“Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014” was the big headline from the widely shared infographic at the end of this post summarising the bold prediction from 2008 by Mary Meeker, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (see latest KPCB technology trends).

To help you keep up-to-date with the rise in consumer and company adoption of mobile and its impact on mobile marketing, Dave Chaffey, Rob Thurner and I will be keeping this post updated throughout 2013 as the new stats come through to support our New 120 page Expert members Ebook explaining how to create a  mobile marketing strategy. We also have a free summary mobile briefing for Basic members.

Recommended Guide:

Free 2013 Mobile Marketing Briefing.

Download our Free Mobile Marketing briefing.

April 2013 update: App usage (80% of time) dominates browsers in mobile usage

We reported comScore data in May 2012 that showed that on smartphones 82% of mobile media time is via apps.  This is a key insight as companies decide whether to develop mobile apps or create mobile device specific apps. In April 2013 mobile analytics vendor Flurry released a useful summary of category of app usage across smartphones and tablets and similarly to the previous report it shows that app usage dominates browser usage as they put it: It’s an App World. The Web Just Lives in It. You do have to be careful about interpreting this though, since Facebook, games and utility apps will naturally have the greatest time spent and browser use is still significant by volume if not proportion.

February 2012 update: The 5 best sources for mobile marketing statistics?

This update to this post features some of the latest updates on mobile statistics from 2012 and highlight some of the best sources to make the business case for investment in mobile marketing in your presentations and business cases to colleagues or clients.

• 1. Google Mobile Planet. A regular survey for different countries starting in 2011, this enables you to prepare your own reports. We recommend this source for the range of countries covered:

In addition to downloads for each country, you can also create your own charts focusing on KPIs of interest. For example, if you’re based in Australia you can look at usage by demographic.

The weakness of the current data is that it focuses on Smartphones, not tablets. It may be useful for pushing back against over-enthusiastic colleagues or understanding consumer barriers. For example, less than a third of Australians have ever bought on a smartphone and you can see there are barriers of security and preference for desktop purchases.

Wave 2 was in spring 2012, with Wave 1 in 2011. Hopefully Wave 3 is due for 2013.  You can read about the sample size in each country.

• 2. ITU. The International Telecoms Union data reports mobile usage including mobile broadband subscriptions to show growth in use of mobile. This reported at country, continent and overall levels, so is the best overall source for mobile penetration worldwide. Much of the information is free – see their free mobile statistics section.

• 3. Xyologic app download reports. This is a great source for showing the overall level of app usage across the four major mobile app platforms by country and drilling down into the popularity of individual apps for different sectors like retail, banking and travel. Around 30 countries are covered, for example, if you’re based in Canada:

We also recommend the Flurryblog (http://blog.flurry.com) for specific reports on trends in app usage. For example, this recent compilation of app usage shows the dominance of games and social networking and the potential of utilities.

• 4. Comscore Digital Future Series.

Comscore is one of key worldwide sources useful for marketers to help us find out about the changes in use of mobile media by consumers. This graph shows the pattern across Europe – follow the link above for US and other country breakdowns.

The report shows much lower levels of adoption in other European countries though – not even a fifth in most. So extrapolating UK behaviour to other countries would seem to be a mistake with the mobile figure still key.

The report also has useful summary of dayparts of different device behaviour, similar to others published.

Retail mobile use

Mobile was again the focus of the section on retail statistics. Audience growth rate is 80% + on mobile in these UK sites, but lower on grocer sites for obvious reasons.

• 5. Ofcom Internet usage report. Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report was published on 13th December 2012, this examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries.

Global increase in use of mobile browsing – May 2012

Here’s some interesting new data showing how mobile use varies between different parts of the world. Look at the scale and growth of mobile usage in Asia in particular.

Source: Pingdom, May 2012

This table also shows the dramatic growth rates in mobile share of web traffic across the world over the last two years:

Consumer preferences for using mobile commerce for retail

We know from the oft-quoted stat later in this post that mobile access to the Internet will exceed desktop access by 2012. But when reviewing mobile adoption statistics, it’s access doesn’t equate to usage or preference. Good evidence is presented in this new research published by eMarketer on Jan 24th, 2012.

It shows that PC/laptop purchases are preferred by 87% of respondents, with mobile websites preferable compared to apps for retail.

