According to recent reports by WHO, there are 4,034,567 COVID-19 infected persons around the world, with 276,690 deaths. Researchers and health experts around the globe are ardently focused on studying the novel coronavirus, where new findings and understanding help in the

Any time you want to make an impact, you automatically reach for you red lipstick. It just has the charm and boldness to make a long-lasting impact. You can never get bored of the classic red lip look. Or can you?

Summer make-up is pure bliss. With the scorching sun comes bright hues, beautiful sundresses and the opportunity to rock a sun-lit make-up look. With the beautiful long days that summers provide to have fun outside (as opposed to the chilly winters

Let's face it- 20s is the time when we enjoy the best skin that we are ever going to have. Well, for most of us. And we would so love to hold on to the flawless skin of the 20s. Reality

Urvashi Rautela has been filing up her Instagram handle with such stunning make-up looks that we sometimes feel envious. When it comes to make-up, Urvashi definitely knows what she is doing. Her high regards for all things beauty need no introduction.

The government now plans to switch to a capital and revenue-spending classifications. This will help create a clear and effective link between the government’s earnings, spending and outcomes.

Shares of Borosil Glass Works have increased threefold over the past one year as the company has posted strong revenue and EBIDTA growth over the past few quarters.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Satpal Arora, MD of Tourism Finance Corporation of India (TFCI), talked about the state of business and the outlook ahead.

That was the sombre assessment of about a dozen top producers, distributors and actors from Bollywood, the movie industry in Mumbai, during a video conference this week, one of the participants said.

Tarun Katial, CEO, ZEE5 shares insights into the kind of content Indians have been consuming during lockdown and how the entertainment industry has managed work from home

Brent crude was up 47 cents, or 1.5%, at $29.33 a barrel by 0121 GMT, having fallen nearly 1% on Thursday.

ICICI Bank#39;s asset quality is also expected to improve in the March quarter on account of write-offs.

My marketing journey was born out of SEO roots, where the priority of content promotion has always been high in order to create the kind of accountable marketing performance that matters. In contrast, I see a lot of brands putting the majority or all of their investment towards content creation without qualitative or quantitative effort towards the promotion of that content.

An imbalance of content creation and promotion is not only frustrating potential marketing performance, but it's wasting the investment made in creating great content. What good is that great content if no one sees it?

Below are 10 content promotion tactics that have stood the test of time and go beyond email blasts, social ads and simple social sharing on brand channels. When promotion is included in the content planning and creation process, it becomes part of a content marketing system that drives the kind of relevant, useful and engaging content customers are looking for.

1. Make Content Worth Sharing - While this seems obvious, in practice, many marketers are creating content to satisfy an editorial plan assignment like X content assets about topic Y per month vs. tapping data sources that can reveal what will actually resonate. Those data sources can be front line staff like Customer Service or Sales as well as social, web analytics and industry news. Insights about frequently asked questions, trending topics and provocative ideas can go a long ways towards creating content people actually want to consume and share with others.

2. Master the Headline - Without question we live in a fast moving world of short attention spans, Many people will only skim headlines so it is essential to make the most out of content titles. Email marketers already know this with subject lines and content marketings publishing blogs, ebooks, articles, microsites, campaign assets and social content should ensure headlines are relevant, succinct, imply urgency, are meaningful and show action.  There's a world of difference between "10 Essential Promotion Tactics" and "10 Essential Promotion Tactics That Drive Results".

3. Optimize for Share - For those that do click through to view content, make sure what they find is easily shareable. Blogs do this with social share icons and easy to share click to tweet messages. Reports, ebooks and any other digital content can be formatted for easy sharing as well.

4. Co-Create to Activate Influencers - What better way to reach relevant audiences that are ignoring ads than through relevant industry experts? Collaborating on brand content with the right influencers can inspire creative promotion to audiences that trust individuals more than brands. With more people turning to online sources of information, influencers can add credibility and reach to digital brand content.

