Content Campfire: Noteworthy Nuggets December 14, 2015

“Let’s gather ’round the campfire and sing our campfire song.” -SpongeBob

Hi there Content Campfire fans, how was your week? Here in Southern California, it’s been sunny and cold, which makes it super nice to hang outside in the afternoon sun, soaking up the warmth. We do what we can to take our minds off the crazy traffic that’s happening this time of year!

This week’s Content Campfire is filled with some goodies to warm up your marketing plans for 2016.

1. 21 Must-Have Social Media Tools for Brainy Marketers (Like You?)

If I had to pick one thing that I hear most often from our clients (and many others), it’s that social marketing and managing an online community can be overwhelming and exhausting.

Having the right tools can make your life so much easier. While there are dozens of cool tools aimed at earning time back in your day, PostPlanner’s Rebekah Radice shares 21 of her favorite social media tools that every marketer needs.

2. Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

Most of us at some time in our life have suffered through a negative work environment. A culture of fear, a bad boss, a whiny co-worker, or even an antiquated culture of mediocrity wears on the soul, and actually has a hugely negative effect on business revenue.

A large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology reports a negative environment is very harmful to productivity over time:

• Health expenditures are 50% greater
• Stress of belonging to hierarchies is linked to disease and death
• Disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects
• Lack of loyalty leads to an increase of almost 50% in voluntary turnover

A positive environment leads to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line. This post from Harvard Business Review has super-helpful tips to create a positive and healthy culture for your organization.

3. Enlisting Employee Participation in Content Creation

This week I was a guest on #ContentChat, a weekly Twitter chat (Mondays at Noon Pacific) focused on content marketing.

In this summary, we chat about the awesome value of employee engagement and participation in a company’s content marketing. We cover some of the Do’s and Don’t’s and also come of the pitfalls that can happen when a good employee engagement strategy isn’t in place.

4. The Definitive Guide to Facebook Video Ads

The Facebook Ads platform just keeps getting better. If you’re not at least looking at Facebook Ads to market your business in 2016, you’ll be losing out on a valuable opportunity to capture leads and sales.

Video ads are a newer feature and while they may not be ideal for every business out there (for one reason or another), you owe it to yourself to check them out.

Ron Sela’s outstanding, in-depth post will help you decide if they’ll work for you and, if so, he shows you how to totally rock Facebook video ads.

5. 8 Qualities of the Most Successful Small Business Content Marketing Case Studies

On a regular basis, I hear from businesses who’ve got a list of reasons why they can’t create their own content for their blog/website. Look, I get it – I’m in the same boat – but there are specific solutions available for every situation.

The biggest problem with this mindset is that quality content cannot be outsourced – it lacks the heart and soul required to attract your target customers. This “can’t do” attitude means they’re losing out on valuable opportunities to capture more leads and sales.

Marcus Sheridan is one of my favorite people and we share a passion for helping companies design and implement ways to create content from within.

If you’re one of those that still thinks you can’t or won’t be creating your own, home-grown content to boost your content marketing efforts in 2016, this post is evidence that might change your mind.

6. The Why of Social Selling

Social Selling (using social media to build networks, earn referrals and generate leads and sales) is clearly a “Best Practice” for 2016.

Chances are, your sales team talks to hundreds of prospects every month via phone, email and even in-person. Imagine how many more they could connect with by leveraging the power of social media!

With the right content, technology and training in place, your sales team will outperform their peers every time.

If you’re still skeptical about adding social selling to your sales process, take a look at the stats PostBeyond put together in this infographic about the “WHY” of social selling.

7. 15 Things for When the World is Sh*tty and Terrifying

While the title of this post is provocative, it’s completely fitting.

It seems like everywhere you turn lately there’s another horrible, sad, depressing, awful thing happening. But what’s really cool about being human is that out of the depths of hell, we can make personal behavioral choices to counteract the awful stuff. We can choose actions that lift us (and those we engage with) up.

Even if you choose not to take any of the actions mentioned in this post, the words may inspire you. It’s my hope (and my plan) to take action, and do my part to make the world (my world, our world) less sh*tty and terrifying.

Let’s do this!