Content Curation Inspiration: Types, Examples, & Use Cases for B2B Marketers
If you create and share content, curation is part of your B2B marketing strategy. From seasoning a blog post with key third-party statistics to sharing an interesting article from an industry publication or influencer across your social channels, you’re curating.
But content curation has a place beyond adding an insight or two to your content.
With large volumes of information available today and short attention spans, curation allows content marketers to create more convenient, valuable content experiences for their target audience, while growing thought leadership, bolstering their content calendar, and increasing production efficiency.
What types of curation exist? How are B2B brands doing curation? When does it make sense to do curation? Let’s dive in.
Types of Content Curation and B2B Examples
The Curation Kitchen Staples: Microcontent
Statistics. Quotes. Tips. Social media commentary. Third-party videos. Gifs. Memes. Curated microcontent is what gives your content its flavor—whether its used as seasoning in a long-form blog post or modularly in short-form social content. This is foundational curation, and it plays a role in all other types. And as TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden once said:
“Snackable content can often be managed and repurposed like ingredients to create a main course. On their own, short-form content like quotes, tips, and statistics are useful for social network shares and as added credibility to blog posts, eBooks, and articles.”
See what I did there? Microcontent is simplistic and easy to integrate, helping you provide more depth and insight on a topic, infuse credibility, and highlight industry experts.
When microcontent curation makes sense: Always—if the content is relevant to the topic you’re discussing. Microcontent helps you provide proof points to bolster your narrative and build credibility with your audience.
The Curation Classics: Roundups, Listicles, and Resource Hubs
Collecting key bits of information and insights and organizing them into an easy to digest format is the quintessential content curation tactic. The premise is simple: You’re gathering interesting tidbits from multiple sources on a specific topic and placing them in one central location.
The underlying theme for this curation tactic (and any content tactic for that matter) is relevance and value. It needs to be topically relevant to your audience and it can’t be a lazy compilation; it needs to serve a purpose.
News roundups are perhaps the most popular of the curation classics. We’ve all seen them and likely have a few we go back to on a regular basis, so I won’t spend too much time here. (Shameless plug to check out our weekly digital marketing news roundup.)
But here’s an example of a roundup style piece from EHS and sustainability consulting firm *Antea Group that brings video content together to have a little fun and spark a connection with the audience.
The post showcases six workplace safety videos—all sourced and easily embedded from YouTube—with movie-critic-like commentary that make connections to the daily life and work of their target audience.
When it comes to resource hubs, HubSpot is an “ultimate list” destination on a variety of subjects, most notably digital marketing statistics. Here’s a recent example featuring Instagram statistics.
For listicles, one of our recent BIGLIST editions featuring 50 of the top marketing blogs featuring martech brands is a solid example. Time was spent on researching and vetting, and the list provides a short and sweet description of each blog, as well as our favorite recent article to give readers a cue on what’s worth checking out first.
Finally, events can be great opportunities for curation. *Introhive, an enterprise relationship management (ERM) platform, regularly curates social and team member insights to compile post-event infographics with top takeaways.
When classic curation makes sense: Classic curation is largely an awareness and engagement play. If you’re looking to provide your audience with a helpful resource that hits quick on the points, and showcase your brand as a thoughtful expert in the space, this type of curation can make it easy for your audience to find insight and inspiration—and minimize the amount of time they need to spend on the hunt.
The Next Level of Curation: Thought Leadership Mashups
Curation isn’t limited to assembling a robust, scannable list of information or resources, or seasoning original content with stats, quotes, or videos. Curation can fuel thought leadership.
Great examples of this kind of curation are trends-focused pieces. Taking a cue from the classic curation formats, this kind of content aims to identify one or more trend or pattern using curated bits of information, all tied together with your knowledge and expertise.
This could be small-scale or large-scale—meaning a single concept could provide the supporting content or tie-in, or it could be your take on a collection of related trends, facts, or insights. This piece from *SAP’s Digitalist Magazine is a great example.