5. Repurpose for Exposure on New Channels - Modular content uses templates to make republishing parts of your content on different channels or in different formats much easier and effective. Doing so deconstructs more robust content to specific elements that can be published for exposure. For example, we've been experimenting with having blog posts converted to infographics and then posting them to industry websites.

6. Create Distribution Channels - Email subscribers, social network connections, groups, and communities are all opportunities to attract and engage an audience around your shared interests. Each becomes a distribution channel for your content where you can share useful information and also do the kind of community content crowdsourcing that inspires active sharing.

7. Optimize for Attraction - There is no substitute for being the best answer for your customers at the moment they need the information and solutions your brand offers. Search Engine Optimization is not always a robust part of the content marketing process beyond keyword research informing content topics. An ongoing effort to optimize new content and optimize existing content for better performance on search engines can provide highly productive exposure at the very moment of need.

8. Publicize - Whether you contribute editorial to various publications opportunistically or secure recurring contributions to one publication, earned media can be a great way to connect your content with audiences that are interested. PR and media relations come in many forms ranging from someone actively pitching for interviews or story ideas about your brand to creating newsworthy experiences and content that is most likely to be covered by industry publications.

9. Syndicate - Something as simple as cross posting blog posts to author LinkedIn profiles, to a Medium account or to industry association websites can help your brand's content reach new audiences. Just be sure to link back to the source to help Google understand which to rank.

10. Create Conversations - Whether on LinkedIn or Facebook, video livestreaming is a great way to tap an existing social audience and instigate conversation around topics connected to your content. Recorded video is another option to create conversations and cross publish as Josh Nite and Tiffanie Allen have done for several years with our news posts and video on YouTube.

It should go without saying that content should be promoted, but after so many years of observing what brands are doing with content marketing, the imbalance between creation and promotion continues, especially when you consider stats like blog posts get an average of 8 social shares (BuzzSumo).

The key is to make content promotion a priority by including it in the planning process, setting content promotion goals and identifying the corresponding KPIs and by getting help with creating and implementing balanced content creation and promotion that actually works.

Outside of online advertising, what content promotion tactics have you found to be most effective?

The post Where’s the Marketing in Content Marketing? 10 Essential Promotion Tactics That Drive Results appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Between stay-at-home orders and the manic Minnesota weather, I’ve found myself at home for the last four weeks looking for something, really anything, to occupy time. One can only take so many walks in a day. Naturally, I turn to YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and all of the other video streaming sites for entertainment.

As a marketer, this makes me wonder what those streaming sites are seeing in their analytics. Obviously, views must be up by an unbelievable amount. But, what about engagement? How many people are completing the videos they start? Are they watching more? Unless it’s Tiger King, the answer is unknown (it’s impossible to look away from Tiger King). But those streaming sites aren’t the only ones that might have some fascinating new data to look at.

Social sites and YouTube provide a host of different metrics and analytics options. While each data point serves a purpose, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that are more important to track to better understand your audience and improve content performance.

Video Analytics and Content Benchmarks

A recent study from video streaming site Vidyard established some useful benchmarks for video content:

• 52% of viewers watch a video all the way through
• 68% will watch the entire video if it’s less than 60 seconds
• 25% will finish a video if it’s more than 20 minutes

The same study found that the most common business-created videos are webinars, demos and social media videos, and are most likely to be published on websites, social media and YouTube.

Of course, these benchmarks will vary by audience, by industry, by the light of the silvery moon — basically, take them as a starting point and customize from there. Here’s the process we recommend.

Using Video Analytics to Optimize Your Video Content

1 — Use Demographics to Understand Your Audience

The first step to increasing content engagement and effectiveness is to gain a better understanding of your audience. To do that, it’s critical to monitor demographic data in your video analytics platform. Most will give you basic demographic data, like location, age, language and device use. Some will give you user interest data, income estimates and even company data.

Knowing this information helps you create more relevant content. For example, if you find that your audience primarily speaks English, but there is a growing subset of French speakers accessing your videos on mobile devices, you might want to consider adding French caption options for mobile users.

