Jessica Lorenz

Tweetables: Top 10 MarketingSherpa posts of 2014 (according to you)

December 30th, 2014

It seems like only a short time ago I was sitting at my desk, staring at a fresh new calendar in front of me — an act that spurred feelings of intimidation, daunt and excitement.

But that was 12 whole months ago.

Over the past year, our team of bloggers have written over 100 posts for the MarketingSherpa Blog alone. I’m pulling together the ones that you’ve shared the most over the past year with your friends and colleagues into a single tidy post.

Something that stood out as I sorted the top shares by category (content marketing, email marketing and social media) is that marketers are evolving their mindsets from company-focused messaging to customer-centric messaging.

 

Content Marketing

Although content marketing may no longer be considered shiny and new, marketers continue to learn how to harness their talents and abilities into this form. No longer are we only marketers, but we are also artists, authors and videographers who strive to reach customers in ways that were not possible only a few years before.

Bolstered by the rest of the categories covered in this post, content is now an essential lighthouse to guide your customer to conversion in a world of saturated and stormy information across the Web.

 

Posts you shared the most:

 

What your peers said:

Tweet 1
 

The above tweet is is reference to Content Marketing: 9 examples of transparent marketing.

 

Email Marketing

How many times do marketers have to tell themselves “Email isn’t dead!” in order to truly believe it?

Email marketing (I’ll say it one more time) is not dead. It is, however, evolving.

Customers can now talk back and engage with your brand. Email is no longer an outbound marketing technique (or push marketing).

Marketers must relearn how to speak with — not at — their audiences in a personal way. Testing, we’ve learned, is the best way to understand your audience and run a successful campaign — including time, content and how much personalization is necessary.

 

Posts you shared the most:

 

What your peers said:

Tweet 2
 

The above tweet is is reference to Email Marketing: The benefits email campaigns can have for your business.

 

Social Media

Social media continues to be an enigma for many marketers as brands strive to find a voice. Companies are discovering how to use these networks as a tool and a resource to better serve their audiences and customers.

However, the posts you shared the most  go beyond the simple “how to” of social media and explore the next step: refinement of social media campaigns.

For 2014, social media went from a “nice to have” to a necessity for marketing departments, especially in the B2C space.

 

Posts you shared the most:

 

What your peers said:

Tweet 3
 

The above tweet is is reference to Social Media 101: Branding for the PR-impaired marketer.

 

Bonus! Creating an effective survey

In an effort to understand your customers better, often a survey is a very hands-on way of getting customer feedback.

However, surveys that are boring long and in-depth are often ignored by audiences.

Completed surveys that provide usable responses is a balance between art and science.

 

Post you shared the most:

 

What your peers said:

Tweet 4

 

The above tweet is is reference to 6 Tips for Creating an Effective Survey.

As we ring in 2015 together, let’s keep in mind how far we’ve come from 2013, 2012 and even 2011. Different aspects of marketing have trended and shifted, but something that hasn’t changed is that marketers — successful marketers — follow the lead of their customers and continually strive to deliver them value.

 

You might also like

B2B Content Marketing: 60% lift in site traffic from embracing an inbound strategy [MarketingSherpa case study]

Marketing Research Chart: What content sources do customers trust? [MarketingSherpa chart]

B2B Email Marketing: Ferguson Rewards trade show optimization achieves over $10 million [MarketingSherpa case study]

Inbound Marketing: The top three tactics from MarketingSherpa case studies in 2014 [MarketingSherpa case study]

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