blogs
Can You Use Any Image You Find Online?
A lot of people are downloading images they find online. They need them for projects, business presentations, blogs, newsletters, and other purposes. But, is it legal? Can you just use any image you find online?
The answer is, it depends.
Curtis Newbold, “The Visual Communication Guy,” created an excellent visual guide to using images. Entitled, “Can I Use that Picture? The Terms, Laws, and Ethics for Using Copyrighted Images,” Newbold created it to help us sift through the complexity of image use and licensing.
Here are some examples: Continue reading
How to Get 10 Posts Out of One Good Idea
Guest post by Dennis Fischman
It’s time to post to your blog. You scratch your head, pace up and down, drum your fingers, start several posts and delete them…and at last, you have it. It’s a good idea. You put the finishing touches on it and hit, “Post.”
“Uh-oh,” you say. “Now what am I going to use for Facebook?”
Save time and worry: take that one good idea and use it again. Here are ten ways you can re-purpose one good idea for blogs, social media, video, and print. Continue reading
Guess the Top Content Marketing Goal for B2C and B2B
What’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Would you like to know if it’s the same as 79% of B2C (business-to-consumer) and 82% of B2B (business-to-business) companies?
A study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says that “B2B marketers remain slightly more likely than B2C marketers to be using content marketing (93% and 90%, respectively), per the studies, with the former also more likely to rate their efforts as being effective (42% and 34%, respectively). Adoption and effectiveness appear to be on the increase for both groups.”
Before I get to the top content marketing goal, here are some interesting comparisons between B2C and B2B:
- This year, 72% of B2C marketers said they’re creating more content than they did one year ago, about on par with the 73% of B2B marketers increasing their level of output. Meanwhile, 60% of B2C content marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months, as do 58% of B2B content marketers.
- B2B marketers still allocate a higher share of their budgets to content marketing than their B2C counterparts, though (30% and 24%, respectively).
- For B2C content marketers, the most widely used tactics are social media other than blogs (88%), articles on their websites (78%), e-newsletters (76%) and blogs (72%), with the same order of adoption apparent among B2B marketers.
- Facebook is – predictably – the most commonly used social platform to distribute content among B2C content marketers (by 89%), and is also rated the most effective by its users (62%). For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is both most-used and most-highly rated.
- Web traffic is the top content marketing metric for both B2C (66%) and B2B (63%) marketers. Social media sharing is relatively more important to B2C respondents, who are far less interested in measuring sales quality and quantity.
- Lack of time is the top challenge faced by both B2C (57%) and B2B (69%) content marketers. B2C respondents are relatively more concerned with producing the kind of content that engages, while B2B marketers are more concerned with producing enough content.
- 39% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy, compared to 44% of B2B marketers.
Okay now. The TOP content marketing goal for both B2C and B2B: Brand awareness! B2C (79%) and B2B (82%).
Customer acquisition (71%) and retention/loyalty (65%) are the next-most common goals for B2C respondents, while lead generation is next among B2B respondents.
And, again… what’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Is it the same as this study indicates? Please share.
Chart: MarketingCharts
I’m Tired of Warmed-Over Content - Are You?
Maybe it’s the end-of-summer blues, although I admit to welcoming cooler weather. Or maybe it’s my recent mood. But, lately, I’ve grown tired of warmed-over content. You know what I mean… the same old advice and tips that everyone has already said. Yawn. Boring.
I subscribe to many publications, blogs, and posts. The majority are related to marketing, branding, social media, copywriting, and customers. Other than study results, which aren’t always conducted accurately, I’m reading the same topics over and over again - using different words and by different authors. Heck, maybe some of my posts are warmed over, too. 🙁
Now that we’re all publishers, how can we ALL be creative and fresh? It’s simply impossible!
How can we ALL come up with original content? It’s simply impossible!
And the Internet proliferates with new blogs, articles, and content hourly. So, what are we to do?
How do we continue to engage our readers and followers? How do we come up with something new to say when we publish so frequently?
I’m tired of reading the same stuff. Are you?
What advice can YOU offer to me and the millions of other content creators? Do tell!
