Each week we bring you a wrap-up of engaging news, tips and trends from social media and marketing technology. This week we learned 10 social media examples for your B2C content marketing, a report on the optimism of small-business owners and their revenues, a long list of social media marketing tips the experts swear by, the 2017 B2C content marketing outlook, Facebook’s new tools for local marketing and more.
To read the full story, click the headline of each article.
10 Brilliant Social Media Examples for your B2C Content Marketing
By Val Melamed
Canva
Content marketing and social media marketing are not only equally important, they also go hand in hand.
Every great branding campaign needs quality content backed by kickass social media pages to boost traction. A creative, informative and well-crafted blog is time wasted if your audience never has the opportunity to read it.
Most people on social media aren’t looking to buy products, in fact, they’re often not even looking for an informative read. Instead, they’re looking for entertainment. So how do businesses use these platforms to grab attention, pique curiosity and invite followers to find out more? It’s a mix of exciting visuals, compelling design and relevant topics.
We’ve picked out some of the best brands getting their social media visuals and content marketing right.
Small-Business Owners Are Optimistic About Revenues
eMarketer
Nearly six in 10 small-business owners surveyed in the US in July said they expect to grow their revenues in the next year, and they’ll be looking to new marketing tactics to help. Whether they succeed is another question.
According to the National Small Business Associaton (NSBA), most small-business owners in the US are confident about their revenue prospects. But they also have a history of being more optimistic about future sales than is necessarily warranted.
In July 216, 57% of small-business owners surveyed said they thought sales would be up in the next year. The exact same share had said the same thing a year earlier, in July 2015. But when respondents were asked in July 2016 about sales over the past 12 months, just 37% said they actually went up. Nearly as many—32%—said sales had been down over the past year. That was twice as many as had expected a decline in sales back in July 2015.
26 Social Media Marketing Tips the Experts Swear By
By Rich Hopen
inman
If you are a real estate agent, you’ve probably been advised to embrace social media marketing. It’s a powerful way to build your reputation in your market and meet colleagues and prospects.
You simply need to make the commitment to jump into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
Oh yeah, don’t forget to build a great website and blog weekly. Are you interested?
Or are you overwhelmed at the thought of learning how to do this?
There’s a learning curve for social media marketing, and it can be steep for anyone, especially non-millennials.
2017 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends
By Ann Handley
Marketing Profs
Although business-to-consumer (B2C) content marketers have been more successful with their efforts this year than they were last year, many still need to slow down to give their content marketing more time—to ensure even better results via longer-term planning.
That’s a key finding of the just-published B2C Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report from MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute, a UBM company. Sponsored by Hightail, the B2C study is in its fifth year. We released the companion report, on business-to-business (B2B) content marketing, at the end of September.
We’ll be talking more about the study findings in the months to come. But, for now, let’s look at some key insights from the B2C content marketing report.
Facebook Adds New Tools for Local Discovery and Commerce
By Greg Sterling
Marketing Land
Facebook wants to be the mobile solution for local businesses. It also sees itself increasingly as a local commerce platform for consumers. The company’s recent introductions of Marketplace and its Events app are indications of a full court press into local.
Today Facebook is adding more tools for consumers and business owners:
booking and ordering for Pages;
social recommendations; and
local event discovery.
The most significant of these new tools is online food ordering and the ability to buy tickets and book appointments on Pages through “call to action” buttons.
10 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Engagement
By Mari Smith
Social Media Examiner
Do you wish more people interacted with your Facebook posts?
Looking to improve your Facebook news feed exposure?
The more likes, comments, and shares you have on your page posts, the more likely your Facebook content will be seen.
In this article, you’ll discover 10 ways to increase engagement on your Facebook business page posts.
How to Get More (and Better) Content From Your Subject Matter Experts
By Marcia Riefer Johnston
Content Marketing Institute
Out of one subject-matter-expert interview, many pieces of content.
That insight comes to us from Vishal Khanna, CMI’s 2015 Content Marketer of the Year and director of digital marketing at Wake Forest Innovations, the commercialization arm for Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Vishal shared his approach to subject matter expert (SME) interviews in his talk at this year’s Intelligent Content Conference. (His ICC talk had the same title as an article Ardath Albee wrote about him: How to Deliver Quantifiable Content Marketing Success With a Small Team.)
To make the most of every minute you get with your SMEs — you know how precious those minutes are — Vishal suggests that you prepare for and conduct each interview in a way that enables you to create multiple pieces of uniquely valuable content.
All ideas, quotations, and images in this article, unless otherwise attributed, come from Vishal’s ICC talk.