Mobile usage statistics in Europe

We now add some detail to consumer mobile preferences using the latest July 2011 Comscore Mobile Lens data on Mobile phone usage.

The latest data (collected May 2011) suggests that mobiles are not used as widely as might be expected, given the hype, for different web applications across Europe, with just 32% using a mobile browser across these 5 European countries, although the figure exceeds 40% in the UK.

Mobile retail usage in Europe

Looking at the retail sector, we can see that just 1 in 10 use mobile access to retail sites through mobile web and apps.

However, the report does show the future growth potential with year-on-year growth rates of 80% suggesting a brighter future for mobile usage.

If you’re a retailer planning your strategy then the report has additional info on breakdown between mobile web and app access to retail. The stats that matter most will be the % of visitors already accessing or buying by mobile and I know this is over 10% in many cases.

Dave Chaffey

In 3 years mobile “should” take over desktop internet usage

What do you think? Either way – this info-graphic from Microsoft Tag provides some serious food for thought and it’s great to see this data together to help with future marketing planning.

In a previous post I wrote about an editorial calendar spreadsheet which we have created to help marketers manage their content marketing. While the spreadsheet allows you to plan and manage different types of content within a team, operational tools are useful too.

In this post I wanted to share a tool we use with it for managing posting on the Smart Insights website – The WordPress Editorial Calendar plug-in. It will be particularly interesting for WordPress bloggers who don’t know about it, but may also interest others since it shows how you can make your editorial process more streamlined. I first heard about this plugin through Chris Brogan who describes how he uses it.

About the Editorial calendar plugin

The plugin works with the basic blog functionality you have come to know and love in WordPress. Using the drafts & scheduling to allow you to add posts into a neat, easy to use interface (see the screenshot below). The plugin allows you to add titles and initial content thoughts into a window after which you can see the current months content activity, both published (grey out) and scheduled in (black text). This ensures you keep a consistent flow of content on your website and makes storing ideas for blog posts and aligning multiple authors dead simple. It also forces you to consider the coming days / weeks ahead and plan in the required actions to make sure your site stays alive. The visibility in such a simple window is an immensely powerful tool.

We have been using the plug-in for 18 months or so now and use it daily. We have found that it’s also flexible in that you can drag and drop posts to reschedule articles as news items crop up.

Overview of the plugin from one of the creators (Zack Grossbart)

The WordPress Editorial Calendar Screen Cast from Zack Grossbart on Vimeo.

Benefits

This is how we see the advantages of this tool which make it indispensable once you know about it:

• It allows you to schedule in advance – either short-term for the week or longer term planning
• You can set the main title, category of post and introduction – good to formulate initial headlines and structure
• Saves last minute thinking
• Allows you to log ideas for future blog posts (and means you don’t forget them ;
• Enables briefing & management of multiple authors (you can provide recommended titles & give a description / thoughts on the post you would like writing

Gotchas

There are a few problems we found tricky to start with:

• Check it’s the right week – use the “choose today” button
• Check also it’s for the correct content type i.e. posts – initially we managed to post to some others. This only matters if you take advantage of custom content types in WordPress (if none of that makes sense to you, you probably don’t, so don’t worry about it )

If you manage an active blog website or even if you post occasionally, it’s a plugin well worth looking at. Let me know your thoughts!

In today’s digital marketing environment, where demands on businesses to publish engaging content have never been higher, managing the process can be challenging, to say the least.

In our 7 Steps Guide to content marketing, we’ve advised on how to plan to create a content marketing strategy that drives reach and engagement. But there is still the practical issue of what to publish, when and where? We cover this in our new guide to guide to managing content marketing where James Carson explains approaches for workflow for editorial planning.

Thinking through how to organise multiple pieces of content, on your site, on partner sites and on social outposts is what many marketers have been grappling with for some time. The varying input and co-ordination of involvement from different staff members, freelancers or contract publishers can make it quite a challenge!

To help manage this process, many content marketers are now learning from traditional PR and publishing houses by using an editorial calendar.

In this post, I’ll run through what Dan Bosomworth, Dave Chaffey and I use in our editorial calendar and then we’ll show our template.

Smart Insights Expert members can download a blank / example Excel editorial calendar. This is the approach we use for scheduling our content and we have recently refined it.

