#I crave narrative flow in my marketing and this order is so !!:!/!/&/:$:$

[sailoryooons]

The order of tour announcement/promotion > movie about album that hasn’t been announced > maybe ?? Album release ??? Is way too out of order for my marketing brain!!!! I like things in narrative order like album > concert > movie or album > movie > concert!!!! Lmao

[michaelandy101-blog]

Are Blogs Lifeless in 2021? We Requested 10 Advertising and marketing Consultants

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/are-blogs-dead-in-2021-we-asked-10-marketing-experts/

Are Blogs Lifeless in 2021? We Requested 10 Advertising and marketing Consultants

It appears all of us have an obsession with killing issues off.

Each couple of years, we revisit one thing and place it on the chopping block. Within the new millennium, we had the Y2K computer scare. In 2012, we feared the world would end and we might all simply poof. When expertise took a extra essential function in our lives, we assumed all print publications would go bankrupt. Now, with the rise of video and podcasts, it is running a blog’s flip to really feel the warmth.

I reached out to entrepreneurs with backgrounds in product marketing, web optimization, YouTube, podcasting, and extra and requested them, “Are Blogs useless? ” Here is what they stated.

Are blogs useless?

In response to entrepreneurs, not even shut. Blogs proceed to be extraordinarily useful for lead era, model consciousness, and web optimization. And so they’re nonetheless fashionable amongst customers. A 2020 HubSpot research discovered that 60% of individuals learn a weblog at the least as soon as per week. So, blogs will not be out of entrepreneurs’ toolbox anytime quickly.

In all equity, this query surrounding blogs will not be with out cause. Google Developments exhibits that within the final 5 years, the curiosity in blogs has steadily declined worldwide.

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Within the U.S. inside the identical five-year span, podcasts have risen in reputation and surpassed blogs in searches.

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Nevertheless, entrepreneurs nonetheless contemplate running a blog a high marketing channel. Ross Simmonds, a B2B marketer and the founding father of the content material marketing company Basis, says running a blog has helped his purchasers triple their visitors and speed up their gross sales shut charges.

“At Foundation, blogging with intent has helped us generate millions of dollars in the pipeline for both us and our clients,” says Simmonds. “It’s also armed us with the ability to elevate our brand’s position in the market and, most importantly, truly help others in our industry learn and unlock new opportunities.”

With that stated, the running a blog panorama has modified over time. Lisa Toner, director of content material at HubSpot, says it is not sufficient to simply have a weblog these days.

“You need to consistently create content that is more valuable than your competition’s content. You need to be an SEO expert to get your articles ranking on page one of Google, and you need a distribution strategy to promote your content across all the channels your audience likes to consume content on,” says Toner. “It’s a lot more complex to win at blogging now, but if you can master it, it’s worth the investment.”

Transparency is an even bigger duty, particularly as social justice turns into more important to consumers.

“You need to think about how people see your brand compared to your competition. Everyone has their own unique selling position (USP) and what they want to put forward, but what users do is compare,” says Sandra Mpouma, head of digital marketing at RationalFX. “So, in terms of business strategy, create loyalty, trust, [and] be transparent and competitive, which is very important nowadays.”

Blogs vs. Different Advertising and marketing Channels

Now that different content material marketing channels – particularly video and podcasting – have surpassed blogs, will blogs quickly change into redundant? Effectively, all of it relies on the person personas you are focusing on. However at the same time as different platforms develop, blogs nonetheless provide many benefits.

“Podcasting is not without its own set of limitations. There are plenty of discoverability and audience growth challenges. At this point, blogs have a pretty well-dusted playbook for scaling. That’s not true for podcasts,” says Matthew Brown, senior podcast producer at HubSpot. “A company can use its likely limited resources to invest in a blog that will basically give consistent, easily measurable, and reliable performance. Blogs also have a direct line to the company’s bottom dollar, podcasts do not.”

Nelson Chacon, principal marketing supervisor for YouTube at HubSpot, highlights that there isn’t any cause to decide on between two platforms in case your workforce has the bandwidth to deal with each. If it aligns along with your person personas, you possibly can have interaction your viewers from a number of angles.

“Creating a blog constructed of articles around the benefits of your product will be helpful. Having a video showcasing its use or how to install it would be beneficial for your audience,” says Chacon. “Home Depot has carried out a incredible job of doing this. Whereas they inform and educate their prospects on their merchandise, additionally they add a fast ‘how-to’ for the extra educated one that simply wants a brief reply defined in a video.”

