On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better... first consider the goal of the campaign.... Determining performance on marketing-based goals can be a bit complicated to pin down... If site perusal is your goal, short video is best... Why produce a long video when you…

A rallying cry creates the emotional shorthand that sticks in our heads and builds strong positive associations. Those are powerful elements that help a brand rise above competitors and help turn customers into advocates. Think about doing that for our organizations. That’s important work. Too important for a mere tagline. It’s time for a rallying…

Storytelling and EU projects - some guidelines I wrote for the 2017 “EU in my Region” blogging competition, which I’m managing for the EC’s DG REGIO.

Had a great time setting up and running a blogging competition for the EU Commission’s Regional Policy department. It’s not over yet, though: the three winners announced today are coming to Brussels this October as fully accredited journalists to European Week of Regions and Cities. 

This new tool shows users what Facebook determines are their interests... has provided a glance into the deep flaws of Facebook’s interest targeting. Advertisers should be concerned about where their dollars are going... Here are the main flaws I came across:... I would just recommend approaching targeting differently:

For the purposes of this post, let’s narrow landing pages down to those connected to content marketing or email marketing campaigns, and meant to generate conversions, bearing in mind those conversions may not necessarily be revenue-generating sales.

If you handle the marketing for your company, you will find that the below resources are either excellent starting points or perfect as-is solutions

When people ask me how to build an audience, what they really want to know is, how do they get an audience to just come to them. You don’t. No audience just magically appears.... write up an entire profile of who your ideal customers/readers/viewers are ... go find them ... get your content in front of them

if he tried to make ads that were beautiful and perfect, it wouldn’t work and his fans would know... his work routinely pulls in millions of views because he’s transparent with his audience... mostly teenage boys know when they’re being peddled a product.

How can you make your social visuals more compelling?The Media Octopus put together an information-packed infographic on the importance of social visuals. It contains a lot of great advice and creative ideas for marketers looking to up their visual game, including these four tips for visual social success:

blogs and Twitter drive two-thirds of content flow. Mainstream media has become a catalyst that blogs and Twitter drive. Responsive Experience Tops Responsive Design: ... preparing for 10 types of customers ... you know who they are via their search terms ... content changes to meet their needs. We must know who they are and start building…

Take a look at any successful sales pitch, investor pitch, or marketing message, and you’ll nearly always find the Move... can make your website messaging more engaging, your positioning more powerful, and your product collateral more effective. - Want a Better Pitch? Master the “Move.” — Firm Narrative — Medium

Below are some basic marketing test ideas across all nineteen traction channels. These tests are designed for businesses trying to get to product/market fit, either preparing for a successful launch or post-launch, but may be useful for any business... middle ring tests and should cost less than a thousand dollars and take less than one month o…

I’m here to help you figure out which advertising platforms might work best for you based on your specific situation... here are the main options that most marketers might suggest today: Google Adwords Yahoo/Bing Ads YouTube Ads Amazon Ads Mobile App Ads Social Media Ads Game Platform and In-Game Mobile Ads Remarketing Ads Audio Streami…

Blogging has never been easier but getting read has never been harder... The problem isn't freedom or openness but distribution... you might post it on Facebook or Google Plus. Your friends might see it ... (though this is largely random) and they might share it ... You might post it on LinkedIn and your network might see it ... and LinkedIn migh…

You really have two types of people you can leverage to aid your target marketing and social strategy efforts: - Influencers: Popular, well-respected, quasi-celebrities in your industry/space that share and engage in relevant content, and have a large audience and an engaged following. - Advocates: Vocal evangelists who are already a big fan o…

my colleagues and I have created a site entitled, “How To Pitch Me” that aims to help those who strive to pitch reporters in today’s tech landscape.... While reading these various submissions, I have noticed that there are certain tips that repeatedly come up... Here are the top ten pointers... [and finally] ... many writers we asked, includin…

"sometimes organizations get so caught up in showing off their use of social media tools that they forget that those tools have a purpose – strengthening the relationship between an individual and your organization. A healthy social strategy includes both content created to get new folks in the engagement funnel AND to strengthen the “passion-c…

While most the activity on LinkedIn occurred within the first 24 hours after posting, Medium was more of a slow burn... led to shares from outside networks. Of the 1,500 views of my article, 500 came from Facebook, 400 from email, and nearly 300 from Twitter... For years, we’ve been warned away from such tactics... in a world in which Facebook …

Great in-depth look at an email marketing success story. Resonating point: "Don't assume you know who your customers are until they've had a chance to show you." - What Startups Can Learn from Watsi’s Wildly Successful Email Campaign - First Round Review

Quite enjoyed helping put together a press campaign for the ECC-Net, one of the Commission’s under-appreciated projects. 

The reasons are simple but powerful: you can’t control the communication. Despite it being a communication channel/social network (emphasis on network)/community (very debatable), it points into the other direction: filtering information, needing to pay for content to be seen, very distracting by other things like games, Ads (which used to be cont…

We are thinking about how to optimize our content from its very conception... we obviously want to grow traffic... The second prong of the strategy is to change how we produce and distribute our content and optimize it for reach... optimizing some of our content for different distribution platforms, integrating visual and interactive content fr…

Twitter’s editorial team (made of real, live humans) will define the big stories of the day, and will package tweets, images, and video to explain what’s going on. Those packages will be the primary unit of Twitter, and will be embeddable all over the Internet.... With this change, Twitter doesn’t have to look like an endlessly flowing, context…

I've broken down all of the major algorithm changes that have occurred over the past 2 years... - The Ultimate Guide to Facebook News Feed Changes... and How They Impact YOU!

"The Influencer Identification Worksheet is a blogger outreach brainstorming tool [to] build a list of bloggers." - A 4-Step Blogger Outreach Tool for Identifying Influencers | Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy

arranging for others to tout your expertise before you make your case can increase the likelihood of people paying attention and acting on your advice... Despite the experience deficit, the candidate who had scored highly on the leadership potential test was rated as more likely to be a successful hire, even though they were objectively much le…

If your enewsletter is basically an RSS feed from your site's newsroom, you might want to think again. At the very least, we always advocate including an email-only editorial in enewsletters published every week or less frequently. "Publishers are ... already treating email newsletters ... as designed to be read entirely in email without reader…

"A successful happening online is more than just a scheduled live stream, live blog, live chat, launch or other moment on the web. While happenings are typically short (60 seconds to 60 minutes), their stories can start long beforetime, which means they arc in realtime and resonate aftertime. So the lifespan of a happening can unfold over weeks, m…

I’ve had the amazing pleasure of meeting with over a dozen of the largest companies on the planet over the last six months... [who] have hired journalists, producers, broadcasters, and editors to refine and tell their story on a consistent basis... but not one ... focused on subscriber growth... While larger enterprises are fighting silo battle…