Lists are one of the best Twitter features, yet one of the most underutilized. Without Twitter lists, my Twitter feed is a disorganized mess of information covering all of my interests. I build lists ranging from marketing to recruitment, technology, world news and sports (ok, sports don’t interest me, but the feed does help me hold a decent conversation with my husband!). I highly recommend using Twitter lists  to improve content marketing.

Twitter lists allow me to create separate spaces for each of my interests, so I can find the information I want, when I want to find it.

Today, I’m going to show you how Twitter lists will improve content marketing strategy. But, let’s start with the basics.

What are Twitter lists?

A Twitter list is a way to group Twitter users together so that you have a feed of tweets from just that group.

Example: Let’s say you’re a content marketer in the travel industry who has a particular interest in fashion. You can create separate Twitter lists for content marketing, travel, and fashion, which would allow you to see the specific type of content you want to see, when you want to see it.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to someone else’s list if you like the grouping they’ve put together.

How to create Twitter lists

Click the profile icon in the top navigation and click Lists.

Then, click the button that says Create new list.

Name your list, give it a description if you’d like (this part is optional), and choose whether you’d like your list to be public or private. If you want people to know they’re on the list, and allow others to subscribe to it, make it public. Otherwise, make it private.

Once you’ve created your Twitter list, you can add people at any time from their profile. Just click on the “gear” icon, click “add or remove from lists,” to add that person to specific lists.

And that’s it!

3 ways Twitter lists improve content marketing

1. Brainstorming content. I have industry-specific Twitter lists with bloggers, journalists, influencers, and enthusiasts, to help me keep a pulse on what people are talking about. These lists are often the inspiration for many of my content marketing projects, from blog posts to webinars, infographics, and eBooks, I can see what topics are resonating with my target audience and what gaps I can fill with my unique perspective.

I can also keep an eye out for questions people are asking on Twitter, and answer them through an original piece of content. Sometimes, 140 characters just won’t cut it if I want to provide a great response. Plus, if someone is asking the question on Twitter, chances are someone else could benefit from the answer, which will be more discoverable on my blog.

2. Content curation. Along the same lines of brainstorming content, I often come across content I can curate. For instance, I may find an infographic or video to embed in my content, or an interesting stat that I can hyperlink from a blog post.

I can also gather my favorite content into a weekly “roundup” blog post, where I link to each post and add some content about why I found it interesting.

An added benefit of curating content within your own channels is that when you reach out to inform the original creator that they’ve been featured, they will often share your content on their network, which extends your content’s reach, helping you build a bigger audience.

3. Influencer marketing. In addition to simply listening to social chatter, I also use my Twitter lists to engage with industry bloggers and influencers. I’ll retweet their content, reply to content they share, and answer questions they ask. Once they start to engage, I add them to a second Twitter list for industry bloggers and influencers who engage.

Since I’ve already provided some value to these people, and they have an idea of who I am, I reach out from time to time to see if they’ll help me promote my content. I usually prefer the softer approach where I’ll reply to their tweet with my insights, linking to a post I’ve written that expands on my point-of-view. Often, the influencer will retweet my response and may even link to my post in one of their future posts, helping me increase my content’s reach.

As you can see, I use Twitter lists quite a bit in my content marketing strategy – and love how they help me brainstorm, curate and distribute content. It’s such a great way to filter all the noise from my main Twitter feed and focus only on the tweets I want to see, when I want to see them.

Are you using Twitter lists? If so, how do you use them?

The post 3 Ways Twitter Lists Improve Content Marketing appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

The Dog Days begin in early July, when the hot sultry weather of summer usually starts. We get that. In an attempt to keep you cool, we are debuting two really cool features. One of them helps you be at the leading edge of UGC rights management, and the other is access of some of the best content marketing APIs available on the market.

1. Streamlining Rights Management

For innovative marketers, user generated content (UGC) is more important and abundant than ever. Including real content from real people is key to providing some authenticity in your brand story.

In “traditional” UGC rights management, you would: search for the UGC that you are looking to use; message the user to get permission to use the content; wait for their response; then you respond back to them expressing confirmation and gratitude; and only then, add the content to your library.

And you do that many, many times a day.