But this kind of curation doesn’t just lend itself to discussing trends. Many of our own blog posts use a mashup curation method to educate and engage marketers, and define our perspectives and approach to marketing.
This can be seen in a recent post from Nick Nelson on how to write clear, concise content. Using our words intentionally is a core belief, and Nick was able to illustrate that with his deep knowledge and some relevant insights from third parties.
Also, when we say “curation,” we don’t just mean collecting insights from third-party sources. You can curate your own content—it’s just most often called repurposing.
Salesforce has a great example here. This recent post touches on a key trend in the marketplace (lack of consumer trust), leverages microcontent from Salesforce’s own research (the Trends in Consumer Trust research report), and then original content builds a narrative for a specific audience (retailers).
In addition, curating and repurposing influencer content is an especially big opportunity. More than likely, the insights that influencers share with you have implications and applications across other related topics.
When curation mashups make sense: If you want to build thought leadership on a subject, mashups should be in your content lineup. Mashups allow you to elevate an idea, perspective, challenge, or opportunity, while using existing content as a jumping off-point or as part of the foundation of your take.
Read: A Tasty, Strategic Addition to the Content Marketing Table: ‘Repurposed Content Cobbler’
Content Curation for the Win
Regardless of your editorial plan, you’re already doing some form of content curation. However, you can make curation a more deliberate and effective part of your overall B2B content marketing strategy.
Whether you create an ultimate list featuring statistics from multiple sources, provide high-level takeaways from an event or report, give your own content new life to build thought leadership, content curation can provide value and convenience for your audience and writing team.
Looking for content curation best practices, tools, and more examples? Check out our post on Content Curation 101.
*Disclosure: Antea Group, SAP, and Introhive are TopRank Marketing clients.
The post Content Curation Inspiration: Types, Examples, & Use Cases for B2B Marketers appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
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Read More →Maximize Your Facebook Ads ROI with Automatic Placements
Facebook gives advertisers many possibilities to optimize and improve performance. It can be overwhelming at times, once you start thinking about the myriad of factors like campaign objective, targeting, ad delivery, ad unit type, ad copy, and budget—to name a few. There are a lot of considerations when advertising on Facebook, which is why advertisers are always looking for ways to improve performance and efficiency for their campaigns.
Facebook has slowly made adjustments to its ad platform to help advertisers improve their results much faster. The development that stands out the most is maximizing “placement” performance with automatic placements.
Facebook has established automatic placements in an effort to help advertisers get the best results available across all default placements. This allows Facebook to choose results from the broadest range possible, which implies that automatic placements are typically the most efficient use of the advertiser’s budget because they help control costs.
Do Advertisers Need to use Facebook Automatic Placements to Improve ROI?
The short answer, yes.
In past years it was wise to break out your ad sets individually for each placement, to have more control and easily decrease or increase ad spend based on results. However, Facebook’s ad technology has gotten to the point where it will likely negatively impact performance in most cases if you use the same tactic and not have all placements enabled in one ad set.
Let’s explore why.
Facebook always has the advertiser’s best interest in mind when it comes to delivering results. The automatic placement option will optimize your ads in real-time to get your ad unit in front of users who are more likely to take action based on the campaign objective.
Facebook had shared in the past a fantastic explanation and visual of how automatic placements work and why it’s so powerful. It’s easy to digest and understand, no matter your advertising skill level.
Facebook’s example graphic above presents 11 opportunities to show an ad: three on Facebook, three on Instagram, and five on Audience Network. For reference, in the past, those three placements would have been broken into three separate ad sets.
The red circle around any of these icons (placements) means the ad was shown in that placement and got the optimization event.
When selecting all three placements and letting Facebook optimize dynamically, your report would highlight that Facebook placements have an average cost per optimization event of $3, Instagram placements have an average cost per optimization event of $5, and Audience Network placements have an average cost per optimization event of $1. If your budget were $27, you’d get nine total optimization events at an average cost of $3 each.
The first instinct of a digital marketer would be to turn off the Instagram placement due to the higher cost to focus on the lower-cost Facebook and Audience Network placements. If that happened, then the below graphic highlights the new outcome.