As for social media, Annabelle Nyst, a senior content material strategist who focuses on social media initiatives at HubSpot, says it is onerous to match it to blogs as every platform serves totally different functions.

“Social content doesn’t always have the shelf life or the discoverability of blog posts,” says Nyst. “It’s more about consistently meeting your audience where they are, in the right moments, engaging with them one-on-one, and establishing trust via community building.”

She provides that social media may be an effective way to amplify your weblog posts. And vice versa, weblog posts can function inspiration for social content material. If utilizing each, Nyst recommends pulling probably the most compelling factors out of your weblog posts, creating social-first content material, and utilizing it to drive visitors again to your weblog.

With all that stated, blogs do not come with out their disadvantages. AJ Beltis, a content material and acquisition supervisor at HubSpot, mentions the excessive drop-off charges typically seen in weblog posts.

“Blogs lack the interactivity that many crave due to its nature as written content,” says Beltis. “This challenges blog writers to hook their readers in a few short sentences without having the benefit of special effects or audio engineers available to their video and podcast creating counterparts.”

What it typically comes all the way down to is your model targets and which channels will enable you meet them. Podcasts, for instance, are higher for branding whereas blogs serve higher for top-of-the-funnel engagement.

“Blog posts are an acquisition juggernaut. There’s a clear path that any seasoned marketer can follow. Podcasts, however, best serve as a brand opportunity,” says Brown. “You wouldn’t measure a series of blog posts on their brand uplift ability, just like you wouldn’t measure a podcast show’s lead generation. That is unless you like gray hairs and a serious lack of sleep.”

Why Blogs are Nonetheless Impactful

From an funding perspective, blogs could also be a greater long-term funding for lead era.

“I could spend $200K to hire a full-time writer, SEO expert, and conversion rate optimization (CRO) specialist to work on my blog. By combining those skill sets, I’m going to be able to create a blog that drives organic traffic to my website and converts it into leads for my business all year long,” says Toner. “Or, I could put the same $200K into an advertising campaign and maybe get a couple thousand leads over the course of the ad campaign. But once the campaign ends, so does my lead flow.”

Toner provides that almost all of HubSpot’s blog-generated leads come from older weblog posts. Which means running a blog is usually a nice lead supply lengthy after posts are printed. Aja Frost, who leads the English web optimization workforce at HubSpot, echoes this sentiment.

“Organic traffic is more important than ever. Unlike paid traffic, which stops coming in the second your budget runs out, organic traffic is mostly self-sustaining after you’ve put in the time and effort to create a blog post,” she says.

She provides that almost all content material administration programs (CMS) have web optimization instruments built-in into their platforms, which makes it simpler to optimize your posts.

Running a blog may also be useful in shaping a model’s product positioning.

“Blogs are still one of the best channels we have to create narratives around our product,” says HubSpot Product Advertising and marketing Supervisor Alex Girard. “They offer us the opportunity to address trends we see in the market, how those trends impact the reader, and how our product might be able to help them meet that trend successfully. They’re also great for telling customer success stories.”

He provides that when utilizing your weblog to market your product, the content material would not must be promotional. If you set up your self as a thought chief and acquire belief out of your viewers, they may organically look into your services and products.

With that stated, it should take greater than good content material to have a profitable weblog.

“Growth without a goal isn’t going to help your business – if 10,000 people are reading your blog, but none of them fit your persona, that’s not going to do anything for your company,” says HubSpot’s Senior Weblog Supervisor Karla Cook. “Focus on something attainable, like generating new contacts, and make sure every post you’re putting out has that goal in mind.”

She provides that one of many largest errors manufacturers make is creating content material just for folks on the decision-making stage. With so many levels between studying a weblog and making a purchase order, entrepreneurs ought to have posts geared at customers in each stage with corresponding presents. Be taught extra about that by means of HubSpot’s business blogging course.

From an web optimization perspective, manufacturers may additionally wrestle with producing visitors as a result of they’re considering weblog first, hyperlink constructing second.