If you see an increase in viewers from a specific geographic area, you will want to look at the analytics for that region to determine what content is attracting the new audience and how they are engaging while they’re watching and immediately afterward.

2 — Use Awareness and Engagement Metrics to Understand Audience Demand

Understanding your audience is important at a strategic level, but understanding audience demand is tactical gold. Of course, this data will drive your go-forward strategy, but it will also help you improve performance right away by adjusting promotion tactics and featured content.

For example, if you see an uptick in video views week over week for a particular video, that indicates that the topic is becoming increasingly popular. To prove that, you will want to look at engagement metrics like watch time, clicks on your call to action (CTA), and subscribers gained or lost. If you see an uptick in views and a corresponding uptick in engagement, you’re going to want to feature that video more prominently. If you see an increase in negative engagement —  a loss of subscribers — or if viewers are dropping off right away, that might indicate your video doesn’t quite match the intent for that topic.

This granular view of data can help you improve and optimize your existing content, create more strategic video content roadmaps, and provide viewers with content they want and need to make critical decisions later in the funnel.

[bctt tweet="“Understanding your audience is important at a strategic level, but understanding audience demand is tactical gold.” @Tiffani_Allen" username="toprank"]

3 — Audit Your Video Library for Optimization Opportunities

Following the best practices for whichever video hosting platform you’re using can result in increased video visibility and better user experience. A great first step is to optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags. Then you can organize  your videos into different sections, playlists, or even channels to help the right audience find your content faster.

To determine your next steps, audit your existing video channels. Do you know at a glance what the video is about? Does the thumbnail image inspire a click? Does your channel, landing page or resource center adequately convey the type, purpose and content of your videos in a way that compels action?

If the answer is yes, go take a break. I recommend a few hours of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s very soothing. But if the answer’s no, you’re not alone. And you do have the tools you need to create better video content. It’s all in your analytics.

As a quick disclaimer, if your videos are hosted on your website and you notice some odd user behavior patterns over the last month or so — increases in direct traffic, crazy long time on page — you might want to look into whether or not IPs are blocked for your team’s home IP addresses. Determine if the patterns are happening on a more global level, or if they’re localized to the geographic area surrounding your physical office.

If you want help with an audit, or just want to bounce some ideas around, we’re here to help. Tweet us @toprank or contact us to get started.

The post What B2B Marketers Need to Know about Optimizing Content with Video Analytics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The vast majority of content and industry news coverage around influencer marketing is focused on those who engage consumer audiences: Instagramers, YouTubers, and  as of late TikTokers. Of course the world of influence is not limited to consumer products and services. Influencers play an important role in businesses marketing to other businesses as well, whether it's on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

So what's the difference between B2C and B2B influencer marketing? We've covered B2B influencer marketing here in depth already with case studies, strategy and best practices, what makes a great B2B influencer, key statistics and more. After 7 plus years of focusing on B2B influencer marketing for some of the top B2B brands in the world, we've learned a few things about the practice. From that experience, I'll focus on what makes for good B2B influencer engagement as a way to understand the difference from B2C.

The most important steps for launching a B2B Influencer Marketing Program: Influence plays a role across the entire business customer lifecycle from awareness to advocacy so it follows that the best approach to collaborating with B2B influencers also spans the spectrum of customer engagement.

Regardless of the desired outcome from building brand awareness to increasing sales, best practices influencer marketing programs start with understanding the relevant topics of influence that both represent what customers care about and what the brand stands for.

It's important to look at B2B influencers as partners not just content creators or distribution channels.

Much of B2C influencer engagement is managed like an advertising buy. With B2B, it's important to look at B2B influencers as partners not just content creators or distribution channels. That means finding, engaging and activating influencers with expertise and audiences that will resonate with the objectives of the business. Using topics of influence, you can identify, qualify and recruit influencer partners to collaborate. You can certainly pay a B2B influencer, but it is most often for the craft of creation not just because they are well known.

