It’s been said that a company no longer controls its brand. That’s something of a misstatement. Control is still present— it’s just that instead of flying solo, companies are now operating with co-pilots— their target audiences, who can sometimes wrest control away and dictate the direction of the brand.

And that’s still a scary thought. But’s not unmanageable.

Shareable, snackable content is the remedy. When brands create shareable content, they not only control the message, they also leverage the fans by transforming them into brand ambassadors who share the message with others.

The three pillars of shareable content are whitepapers, blog posts and rich media.

White Papers. White papers address a specific pain point or a pressing issue in your industry and help establish your company as a thought leader. They are fact-intensive and insight-driven papers, typically 6-12 pages in length, with limited graphics and clean formatting. They can include a gentle upsell opportunity [...]

Banner ads have fallen on rough times.  According to BusinessInsider, banner ads started to die in 2012. A recent article from Digiday presents some abysmal stats for this 18-year-old advertising medium: trillions of these ads are served to US users yearly, yet the average click-through rates are less than 1% — in fact, the CTR averages .1% (or less; 468×60 banners average .04%). This same article describes banner ads as “a symbol of all that’s wrong with online advertising.”

That’s a pretty harsh sentiment, and the statistics are hard to ignore. Content marketing and native advertising are quickly overtaking the banner advertisement.

But is it time to completely write off this advertising medium? Why not take a closer look at why banner ads are so ineffective? After all, while this form of technology may be dying, it’s not dead yet – opportunity could still lie by taking corrective action.

Digiday reports most banner [...]

If you asked everyone in your marketing department to name his or her top goals for the company, would the answers match up? I’m going to go out on a heavily reinforced steel limb and say, probably not. And that’s OK. In marketing, that highly sought-after “same songbook” is not always the only one worth singing from. When everyone is focused on the same goal, it can be easy to miss opportunities outside the field of vision.

Sometimes, digital marketers—clients and agencies alike—become fixated on a single goal at the expense of other opportunities. With that in mind, here are 5 tips for more effective goal-setting in digital marketing:

1. Set goals, but don’t be afraid to re-evaluate — Goals should be taken seriously but not at the expense of business growth. With business moving at the speed of Google Fiber, goal-setting should be flexible, fluid.

2. Define goals in business terms — [...]