“What I often notice is that marketers see ‘blogging’ and ‘link building’ as two different disciplines. First, they write the blog posts, then they think about how to earn backlinks to them,” says Irina Nica, a senior marketing supervisor at HubSpot who works on product consciousness by means of outreach initiatives. “Instead, they should include linkable assets into their regular content calendar, alongside other types of articles that are maybe designed for generating organic or social media traffic.”

Regardless of the numerous advantages we have gone over, running a blog is not at all times one of the best technique for each model. Why? Effectively, what in case your very best person persona would not learn blogs? What if they like emails as an alternative?

“Some brands have great email communication and workflows where they provide people with downloadable offers where they don’t have to go somewhere else to get the information, it’s just in their inbox straight away,” says Mpouma. “You don’t necessarily need a blog as long as you’re offering something in exchange. I think the blog has always been that: Offer something for free in exchange for that user interaction.”

So, in that case, blogs would not precisely be useless, extra so irrelevant.

Why Advertising and marketing Is not Lifeless

issues from a broader perspective, blogs are simply an extension of marketing. Some have recommended that marketing is useless, which makes entrepreneurs like me surprise if there’s one thing we do not know.

Primarily based on current knowledge, marketing continues to be influential. And that applies to each conventional methods and digital initiatives. Statista reported that in 2019, content material marketing generated over $42 billion in income worldwide.

“There’s a reason why Nike and McDonalds continue to invest millions every month in marketing even though they’re already household names. There’s a reason why the top musicians and artists still do promotion prior to their latest album release,” says Simmonds. “Marketing isn’t to be seen as just an expense. It’s an investment. And if you make an investment that is rooted in a strategic plan — that investment should return dividends for years (maybe decades) to come.”

The important thing takeaway is that whereas not all marketing techniques work for each model, it is unlikely that blogs will cease being useful to manufacturers within the foreseeable future. So for now, blogs, you possibly can relaxation and step off the chopping block.

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[readersforum]

9 YouTube Video Ideas to Inspire Your Brand’s YouTube Channel [+ Examples]

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/9-youtube-video-ideas-to-inspire-your-brands-youtube-channel-examples/

9 YouTube Video Ideas to Inspire Your Brand’s YouTube Channel [+ Examples]

Nowadays, almost every brand has a YouTube channel. However, almost no brands can boast a flourishing one.

Building a thriving YouTube channel is one of the most ambitious achievements a marketer can pursue. Not only do you have to spend time scripting, producing, and editing videos, but you also have to make sure your content actually resonates with your target audience.

To help inspire you, we’ve put together a list of video ideas that HubSpot has experienced success with on our own YouTube channel. Read on to get the creative juices flowing.

YouTube Video Ideas

About Us

Culture

Ask Me Anything

Comedy

Shows

Explainers

Tutorials

Customer Case Studies

Product Promos

1. About Us

Your “About Us” video’s main job is to introduce your brand to future customers and make a good first impression with them. Before you put pen to paper, though, you must remember that people don’t just want to know what your company does and how you do it. They also want to know why you do it. Put simply, your brand’s purpose is what actually resonates with your audience and inspires them to follow you.

So when you’re scripting your video, make sure you spotlight why your organization exists, the values you truly believe in, and, ultimately, the reason people should care about your brand. Only then should you cover what your product or service is and how you build or develop it.

2. Culture

As I approach my one-year anniversary as a college graduate, reality has officially sunk into my bones. As adults, we spend the majority of our lives working — and not hanging out with our friends like we did during the glory days.

However, I’ve also realized that if you love your job and company, work isn’t some dreadful chore that you check off your to-do list everyday. It’s actually a blessing and something you can’t imagine living your life without.

In order to build a company that your employees love working for, cultivating an authentic, people-first culture is a crucial first step. Once you do this, consider creating a video that highlights your culture and your employees’ genuine praises about your company. Not only will it persuade elite talent to apply to your open roles, but it’ll make potential customers think more highly of your brand.

3. Ask Me Anything

Since your executives’ public perception directly impacts people’s sentiment toward your brand, like Elon Musk and Tesla, they’re essentially the face of your company. And with all the status, attention, and aura surrounding them, your knee-jerk reaction might be to polish their interactions with the public as much as possible.

However, most people can spot a walking press releases faster than they can exit out of pop-up ad. So it’s actually better to set your executives free and allow them to genuinely interact with the public.

Breaking down the barriers between your executives and audience also makes your fans feel like they actually know your leaders on a personal level — and this’ll develop a more intimate and loyal relationship between your company and your potential customers.