The output of B2B influencer collaboration can be in any form that the brand is currently publishing content: text, video, visual, audio, interactive and even VR.

B2B influencers are different than B2C in that they must be subject matter experts. But it is often the case that they do not have the broad social media skills or reach as their B2C counterparts. Also, B2B influencer marketing is less about a transaction or advertising buy than it is about developing relationships with influencers that can add credibility to a brand and even advocate for purchases that have an extended sales cycles and run millions of dollars.

Successful B2B influencer relationships take time to build and require time to maintain.

Matching topically relevant influencers with content collaboration opportunities that deliver mutual value for the influencer, the audience you're after and your brand is both art and science. Successful relationships take time to build and require time to maintain. It is no different when working with B2B influencer partners, so brands should invest the time and resources to keep those relationships strong. That can mean software like the enterprise platform we use, Traackr, as well as the expertise of an influencer marketing agency that has many years of experience and established relationships with influencers in your industry.

What does effective B2B influencer marketing look like in action? Tech giant SAP wanted to raise awareness of their brand and establish thought leadership with their target audience of CTOs, CIOs, and technology managers. With B2B decision makers (and consumers in general) craving more inspiring and on-demand content, a podcast was the ideal channel to reach that target audience and spark in-depth engagement.

To Turn SAP’s vision for C-suite thought leadership into reality, they worked with TopRank Marketing to produce six episodes of Season 1, Tech Unknown Podcast. Each episode featured a long-form interview with an industry thought leader and was hosted by tech expert, Tamara McCleary. TopRank Marketing identified influencers for each episode with reach, relevance, and insight that would appeal to technology leaders.

The agency conducted live interviews with Tamara and the featured influencer guests to encourage in-depth exploration of the subject matter. The first season of the Tech Unknown podcast beat industry benchmarks for average downloads within 30 days, activated influencers that were important to the brand and the CTO/IO audience, earned millions of impressions, and opened the door for unique content repurposing opportunities.

Season 2 of the SAP Tech Unknown Podcast has now started to publish and is already breaking new performance records.  By combining an understanding of brand objectives and audience interests with the expertise and audience of specific influencers, SAP has been able to drive conversations, activate relationships and move the needle on their marketing objectives.

Where to start with B2B influencers:  In B2C, many influencers are inventory in a marketplace with detailed info on audience, performance and content creation capabilities where you can purchase services not unlike buying a sponsorship or advertising.

In B2B, there are no such marketplaces. Influencer Marketing platforms that algorithmically sort vast amounts of data are used to identify influencers that might be a match based on topical relevance, resonance with their audience and reach.

Once a B2B influencer has been identified as having the right mix of relevance, resonance and reach, B2B marketers can check to see if there is already a relationship with the influencer directly or through a first level connection. Engaging an experienced influencer that is already in your network is much different than starting a conversation with someone new.

It's also important to check to see if the B2B influencer is accustomed to “being an influencer” in terms of public speaking or writing and creating content.

Many B2C influencers are already familiar with what it means to "be" a social media influencer, but in B2B, such self assigned influencer status and behavior is less common. In B2C the goal is often transactional (drive product sales) and the brand might just present a project and have the influencer pitch a creative idea on how to implement. With B2B influencers that's possible but less likely. More often the B2B brand will have a campaign or program in mind with a narrative and structured content collaboration opportunities that influencers can take part in according to their specific areas of expertise and audience engagement.

For example, a B2B influencer program might have elements focused on top of funnel awareness, middle funnel engagement and end of funnel decision making. Each stage would involve different types of influencers (TOFU - brandividuals), (MOFU - industry experts), (BOFU - customers).

Relationship building with B2B influencers is key. A new contact will often be engaged with subtly on relevant social networks. You can look for signals that can be an open door to inviting a conversation. Then, as you engage online, you might feature the influencer in content or invite them to contribute something very easy, but that gives them great exposure. That basic interaction opens doors to more robust engagement.

