LOADING...

Posts

Factors to consider when choosing a digital content marketing agency

News

Digital marketing agencies play an integral role in creating content and attracting audiences. These audiences are important in creating and developing brand relationships and a viable consumer market.

However, with the increased need for digital marketing agencies, there has also been a rise in people with no know-how claiming to be digital marketing experts. Michael Brenner provides some essential guidelines on what to consider when choosing a digital content marketing agency.

Cost-effectiveness

An agency must help you to spend less. Consider the difference between hiring your own full-time content writer, graphic designer and SEO expertise and paying the agency for these services. An agency must make it possible for you to only pay for what you need at a particular time.

Resources for high demand and short deadlines projects

Projects come in different sizes, and some of them can be high demand with short deadlines. Check if an agency you are engaging has the resources to cope when this happens.

Strategy and process

Content marketing involves developing a strategy which outlines how and when to reach the content marketing objective. Consider if an agency has this capability.

Current and future needs

Businesses go through different phases. Your needs today could be blog and social media posts. Think about the next phase of your business, which might need video scrips and editing. Check to ensure your needs are met in different phases.

Agency credibility

It’s easy to be sold a proposal, but nothing tells a better story than what the agency does in-house.

  • Is the site active with content and business updates?
  • Do they have active social media pages?
  • Do they provide timely feedback?
  • Do they have examples of businesses that have benefited from their services?

Value

Writing on the key dimensions of content marketing, Amanda Claesson and Albin Jonsson emphasise the need to deliver value in a content marketing context. An agency should create interesting content that gets the customer’s attention, leading to long-lasting relationships and increased revenue for brands.

Audience reach and trust

A good agency must have established platforms with a broad audience reach. Any content marketing campaign will depend on excellent audience numbers. The agency must have developed sufficient trust from the audiences interested in content published on the agency platforms.

Contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected] for available advertising and marketing opportunities.

DATE: Aug 8, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Content marketing mistakes businesses must avoid

News

The value of content marketing should never be underestimated. It provides benefits that include the fact that content can be used to promote a brand, engage an audience, increase product and brand visibility as well as using it to collect in-depth market data.

According to Brian Bamberger, Managing Partner of Pharma Acumen, there are some content marketing mistakes many people make which can be avoided.

Content marketing mistakes

Not creating content for multiple buyer personas

Some businesses choose to focus on one persona group in content marketing. You need to be open to the idea that multiple personas will consume your content in a targeted market. It, therefore, makes sense that your content must be meaningful to diverse personas.

Not establishing and measuring KPIs

KPIs assist in adapting and increasing conversions. Key performance indicators to monitor include search engine rankings, website traffic, time on page, audience behaviour, conversions, leads generated, social interactions, subscriber income generated and lifetime value.

No clear multichannel promotion plan

You need to have a mix of channels, such as owned, earned, and paid media channels. Owned refers to your own channels, such as a company website, social media pages and an email platform. Earned is about organically generated attention for your brand, including external mentions, word of mouth, influencer mentions and customer reviews. Paid is the exposure you pay for, specifically through sponsored content, social and media ads.

Not working with a content marketing partner

To execute a content marketing strategy, working with a partner will brings experience, expertise and resources to the table. A partner has the necessary experience in creating compelling content and an in-depth understanding of the market landscape and channels to use.

Hive Digital Media is now a reliable content marketing partner. Hive offers two effective content marketing platforms which are LNN & Citizen that brands across South Africa can count on.

Caxton’s Local News Network (LNN) boasts more than 50 hyperlocal community newspapers in both print and digital formats in communities around the country. LNN publishes stories that directly affect the daily lives of the readers with diverse interests, different age groups, races, religious and income groups. This diversity in content translates into LNN enjoying site visits of up to 6.4 million.

The Citizen is among South Africa’s top 10 news websites boasting around 3 million plus unique users monthly. Hive Digital Media’s commercial offering on The Citizen includes sponsored and advertorial content, banners, social media on diverse platforms and high-quality audiences that not many other platforms offer. Brands can reach their target market through display ads (desktop & mobile), website roadblocks, home page and section takeovers. Sticky banners, outstream in-banners, video ROS, sponsored content and SEO content can also be provided.

Neil Patel offers another insightful mistake to look out for.

