Content Marketing in 2012

The guys over at the Content Marketing Institute released their predictions for 2012.   The following are some of the highlight that I found most interesting:

I believe that Google+ will become a new blogging platform and that in addition to sharing content, users will start creating their own content right on the G+ site. – Ali Goldfield

2012 is the year more organizations embrace the convergence of employee personal branding and corporate branding through content marketing strategies. – Bernie Borges

Brand marketers will continue to hire their own brand journalists and build out their own editorial departments. So if you’re a publisher…watch out! Your own advertisers and sponsors will be competing more and more with you. – Daniel Burstein

2012 will be the year of hard work – and the year we all focus on building our content brands: getting famous for great content not just for great widgets. – Doug Kessler

Media agencies will either create new content marketing specialized groups or expand the roles of “search strategists” to “content strategists” and include effective and efficient content distribution to their responsibilities. – Gilad de Vries

Mobile can no longer be treated as an isolated channel or a “nice to have”; it will become a primary way to speak to customers and prospects. – Gordon Plutsky

One thing is for sure, the industry will continue to evolve and those organizations that are most tightly focused on meeting the needs of the clients will win over the long-term.

You can read the whole story at the content marketing / Joe Pulizzi blog: http://blog.junta42.com/2011/12/top-content-marketing-predictions-for-2012/

 

Moving from Impressions/Viewers/Eyeballs to Engagement

The business models for media companies on the Internet is rapidly changing.  For more than 10 years there has been a slow transition from a focus on impressions to engagement.  The reason is readily apparent:

Impression are not a good measure for determining the effectiveness of a campaign.

1) Impressions Don’t Tell You How Many People Saw Your Ad or Content

The reality is that if that just because your content is on a website, in a magazine or in the newspaper does not mean that anyone saw it.  A newspaper thrown to a driveway counts as a reader if they open the paper or not.  A Piece of content far below the fold on a website counts as an impression whether people scrolled to it or not.  Just because you received 1, 1 million or 1 billion impressions does not mean that many people saw your content.  Impressions measure the theoretical maximum number of people you can reach – not how many people you actually reach.

2) If People Did See your Ad or Content – Impressions Don’t Tell You What They Did

The second problem with impressions as a measure is that even if people saw your content, it does not tell you what happened as a result.  Someone saw your content, so what.  Did they buy something?  Did they generate a lead?  By using impressions as your primary metric you have no idea what happened next.

That is the primary issue why impressions are not a good measure.  What matters is what happens after the impression – the results.   Without results there is no way to justify the spend.

In future posts we will explore how to use ENGAGEMENT to measure the results of your advertising and PR campaigns.  Engagement and the impact of the engagement is the key to ensuring your ROI.