If the influencer is clearly a pro and being an influencer is their business model, you can approach them directly as you would any other consultant.

B2C and B2B Influencer Marketing are different - and changing.

While there is advancing consumerization within the B2B world from software user experiences to the types of influencer content being co-created (server unboxing videos, tech "hauls") B2C and B2B influencer marketing are distinctly different. Viewing B2B influencers simply as content distribution channels or advocates for hire is a misplaced B2C-centric expectation. B2B influencers are industry experts that may or may not have advanced content creation skills. They have the attention and respect of their peers and that kind of influence is very powerful for brands that want to recapture buyer attention lost to dropping trust in brand advertising and communications.

If you have experience working with B2B and B2C influencers, what are some of the key differences you've experienced?

The post B2C vs. B2B Influencer Marketing – What’s the Difference? appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

How COVID-19 Is Impacting Business Event Planning
70 percent of business event planners have changed previously-planned in-person events to virtual platforms due to the pandemic, and 47 percent expect that once it ends people will still be hesitant to travel, with 27 percent expecting a swift uptick in real-world events due to pent-up demand, according to newly-released survey data from the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA). MarketingProfs

Google ad sales steady after coronavirus drop; Alphabet leads tech share rally
2020 first-quarter advertising sales at Google tallied $33.8 billion, with 73 percent coming from search and 12 percent from its YouTube property, and Google's ad business accounting for some 83 percent of revenue for parent firm Alphabet, according to newly-released financial results. Reuters

Spotify-owned Anchor can now turn your video chats into podcasts
Spotify will utilize its Anchor property to make it possible to convert video meeting content into podcasts, offering marketers new options for making use of a virtual hangout video content podcast conversion feature, Spotify recently announced. TechCrunch

Google’s new Podcasts Manager tool offers deeper data on listener behavior
Google has rolled out a new podcast analytics data feature — Podcasts Manager — that provides marketers an assortment of new podcast listening data, the search giant recently announced. Marketing Land

LinkedIn's up to 690 Million Members, Reports 26% Growth in User Sessions
LinkedIn (client) saw its user base increase to 690 million members — up from 675 in January — with an accompanying 26 percent increase in user sessions, and LinkedIn Live streams that increased by some 158 percent since February, according to parent firm Microsoft’s latest earnings release. Social Media Today

Advertisers Continued to Gravitate to Instagram in Q1
Advertisers moved to spend more on Instagram during the first quarter of 2020, with ad spending up 39 percent year-over-year on the platform, holding steady at 27 percent of parent company Facebook’s total ad spend, according to recently-released Merkle data. MarketingCharts

Brands Are Using More Data And Spending More On It: Study
B2B marketers are making greater use of data and spending increasingly to gather it, according to recent report data from Ascend2, showing that 47 percent use engagement data to make marketing decisions, one of several report statistics of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost

Most consumers are trying new brands during social distancing, study finds
Brands are seeing newfound levels of audience interest, with an uptick in consumer interest for trying new brands that has been observed during the pandemic, with members of the Gen Z and Millennial demographic seeing the biggest increases, according to recently-released survey data. Campaign US

Marketers Ante Up for In-Game Advertising
A $3 billion in-game advertising market in the U.S. alone has attracted additional advertisers, and a new Association of National Advertisers (ANA) examination of data from eMarketer found some surprises in that most mobile gamers were over 35, with 20 percent being over 50, while the majority were female, several of the in-game advertising statistics of interest to digital marketers. ANA

Data Hub: Coronavirus and Marketing [Updated]
Digital marketing has fared better than traditional campaigns in the face of the global health crisis, according to newly-released survey data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) exploring the differences between the pandemic and the 2008 recession. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at generic advertising “in these uncertain times” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

WHO Releases New Guidelines to Avoid Being Nominated for Viral Challenges — The Hard Times

Major Relief: Microsoft Has Confirmed That The Xbox Series X Will Play Video Games — The Onion

