Content marketing is fast becoming an integral part of the marketing mix, providing a dynamic channel from which brands, publishers and agencies can drive awareness and customer engagement to create a deeper relationship with consumers.
In fact, research from Outbrain reveals that more than 90% of respondents predict that content marketing will increase in importance for them over the next 12 months. The research, based on a survey of more than 1,300 digital marketing professionals examined the strategies, objectives, and challenges that marketers are currently facing.
With just over one month till our next Digital Mission to Social
Media Week in New York, it seems like a great time to look back on how one of
our Mission alumnae took advantage of the countless opportunities to network
and connect with like-minded individuals on a Digital Mission trip and what
success it was brought them less then just two years later.
Anna and
her colleague Oli,
come along on the Digital Mission to SXSW 2011 to help promote their new start-up www.completelynovel.com a book publishing hub which enables writers to access
professional design, printing and distribution services and use the power of
the web to promote their books.
Do you know you're going to die one day? I
remind myself of this every morning. Not for a depressed, self loathing,
teenage angst kinda way. It's to push myself to get things done while I can.
My new years resolution was to stop using my
phone while walking. My main two reasons for this are -
1) I hate the inconsiderate people (I
previously included myself in this group) who slow down or even stop walking
while on their phone in front of me. Nothing is that important you have to be
staring at your phone that intensely, if it was, you wouldn't have forgotten
about it or left it to last minute.
You might say “but I needed to check Google
maps for directions”, but you could have moved to one side and not walked into
oncoming people, or slowed down the people behind.
As you may know, Social Media Week London will be returning to your streets in September 2013, however if you can’t quite wait that long then why not be a part of Social Media Week NYC in February where Chinwag will be joined by some great companies for a Digital Mission trip to New York.
SMW NYC looks set to be a great week with its global theme of Open & Connected: Principles for a Collaborative World being explored by speakers including Ben Kaufman, founder & CEO of Quirky, Cindy Gallop and the MakeLoveNotPorn.tv team, and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.
Back in December we announced the first set of companies
that will be joining us for the Digital Mission to New York in February this
year.
We are very excited to not only let you know the next lucky
group of companies coming along on the trip, but also to let you take a
sneaky peak at the mission agenda.
With an investor roundtable, masterclass in doing business in
the USA, a traditional British pub quiz as well as all the keynotes, showcases and presentations
that are being held as part of Social Media Week NYC the mission companies are not
going to be short on events to go to and people to meet. You can take a look at the full agenda for the week here.
There is one week left to apply for the Seedcamp London event hosted on the 30th and 31st of January. This event is the perfect way to start the new year for startups by applying to join the Seedcamp family you will gain the support and connections to take your company to the next level. Applications close at 11:59pm on the 8th January.
‘Content is king’ as the old maxim goes and whilst there’s still an
infinite amount of truth in that statement, the intriguing sub-plot that
developed over the past decade or so could perhaps be framed as ‘visibility is
a close second’.
Many a beautifully scripted site bearing gifts of great
content has got lost in the vast, cacophonous sea of information that is the
internet.
From early paid link
schemes, through unnatural links to the frowned-upon ‘carpet-bombing’ practises
of Link Farms, there’s been an ongoing search for new and improved ways to
optimise website rankings.
The algorithms used in search engines have long been
the subject of much keen analysis (and equally keen tinkering with a view to
manipulating) but the latest phase in online behemoth, Google’s development
intends to restore some much-needed transparency and trust to the SEO process
with Google+ Authorship Markup.
2012 has been an exceptional year for web video, with Psy's taking the world by storm and Felix Baumgartner's huge leap from space.
With record-breaking numbers of viewers watching content online, video has also played a massive part in the growth of companies globally.
Just take a look at YouTube's statistics to see how mind boggling the 'video revolution' has become, for example: 500 years of YouTube videos are watched every day on Facebook. Crazy!
We've pulled together a few interesting statistics from the past 12 months to sum up how web video has also been impacting on businesses.
What a bizarre couple of weeks for the image conscious, or at least the photographically-minded, first Instagram severs it's close ties with Twitter, then ratchets up user anger with a dramatic changes in its terms, enabling it to sell users' photos.
Meanwhile, over at Flickr, the once beloved haunt of pictures the product development wheels have cranked into high gear with numerous updates including a well-received and surprisingly snazzy mobile app.
