Shocking Online Marketing News of October
Do you think October was a quiet month for online marketing news? Quite the opposite, actually. This months’ online marketing news is enough to send many experienced marketers into shock. Once you recover, it could be time to seriously rethink your strategy. Not only is Facebook losing market share among younger consumers, Google’s lost the respect of some of the most famous marketing minds around. Buckle your seatbelt, because the online marketing news month in review is pretty big stuff:
Twitter Overtakes Facebook Among Teens
Before you start to hyperventilate, Facebook is still the world’s undisputed king of social media networks. Except among teens in the US. According to online marketing news about a recent study by firm Piper Jaffrey only 23% of teens consider Facebook the most important social media network. That’s a dramatic drop from 42% just last year!
Citing “too much drama” and “too many adult users” as reasons to switch to Facebook, the results are pretty staggering for consumers. There’s no question that it could be time to shift your marketing focus - and dollars - if you’re trying to attract young consumers.
GE Turns to Vampire-Inspired Content
It’s pretty hard to effectively create content for certain B2B brands, and GE has long been a leader in figuring out new and innovative ways to spice up their content. Their latest effort could be the best by far: an innovative twist on big data with vampires.
The result is campy, silly, but downright effective - it had nearly 720,000 views at the time of writing and is making online marketing news worldwide! Perhaps all you need to put an exciting twist on your B2B brand is to incorporate vampires, werewolves, or some other trending monster.
Forbes: There’s No Such Thing as Content Automation
Automation is something of a buzzword at the moment, and really - why shouldn’t it be? Leveraging technology to send perfectly-timed emails to your prospects en mass is among the best things to happen to sales specialists, ever. However, in case you’re concerned that your content marketer job could one day be replaced with a really sophisticated piece of software, don’t worry. Forbes’ SEO expert Jason DeMeyers predicts that in 2014, we’ll see companies increasingly trying to automate their content marketing, and failing when the result is drastically lower quality. This piece of online marketing news is really no surprise - you can certainly scale technology and outreach, but there’s no way you’ll be able to emulate human creativity anytime in the near future.
Seth Godin Says Google Has “Jumped the Shark”
When Seth Godin talks (usually in the form of his trademark concise blog content), marketers listen. When he stated recently that Google had jumped the shark, the online marketing news buzz quickly started to wonder if he could be right. For the uninitated, the phrase “jumping the shark” is a reference to the 1970s television show Happy Days, when the former hit’s writers turned to bizarre story lines as they ran out of ideas. In contemporary culture, it’s used to describe an entity that’s begun a downward spiral. This announcement wasn’t out of the blue - it was in specific reference to their decision to use the names of Google+ users in sponsored content. Godin feels this decision lacks integrity, and the general tone of the online marketing news community is full agreement.
Forrest Research Declares Content Distribution is Queen
Great content is no longer enough. According to Jonathan Perelman of Buzzfeed, content is still King, but “distribution is Queen, and she wears the pants.” In recent years, the number of websites online has exploded to over 750 million, a figure that’s continuing to grow at a meteoric rate. Content marketers are finding it incredibly difficult to gain notice simply by publishing exceptional work, even if their stuff is really high-quality. A recent study by Forrester confirms this fact, stating that only 36% of marketers feel they’re distributing correctly. Their key recommendation was to step down writing and step up your promotion efforts in order to see best results.
Pinterest Promoted Pins Debut
It was only a matter of time before Pinterest made a move to monetize their site, following Facebook and Twitter’s advertising efforts. There’s little difference in the visual aspects of promoted and regular pins, and there’s a good chance that users won’t even notice the sponsored content unless they look closely for the “promoted pin” label at the bottom of the pins. The feature is still in Beta, and only available to some users. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this online marketing news is that there’s controversy about whether or not the pins’ current design meets the FTC criteria of full disclosure for sponsored content.
Do you think that Google and Facebook will soon lose users? What were your favorite pieces of online marketing news for October?
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