So how do you shorten that process? You use our new advanced rights management feature. Streamline the UGC rights management process by uploading legal approved terms and conditions that you can direct content owners through to grant permission. The uploading of terms and conditions happens once (or as often as legal changes it), and the “I Agree” happens automatically and repeatedly. That means a streamlined rights management process and an auto-populated bank of legally-approved UGC to choose from.

Interested in learning more? Talk to your account manager or contact our sales team.

2. Thismoment Developer Platform: Shiny New APIs

If you haven’t heard yet, Thismoment’s Developer Platform could be the source of content in powering your beautiful, amazing interactive brand experiences. With a whole host of ready-to-go APIs, your developers can quickly gain access to an entire library of APIs and supporting documentation to build rich front-end experiences on the back of our technology. This month, we’ve updated our APIs to include Content Cloud content and Content Cloud Playlists.

Learn more about Thismoment Developer Platform at: https://developers.thismoment.com/

The post Content Cloud Updates: Rights Management & New Developer APIs  appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications, LLC, a global, tech-enabled talent acquisition company, today announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with Thismoment to offer employers a best-in-class user generated content and experience management solution to enhance their employer brands and ensure they attract right-fit talent.

As competition for qualified workers continues to increase, organizations must leverage the tools and best practices that enable them to stand out from the crowd and to be seen as an employer of choice. Through this partnership, TMP’s and Thismoment’s extensive list of joint customers will benefit from TMP’s talent acquisition expertise and TalentBrew platform, combined with the power of Thismoment’s Content Cloud experience management software to help companies showcase their unique employee experiences and improve the talent acquisition process.

The partnership will provide clients of TMP with a turnkey employee generated content (EGC) and experience tool that can be used by employees across devices to create content that conveys the organization’s employer brand authentically. The solution enables brands to improve employee engagement and permits their current workforce to participate directly in talent acquisition efforts while elevating the brand as a true innovator in the recruitment marketing space.

“What’s exciting about EGC is that it involves our employees and increases engagement,” said Chris Hong, vice president, Talent Acquisition for ESPN. “EGC allows us to tell ESPN’s true employment brand more personally and effectively through the use of employee generated photos and videos. We can showcase to an external audience, where in my early career experience, EGC was on a company intranet only and not accessible to the outside. To me, EGC is so in line with the current times, where employer transparency is the new and expected norm. I mean, who better to exemplify our employer brand than our employees themselves. Talk about being authentic!”

“We are excited to partner with TMP, the market leader in employer brand and talent acquisition, to bring the power of user generated content to the talent acquisition vertical,” said Vince Broady, founder and CEO of Thismoment. “Employee generated content leverages the knowledge, creativity and connections of the brand’s entire workforce to promote their culture and drive job seeker engagement.”

“TMP’s TalentBrew software platform pushes jobs and content directly to candidates, giving them a true understanding of a company’s culture. Likewise, a company’s current employees are often the best sources for conveying the work culture and employer brand of an organization,” said Michelle Abbey, president and CEO of TMP Worldwide. “Through our partnership with Thismoment, we can help our clients project the voice of their employees to enhance the recruitment process. We look forward to working closely with Thismoment to develop innovative solutions and to innovate and improve the way brands engage their employees and recruit the best talent.”

About TMP Worldwide
TMP Worldwide is a global, tech-enabled talent acquisition company that leverages software, advertising and creativity to develop and deploy our clients’ employer brands across digital, social and mobile platforms to connect candidates with employers.
This strategic mix of talent and technology allows us to serve a global client base that spans virtually all sectors of private, public, and government employers, and positions us as the organization to define the standard of measurable and cost-effective solutions to the human capital management community.

The post TMP Worldwide and Thismoment Announce Strategic Partnership to Enhance Talent Acquisition Processes appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

Without question, the web is now buzzing about what web cards, (a la Google Now), bring to the table, but the idea of content-rich “cards” has been around for a long time. Let’s take a look at how collectible card games can offer insight into this burgeoning UX metaphor.

There is a specific market out there with millions of users that have been addicted to the concept of cards for decades, and that market has little to do with the internet. Welcome to the world of collectible card games. A world in which players obsess over cards and their design, and use these cards daily as a form of constant engagement.

