It´s very easy to fall in love of Marketing world, because this field brings an awesome combination of great artists, creative and smart people, and amazing technical solutions to drive the best results for every client who wants to take advantage of it and promote their products.
But, there are new trends who can’t be ignored: Smartphones’s use is growing exponentially; Analytics is becoming in a critical thing to measure correctly which are the best Marketing channels; and a new field called Content Marketing is becoming in the first choice to launch successful Marketing campaigns.
So, I strongly believe that the Future of Marketing is focused in these three components: Content Marketing, Mobile world and Analytics. But, a question comes to my mind: How to take advantage of these trends right now? Using the right tools for the job. The winners for me? HubSpot, LinkedIn, NewsCred and HootSuite. Why? Keep reading
All is about Content Marketing today
HubSpot
I don’t have words to describe my love for HubSpot’s platform. This incredible team have developed a completed Marketing platform based on its own research, and entered to this space for the big door. Brian and Dharmesh (CEO and CTO respectively) created the Inbound Marketing term, and it comes to make a revolution in the field, taking advantage of Social platforms, ebooks and blogging to generate leads to your business. If you want to have an overview What is HubSpot, just see this short video about them:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_bqIr7pGzQ]
There are a lot of things you can do with HubSpot’s Marketing platform:
- Use Google Plus, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare to generate leads
- Then analyze which are the best channels to generate leads
You can see here that the clear is: the great content that HubSpot offers in every social network, and in form of amazing blog posts. This is one of the things why Inbound Marketing is a successful strategy to follow for Marketing efforts. So, I think that they are working in things focused on the future of the field. Do you want to keep updated with the statistics about Inbound Marketing? Just see this presentation by Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s CMO called “86 Reveling Charts from the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing”:
[slideshare id=21351431&doc=stateofinboundv31–130517163005-phpapp01]
NewsCred
But HubSpot is not the only one in this field. Large brands like Pepsi, The New York Times, Reuters, ESPN, Toyota are using another platform to be successful in Content Marketing: NewsCred.
Like they says:
NewsCred transforms brands into world-class publishers. Through creative content strategies and powerful curation technology, we give you the content your audiences need, want and share.
and I think that they are doing a terrific job on this, because these large brands are gaining a lot of audience for its sites and the lead generation is increasing with time. For example, Pepsi increased 87% of the traffic since they are using NewsCred’s products.
Do you want to know more how they are doing all this? Read its great whitepaper shared at Slideshare: [slideshare id=24498192&doc=contentmarketingbrandsaspublishers-130722094237-phpapp01]
I fallen in love from LinkedIn since I signed up in 2009. I’ve followed its successful story from a startup to a billion’s company; and I strongly believe they are just beginning.
LinkedIn have focused on content too, with small but strong steps to become in a winner: the Slideshare’s acquisition, the new Company Page Design, the Professional Portfolio adding and the new way for Companies updates.
But united to all this, there was a remarkable movement from part of LinkedIn: Influencers’s program. Dharmesh is a better writer than me, and he wrote an amazing post called “The Surprising Brilliance Of The LinkedIn Influencers Program” explaining why this program is amazing.
So, if you are following LinkedIn’s story like me, you should think the same things: They are transforming not just Marketing, but how companies are doing business. Brett Wallace did a great presentation explaining this:
[slideshare id=20419300&doc=linkedintransforminghowbusinesseshiremarketsell-130502124144-phpapp01]
Taking advantage of Mobile space
LinkedIn’s Pulse and its Mobile apps
Are you using LinkedIn’s Mobile apps? You should, because like they say: “It’s an amazing experience”: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32xyP3KuWE]
Since LinkedIn updated its Mobile apps for Android and iOS, with a cleaner UI and awesome performance, the number of users using smartphones to manage everything in the platform have been increased with time. I love Android version (Sorry Apple, I simply love the green robot). But the journey didn’t finish there: there is a version for BlackBerry, other for Windows Phone, even a version for Nokia devices, and when you analyze what they did, one word comes to the mind: Content, nothing more.