The majority of the placements would still deliver the same result, but eliminating Instagram would drive up the average cost per optimization event of Audience Network placements from $1 to $3.40. The increased cost without Instagram placement is due to less audience inventory. The more placements enabled, the more inventory and less competition amongst advertisers. Instead of nine total optimization events, you’d only receive eight optimization events for your $27 budget due to the higher overall cost.
Not all placements are created equal in performance, but trying to outsmart the Facebook Algorithm can lead to underperforming results.
What are the Different Types of Facebook Placements?
There are currently a total of 14 placements to run ads, and we anticipate that number to grow as Facebook expands to more of their network of apps (we expect to see What’s App appear as a placement soon).
Below is a complete list of the placements currently available.
Feeds
- Facebook Feed
- Instagram Feed
- Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook Suggested Videos
- Facebook Right Column
Stories
- Facebook Stories
- Instagram Stories
- Messenger Stories
In-Stream
- Facebook In-Stream Videos
Inbox and Messages
- Messenger Inboxes
- Messenger Sponsored Messages
Contextual Spaces
- Facebook Instant Articles
More Apps and Sites
- Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial
- Audience Network Rewarded Videos
- Audience Network In-Stream Videos
How to Enable All Placements
As you can see, Facebook offers a lot of placements to run your ads, and it can be overwhelming. That’s why automatic placements are beneficial; you can let Facebook do all of the heavy lifting and optimize for the lowest cost.
Below are instructions on how to turn on automatic placements on Facebook.
- Go to your Facebook Ads Manager to create a new campaign or edit an existing one. Be sure you’ve selected the Ad Sets tab (1) and then select the ad set you want to edit (2).
- Once your ad set is open, scroll down until you reach the Placement section. Be sure the “Automatic Placements” box (1) is selected.
And that’s it!
Enabling the automatic placement feature is the easy part. Understanding how automatic placements work and why they are beneficial to your overall advertising strategy empowers you as an advertiser to maximize your ROI and drive the best results for your campaigns.
The post Maximize Your Facebook Ads ROI with Automatic Placements appeared first on Portent.
Tips for measuring marketing impact to prove ROI
Executing a trial and error method sometimes does not merit a single attempt. Due to fast modernization, marketers always want to keep up or even topmost the marketplace. They can also struggle just to attest the worth of their programs even when there is no actual purchase and direct response from the consumers. More often business to business (B2B) marketers’ concentration is centered on the top generation programs with severe, prolonged, and multipart sales cycles to prove capabilities. Using the information given, how do you think marketers still can assess the impact of their marketing programs with this kind of pressure?
This is by incorporating the following tips.
- Plan for ROI
- Thinking about and weighing the most valuable occasions
- Ensuring team cooperation, that each member has the vital and critical information needed at a given period
- Forecasting events to make your data structure more adaptable to any circumstances
- Creating a timeline for iteration periods or development stages
- Understand marketing objectives
- Brand awareness and market positioning.
- Lead generation.
- Lead nurture and sales enablement.
- Target account acquisition
- Customer loyalty and growth.
- Identify Vanity Metrics
- Generate more sales
- Anchoring analytics on a strategy, not the previous year’s budget.
- Understanding the consumer’s decision journey to purchasing your product or service, the what, when, where and how of a buyer.
- Discussing ROI with the entire organization, not just the marketing and sales teams but all of the departments must be included.
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How do you prioritize your CX improvement initiatives?
You’ve listened to customers. You’ve mapped their journeys. And you’ve identified a lot of improvement areas that would make the experience light years better for your customers.
Getting Sales from Content Marketing
The content you create for your marketing efforts can be sales gold. In my latest video I walk through a few ways get sales from your content marketing efforts.