Let’s start in the logical place, with the why and then go into the important bit of what, when, how and where.

Goals for an Editorial Calendar

At its simplest, the editorial plan is a way to plan and manage the production of content – it’s a checklist. But it has some wider goals too:

• Provide consistency and quality in your content – content quality is key to making your brand engaging
• Align the team – Anyone involved in the research / creation / publishing / responding area of content marketing
• Give a framework and process to plan and manage the creation of content – structure means control and less of a last-minute approach
• Enforces accountability – specifies who does what and when

What’s in and what’s out?

We’ve also found it’s helpful to think through how best to use your calendar, by thinking what it should and shouldn’t include. For example, it should include:

• A schedule for the flow of proactively publishing content
• A method to align content with upcoming marketing campaigns and product releases
• A way to group various types of content by themes which meet your communications goals
• Understanding of key dates throughout the year  – Seasonal, influential (Fathers day etc), product launches, campaigns

But careful you don’t try to achieve too much, it’s often best not to use the calendar as a way to:

• Manage reactions to interactions on your content or to listening processes
• Schedule every last tweet or status update – it’s higher level than that. Don’t lose spontaneity
• Report performance for your content – That should be analysed as part of your performance reporting and KPIS. At this point you are doing the work you agreed to hit objectives

Requirements of an Editorial Calendar

We think that the bare minimum an editorial calendar needs to cover includes:

• Name of content
• Type of content
• Source of content
• Where it will be published
• Deadline for creation
• Publish date

Smart Insights Expert members can download a editorial calendar spreadsheet to adapt for their own campaigns. In the updated version we have a tab for longer-term planning where you can easily add foundational content for a 12 month period to integrate with your marketing campaigns through the year.

“Those who tell stories rule the world” – Plato

Storytelling – the buzz of 2012? I remember so many articles from last year, many great, claiming that 2012 was the year of brand storytelling. The power of those stories central to marketing dialogue.

Let’s remember first that storytelling isn’t new, using narrative to evoke emotion in people is central to clever advertising creative from decades ago.

It’s ‘digital’ and ‘direct’ marketing that has only more recently moved marketing too more of a science – and often a very lazy one at that – bypassing all the important learning of what it means to market to, and motivate, real people with unmet needs. It seems though that we’re all catching back on to the effectiveness of building stories through content and connecting with people, our consumers.

When your information is communicated in story form, it’s claimed that people relate and remember it better and that we’re affected by it more deeply. This is the latest science at least, results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. Where evolutionists claim that the chemistry of our brains hasn’t changed in over 50,000 years, back then stories sparked emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, trust…), and that brain chemistry remains the case today. Until recently though we’ve only been able to speculate about evolution and story’s persuasive effects, now psychologists such as Green & Brock argue that fictional storytelling radically alters the way that information is processed by the human brain, that our guard is down.

In Peter Guber’s book ‘Tell To Win’, the idea is that using stories or narrative as construct for brand or product messages is a form of Trojan Horse, where the story is a delivery system for the storyteller’s agenda. The psychology and science goes that by helping people feel is they key, and that we’re more emotional than rational – that being central to shopping science (Paco Underhill, Martin Lindstom being key authors in that space) as well.

Brands are telling these stories right now, some better than others, across a number of different mediums – from packaging to video to visual and verbal content.

Engagement meets storytelling – the new buzz of 2013?

Research consultancy Latitude, released part 1 of a study, “The Future of Storytelling,” which identifies trends and audience attitudes about branded content. The tips Latitude provides on telling stories are the following:

1. Immersion – Create an immersive experience through content that is delivered in multi-media and that is multi-sensory;
2. Interactivity – Allow the consumer to become a part of your brand narrative;
3. Integration – Ensure that there is coherence across the many touch-points; and
4. Impact – Make it lead to real action

Seems like great advice? In 2013 we’re seeing the idea of interactivity and engagement come to the fore, enabling and encouraging people to do something. Makes good sense, but does that really build connection. I don’t think interacting alone with, for example liking a brand, or commenting on a piece of content, really means anything. Though logically an interaction is a low level signal, of some sort. Harvard Business Review (HBR), challenge the linear assumptions of storytelling, they ran a series of posts from a study that poo-poo’s some of the beliefs held by engagement evangelists…