Focusing on quantity, not quality

It’s not the quantity but the quality that makes a successful content marketing campaign. Have quality original content, and don’t use bad SEO practices like link stuffing, irrelevant keywords, sneaky redirects, etc.

Being inconsistent

Carole Alalouf places emphasis on the need for consistency. You can achieve this by putting a content schedule in place, which can be about industry developments, your brand or products.

So, when planning your brand’s content marketing strategy, avoid the above mistakes to improve your chances of success.

For more on available advertising and content marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

DATE: Jul 28, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Branding mistakes businesses make

News

Branding, in the simplest way, is the process of establishing a brand identity that enforces a positive perception of a business and its associated products. Elements used to achieve this distinctive identity include a logo, business name, visual design, tagline, etc.

Writing on www.prudentpedal.com, Jeff McKay, Founder & CEO of Prudent Pedal, emphasises how vital branding is for business success. He has pointed out that branding takes time and costs money. For this reason, that businesses must endeavour to avoid some common mistakes.

Branding mistakes to avoid

Failing to understand the difference between branding and culture – Branding is a marketing-controlled aspect managed by people which involves company name, colours, logos, etc. Culture is about the human behaviour of people associated with the brand, which impacts its reputation. Attention must be given to both from a leadership, operations and capital point of view.

Failing to align the brand to the business growth strategy – Any branding process must be a driver of business growth ambitions. Most businesses make the mistake of branding without envisioning how the branding process feeds into its growth trajectory. Growth plans aligned with good branding translate into better market appeal and growth.

Being unclear about a brand’s purpose – Every business must serve a sustainable purpose. Some focus on getting products to the market without highlighting their vision, mission and values. These factors form the foundation of a business and provide insight into the business in the marketplace.

Wrong timing –   A branding or rebranding exercise should only be done at strategic inflexion points. These points include when a business takes a new strategic direction, when there is a new merger or acquisition, when the line of products and services has changed and when a business launches in a new market.

No well-defined brand strategy – According to Iss Bautista, who has written on crucial branding mistakes to avoid, she states that a brand strategy captures the business objective and aligns it to customer experience. This demands in-depth research and observing market trends to define the target market and how to win over that market.  One simple way to do this is to create buyer personas that must fit into the strategy.

Ignoring public opinions – Customers are the public that engages and buy products and services. A business must be open to in-store of digital customer feedback. Consider hiring local influencers, sponsoring local events and donating to charity, practising cultural sensitivity, using simple and inclusive tone and language, etc. All these efforts allow a brand to be entrenched, but it also becomes easier to gather and influence public opinion.

Failing to have a consistent style – Being inconsistent can potentially break consumer and market trust. Colour schemes, writing style, visuals and imagery, fonts and typography must be consistent on the website, documents, social media pages and any relevant channel where the brand is visible, as this helps the business maintain a high-quality brand image.

Contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected] for available advertising and marketing opportunities.

 

 

DATE: Jul 12, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Key content metrics

News

Content marketing campaigns are conducted by brands with the expectation that the brand will reap the rewards of a well-spent budget. On completion of these campaigns, content metrics, in the form of hard data, will assist brands in identifying successes and gaps between the initial content marketing plan and the results obtained. These findings can be utilised to facilitate the implementation of corrective measures and the achievement of goals.

What are the first steps you should take to make sure marketing activities are measurable?

According to strategic marketing, theory and applications for competitive advantage published on https://www.oxford.co.za/, reproduced with permission from Advertising & Marketing Review magazine and Pam Giordano. These are the first steps you should take:

  1. A clear understanding of the content marketing campaign objective, which must be aligned with the right solution.
  2. With a clear understanding of the objectives, you need to identify the measurable components of the campaign with regard to the frequency of the measurement and the format to be used.
  3. There should be clear communication with the implementing team, who must adhere to the reporting schedule.

Metrics brands and content marketing campaigners should know

According to Rancati Elisa and Niccolo Gordini, who have published a research paper on content marketing metrics: theoretical aspects and empirical evidence on https://core.ac.uk/, there are four main content metrics. These are:

Consumption – Consumption focuses on measuring brand awareness and website traffic generated by the content.  Prominent consumption metrics in this regard are page views, downloads, visitors, and time spent on the page. All these can be obtained through Google Analytics.

