Top 5 Must-Reads: Weekly Round-Up – 5.29.15

We find it, so you don’t have to.

Targeting, storytelling and explaining the “why” of your advertising messages – all included in the following collection of the best marketing, advertising and small business related content you may have missed this week:

 

1. A Handy Little Guide to Creating Visual Content for Social Media [Infographic] (HubSpot)

Posting visual content is one of the most important things you can do to improve your social media strategy. A successful social strategy will often include photos, videos, and screenshots of Infographics or other graphs. Did you know 90% of the information sent to the human mind is visual? 

 

2. Product Videos: All the Cool Brands are Making Them (eMarketer)

Consumers don’t want to spend time reading about a product; they want videos. And brands that cater to such demands stand to see higher sales and gain loyal customers, according to February 2015 research by Animoto.

 

3. 90% of All New American Mothers are Millennials, and Buying Things Differently (Mashable)

Nearly all new mothers — about 90% — were millennials last year compared to 50% a decade ago. They are rewriting the “rules” for typical mother purchasing behavior, leaning into companies with “authentic” narratives that resonate with their own worldview, oftentimes bundled with social causes.

 

4.  4 Content Marketing Secrets Every Small Business Should Know (BusinessNewsDaily)

Before the ear of social media, the only industries that had to worry about continually producing fresh, original content were academia, news and entertainment. Today, with blogs and social platforms like Twitter and Facebook representing major components of most brands’ marketing strategy, businesses in all fields are expected to be expert content curators, and the old “publish or perish” adage now applies to just about everyone.

 

5. 3 Tactics for Converting Customers into Brand Advocates (BusinessNewsDaily)

If you want to make it as a brand in today’s world, you can’t follow yesterday’s marketing practices.  To meet these priorities, many brands have begun to incorporate user-generated content (UGC) into their marketing strategies. By retweeting followers’ posts, running photo and video contests or encouraging customers to share their experiences with the brand, a company can take advantage of great content that, when used in the right way, can paint a more positive, genuine brand image than any internal campaign could.

 

Want to see more of Cox Media’s content from this week?

7 Keys to Building Your Brand [Video Series]

7 Days to Building a Stronger Brand: Day 1 (Relationship Messaging and Transactional Messaging) [Blog Post]

7 Days to Building a Stronger Brand: Day 2 (See Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes) [Blog Post]