The weekend’s almost here, and this week’s edition of the TDA Content Happy Hour comes with a shot of Facebook news. Yes, the world’s most popular social networking platform went public today, but many marketers continue to wonder how to best use Facebook for B2B purposes. Punch out, pull up a chair, and see how Facebook is allowing users to pay for more visibility, along with headlines covering the rest of the week’s top content marketing headlines.

Facebook is turning social relationships into a game, with Highlight you can pay to play
By Drew Olanoff at The Next Web
Okay, Facebook: you’ve set a high price for shares in your IPO today. But once your publicly traded coming-out party ends, you’ll need to answer to investors who will keep asking pesky revenue growth questions. One way to boost monetization may be Facebook’s upcoming Highlights feature, which will let users pay to push posts to the top of follower news feeds. Some critics, however, feel that Highlights may appear artificial—and might have less of an impact than the naturally engaging content Facebook has traditionally fostered.

Google Rolls Out Knowledge Graph to Make Search Results More ‘Human’
By Corey Eridon at HubSpot
This week, Google announced plans to roll out its Knowledge Graph search tool, which returns results based on pre-established topical relationships. This new tool is part of Google’s overall strategy to retrieve content based more upon relevance than SEO-driven clutter—and may help marketers concentrate on writing copy for human consumption instead of artificial search engine parameters.

2012 State of B2B Social Marketing [Stats]
By Paul Gustafson at Content Matters
B2B social media marketing continues to grow at an extraordinary pace. Over 93 percent of B2B marketers use a variety of these new platforms, and now are reaping the rewards. Find out how these organizations are boosting sales with social media, and why unique content is the engine of successful social outreach with this TDA overview.

LinkedIn Introduces 2 New Features – Targeted Updates & Follower Statistics
By Chris Marentis at Technorati
LinkedIn recently announced two new support features: targeted updates and follower statistics. The former will allow users to post updates to targeted users based on variables such as company size or job function. The latter will measure a deeper level of insights such as follower demographics, update impressions, and engagement levels.

Here in Silicon Valley, things always change fast. But the massive adoption of social media and mobile devices has accelerated the rate of change to an unprecedented level. Just last year, over 90% of B2B marketers used social media marketing techniques to reach enterprise decision makers. Why? Because decision makers now use social media to gather information.

This represents a massive change in B2B marketing. Consider the following key trends in B2B customer behavior as reflected in these stats:

• 36% of business technology decision makers now post updates on social networks.
• 62% of business technology decision makers now read and post comments on blogs.
• 80% of business technology decision makers now read, watch, and listen to online content.

Because B2B buyers use these channels to inform purchase decisions, B2B marketers are integrating social into their marketing mix. These stats tell the story:

• 93% of B2B marketers use social media to market their businesses.
• 89% of marketers are either maintaining or increasing their inbound marketing budgets
• Social media spending will increase 3% in the next 12 months and 9% over the next five years for B2B companies.

When B2B marketers connect with customers in the locations where those professionals are consuming content, they reap a variety of rewards:

• 60% of B2B marketers improved their search ranking with social media.
• 40% and 43% of marketers acquired new business from Twitter and Facebook, respectively.
• 65% of B2B marketers acquired new business through LinkedIn.
• 66% of companies that published weekly blog posts acquired new customers via their blogs.

Over the last year, it has become essential for marketers to fully integrate social into their marketing strategy. The spoils of social marketing go to those who publish frequently —so marketers must make sure they have the best content providers on their side.

Here at TDA, we help clients devise and execute content plans to optimize social media outreach. We specialize in great content, which fosters engagement, deepens relationships, and builds bigger audiences through referrals. With trends like these, the time to put your content plan in place is now. Let us know how we can help.

We’re experiencing technical difficulty with our main Web site. Instead of posting an icon with a “down for maintenance” image, we’ve redirected the traffic from our home page to our blog (since that’s where most of our visitors go anyway).

Of course, you can also still get in touch with us via Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Or be “old school” and dial 650.919.1200.

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The weekend’s almost here! Punch out and pull up a chair—we’ve got this week’s top content marketing headlines on tap.

Bing Reinvents Social Search and Discovery
By Lance Ulanoff of Mashable
Microsoft search engine Bing now returns insights from Facebook. The sidebar, entitled “What Your Friends May Know,” provides related posts from a user’s Facebook stream that correspond with their query. Microsoft anticipates that it will integrate results from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ in the near future.

Do Brands and Agencies Use Content Marketing Differently? [Research]
By Michele Linn at Content Marketing Institute
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), agencies use a wider variety of marketing tactics than brands. In its research, CMI found that agencies lead brands in creating effective content via blogs, social media, and videos. CMI’s study further establishes the value of partnering with agencies that specialize in content production.

HootSuite Takes Aim At Businesses’ Facebook, Social Media Teams
By David Cohen at AllFacebook
This week, social media management dashboard HootSuite rolled out its Teams feature. This new feature allows companies to better manage social collaboration, network access permissions, and team structures. These changes give companies better control to help them engage audiences with a unified voice.

