As content marketers, we all know how critical content promotion is. Just because you write it doesn’t mean that they will read it. Getting people’s eyes onto our content has become such a big industry that Relevance needed to create a “Content Promotion Ecosystem” to map out all of the tools available to help content marketers do their job.

Content Promotion’s Dark Secret

But there’s a dark secret lurking in the content promotion industry. Actually, it’s not even a secret – everyone knows it, but they simply don’t like to talk about it:  Most of the tactics used to promote content today are pure, unadulterated click-bait.

This means that the tactics being used to get people to content are simply focused on getting people to “click” on the content – not to actually read or engage with it. Think about the content promotion vendor you’re currently using to drive traffic to your content. How do they measure the success of their promotion/distribution? Chances are, they are charging you by the click.

But are the people that are clicking actually sticking around to read your content? If you’re promoting content via content recommendation engines or other “native” placements, in most cases the answer is emphatically no.

Tony Haile and his team at Chartbeat blew the lid off this idea back in March, giving the industry a peek into how bleak the performance of most promoted content really is. Their data shows that a majority of people bounce from promoted content within 15 seconds. And for native content, only 24 percent of people who land on that content will ever scroll at all. If people are spending less than 15 seconds on the page and not scrolling, then they are not engaged with and/or reading your content.

So how can you ensure that you promote your content in a way that achieves engagement, not just click-through rates with high bounce rates? Remember these three rules as you consider paid promotion for your content.

1.) Know How Your Promoted Content Will Look

A big reason why most promoted content fails is because it is being “optimized” by the content promotion platforms to drive higher click-through rates. This “optimization” can include everything from altering the headline of your content to changing the thumbnail image to something more “compelling.” This is the approach taken by the content recommendation engines – the boxes you see on pages that recommend other content to read from “Around the Web.”

The problem with this optimization is that it is increasingly being called out for what it is – a deceptive tactic for getting people to click on something that they otherwise may not have clicked on. So if you’re looking to reduce bounce rates and increase the amount of people who actually read your promoted content, be sure to use a promotion platform or channel that presents your content in a transparent and credible way.

If your content is about a B2B technology, it should be presented as such – featuring the actual headline so that people know what they’re going to land on. That B2B content is interesting and useful to a lot of people, and by presenting it for what it is, you’ll attract more of the right people – the people who might actually become customers. What sense does it make to mask that content with a more consumer-friendly headline and a “more compelling” image if it drives the wrong people, and those people bounce?

2.) Optimize For Increased Engagement, Not Just Clicks

After talking trash about “optimization” in the section above, this may sound like conflicting advice, but the fact of the matter is that optimization is critical – just not in the way that most content promotion platforms currently handle it.

When vetting a content promotion platform, ask them what they mean by optimization. Ask them whether they are simply optimizing for the click, or if they are actually optimizing for engagement – getting your content in front of the right people, who will stick around, scroll through and read your content. A great place to start is by asking content promotion vendors if they have the ability to tell you how many people engaged with your content, how long they spent reading your content and whether they scrolled or not. If they can’t tell you these things, chances are good they aren’t optimizing your content in an ideal way.

If a content promotion platform can’t measure engagement for you, then that means the only thing they can promise you is clicks. But if 76 percent or more of those people are bouncing within 15 seconds, then that’s a large percentage of your content promotion budget that is wasted from the start.

3.) Don’t Leverage Trust For Cheap Traffic

Traffic is great, but traffic alone should not be the end-all, be-all measurement of your content success. The quality of that traffic must also be a key consideration. Traffic that bounces in under 15 seconds has no value to your business. And by using deceptive (or at the very least, misleading) tactics to drive that traffic to your content by disguising it, you’re not only seeing little-to-no value, but you could actually be damaging your brand.

No matter how great your content is, by voluntarily pushing it into the content recommendation stream, you devalue your content by placing it in a pipe that feeds up a lot of junk. You might get more clicks by having your content appear in streams next to stories about the Kardashians, but will those people actually engage with your content in a meaningful way? Unlikely.

There’s a reason why many of these content recommendation and content promotion platforms charge so little per click, and that’s because they don’t care where the click comes from. It’s not worth leveraging brand trust to get cheap traffic that doesn’t convert.

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

In summary, its time that all of us in the content marketing world stop focusing purely on driving clicks to our content, and instead start focusing on increasing engagement with our content.

An engagement-focused approach to content promotion shows deeper respect for your potential customer by presenting content to them in a clear and credible manner, but it also has the benefit of driving more business value for your brand.

Rather than wasting 75 percent or more of your content promotion budget on clicks that bounce, an engagement-based approach will help ensure that the traffic you drive is more focused, more engaged and more likely to convert.

The post Content Promotion vs. Clickbait: How to Avoid Destroying Trust & Traffic appeared first on Relevance.

