Business and Marketing

Shareable content could give marketers the jolt they're after

People are sharing digital content more than ever, with 93% of respondents to the “Content Fitness Test Report,” a recent study from PAN Communications, claiming that they share content with their network.

The study consists of data from the responses of a survey sent to more than 1,000 marketing professionals, all of whom donned their consumer hats when responding. According to the study, while 50% of respondents still seek news and information from online news sites, this is 14% less than in 2012. This was followed by Twitter, cited by nearly a quarter of respondents, and blogs (15%). Additionally, although 82% of users consume information and news on their laptops, 85% do so on their mobile devices—driving up the value of responsive design.

The amount of users seeking content on Twitter rose 3% from 2012 to 2013 to 24%, while blogs rose from 6% to 15% in that same time frame.

Though the shift toward using social media and other non-traditional outlets for news and information may seem slow, communication via social media is becoming increasingly commonplace. In fact, 81% of consumers now use Facebook to communicate within network. SMS comes second for communication, with nearly 68% of respondents citing it; LinkedIn and Twitter round out the top four communication tools at 70% and 67%, respectively. Of the 93% of consumers sharing content across these platforms, only 76% feel that content is directly relevant to them or their network.

With such a high rate of sharing, marketers who produce shareable content stand to gain as the paradigm shifts further toward using these non-traditional platforms as information sources.

Business Breaking News: How to Use CRM for Your Small Business

Do small businesses really need customer relationship management (CRM) software? Regardless of a business' size, CRM is key to gaining visibility into a company's pipeline, to build a more knowledgeable workforce and, ultimately, create happier, more loyal customers.

Unfortunately, discussions of CRM often focus on the "big business" context. These discussions rarely show how the average small business can benefit from the technology, much less get the most return on investment (ROI). Moreover, most CRM software tools are designed for enterprises, making them technologically overwhelming and unaffordable for smaller organizations. Used correctly, however, CRM can mean the difference between failure and success as a small business.

"I think the biggest struggle for small businesses is winning their first customer, then the first 10, then the first 50 and so on," said Connor Marsden, United States lead at Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "As the company scales out, the ability to understand who the target customers are, what they need and how to win their business becomes more important." [Big Data vs. CRM: How Can They Help Small Business?]

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