8 Ways to Get the Biggest Marketing Bang Out of SlideShare
By Joe Chernov at Mashable
SlideShare gets 29 million monthly unique visitors. To help you harness this traffic, Chernov lays down eight tips in a great slide deck. We found it interesting, for example, that Google indexes slideshow notes—so keyword optimization is required for presentations to make the top results. To get the most mileage out of a slide deck, marketers need to sprinkle in a little SEO magic.

Happy Cinco de Mayo weekend! Enjoy this week’s content marketing headline fiesta before your weekend siesta.

Expanding content delivery channels in the mobile age
As mobile device adoption and online readership continue to grow, readers have begun to expect content delivery in real time. In this environment, marketers’ responsibilities are shifting from fixed-schedule publishing to active gatekeeping of relevant content for specific audiences.

Facebook launches “action links” for greater app interaction
By Steven Musil at CNET
Facebook has just introduced “action links,” which help marketers customize audience interactions with specific content. Leading marketers are now using this feature to create interactions that let Facebook users “save” different products or places for future review—and lets marketers have greater control over customer brand engagement.

How do you diplomatically tell important people that they can’t write?
The development of social media has led many people to assume that anyone in the office with an education can write effective copy. The reality: not everyone is a gifted writer. Learn how to gently break this news to influential people by sharing editorial best practices that produce world-class content.

ABM Annual: Keynote Griffin says b-to-b media well-positioned for mobile, social
By Sean Callahan at BtoB Magazine
At last week’s American Business Media (ABM) conference in San Francisco, former Time, Inc. and Meredith Corp. CEO Jack Griffin noted: “Brands and the content that builds them are even more important in an environment of almost infinite choice.” Griffin then went on to explain that as content models continue to change, B2B publications need to concentrate on fundamentals: data and audience, content and brand, community, social media, and mobile access.

Facebook Timeline Changed the Way We See Brand Pages; Here’s How
Sarah Kessler at Mashable
Facebook’s recently launched Timeline brand pages have changed the way people experience brands. A recent study revealed that Facebook users are most likely to look at cover photos, number of likes, events, and apps. The impact of visual cues should not be lost on marketers, who may wish to optimize these focal areas to make the most of the traffic that comes through their Facebook pages.

Consider this: in January 2012, the number of iPhones sold surpassed the number of babies born throughout the world. As mobile devices become the standard platform for consuming information, reader expectations are rapidly changing. Users have become accustomed to content streams composed of sharable and near-real-time information. With a better understanding of what readers now expect, content marketers can both cope with and profit from these changes.

The traditional linear and fixed publication schedule is a reliable one-way street, but cannot rapidly incorporate new developments from readers or other sources.

The fixed publication schedule of traditional content delivery

Traditionally, many content marketing deliverables (e-mail newsletters, magazines, etc.) have been published on a fixed schedule. While this cadence was originally imposed by the printing press, even digital press dates force publishers to prepare a preconceived packet of content. A structured production cycle enables planning, room for the creative process, and adequate time for internal reviews and approvals. The process allows marketers to carefully plan the content, and optimize its influence on buying decisions.

The value of a structured cadence of well-thought content doesn’t evaporate when preparing content for smartphones and tablets. In fact, because of the intense competition for attention on these devices, it’s even more important.

But it’s not enough.

Mobile adoption = real-time content expectations

With the massive adoption of smartphones, tablets, and social media, readers have instant access to a much wider range of information in real time and on demand. Audiences now assume apps on their devices will constantly and immediately bring them the right information. To meet these raised expectations, content marketers need to embrace the reality of near-real-time content streams, and adopt production cycles that cater to this continuous content stream.

In this new model, exclusive original content remains the primary attraction for audiences. But in addition, audiences expect more content, not just from you, but from other credible sources. And they want to interact directly with the people providing content, as well as other audience members.

In a world populated by disparate information sources, content providers must act as true gatekeepers.

Filtering out the noise is your value-add

One way to help your audience is by not contributing to their information overload problem. Make sure the content you create is truly useful to your audience. The old “less-is-more” adage is particularly true today: be good, be brief, or be quiet.

Further, you can help your audience deal with information overload by “curating” the content streams they should be monitoring. To us, “content curating” means “ruthlessly editing” these streams. We advise our clients to only re-tweet or share high-quality stories that audiences just can’t afford to miss. Explain why you chose to share a particular item. Highlight its importance and its implications. Over time, if you do a good job of this, your audience will begin to trust you because what you send to them is important, useful, and maybe even entertaining. They’ll also stop paying direct attention to alternative sources because all of the best content is in your stream.

Of course, creating this stream of relevant, engaging content requires you to know your audience and anticipate its needs. Armed with this knowledge, expert editors can drive the creation of important original content and curate the best of it from other sources.

Eventually, your audience will come to know you, trust you, share your values, and appreciate your efforts. And that’s what content marketing is all about.

By Pop Culture Geek

The weekend’s almost here! Punch out and pull up a chair—we’ve got this week’s top content marketing headlines on tap.

The rise of mobile: A new era in B2B marketing [SlideShare]
Why should your company’s content go mobile? Because your audience increasingly consumes information this way. View our SlideShare presentation to get the cold, hard facts about mobile readership, and find out how to extend your reach.