Notice that the Nielsen study specifically calls out the value of experts, not influencers. And why is that? Because Nielsen wanted to focus on what actually moves the needle with consumers (what gets them to act), and influencers – despite the hype around influencer marketing – do not drive action.

Let’s break down the different between influence and expertise for a moment.

Influence

When services like Klout measure influence, they are primarily concerned with the social interactions that a person has. To achieve a high score on Klout, all you need to do is connect as many social networks as you can, and then post on those social networks in a way that “inspires action” such as getting people to like, comment, share, re-tweet and more.

The issue with influence measurement is that it is extremely easy to game, which drastically reduces the value of these influencer rankings for businesses. For proof, see this brilliant post from Harmit Kamboe, which clearly illustrates how easy it is to pull a fast one on Klout.

The argument is that influencers on Klout are technically able to inspire someone to act, but how on earth does liking a post or sharing someone’s photo provide value to a brand looking to engage in influencer marketing? It doesn’t mean the influencer in question has any ability to get people to consider another brand; it simply shows that they’re good at posting cute photos.

Expertise

Measuring expertise, on the other hand, is less about social interaction and more about tracking actual subject matter knowledge. I believe that in order to truly measure expertise, you need to look at what people are publishing online, and how the content they are publishing is impacting the marketplace. I would also argue that once someone has established true expertise on a topic, that is what makes them truly influential in a way that actually has an impact for brands.

I propose the following as the standard for measuring expertise, based on someone’s content:

• Consistency – In order to be considered a true subject-matter expert, you have to cover that subject regularly.
• Depth – Experts don’t just re-write press releases or newsjack trending topics. They write with depth and add their opinions and insight to the topics they cover.
• Validation – When content is truly expert, people will want to share it consistently.

Think about it. In a world with so many sources of content, how does today’s consumer know who to trust? How can they concentrate on the content that they should be paying attention to when researching any brand, product or topic of interest to them?

Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: influence is how someone reacts to your status. Expertise is how someone reacts to your knowledge.

People don’t trust in someone based solely on their social status. They trust in someone based on clearly demonstrated subject matter expertise. They want to know who has the most knowledge on a topic so that they can pare down how much they need to read in order to focus on the most credible sources. That is what impacts customers.

Do potential customers really care about an arbitrary score based on someone’s social media activity? Or do prospects want to know what level of expertise someone has with the topic so that they can determine whether they are qualified to inform others on the subject?

So rather than focusing on amorphous influence, I think it’s time we all focus on what really moves the needle: expertise. That means identifying your industry’s experts so that you know who you need to be educating and informing on a regular basis. Moreover, building your own internal expertise within the brand through earned, owned, and shared media is equally important. That combination of establishing credibility via third-party experts and supporting the customer with your own internal expertise is a winning combination for reaching and adding value for the customer.

The post Influence vs. Expertise – What Actually Matters? appeared first on Relevance.

Believe me, we’ve all been there.

And even when our content failures are few and far between, overall, most of us who oversee content marketing feel like we’re not succeeding. As the CMI and MarketingProf’s annual B2B Content Marketing Trends Report shows, only 42 percent of marketers feel like we are being effective at content marketing.

The Nielsen Study

So what ingredient are we all missing to help produce a content marketing strategy that clicks with consumers and builds our brands?

This is exactly what we set out to identify in a new study that we commissioned with Nielsen. Our goal was to determine which types of content were needed at different stages of the consumer’s decision-making process so that we could develop a content marketing strategy that pairs the customer with the right content at the right time. We commissioned Nielsen to do a live, in-lab study to measure the effectiveness of the following types of content:

• Expert Content – Credible, third-party articles and reviews.
• User-Generated Content – Reviews from users, like product reviews on Amazon.com or Yelp.
• Branded Content – Any content developed and owned by the brand.

These content types were measured for their lift throughout the following stages of the consumer buying cycle:

• Brand Familiarity
• Brand Affinity
• Purchase Intent

We decided to do this as an in-lab study because, in order to determine the real impact of content, you need to make sure the consumer is actually reading the content. Online surveys in this realm are easy for respondents to click through without reading the content, and answer questions based on their existing opinion, not their opinion after exposure to the content.

Credibility & Trust Are King

Several key findings from the Nielsen research indicate that the credibility and unbiased nature of the content were critical for consumers:

• 85 percent of consumers regularly or occasionally seek out expert, trusted content – credible, third-party articles & reviews – when considering a purchase
• 69 percent of consumers like to read product reviews written by trusted experts before making a purchase
• 67 percent of consumers agree that an endorsement from an unbiased expert makes them more likely to consider purchasing

The Nielsen research showed that expert content – articles from credible journalists – was the only content type to exhibit a strong lift in all 3 areas of the purchase cycle.  It provided the most familiarity lift for 7 out of the 9 products, the most affinity lift for 5 of the 9 products, and the most purchase intent lift for 6 of the 9 products. On average, expert content lifted brand familiarity 88 percent more than branded content and 50 percent more than user reviews; it lifted brand affinity 50 percent more than branded content and 20 percent more than user reviews, and it lifted purchase intent 38 percent more than branded content and 83 percent more than user reviews.