Sharing – Sharing metrics are used to measure the extent of content sharing within a consumer network of like-minded people. Sharing metrics include likes, shares, tweets, email forwards and inbound links.

Lead generation – Lead generation metrics are about finding out how effective the content is in generating leads because this is often a goal, especially in B2B. Key metrics in lead generation are form completions, email address disclosure, newsletter and blog subscriptions, blog comments, cookies, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and conversion rate.

Sales metrics– Sales metrics are designed to assist in identifying the impact of content metrics on business performance which comes down to acquisitions and sales targets. Sales metrics include online and offline sales, customer retention, cost saving, and content marketing return on investment.

The content metrics listed above are key in managing measurable and goal-oriented content marketing campaigns. For more on available advertising and content marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

DATE: Jul 3, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Audience targeting in content marketing

News

Audience targeting is integral to content marketing and sales campaigns for businesses.  It allows brands to deliver targeted campaigns that ignite and support conversations between a brand and prospective consumers.

Audience targeting perimeters

Motivation – Research what motivates the audience you are targeting.

Occupation – Don’t overlook the general occupations of your audience because this often informs preferences.

Perception – This involves finding out how consumers view your brand, a particular product or similar products in the category.

Once these perimeters have been established, you can now work on delivering information that is valuable and relevant to the targeted audiences’ success in their private or work life.  You must also align this information with your overall business strategy.

General audience targeting guidelines

According to Ana Carrapichano’s advice on Market Segmentation and Targeting, there are a few steps you can apply to make the most of content marketing audience targeting.

Set goals

You need to have clear objectives to identify opportunities for a particular audience. The goals or objectives form the foundation of any successful content marketing or sales campaign.

Gather data

Data is at the heart of the current digital world. Gather data on your own or from credible sources. This will allow you to target your audience in segments and niches.

Consumer needs and wants

You need to deeply orient yourself in a particular market segment through Psychographics. Psychographics is an in-depth market filter that considers how your targeted consumers view the world based on personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle factors.

Market segmentation

Based on gathered data, you can divide a big consumer market into shared characteristics. These characteristics will determine how viable a market segment is.

Improve

Always keep improving because the consumer market constantly evolves. Reset your goals, clean up your database and reassess the channels you use for any campaigns.

Contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected] for available advertising and marketing opportunities.

DATE: Jun 27, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Types of content marketing you need to know

News

Content marketing campaigns leverage the power of relevant content to highlight aspects to do with particular brands. The ultimate goal is to attract, acquire, and engage a targeted audience.  Content marketing is very different from a sales advert in the sense that it goes beyond selling by providing relevant information and ideas.

Content marketing objectives

Content marketing objectives can be outlined as follows:

  1. Creating and reinforcing brand awareness
  2. Facilitating lead and customer conversion
  3. Creating customer service feedback channels

Types of content marketing formats

Blog posts – These focus on making available valuable information delivered as articles which should be optimised through search engine optimisation practices to help it achieve a better long-term search engine ranking. This content must seek to reach a targeted audience and attract new readers.

eBooks – eBooks are an in-depth source of information on particular subject matters and are very effective for lead generation. This is because readers supply contact information before accessing the information resource.

Infographics – Infographics are ideal for distributing data and large sets of information. The visual presentation effectively creates compelling and attractive content for audience engagement.

Videos – With increased video demand on social media platforms, video content marketing is a must. Video content can be used for product demonstration, brand presentation or topical subject matter presentation to a target audience.

Podcasts – Podcasts involve pre-recorded interviews and edited radio shows on topics of interest for diverse audiences. Podcasts can be utilised as lead generators when listeners sign up for updates.

Webinars – Webinars allow experts and industry leaders to provide in-depth insights into specific topics aimed at a targeted market audience.

Case Studies – Case studies are all about success stories associated with a brand or specific products produced by a particular brand. These case studies are distributed on carefully chosen channels to convert potential audiences.

User-generated content – User generated content is made by users of particular products or services. Content created can be in form of videos and audios, still images and text. This material can be repurposed for distribution, increasing visibility and credibility in the market.