One of the best ways to connect your executives with your audience is by setting up Ask Me Anything or Q&A sessions, where people can ask your executives any question they want and your executives agree to honestly answer as many of their questions as they can.

4. Comedy

Even in 2019, most companies still stuff their YouTube channels with formulaic corporate videos that are scripted in jargonese. Trying to capture people’s attention with these boilerplate videos is nearly impossible. That said, what’s the best strategy for standing out from the crowd?

Well, according to Psychology Today, humans associate the same personality traits to brands as they do with people, so, just like how we choose the people we spend our lives with, we engage with the brands that can evoke warm feelings in us, especially feelings of humor.

So before you green-light another talking head video, think about spicing it up and adding some humor. You’ll inject more color and personality into your brand, which consumers desperately crave when they interact with businesses.

5. Shows

In the neuroscience field, researchers have proven that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and resonate emotionally with them. The human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to well-crafted narrative — that’ll never change.

So just like your favorite Netflix show, creating shows can entire your viewers to watch entire seasons of your series, subscribe to your channel, and get more excited for your show’s newest season than they currently are for the final season of Game of Thrones.

Most brands also produce their content disparately, severing them from any thematic anchor, so tying your stories to a unique angle and telling them in an episodic fashion can help separate your videos from the rest of the pack.

6. Explainers

Whether it’s an exciting new trend or difficult-to-grasp technology, your audience wants to learn about your industry’s innovations to stay ahead of the curve. In order to fill their curiosity gaps, consider creating explainer videos about your industry’s latest trends and technology.

However, don’t just make a talking head video of someone droning on about the topic of discussion. People crave a variety of stimulus when they consume content, so get creative and complement your video’s narration and text with a diverse mix of dynamic graphics, popular movie scenes, and footage of real people.

Visual storytelling also helps people grasp concepts and data easily, so each time your narrator expands on a concept or some data, your viewers can listen to the information and watch a visual representation of it, helping them form a concrete understanding of your video’s central idea.

7. Tutorials

It doesn’t matter if they’re guitar lessons, beauty lessons, or how-to videos about making a fire with a lemon, people love learning how to improve their lives. So if you can cover topics that people are passionate about and teach them how to get better at them, they’ll be able to live better lives, which will help grow your channel’s brand loyalty and sentiment, retain your viewers’ attention, and attract their friends’ attention by way of word-of-mouth marketing.

Just like your explainers, make sure you diversify your tutorials’ visual stimuli. Because, contrary to the rest of the types of videos on this list, the best tutorials are actually talking head videos, but they also have engaging visuals that make them more distinct and gripping.

8. Customer Case Studies

Social proof and word-of-mouth are some of the most potent tactics at your disposal. Humans evolved to follow the crowd and assume the majority is always right, so the more testimonials you have, the more credible and trustworthy your brand will seem.

Your case studies are also some of the most persuasive types of sales enablement content, so make sure your sales reps and potential customers can easily find them on your YouTube channel.

When scripting your case studies, you want to place your potential customers’ in your current customers’ shoes, so focus on how your customer faced a specific problem, what they initially did to try and solve it, how they discovered your solution, the experience of using your solution to solve their problem, and the results they produced with your solution.

9. Product Promos

Tailored for potential customers who are further along the buyer’s journey, product promos are videos that spotlight your product’s top features and tangible benefits. This type of video is powerful because it can convince potential customers to move on to the final stage of the buyer’s journey and seriously consider purchasing your product or service.

If you want to learn how to create compelling product videos, check out one of Meghan Keaney Anderson’s blog posts about 7 of the Best Promotional Product Videos Ever Made.

In her post, the VP of Marketing at HubSpot says remarkable product videos all share four elements: engaging dialogue and narration, a comprehensive yet concise explanation of the product and its benefits, professionalism, and empathy and relatability. To see one of these videos in action, check out this product promo about HubSpot’s Growth Stack.

[varshiniravi]

A Review of Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless

Breathless, or À bout de souffle, was Jean-Luc Godard’s feature film debut, but it was also more. It was also one of the earliest and most influential films of the cinematic movement labelled the French New Wave ( Nouvelle Vague ), as the film making and story telling techniques employed revolutionized the industry by rejecting linear story telling and employing rapid cuts to enhance the narrative.