Google’s Mobile PlayBook: “The Busy Executive’s Guide to Winning with Mobile”
By Emily Price at Mashable
By 2016, one-third of all tablets will be purchased by businesses, which will primarily use the devices for reading content. With this in mind, Google (which knows a thing or two about content and reading) has introduced its free Mobile PlayBook. The primer is full of tips about attracting corporate readers—and getting started in mobile marketing.

Google quietly introduces Brandcast, a tool to help businesses get the most out of YouTube
By Nancy Messieh at The Next Web
YouTube’s soon-to-be-launched Brandcast tool is designed to help companies better reach target audiences on the video sharing site. This audience segmentation solution is divided into three sections: original channels by category, audience demographics, and marketer resources. YouTube will officially introduce Brandcast on May 2nd.

What Your Klout Score Really Means
By Seth Stevenson at Wired
You probably know that Klout is a social media analytics tool that gauges how influential people are on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But did you know your Klout score can influence perks and considerations offline? According to Stevenson, companies seeking shout-outs from influential people give perks such as hotel upgrades to patrons with high Klout scores. While the science behind Klout isn’t perfect, it does represent one way marketers are trying to quantify success in social media.

Last Friday, I had lunch with a friend who manages the relationships between one of our clients and an important group of industry analysts. He described a key challenge he’s facing this way: “All of these guys are smart, but not all of them can write. How can you tell them without hurting the relationship? Can you help?”

It’s a delicate subject. Telling someone who needs help writing can be like telling your boss that her teeth are adorned with bits of spinach. In touchy situations like this, you know that you should mention the problem, but summoning the nerve to do so is an effort. Who knows how that person will react?

One way to approach the subject is by sharing how editorial best practices contribute to world-class content deliverables. Here at TDA, we follow a disciplined workflow that starts with crisp high-level direction before we proceed with hands-on editorial services that run the gamut of content shaping and development, peer read-behinds, copy editing, fact-checking, and proofreading.

In addition, writing and editing are different professions here at TDA. Writers write. Editors edit. Different skill sets, different qualifications, different personalities.

Expert editing makes good writing even better. The eye of an experienced editor helps writers tell a story with a natural flow and logical transitions. Polishing text helps simplify even complex messages—and weaving those ideas into a story that has a beginning, middle, and end goes a long way to captivate readers through the entire piece.

Besides working closely with our own writers, TDA editors routinely coach client authors who are renowned engineers, executives, marketers, or scientists. The experience usually helps these folks understand and appreciate how our edit support services complement their writing efforts.

After you share editorial best practices, you can more easily mention that talent matters. Many brilliant thinkers just aren’t cut out to be writers. Some of us who do have the writer’s knack often don’t have the time or focus to devote to the authoring task. But it’s a job that can be easily outsourced to those who do.

As I told my friend, there is no shame in hiring dedicated writers to help, especially when communicating important but complex ideas. So, yes, you can inform people that they don’t write well—without injuring professional relationships. And if you follow the points above, you’ll probably find it easier to do than telling people they have spinach in their teeth.

Photo by Maryland GovPics

If your organization wants to stay competitive, it needs a mobile content strategy. Now. Extensive mobile readership isn’t something that may happen far off into the future. It’s how your audience consumes information today.

Understand what your competitors almost certainly know about extending mobile reach. View this short SlideShare presentation to see the vast impact of mobile content—and find out how to get started reaching more decision makers and influencers.

Photo by djhalo

The weekend’s almost here! Punch out and pull up a chair—we’ve got this week’s top content marketing headlines on tap.

Facebook Enhances Analytics to Enable Smarter Ad Targeting for Marketers
By Corey Eridon at HubSpot
Facebook is currently testing a new set of advertising tools that are not yet publicly available. The new Ad Manager suite lets marketers target customers based on comments, check-ins, apps used, and more. When released, these tools may help marketers better engage audiences with quantifiable metrics about specific Facebook activities.

3 Rules for Creating Effective Infographics
Content Marketing Institute
Like other pieces of marketing collateral, infographics must follow a few essential content creation rules to be effective. Marketers need to understand three best infographic practices to get their messages across: tell a story, communicate complex data simply, and facilitate social sharing.

Klout Unveils Brand Pages
By Brian Anthony Hernandez at Mashable
This week, social influence analytics provider Klout unveiled a new way for companies to identify and support top customer-brand advocates. Called Brand Squads, these brand pages are currently being tested by hyperactivity merchant Red Bull. With LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ all touting brand-boosting measures, it looks like Klout is making a play for more corporate mindshare.

It’s a Small World After All: The Top Global Web Trends
By Brian Solis at Social Media Today
Which search engines and social media platforms prevail among international audiences—and how many people actually use them? This insightful article provides in-depth and country-specific information, including a look at the top markets for social engagement.

Rebooting Twitter’s Analytics
By Jon VanZile at BtoB Online
Many marketers use tools such as bit.ly or ow.ly to track shared content on Twitter. However, content providers should be aware of the potential for underrepresentation of social traffic in analytics tools, because link shortening can misrepresent Twitter traffic sources as direct traffic from other sources, such as Google.