The content marketing options above are an ideal opportunity to grow your business audience. For more on available advertising and content marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

Additional sources of information

https://go.marketo.com/rs/marketob2/images/DG2ECM.pdf

https://marketing.expertjournals.com/ark:/16759/EJM_511vinerean92-98.pdf

 

DATE: Jun 20, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Relevant content marketing tips

News

Content marketing is generally vital in different economic and social sectors.

According to a content marketing handbook published on The Channel Report, “Content marketing is a technique that involves the creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content to attract and engage a defined and targeted audience with the aim of triggering profitable customer action.”

Content marketing can be done in different ways, such as plain text through articles, video content, still images or photographs, audio, visual presentations, increasingly popular e-books, and well-curated infographics.

 Content marketing from a commercial point of view is designed to assist brands to retain customers, acquire new ones and to build stronger brand market presence.

Why you need content marketing

1.Maintaining reader attention- Audiences and prospective buyers often search for quality content to enhance their knowledge and help inform future decisions. The brand, therefore, uses content to retain the attention of this audience.

2.Brand loyalty – By curating quality content, a brand ultimately creates trust with its audience, translating into brand awareness and loyalty.

3.Lead generation- Increased traffic to a website or online platform assists businesses in generating quality sales leads and improving direct sales for products and services.

How should the execution of a content marketing campaign be done?

“There really isn’t a single strategy, a blanket strategy that works for every single business. I do, though, feel that content marketing, especially a blog, is a good fit for at least 75 percent of the businesses I’ve ever worked with,” said Marcus Sheridan, a renowned international speaker and marketing expert.

Here are some relevant tips you can apply to help you to run a successful content marketing campaign:

Timing

Timing is everything in content marketing. You need to choose the right time to implement your content marketing strategy. You can utilise major calendar event dates or come up with seasonal content marketing strategies.

Use themes and imagery

Creative themes and images evoke the feelings and emotions of audiences. You can tap into this emotion to relay your brand and content marketing messaging.

Complimentary businesses

Check around different industries for businesses that complement your brand. You can then approach them to be joint partners for a particular content marketing campaign. This not only enhances the brand but also increases audience numbers.

Targeting

Don’t shoot in the dark. You need to identify the target audience and deliver messaging on a suitable platform which is relevant and useful to such an audience.

Distribution channels and platforms

Identify the platforms where your targeted audiences are mostly found and can easily access your content marketing information. Be mindful of exposing your brand and audiences to harmful or poorly ranked platforms. A distribution plan informed by in-depth analytics can assist in this regard.

You can utilise the tips provided above to run a successful content marketing campaign. For more on available advertising and content marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

Additional sources of information

https://channel.report/Resources/Whitepapers/31d855f9-4898-46ac-a937-485e74c621e0_content-marketing.pdf

https://core.ac.uk/

the-cma.com/

DATE: Jun 7, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Hive Digital Media Launches Newsletter Product Offering

News

Hive Digital Media is excited to announce the launch of a new newsletter product offering.

This new product is an offshoot of the broad and reliable Local News Network (LNN). The newsletter drives awareness by placing advertising within an LNN newsletter subscriber base and is available for booking on a weekly basis.

“The addition of newsletter advertising under our LNN offering will prove to be a vital asset in growing our client’s brand awareness and reach. The newsletter offering will allow for a targeted approach to our opted-in 1st party audiences which translates into generating 100% share of market voice for our clients”, emphasised Joedache Madray, Hive Digital Media Commercial Project Manager.

Any brand or client that needs brand awareness or effective audience reach can count on this product which offers excellent benefits.

Benefits of this newsletter to brands include:

  • The opportunity to grow awareness by placing your brand alongside trending stories.
  • Using newsletter advertising to reach high-quality 1st party audiences.
  • Delivering your brand directly into users’ inboxes.
  • Enjoying 100% share of the market voice.
  • Having unrivalled access to an opted-in audience.

Some of the most popular metro audiences include the City of Tshwane at 35.30%, the City of Johannesburg at 24.29%, Outside Main Metros at 26.84%, the City of eThekwini at 9.07% and Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (East Rand) at 4.49%.

Business brands can tap into the commercial potential that newsletters offer. Newsletters generally offer businesses potential benefits such as increasing leads & sales, boosting other digital efforts, boosting market authority and credibility, as well as positioning and measuring brand awareness.