1. Myth #1: Most consumers want to have relationships with your brand. Turns out only 23% have some feeling that this may benefit them, and the perceived benefit is for discounts.
2. Myth #2: Interactions build relationships. Only 13% of people cited frequent interactions with the brand as a reason for having a relationship. HBR say evidence is that brand values are more effective in building consumer relationship. So, to build relationships, start by clearly communicating your brand’s philosophy or higher purpose. The consumer decides if you’re there kind of company
3. Myth #3: The more interaction the better. Without realising it, claim HBR, many marketers are only adding to the information bombardment consumers feel as they shop a category, reducing stickiness rather than enhancing it. Treat the attention you do win as precious.

Storytelling and user engagement can earn permission of course, but lasting engagement, we might agree probably not? The HBR piece too though, strays a little into linear assumptions, they claim that, for example, people fly with Southwest Airlines because they share the value of “democratization of air travel,” and other people will purchase Pedigree dog food because they share the value that “every dog deserves a loving home.” I think that sounds pretty far fetched, does that even sound like something you can imagine a pet owning friend even say that?

So with strong arguments for storytelling, engagement and brand values, what is the recipe to success with storytelling? I think it’s based on combining all of the above and remembering one crucial factor…

It’s always about them, not you

If we forget about marketing jargon (hard, I know!) around storytelling, engagement and brand values, marketing is relationship building on some level. That’s how loyalty is achieved beyond a Tesco ClubCard, right?

The answer is to give people what they want, whether that’s some easily accessible information on your website, features of your product and service, or creative content that echoes their own values. I believe the HBR notion of having strong brand values, that the business lives and breathes, must be actively communicated – but that the best way to do that is in story-telling through rich content. The story becomes the vehicle to communicate brand values that will resonate with the (right) customer. Those brand statements and values are not in place to make you feel great, they’re there to ensure that you’re delivering what your customer wants at every touch-point that they have with your brand.

Our 7 take-aways for effective story-telling

Story-telling is not a guarantee of marketing success – of course explore this for your brand, here’s our tips to help do that:

Your crafted story + authentic values = Engagement

1. Brand values – take HBR’s point first – what is your brand about and who for? Define and embrace what’s true about your brand, and make sure you can back up the stories and philosophy you put forth.
2. Create meaning – don’t just give me raw information and data, apply your brand values so that is has value, interest and mending for me. Develop the narrative, include captivating imagery. Why else do strong info graphics and video explainers work so well.
3. Motivate people – Stories can motivate people towards your goal, they can simplify decisions through clarity and understanding. I immediately think of Steve Jobs’ Apple presentations – story-telling art?
4. Bake sharing in – Seth Godin talks about stories are easily shared, we can repeat them to each other. People do not repeat your product benefits to each other – they tell stories of benefits and applications to each other. Make your stories easy to share for effective social media marketing.
5. Craft the irresistible truth – this does not happen over night, it takes time to develop. Using brand narrative or stories is sound, but only if it’s grounded in an own-able truth that sets you apart, otherwise the brand is weak, and its impact will be weak. Real brand storytelling builds a strong brand; the opposite will result in only a fleeting sense of community, a transient fan.
6. Brand experiences – How can you include people in your story, let them evolve or become a part of it, the recent Lynx Apollo campaign springs to mind. Open up great experiences for people to get involved in order they leave you feeling something.
7. Long term over short term – It’s hopefully obvious that this is a ‘get out what you put in’ thing. This isn’t an ‘SEO programme’ or a display ad campaign. Integrated and considered programmes of effort and strong online platforms are in investment to build the brand, over short campaigns designed to ‘engage’

While the transition from direct to digital media has drive a real focus toward rich content, the caution is that today, with ever more social tools and communication media, there’s a need for cohesive, cross-platform and meaningful connections in a marketing world that is ‘always on’. It requires more of brand communication. This is where your story-telling matters. Create strong, brand touch-points across web, packaging, video, textual and verbal content. Your marketing role is increasingly less about directing and more about curating that consumer journey.

As ever, please share your ideas in the comments below…

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” Isaac Newton

Busy – what does that mean?