They began the journey to make an impact in the Mobile space when they acquired Pulse, because Jeff and his team saw an amazing opportunity behind this great app, and now, there are a lot of ideas over Pulse that is disrupting this field: LinkedIn’s Channels in Pulse, Forbes, Quartz, LinkedIn’s Influencers; everything is curated in Pulse today, and there are more to join to the journey.
And the last added feature to the Mobile apps is simple: now you can apply for a job using your device. See the slides here:
[slideshare id=24875928&doc=applytojobsonlinkedinmobile-130802120746-phpapp01] Don’t wait a second my friends, enrich your Mobile experience today with LinkedIn, and let me know what do you think about it.
HootSuite
You should be wondering why I put HootSuite here. The answer is simple for me: It’s the most advanced platform for Social Networks Management. You just have to read its rich features, and you will feel the same. But not just for desktop, but in the major Mobile platforms, HootSuite has great things for you. I’m not the only one that loves the platform, there are more than 7 million hearts around the world (175+ countries) that feel the same.
Using HootSuite have allowed me to share my insights around all my Social Networks profiles at the same time, and it’s just amazing. I have a large HootSuite’s Dashboard to monitor my Streams, and it works brilliantly:
[caption id=”attachment_175165" align=”aligncenter” width=”1200"]
HootSuite’s Dashboard[/caption]
Analytics is driving the innovation
But the real fun begins when you start to use Analytics of these platforms to see which are the best channels and ways to engage more users.
HubSpot
I’m a fan of the Marketing Grader from HubSpot, because with its targeted advice, I’ve improved a lot this blog, and I’ve seen the evolution of the score always in increasing. I have a current score of 84, but I know that there a lot of areas for improvements, so I keep using the platform everyday to measure how this scores changes. See the picture below:
[caption id=”attachment_175165" align=”aligncenter” width=”1200"]
HubSpot’s Marketing Grader[/caption]
But this is the Free version. The Premium version has a lot of useful metrics to see and monitor, and richer features like: Leads Generation, User Engagement, Social Media Monitoring, Blogging engine, Keyword Grader, Link Grader, Page Grader, correlation between Leads and Sales, Email Marketing, etc. HubSpot shared a great demo about the platform at YouTube: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWoEj5WVNZM]
LinkedIn have done a lot too in these days with the new feature for Company Page Analytics, when you can see everything about your brand in the platform: Gained followers, User Engagement, Impressions by campaign, Clicks over your Sponsored Updates and more. See the video about this from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Channel at YouTube: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmQS5GLer-8]
If you want to know more about this, just see the slides about the topic: [slideshare id=24317221&doc=newlinkedincompanypageanalytics-130716194204-phpapp02]
HootSuite Pro Analytics
HootSuite is doing the same thing, providing to Premium users with a lot of Analytics, even you can customize your Analytics. But one of my favorite features of the platform is the chance to a great collaboration between teams. For me, this is a killer feature, because almost every company has two or more dedicated Marketing pros, so, using this, they can be updated with the work of everyone and they can share ideas, thoughts, everything based on it; and all this for incredibly good plans. Do you want to know more about Social Networs Analytics in HootSuite? See this video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re1Jsfy7zyk]
Another great thing about HootSuite’s Analytics is that they have its own URL shortening services called Ow.ly, which is very good to track and measure clicks over your Links and pages. This video from HootSuite’s University channel in YouTube shows how to add Ow.ly Analytics to your Dashboard: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01hLNxNRw_k]
Conclusions
So, my friend, if you are a Marketing professional, you should consider to begin to use today some of these amazing platforms, because they are working very hard to make Marketing even easier< they are working in the Future of Marketing right now, so, you can take advantage of the great amount of innovation of these teams and create engaging and beautiful Marketing campaigns, with a major focus in Content. I said to you already, but I will repeat the phrase again:
All is about Content. With a richer content, you will engage more users
It’s simple. Best wishes and thanks a lot for your time.