Our story starts off by following Michel Poiccard, a criminal, driving on the roads of France in a stolen car. Along his journey, he murders a cop on a motorcycle which in turn leads to him becoming a wanted criminal. He makes his way to Paris in order to pursue an American student by the name of Patricia Franchini. Michel is absolutely smitten with her, often asking her to run away with him to Italy or to sleep with him. In contrast to Michel’s complete conviction of his feelings, Patricia is in two minds. Michel is ready to flee to Italy, if it weren’t for the fact that he is awaiting payment from a friend of his. As Michel hunts for his debtor, his name and face gains prominence amongst media for murder. Meanwhile, Inspector Vital who is on Michel’s case, contacts Patricia after someone spots the both of them together. As the story progresses, Patricia realizes that she knows very little about Michel, learning about his marriage, his alias, etc. Eventually, Patricia is forced to come to terms with the reality of the situation, which ultimately leads her to betray Michel. The story ends with Michel being shot, still running away from the law until he falls and accepts his death, out of breath.

This film is heralded for its usage of jump cuts and long tracking shots that aided the establishing of the setting, non-linearity of the narrative and . However, it is also important to draw attention to the dialogues, partially for how integral it is for the structure, but more so for how it aides in the portraiture of the protagonists.

To begin with, let us examine Michel Poiccard. Michel Poiccard is fascinated by the glamour of Humphrey Boggart, as is evident of his imitation of Mr. Boggart’s famous tic, and references to his movies strewn around in conversation. This fascination for glamour also causes him to paint a colourful view of his life of petty crime as he envisions himself to be a suave, womanizing conman. One could argue that because of this very fascination, he pursued Patricia, who to him painted a picture of a typical American, one who was free, set in her ways and adamant about following her dream. To him she was exotic and just out of his reach, and as a character, was one of the earliest prototypes of the manic pixie dream girl, in my opinion.

Belmondo’s character mimics the trend of French cinema pre-Breathless, when Hollywood and its Golden-Age movies flooded international markets, gaining acclaim. The success of these films led to local film makers mimicking the techniques and styles of American films. Furthermore, French movies strictly adhered to narratives already prevalent in literature and paintings, and hence there was no individuality, signature or style per se that distinctly made this movies “French.” Similarly, Poiccard’s mannerisms, fashion and references are so intrinsically American that at first glance, you would not guess otherwise. The only betrayal of his nationality is his romantic talks, and how insistent he is on courting Patricia. A part of him craves her reciprocation and companionship, although we are unsure how genuine he is in his expressions. In fact, pinning Michel down aside from his apparent romanticism and pretense is rather difficult. It is particularly hard to feel strongly about him, from the petty theft to the courtship to his final moments. All we can call him is persistent in his demands, be it money or love.

As we move onto Patricia, we are introduced to a woman who is noncommittal in regards to matters of love, and is highly ambitious and perseverant in regards to her dream of being a journalist. Her uncomplicated outlook on life is made clear in several instances during the film, for example, when she concurrently dates an American journalist as Michel reappears in her life, or the conversation Michael and her share during the car ride to Champs-Elysse. Her mannerisms can be a byproduct of the “American Way”, that is, the entitlement to life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. When we view Patricia through this lens, we understand her reasoning behind her actions a whole lot more clearly, such as her betrayal ( deliverance of justice ), her conflict between continuing with her career ( right to life ) and running away with Michel ( pursuit of happiness ). Personally, I feel Patricia and her character can be summed up by a quote said by herself :

“I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy.”

Her dilemma sounds philosophical, and we’re left pondering for the cause of this sentiment, but by looking at it through the eyes of an American, we get some semblance of an explanation for her musings. It is also evident that Patricia is indeed sentimental to a point, due to the last scene where she mimics Michel’s habit of running his thumb on his lip, showing that as detached as she had been in regards to Michel and their affair, he still impacted her.

All this ultimately leads to me questioning what to make of Breathless. It is commonly accepted that it is a crime drama, and I will agree considering it is sort in a typical American Crime / Noir film. However, I can’t bring myself to deny the fact that constraining this film into one archetype goes against what the very film stands for as it breaks linearity and tropes blatantly. In fact, the constant ebb and flow of Patricia’s affections and the suspense of her feelings become a major plot point, if not one of them, which leads me to the conclusion that Breathless is a story.