Swamped by choice

• Excessive meetings and committees – a lack of leadership and context for action
• HiPPOs – the highest paid persons opinion creates busy teams, with little commercial output
• Shiny new object syndrome – “let’s build an app in Facebook”
• Re-invent the wheel – you really, most likely, don’t need that “re-brand”
• Playing in data – what is key to know and action, over what’s nice to review – we’ve all been guilty of WILFING – “what was I looking for”?
• Product obsession – assuming the customer really is sat waiting for your new thing. Forgetting the consumer altogether
• Email inboxes - enough said

Focus and priorities

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” Albert Einstein

As a busy marketer working client-side, you’ll often hear yourself – and others – talk about not having enough time. That there aren’t enough hours in the day. I know from my own (sometimes painful) experiences, when I sometimes sit working on the wrong stuff at 1 AM, that this is rubbish – that we all get the same minutes in the day, it’s how we choose to spend them that matters. I believe that it’s a matter of focus.

The challenge of focus

Seth Godin recently wrote about FOMO (fear of missing out) and it really resonated from a marketing perspective. Passionate marketers often run themselves and each other ragged, worrying if we’re all missing out on the latest insight, learning, app, model, idea, case study or news piece. I understand that, it’s often a pressured job function. There’s always something stopping us from focussing – that we feel we’re missing out somehow. So the hours worked add up and the days get longer. The other perspective, of course is that we don’t actually commit, or do the work, we spend too much time thinking about the less important stuff, only thinking about getting the work done. One huge advantage that you can have over your competitors is to deliver, to pick the right stuff and focus on getting it done, to relentlessly drive forwards. There will always be an abundance of other avenues, ideas and options – but focus is required today.

What is the best approach to gaining focus?

I cannot lay claim to originating an effective ‘system’, but I’ve read and applied (and fought with!) a fair amount of ideas to get focus. The best ones for me are not born from apps or systems such as ‘GTD’ (though they have their place too of course), but in simple, transparent processes – not trying to do too much is the biggest thing to discipline. So how do you do it?

The Experts

Zig Ziglar, to my mind, pioneered this in the 1980s with his Goals methodology. He approaches it from a personal perspective of course, so it’s important you realise that as a perspective and translate it to apply at work…

1. Write your goals down
2. Date them
3. Identify obstacles
4. Identify the people/organisation that you need to work with to accomplish the goals
5. Find out what you need to know, if anything, to achieve them
6. Develop a plan of action, a list, with time limits
7. Identify “What’s in it for me?” – what rewards and benefits will I get?

As a more commercial alternative, though very familiar when you’ve read Zig’s earlier approach, also consider Marc Benioff’s system (he’s the founder of the $2Bn software giant Salesforce.com, if you didn’t know and ex-Oracle guru). I recently read about his V2MOM system here, he gives a lot of advice in that interview and one of his keys to success is “you should not allow yourself to get disfocused… An entrepreneur can have a sort of ADD type of thing (Attention Deficit Disorder)… and you have to build the tools to help you refocus yourself and channel that energy”.

“[At Salesforce.com] We have an internal tool that I use and a communications cadence to help me to stay focused – I can be the kind of person that needs help staying focused. That tool is called a V2MOM (an acronym that stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures). These are five questions that I’m constantly asking of myself. I do that basically every six months for the company…”

I can paraphrase his advice for you:

• Vision: What do you want? Write it down in 10 to 15 words
• Values: What is most important about that vision? What are the values of the vision? Is it growth, is it quality, is it excellence? Write those things down and prioritize them.
• Methods: How are you going to achieve it? What are the actions that you’re going to specifically take? In priority, write them down.
• Obstacles: What is preventing you from achieving that outcome – right now? Write it down. What other obstacles may occur?
• Measures: How will you know if you’re successful? What are the measurements of success? Write it down.

Benioff suggests that we recreate this on a continual basis, and get others in the team to do the same. It’s a focusing exercise, I like how he appreciates the value of others in your team and organisation seeing what you’re doing, what you’re focussing on, as much as you or I knowing what we’re focussing on. It creates trust and alignment  Of course, you’ve got to walk your talk… “If you’re gonna write it down and say you’re gonna do it, you better do it”, he says.

I learned the hard way when working client-side that if you don’t have alignment it can be a real battle, for everyone, especially those not in the management team. But — if you can get everybody on the same page, it’s a “super-charger”, as Benioff suggests.

