exercise as you contemplate what the audience you…
Read MoreYour marketing team is putting in a lot of creativity, strategy and effort into making sure your company’s content marketing plan is as effective as possible. But, are they following simple best practices that will ensure content from your company will stand out from the rest? Here are a few best practices to share with your marketing team, broken down by platform, that will help them keep content user and search engine friendly, reach target audiences and generate more leads. Whether your team is aiming…
Read MoreThere’s a recurring debate in Fredrik Backman’s endearing book, A Man Called Ove, in which the title character and his best friend lock horns over the supremacy of one Swedish car manufacturer over the other. This Volvo vs. Saab rivalry reminds me of the ongoing debate between PR practitioners who subscribe to our traditional strategies of media relations and the more progressive proponents of content marketing. Of course, if you have a two-car garage, and budget is not an issue, the easy answer is to…
Read MoreNot every video you post on your social channels needs to have Oscar-worthy production values. Sometimes you need to move more quickly—and spend less money—than you can when using a professional videographer. But even for smartphone video quickly captured in the field, you can take a few steps to improve the final quality of your videos. Here are a few quick tips for capturing better video in situations where it doesn’t make sense to hire an external videographer. Standing too far away There’s a phrase…
Read MoreDo you know what the beauty of owned content is? You have total control, and for a control-freak like me, developing original, owned content puts me in a happy place. Chances are, if you have a content marketing strategy in place, you are already producing some level of owned content. But if you’re looking to beef up your practice, or get started from the ground up, you may need a little bit of guidance. The world is your content oyster, and it can get overwhelming…
Read MoreReading online isn’t much different than in print. Some of us read every word on every line, but for the rest of us – we’re skimmers. If a headline captures our attention and piques our interest, we’ll make the decision to invest time and read the full article. As it turns out, writing blog headlines is just as much a science as it is an art. Sure, you need to eloquently string a cohesive series of words together to tee up your article, but you…
Read More“It’s a PR Podcast.” This is the answer Kelsey and I give when asked one of two questions: What are you recording? What are you calling your podcast? We’ve been super excited about this podcast for months now. From Slack side conversations to recording with microphones, the day finally arrived, and we’ve already released a few episodes in our first “season.” For anyone interested in starting a podcast, we’ve boiled down our process and a couple of lessons learned into a few steps to help…
Read MoreAn ongoing request you’ll hear almost daily at The Hodges Partnership is, “Does anyone have time to proof this?” And with good reason. When you’ve spent a lot of one-on-one time with a news release, blog post or op-ed, it’s easy to overlook mistakes, and we all know how that goes – as soon as you hit send or press publish, then you notice there’s an extra word or typo. The good news? There’s hope, because there are a number of resources available (some that…
Read MoreSearch Engine Optimization or SEO is the key way to improve your website’s prominence in search engines. There are several rules, tools and plug-ins that can help boost SEO on the backend as well as experts and agencies who specialize in this area. But there also are a few best practices you can employ on your own that will help optimize your company’s website. Some of these also will help improve user experience and can support content marketing efforts. Here are three SEO best practices…
Read More