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Embracing Data — LinkedIn (client)
• Lee Odden — 10 Expert Tips for Marketing During a Crisis — Oracle (client)
• Lee Odden — Klear Interviews Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Marketing [Video] — Klear
• Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing — Pandemic Cross-Country Skiing in Duluth, Minnesota: A Personal Timeline — Lane R. Ellis

Have you got your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week of news? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking time to join us, and we hope you will join us again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don't miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

The post B2B Marketing News: Brands Spending More on Data, Spotify Turns Video Chats into Podcasts, & Consumers Trying More New Brands appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

A series of studies of the genomes of thousands of samples of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 show that it is mutating and evolving as it adapts to its human hosts. Soraya Ali reports.

Brazil's Bela Vista Biological Refuge Veterinarian Pedro Enrrique Ferreira says the Harpy Eagle hatchling born on April 26 only weighs 150 grams now but could one day grow to weigh some 20 pounds.

Brazil's Bela Vista Biological Refuge Veterinarian Pedro Enrrique Ferreira says the Harpy Eagle hatchling born on April 26 only weighs 150 grams now but could one day grow to weigh some 20 pounds.

Brazil's Bela Vista Biological Refuge Veterinarian Pedro Enrrique Ferreira says the Harpy Eagle hatchling born on April 26 only weighs 150 grams now but could one day grow to weigh some 20 pounds.

Author Stephenie Meyer thrilled fans of her best-selling "Twilight" novels by announcing she will release a prequel - but what can we expect from the new book?

Alexander Albon won a virtual Formula One thriller, against a field that included England cricketers Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad, around Brazil's Interlagos circuit on Sunday to deny Charles Leclerc an esports hat-trick.

Hindutva is Hinduism that resists. It doesn't matter how plural one is, as soon as one speaks up for Hinduism and defends it against attacks or misrepresentations of others, one would be dubbed "Hindutva" and demonized in the "secular" discourse.

As per industry experts, life insurance in India is still seen as a product that comes into play only when something goes wrong with its primary focus on the mortality aspect.

The BCCI official also claimed that a limited-overs match would be more beneficial for both boards.

In the past, Yograj lashed out at Dhoni on multiple occasions and has been critical with his assessments about the veteran wicketkeeper-batsman.

Natasha Poonawalla's husband Adar Poonawalla's institute Serum is working on a cure for coronavirus

Here is the full list of what's allowed and what's prohibited in Delhi till May 17:

[London] : [Published by The National Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies, 25, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W.], [1909]

[Letchworth] : [Garden City Press Limited, Letchworth, Herts.], [1909]

Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2019]

Cham : Springer, c2019.

[S.l.] : SPRINGER, 2020.

Singapore : Palgrave Macmillan, c2019.

London : Palgrave Macmillan UK : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

London : Hurst & Company, 2020.

Cham : Springer, [2019]

Cham : Springer, c2019.

Washington, DC : Island Press, 2019.

Berkeley, CA : Apress, [2019]

Cham : Springer, c2019.

by Claire L. Lanier This spring, in conjunction with The Presidency Project, the Museum is offering a series of twelve public programs exploring the American presidency – what it means, who did it well, who did it not so well, how different interpretations of the presidency have manifested the current functioning of the office, and...

The post Presidential Power Program Series: Looking at what it means to be president appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Written by Debra Schmidt Bach, Curator of Decorative Arts The New-York Historical Society recently acquired a pair of custom-made boots created for actor Kevin Smith Kirkwood for his role in the hit Broadway musical Kinky Boots, which tells the story of Charlie Price, a young Englishman who inherits his family’s failing shoe factory. While trying...

The post Heels and History: What sparkly, red platform boots tell us about American culture appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Currently, only 13 percent of the historical figures in history textbooks are women. Why does this matter? As one teacher put it, in his response to our national survey: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Girls and young women make up more than half of K-12 students and college undergraduates. If women are considered...

The post “You Can’t Be What You Can’t See”: Teaching Women’s History appeared first on Behind The Scenes.