Good Presentation on Creating Content from Marketo

Marketo, a marketing automation software company, is always creating good content for marketers. They know that they are battling for mindshare and have to position themselves as marketing experts.

This deck is a pretty good example. Take a moment...

Creating Content that Converts from Marketo

Was The “The Long Tail" Wrong?

Today I read a great article, "Blockbuster" by Kelefa Sanneh in the New Yorker.

This was a dominant refrain in the aughts; commentators mourned the disappearance of small record stores, big bookstores, broadly popular television programs. Chris Anderson, who was then the editor of Wired, had a more optimistic view: in 2006, he published “The Long Tail,” which celebrated the coming demise of “the hit-driven mindset” and the growing importance of online distribution. Using Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes, you could browse what Anderson called “the infinite aisle,” where vast inventories and smart suggestion software made it easy to shun blockbusters and follow your own passions, no matter how obscure. He argued that retailers, too, had been freed from the tyranny of the hit. Technology made it possible for businesses to profit by “selling less of more,” catering to an explosion of niche markets that, taken together, rivalled the size of the mainstream. Consumers were travelling down the demand curve, away from the head, where the most popular products lived, and out onto the tail, home of the miscellany, which was growing longer (as variety increased) and fatter (as sales of non-hits increased). The new popular culture would be more interesting and more efficient, catering to the ever more diverse tastes of a general public that was outgrowing its reliance on old-fashioned hit men...

...He also hailed a researcher named Anita Elberse, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, whose work on Netflix had been “very helpful.” Now Elberse has published “Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment” (Henry Holt), which is a response to Anderson’s long-tail theory, and in many ways a refutation of it.

So what happened?

One of her most persuasive subjects is Schmidt, who revealed himself to be a long-tail apostate in 2008, scarcely two years after Anderson’s book was published. “Although the tail is very interesting, and we enable it, the vast majority of the revenue remains in the head,” he said. “In fact, it’s probable that the Internet will lead to larger blockbusters, more concentration of brands.” Anderson’s book often read like a manifesto, cheering for the triumph of the underdogs while also predicting it. Elberse wants to reassure her readers that a hit—“The Avengers,” an N.F.L. game, a Taylor Swift album—still draws a crowd, showering profit on the corporations behind it. Her case studies are meant to demonstrate that popular culture remains big business, and that, in an increasingly complicated and unpredictable cultural marketplace, hits are more dominant than ever. The story she tells about the entertainment business resonates with a bigger story that people often tell about America, where Elberse sees “a winner-take-all dynamic” increasing the distance between the most economically productive citizens and everyone else. More efficient markets aren’t necessarily more diverse or more egalitarian, and perhaps there’s no reason that music or film or books should be immune from the forces of consolidation. Anderson assumed that consumers, once freed from the limitations of brick-and-mortar retail, would scatter into countless niches. In Elberse’s view, we would rather lump than split, and new technology—amplified by canny deal-making—is making us lumpier.

I highly encourage all of you to read this article...

Good Article: 10 surprising social media statistics that might make you rethink your social strategy

Good article from The Next Web (a great site) that looks at some of the trends happening in social media. Much of the conventional wisdom is seemingly out of date.

Here are the ten items they showcase.

1. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55–64 year age bracket.

2. 189 million of Facebook’s users are ‘mobile only’

3. YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18–34 than any cable network

4. Every second 2 new members join LinkedIn

5. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

6. LinkedIn has a lower percentage of active users than Pinterest, Google+, Twitter and Facebook

7. 93% of marketers use social media for business

8. 25% of smartphone owners ages 18–44 say they can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them

9. Even though 62% of marketers blog or plan to blog in 2013, only 9% of US marketing companies employ a full-time blogger

10. 25% of Facebook users don’t bother with privacy settings


And a quote:

 Your social media strategy really comes down to what your goals are, and who your target customers are, but it doesn’t hurt to pay attention to the trends happening across the web. Hopefully, these stats will help you to identify trends that will affect your strategy and adjust accordingly. 

 Good tip!

The best—and worst—times to post to social media

Some good info from Ragan...

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/14644.aspx

Here's a look at three of them:

Facebook: Traffic is highest between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET.

Best time: Between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET

Worst time: 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. ET

Pinterest: Saturday morning is the best time to post.

Best time: 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET or 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET

Worst time: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET

LinkedIn: Post before or after business hours.

Best time: 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET or 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET

Worst time: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET

Wild Drastic Logo Changes

I saved this article in Business Insider a while ago. I am fascinated by how logos have become more and more minimalist over the years. A simple, easy to understand logo is the starting point of any brand.

Certainly not the way they used to do it. Lol.

Read the whole article here: