This week’s edition of Thursday Trends covers everything from little mouths telling big stories to measuring your media and following the latest content marketing trends. Read on for the latest content marketing news of the week!
Find Out Why We Never Outgrow Bedtime Stories and What That Means for Marketing
Why Your Audience Needs Stories: It’s a Brain Thing via Content Marketing Institute
It’s true, and no one can deny it. We all love good stories. Novels, gossip, fairy tales, movies, and the latest TV shows. We anticipate them. We eat them up. We discuss them with our friends. And when we have a great story to tell, we can’t wait to share it with anyone willing to listen. Whether the stories we tell make us laugh, cry, or cringe, we can’t help but love them. It turns out, we’re wired for narrative.
This recent interview published on Content Marketing Institute, discusses exactly why people love storytelling so much (Stories light up our brains!) and how marketers can and should use the power of narrative in their content.
Though They Be Small, They Be Mighty!
Everything You Should Know About Micro Influencers via WriterAccess
Consumers are more likely to purchase something, if a trusted friend tells them to. In marketing, this is known as earned media. Gaining much traction with organic earned media, however, can be difficult. How do you convince satisfied customers to leave you positive reviews and share their good experience with their friends? There is one way around having to generate earned media by chance: marketers can use influencers (who have lots of friends, fans, or followers) to spread the word, in exchange for some sort of compensation, of course.
When considering influencers to help you, you likely immediately think of big names like Oprah (How many authors have benefited from her book club?), but major influencers like her are tough to come by, not to mention very expensive. This article from WriterAccess suggests using micro influencers, those with 2,000 to 50,000 followers. Take a look at the full article to find out why they’re a great option for marketing your products, services, or experiences and where you can find them.
What’s Social Media Done for You Lately?
Essential Social Media Metrics for Content Marketing via Practical Ecommerce
If you’re posting content to multiple social media channels, nice work! You already get an A for effort. Unfortunately, you can post, post, post to your heart’s content, but if you’re not tracking your social media metrics, you might be waste, waste, wasting your time.
This article from Practical Ecommerce parses out which metrics are most important to track, explains why, and also tells you where you can find them. Read through the full article and then find out how effective your social media strategy is (I double-dog dare you!).
What’s Hot in Content?
5 Trends to Know in SEO & Content Marketing via Search Engine Journal
Gone are the days of bringing in readers and site traffic by posting articles hither and thither. To compete within the market of content marketing today, your content must have nearly perfect form to entice readers, trigger shares, and gather clicks.
This article from Search Engine Journal explains that to be effective with content, marketers must dive deep to provide their target market with high-quality, personalized content across channels — and they have to do it authentically. To get the skinny on the latest must-haves in content marketing, check out the full article.
Jennifer G is a full-time freelance writer and editor with a B.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. She enjoys researching and writing creative content to engage readers and developing professional voices for clients across all industries. She specializes in medical, health, veterinary, and financial writing. Having worked nearly thirteen years in finance, Jennifer applies her experience in the banking industry (marketing, social media management, consumer and commercial lending, customer service, accounts, and bookkeeping) to her writing work within the industry.