So, what does this mean for our content marketing strategies?

A Content Mix Focused on Credibility is Key

As you can see from the chart above, it’s not as though branded and user-generated content didn’t have any impact – they certainly do. But what the Nielsen data clearly shows is the need to begin with credible, third-party content in order to establish trust with the consumer. Then, once that foundation of trust is established, the usage of branded and user-generated content becomes more effective.

This is something that we learned first-hand over a year ago when we first launched our company. Back then, we did what so many other well-meaning startups do – we created a big, expensive, well-produced video. And we did it right. We hired a great video team, we got big customers like Samsung on board to sing our praises, and we focused on what our solution could do for the customer. The video looked amazing, and our employees and investors loved it.

But unfortunately, not many other people ever saw it. That video received less than 1,000 views and resulted in absolutely $0 in revenue. So how could it be that such a great piece of content had so little impact?

The answer is simple – we didn’t have any credibility with our audiences. We put so much time and effort into creating a video that said all the things we wanted to say about ourselves, but we hadn’t thought about the fact that we didn’t have the credibility to say those things yet. We still needed to put the hard work into establishing trust with our audiences.

As a result, we spent the last year focusing our efforts on PR and developing relationships with the press and influencers in our industry. This has led to a lot of press coverage, invitations to speak at conferences, etc. and has given us the ability to show customers what the experts have to say about us, instead of what we have to say about ourselves.

So the next time you’re frustrated by the performance of your content, don’t just spend more time and money producing more content or promoting your existing branded content. Instead, take a look at the most valuable content you have at your disposal – the credible articles & reviews written about your brand – and leverage that to help increase your credibility and trust with your audiences. By utilizing a mixed content strategy that layers in credible third-party content, your own branded content, and user-generated content, you’ll see greater interaction with all your content and a much stronger impact throughout each stage of the funnel.

The post People Trust Experts More Than They Trust You appeared first on Relevance.

At inPowered, we’re obsessed with trust, what establishes it, what nurtures it, and how it can be maintained long term. So we decided to enlist the help of Nielsen to create a study that would help determine what type of content consumers trust most.

The Research

Our goal was to determine which types of content were needed at different stages of the consumer’s decision-making process so that we could develop a content marketing strategy that pairs the customer with the right content at the right time to establish and nurture trust. We commissioned Nielsen to do a live, in-lab study to measure the effectiveness of the following types of content:

• Expert Content – Credible, third-party articles and reviews.
• User-Generated Content – Reviews from users, like product reviews on Amazon.com.
• Branded Content – Any content developed and owned by the brand.

These content types were measured for their lift throughout the following stages of the consumer buying cycle:

• Brand Familiarity
• Brand Affinity
• Purchase Intent

What Nielsen revealed throughout the course of several months of in-lab surveys was fascinating, and provides solid guidelines for anyone determining where to focus their collective content energy and budget in the quest for consumers’ trust.

It’s All About Trust

Several key findings from the Nielsen research indicate that the credibility and unbiased nature of the content were critical for consumers:

• 85 percent of consumers regularly or occasionally seek out trusted expert content – credible, third-party articles & reviews – when considering a purchase
• 69 percent of consumers like to read product reviews written by trusted experts before making a purchase
• 67 percent of consumers agree that an endorsement from an unbiased expert makes them more likely to consider purchasing

Overall, the Nielsen research showed that expert content – articles from credible journalists – was the only content type to exhibit a strong lift in all 3 areas of the purchase cycle. And the driving force behind that lift was the level of trust the consumer had in the different sources of information.

Building Trust is Critical

What the Nielsen study reveals is that all brands – no matter what category – need to employ a mix of Trusted/Expert Content, User-Generated Content, and Branded Content to establish trust, educate consumers, and help them navigate the decision-making process. As a result, Nielsen recommends that all brands implement a blended content strategy to better serve the information needs of consumers:

• Build trust – Begin with trusted content from credible, third-party experts in order to establish a foundation of trust with the consumer
• Share your story – Once trust is established, utilize branded content to further connect and engage
• Continually reinforce – Maintain your efforts by encouraging customers to generate user reviews, and by continuously utilizing more trusted content

The fact that building trust with the consumer is the most effective way to influence their decision-making process may seem like common sense. But in a marketing landscape that is forced to simultaneously deliver on multiple metrics – from social media engagement, to site traffic, to brand awareness, and more – it can be easy to get distracted and pursue the wrong content marketing mix.

But the fact of the matter is that all of those metrics – and your revenue – will increase as you build a community of consumers who trust and value your brand.

This post originally appeared on The inPowered Blog.

The post Trust is the New Black: The Importance of Experts in Content Marketing appeared first on Relevance.