Create a process to align marketing

This is the really important bit – actually applying this stuff at work and with a marketing team (or wider ideally!). Some time ago I read a book called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and loved it. Mike Michalowicz, the author, probably gave me the best, most obvious, advice on applying the ‘systems’ in a marketing or commercial environment where it’s about more than just you. It’s something I’ve done ever since and we’ve even shared how we apply it at First 10 Digital in this post – you can also see the ‘resources’ section on the TPE website. With your vision piece in place you know your top level focus, it’s simple to turn this into more detailed, collaborative and focussed action:

• Design the daily and weekly measures, Michalowicz advises only a handful, the really important drivers. This in itself is a powerful concept, of course the ’5′ may vary according to your role or function, I’ve found. In order to focus, tighten your attention to the measures that matter. This is going to enable to you to know if you need to dig deeper when any of those measures change negatively, and not lose focus when they’re positive by drifting into ‘nice to know’ information. Save that for specific reports on a monthly or quarterly basis if you can.
• Align the whole marketing team with a ’90 day plan’. This is the powerful bit. I always struggled with annual goals, they seem so far off that I could lose focus, whereas 90 days is long enough to impact, it’s exciting to see positive change, to deliver, yet not so long as to feel distant. Of course a 90 day (or quarterly plan) can easily cascade from an annual marketing or commercial plan once that’s created. We set something around 5-7 SMART objectives, and then ensure all key milestones or deliverables are working towards making one or more of those goals realised, each millstone or deliverable is owned by somebody and it has a date next to it. Smart Insights Expert members can download our 90 Day Planning Template which is a popular part of our Digital Strategy Toolkit. Using this, a whole team will know what they’re doing without having to get into each others specific task-lists – it avoids micro managing, it gives alignment and focus to the manager and the person doing it, it also enables management of expectation at the senior level of the business, total transparency as to what marketing is doing to help the business. I always found that pretty liberating!

I hope this helps, any tips or ideas you have for focus? Please share in the comments.

57 percent of (B2B) marketers spent no time on Pay Per Click, and only 4 percent spend more than 15 hours per week.

How to find the sweet spot for PPC?

Can we not just spend more in PPC to increase sales volume?

We could, but it would involve generating demand through targeting the non-product aware, higher up the purchase funnel so requiring new landing pages and follow-up email and remarketing communications. We could expect a positive ROI  (in a pure media spend sense, not time spent) over 3 months+

• What % of sales are generated by PPC vs other channels (first heard + assisted conversions)
• What % of your marketing budget is spent on PPC (Media + staff / agencies)
• What is the current ROI of PPC and has it ever met it’s objective

• Was their a reason for hitting the objective? more focussed? freak month? lower spend?

• Does your time / resource balance appropriately match where sales are generated?
• Is PPC generating the right levels of ROI?
• Are the right people, process & foundations in place to optimally run PPC?
• Are you asking too much of PPC? Should you re-focus the keywords, go for quality not quantity and re-invest spend elsewhere (content or product for example)

Key Points

• PPC management is a commodity skill so relatively low cost
• Once you have a solid base (structure, landing pages, reporting process) it is a relative simple channel to maintain
• It is very process driven and well documented online
• It will have activity ups and downs (new products, campaigns, new territories etc)
• You can make use of Google Analytics custom intelligence alerts to prompt you of large performance changes (good or bad) so you don’t have to worry about performance daily. You will be alerted when you need to be worried

The case for brand policing and control

When brand police become government militia

So what’s the solution?