This new product offering is yet again a determined demonstration by Hive Digital Media to improve its already exciting product bouquet. For more on available advertising and marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

DATE: May 3, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Hive Digital Media Onboards The Citizen

News

Hive Digital Media has partnered with The Citizen, one of South Africa’s most popular publishing platforms.

Boasting around 3 million plus unique users monthly, The Citizen consistently features among South Africa’s top 10 news websites.

What’s being offered under this partnership?

Under this partnership, Hive Digital Media will manage sponsored content and display advertising opportunities on the brand.

The Citizen offers advertisers a one product/site solution for national campaigns complimenting Hive Digital Media’s Local News Network (LNN) which covers the hyperlocal targeting needs of clients.

This translates into an all-round brand experience from Hyperlocal to National.

Hive Digital Media’s commercial offering on The Citizen includes content, banners, social media, and most importantly, high-quality audiences.

Citizen readers are enthusiasts in news, sport, technology, food, gardening, entertainment and more. These keen readers are often in-market for relevant local news, automotive products and services, education solutions and diverse financial services. In addition, these readers generally look to The Citizen site for regularly updated news, business developments and opportunities, sports, and celebrity content.

Brands can tap into this enriching potential to reach their target market. This can be done through display ads (desktop & mobile), website roadblocks, home page and section takeovers. Other opportunities include sticky banners, outstream in-banners, video ROS, sponsored content and SEO content.

The Citizen advertising avenue offered through Hive Digital Media is an important information vehicle for local and national advertising. This entails reaching broad and diverse audiences across South Africa.

Joedache Madray, Hive Digital Media Commercial Project Manager, emphasises on the significance of this partnership.

“As a business, we are constantly looking for growth opportunities that can assist us in serving our clients better. Having the Citizen platform joining our already strong arsenal of offerings will prove to be a great innovative business development step to bridge the gap from our local inventory on LNN, to a national level of exposure and reach via The Citizen. This will hopefully translate into impressive returns on ad and marketing spend investment for our clients.”

This innovative business partnership is set to positively contribute to Hive Digital Media’s exciting product offering. For more on available advertising and marketing opportunities, contact the Hive Digital Media team at [email protected].

DATE: Apr 24, 2023
AUTHOR: Patrick Mumbi

Employee Development at Hive Digital Media

News

Employees are an integral component of any organisation. It is for this reason that Hive Digital Media prioritises employees’ health, well-being and development.

A study by Walters & Rodriguez (2017), on the importance of training and development in employee performance and evaluation, states that employees are responsible for the quality of products, service and client satisfaction. This responsibility that employees hold makes them an asset to a business. Walters & Rodriguez (2017) study concludes that well-trained employees stay longer at the company due to job satisfaction. Therefore, development and training are essential tools businesses can use to improve employee performance. These tools also encourage employees to become more motivated, productive, efficient, innovative and satisfied in their working environment (Walters and Rodriguez, 2017).

Hive Digital Media strives to create a great working and learning environment for its employees. The Hive identity is a reflection of this, being Headstrong, Industrious, Vibrant, and Educative. Educative is defined as “We go above and beyond to elevate each other and our community through knowledge sharing. We work together to solve problems and provide insights”.

Each employee at Hive Digital Media is passionate about what they do and continues to upskill through studies, webinars, conferences and research in order to become experts in their field. Hive Digital Media currently has a few employees studying. Samantha Mckay and Ramondi Kennedy have almost completed their digital learnership through Red & Yellow; Norah Ndlovu and Hope Nkambule will start in March. Clarise Sha is completing a sales management course, and Joedache Madray a leadership learnership.

Apart from their work responsibilities and upskilling, employees are also encouraged to focus on their well-being. Once a month, 30 minutes is dedicated to a meditation session where employees refocus their energy. In addition, sessions and events are hosted to improve employee relationships and morale. Examples are show-and-tell sessions where employees can talk about their hobbies, an outing to a pottery place to paint pots and catch up, and the favourite year-end event – the Christmas party.

Hive Digital Media is a positive working environment of hard work and dedication. Team leadership is continuously working on ways to keep up with the constantly evolving workplace dynamics. This is done in order to keep employees motivated, productive, efficient, innovative and satisfied in their working environment.

DATE: Mar 6, 2023
AUTHOR: [email protected]