Read More →Digital Marketing News: Content Pet Peeves, Facebook’s New Look, Personalization With AI & More
What’s Most Annoying About Brand Content? Consumers Weigh In
Adobe’s* 2019 Brand Content Survey asked 1,000 consumers what they found the most annoying in brand content. The results showed that wordy content or poorly written content takes the cake with 39% of the vote. It’s also important to note that lack of personalization and too much personalization are both annoying pain points for consumers. Adobe
Video Is the Fastest Growing Type of Content on LinkedIn and Starts the Most Conversations
LinkedIn* posted a new infographic this week sharing the most surprising statistics about the platform. For example, the number of messages sent on the platform has increased 35% year over year. Plus, millions of LinkedIn members have already created video on the platform, making it the fastest growing type of content on the site. Their statistics also show that video starts the most conversations, making it a great engagement tool. LinkedIn
Nearly 75% of U.S. Internet Users Say the Cambridge Analytica Scandal Raised Privacy Concerns
Text messaging marketing company, SlickText, conducted a survey to evaluate how consumers view their privacy online after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They found that almost three quarters of consumers were more concerned about how their information was used online after the scandal. In addition, only 32% of respondents said they’re willing to trade their personal information for greater convenience. SlickText
Facebook Is Rolling Out a Redesigned Interface
At Facebook’s F8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced a design overhaul for all of their applications, including saying goodbye to their traditional blue color. The new look also rearranges the home page to focus on stories and groups—something digital marketers will want to adapt to. Facebook
Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used for Personalization at Scale
A new study from Arm Treasure Data* and Forbes Insights revealed that 25% of companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve personalization at scale—and they see AI as a critical component to their personalization efforts. The study also found that 40% of respondents are seeing an increase in sales and profits thanks to personalization. Forbes Insights and Arm Treasure Data
Engaging with Followers Is the Biggest Challenge for B2B Brands on Instagram
Social Media Today hosted a Q&A session over Twitter to discover top challenges and tips for B2B brands on Instagram. Respondents highlighted engagement as a top challenge and goal on the platform. Respondents also advised other B2B digital marketers to stay true to their brand and company culture as a top Instagram tip. Social Media Today
Creative Commons Launches New Search Engine
Finding relevant, copyright-free images for your digital marketing needs just got a whole lot easier. Creative Commons just launched CC Search, a new search engine for over 300 million Creative Commons images and 19 different collections. PetaPixel
More Than Half of Organizations Could Redirect Investments Towards Customer Experience Innovations
For more signs that experience is how brands compete today and in the future, a new article from CMO.com predicts over half of all organizations will reallocate budget for experience innovations and management. To navigate this new business landscape, CMO.com recommends a single, real-time customer profile and technology that makes it possible. CMO.com
The Benefit of Experiential Marketing
Almost 75% of people who take part in a brand’s experiential marketing are more likely to purchase something from that brand. Compared to other marketing types like video, content, and audio, experiential marketing lead to greater satisfaction, engagement, and entertainment levels among participants. ClickZ
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
Every digital marketer’s favorite cartoonist, Tom Fishburne, highlights the pitfalls of creative review. Marketoonist
Bringing down the bots—bot fraud losses will be down 11% this year compared to 2017. MediaPost
How seriously should digital marketers take artificial intelligence? Hint: the answer is serious. The Drum
TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
- Lee Odden — Solving the Experience Economy Equation — SAP (client)
- Lee Odden — What’s Trending: No Endgame in Sight for Video Marketing — LinkedIn (client)
- Lee Odden — How to Create Winning Co-Marketing Partnerships — Heidi Cohen
- Debbie Friez — Connecting Ideas and People With Dell Influencers — Katana Logic
THAT’S ALL, FOLKS
From Facebook’s design overhaul to the creativity-draining review process, there were a lot of newsworthy topics to cover in digital marketing this week.
Thanks for joining us and we hope you’ll come back again next week for more of the most relevant digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for daily news stories and updates. Also, don’t miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.
*Disclosure: Arm Treasure Data, LinkedIn, and Adobe are TopRank Marketing clients
The post Digital Marketing News: Content Pet Peeves, Facebook’s New Look, Personalization With AI & More appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