1. Brand (and marketing) leadership. Control needs to reside at the ‘P&L’ level – the place where the buck ultimately stops. Leadership is the only real way to prevent restrictive or short-term thinking amongst a wider team, or at the other end reactive, wasteful marketing, from taking place by over excited teams. I’d group good, day-to-day management into this, a leader in any area needs to be able to help a team face in the right direction and manage those ‘characters’
2. Roles and responsibilities. Being being able to have an opinion or voice is one thing, and knowing who makes the decision in a particular area is a different thing entirely. Mixed teams of middle managers vying for control is tough to see and really hard to be a part of. People need to know who has final say, and on what specifically
3. Process. You need enough resource appropriate to the amount of process and control required so as not to slow things down. You cannot have your cake and eat it, as they say. This enables a consistency of applying the rules, a maintaining of speed and ability to manage wider team expectations to commercial deadlines, avoiding damaging bottle-necks. It’s a cost equation in some ways, too many people incur heavy process costs, not enough and it costs in wasted opportunity and ineffectiveness
4. Relevant filters. when deciding what’s right for brand policing, appropriate filters are needed for the business or team size, commercial realities and the talent of the people are factors that come in to play, ensuring good control in light of the commercial realities. You need less process for bright, forward thinking people with lots of experience who have responsibility for a business unit or output, and clearly more when a stretched, inexperienced team in ‘Outer Mongolia’ are shipping something out of the door without a thought about the brand
5. Motivation. After leadership I think this is the most important, if people are motivated by the same output – through good management or incentive – then they can move mountains with next to no hands-on management. No matter how big an ego or fearful someone is, if we’re all motivated and on the same page then alignment is inevitable and, I’d suggest, so is increased success.

I’ve been spending some time this week writing a content marketing plan for a client, at First 10. As a part of that plan I’ve focussed on content curation as a major part of the programme of activity over the next 12 months. In their case the reason why they’re investing is that it’s right strategically and suits their budget. They are a commercial marketing team with minimal internal copywriting resource, and they’re not creative enough to reliably originate a steady stream of ideas. So it made sense to centralise content curation in addition to publishing original articles and media as and when they can afford it. My sense is that most marketing teams are likely needing this approach, so I thought I’d distill and simplify what’s in their plan, in case it might help spark ideas for you.

I’d suggest that, even from Smart Insights’ own perspective, curating content is an activity of central important, for your brand too if being useful to your audience is something that you appreciate matters for modern marketing. By spending time to find, filter and enhance content – and sharing that with social networks – you’re building value in your brand. Quite simply, increased reasons to re-visit, refer and interact.

Remember that it takes time

Curation is not an opt-out or quick fix. It happens over time. When a brand does a good job of defining what it stands for, demonstrating a commitment to an editorial calendar that remains on-topic will play a powerful part in building consumer trust online. Of course it cannot exist in isolation, being active in relevant social networks, industry events and of course originating your own content play a part. Curation can play the central role in creating awareness and credibility when it’s well integrated. It could be that as much as 80% of your content can be curated too, it’d depend on your marketing objectives and strategy.

Content Curation can deliver on multiple marketing objectives:

• Improve website engagement, repeat visits and levels interactions
• Become a crucial part in lead nurturing and conversion – through email and social media marketing
• Help you to become a “go-to” resource on a particular topic (this will take time!), naturally you’ll be more findable online as a result
• Develop your brand as a known, credible source of information on a particular topic – important though that you’re adding insight to curated content
• Become known by influential members of your industry or topic area – links and likely referrals
• Grow traffic – all those links will increase your visibility in search engines results pages as well as send referred traffic from the outset

Our 23 ideas to help you with content curation

Sources of content come first…

• 1. Finding and subscribing to the best online (and offline!) magazines and blogs make the best start point
• 2, My favourite is still specific newsletters – the content is more considered. You might get via email or subscribe to an RSS
• 3. Of course content shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, Reddit and other social sharing websites
• 4. The classic – Google Alerts and remember real-time search engines such as socialmention.com
• 5. Curation software can be useful (I’ve little experience of it to be honest) including Storify, Flipboard and Scoop.it
• 6. News aggregators, my favourite is Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop
• 7. If updates from other brands matters, then consider press release distribution services like PRWeb and PRNewswire
• 8. I’d guess that you’re already monitoring competitors anyway. If not (and they’re worth the effort), setup Google Alerts and social media monitoring tools like Radian6 for mentions of their brand terms, and easy way to learn about their activities

What kind of content will you curate…

• 9. I start with influential people – the best – who are the most important to your target audience?
• 10. Re-purpose or talk about best practise: blogs, news, training, tips, networking and industry events.
• 11. Statistics, research, white-papers and reports is the classic curated content – but – be sure to offer your insight and opinion on it
• 12. Videos are great to embed: YouTube and Vimeo
• 13. Slideshare presentations
• 14. Guides and eBooks – if you read them, review them
• 15. In an industry like marketing, Smart Insights get a lot of success with case studies
• 16. Infographics and diagrams
• 17. Tips, How To’s and lists (the classic “7 ideas about XYZ)
• 18. I love the value in collections of resources on a theme in one blog post – see our here on Mobile Marketing Statistics

Where might you publish curated content…

• 19. Brand blog, of course – this should be your hub for the best stuff
• 20. Guest author posts on industry sites
• 21. Email newsletter
• 22. eBooks, guides and your own white-papers
• 23. Social networks, naturally

The key of course, with all content marketing, is to learn and focus on what matters to your audience or community and align that with your brand’s USP and values. That cross-over is the sweet spot from a commercial perspective. The more considered you are about any content, and the more naturally you’ll optimise you content platform for search engines and real people. If I’ve missed obvious ideas the please add them to the pile using the comments below

I’ve been following the Selfridges TV series and, although it’s great, there’s something that really bugs me about it. It feels like, as marketers, we spend a lot of time re-learning how to do marketing well? In case you’ve not seen it, the simplistic take on what Harry Gordon Selfridge believed is to… build your business (and so your promotion of it) around the customer.

Are we lost?

Over 100 years ago, retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge and John Wanamaker – credited with being the inventor of advertising and a marketing genius, alongside pioneering advertising men such as Claude C Hopkins who wrote Scientific Advertising in 1923 – seem to have had marketing licked. Browse popular marketing sites today though, and you’ll see these lessons being shared as original thinking.

As operational thinking throttles brands to death (look at faded UK brands like Republic, GAME, Blockbuster, HMV, Jessops and JJB – businesses who made the High St only 10 years ago) I can only conclude that we’re not learning? These brands focus on their undifferentiated or average products and the media and channels to promote them. New tools simply become advertising 2.0 instead of new opportunity to engage a customer.

Does the spirit of Mr Selfridge hold the secret?

In a world where the customer is in control of your brand, where they have the ability to make choices, there’s a drive today of  greater focus on the customer. Through using (big) data, on personalised, targeted and automated CRM and of course social media for ‘out-reach’ as well as listening. We talk about creating experiences, engaging users, telling stories and encouraging user interaction. Yet the lesson remains pretty simple…

“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

― Harry Gordon Selfridge

Think of the power we have to do this today, and what someone like Selfridge would have done with it. So what are you doing?

Here are 5 obvious things that Selfridge did, that so many other brands today fail miserably at:

• Create experiences for the customer – If there’s one thing that Selfridge wanted to achieve, it was to make the shopping experience pleasurable. Re-read that last word, how true is that for most shopping experiences today (online or otherwise). Imagine that store opening when nothing like it had existed before in London. Who innovates like that today – a few? Zappos is always the go-to holy grail example for online retail. Is that it? Creating experiences is probably the single biggest learning from Selfridge, and one those dying High St giants still fail to see
• Curate great (useful / fascinating) content – by looking around him, Selfridge invited things that were of interest to people, into his store. Displays and exhibitions (curated content, you might say) became a reason to share, comment and like – albeit in the real world! Do something worth talking about beyond what you sell, we might say? An example from Selfridge – 1909, after the first cross-Channel flight, Louis Blériot’s monoplane was exhibited at Selfridges, where it was seen by 12,000 people. Bold, PR-able, worth talking about and effective at driving traffic. You’d have to say so
• Design brand stories – probably most famously, Selfridge turned the front of the store into rich displays through the large windows at street level, something now synonymous with the store. This was revolutionary stuff at the time. Not sales promotion or stacked up products, we’re talking designed displays 100 years ago, retail art. Another reason for people to stop, stare or generally just feel and share something positive about the store – albeit through word of mouth
• Amplify brand stories – Mr Selfridge was a prolific advertiser and an expert in combining paid and earned media to promote his stories. This wasn’t about product alone though – he promoted stories that drew people in, whether those in-store displays, local stars or connecting with popular opinion at the time, the best example being the suffragettes movement
• Make what you offer easy to buy – shopping at the time made it hard for people to make purchase decisions, you couldn’t browse before buying – the basics weren’t known. Selfridge however, with his open store layout, trained experts and eye for design wanted to make it easy to find things, to buy, products on display and grouped in logical areas. Basics so often lost on many websites (especially mobile), today

Focussing on the customer, who’d have thought it.