Of course, first comparisons between analog and digital content cards seem abstract and far-fetched; however, upon a further examination, it’s quite startling how similar the cards of the web are to those of collectible card games.

Creating (Digital) Decks of Cards

Imagine you take your phone out of your pocket and start flipping through some web cards you’ve collected, perhaps using a single aggregator app. This is not much different than the analog concept of shuffling through your hand in a card game in search of the perfect card to put into play.

As long as those people have a card deck, they will eventually interact with it. So how do you deliver a deck of digital cards that entices a user to engage with it?

Analog card players collect such cards through various means (gifts, trades/swaps, specialty purchases, card pack purchases, etc.). Similarly, the digital card user can also collect cards through various digital sources. In both worlds, once the cards are yours, you can mix them up, sort them, and arrange them any which way you like to suit your needs. Each card has its own purpose, and each card can be picked up or discarded easily. And that feeling of deploying the perfect combination of cards can be priceless.

You have to allow a user to carry their decks of cards across different mediums and ensure the cards function correctly. This kind of card deck is worth keeping.

Powerfully Simple Design

The power of the card’s design lies in its simplicity. It has the ability to convey a great deal of information at a glance, and offers even finer detail upon deeper interaction.

When you look at a card from a collectible card game, you will most likely first notice the card’s image. The image is the main attention grabber and is the focal point of the card.

The more interesting the image is, the more you forget that you are looking at a rectangular card. The card becomes an experience based on a centrally placed image, accessorized with details in the form of interactive data all around the image, to be explored only if your attention to the card increases.

If you already know what the card is about, you might only look at the image and move on. This kind of shallow experience is important for users who don’t want to invest too much time into one card and would rather browse the other cards. Or perhaps you are so familiar with the card that the image is all you need to process its information and carry on with other tasks.

Digital cards should also be designed with simplicity in mind.

Relevant Grouping

Looking further into the design of collectible cards, we see that they are usually organized into familiar groups which makes it easier for players to learn what they are used for.

This is represented visually through different background colors and themes, which can set the tone of the card quickly. The small icons found in various layouts on the cards, are usually not only cool looking, but allow users to understand the underlying content and make faster decisions when they are needed. The icons themselves can be interactive and play important roles and functions in the cards, often making the card a little more special to the user who is counting on these interactions.

Of course, there is usually one small representation of data that can be crucial for making fast but educated decisions. This can be found in the top corner of the cards, a place visible on every card even when they are stacked on top of each other.

This powerful and precise piece of information can come in many forms: a number, a rating, a price. This data point can be crucial in making important decisions quickly, especially when you have a “hand” of cards to compare.

The best part is that this grouping metaphor translates directly to digital cards!

Rich Content Is Key

And now we come to the most involved part of the card: the information written in text. This can take the form of descriptive titles framed in their own containers, or full on descriptions which are brief and to the point.

In card games, the main card description is the real heart of the card experience because it describes the underlying functionality. The description will answer your questions about the card, help you formulate opinions on how to use the card, and will serve as the source of further actions taken with the card.

This translates to the web card UI world quite simply: the card’s description is where links live; is where flight times are listed; is where an amazing comment is displayed; is where your photo captured a moment in time. The card’s description is where your rich content lives, accessible at anytime from the convenience of your pocket.

Why is this important?

We all grew up with cards. Whether it was collectible card games or just normal playing cards, most of us have experienced fun moments playing with them. For the collectors, it started with the excited feeling of getting new cards, and unwrapping them to play with them for the first time. If you got a rare card or one that you paid for, it felt special because it was harder to obtain and you knew that it would be very useful.

When interacting with the cards, you would completely focus on a card, and each card would tell you a different story.The best part was that the cards could be used to interact with others, creating a truly involving experience. We can draw from every one of these great aspects of playing with non-digital cards and apply them to web cards.

The limitless flexibility in mixing and matching web cards combined with the rich content available in the card format gives us unprecedented control over the information that governs our daily life. With web cards, we can track our packages, schedule flights, share photos and videos, and even make dinner reservations all in one customizable experience right at our fingertips. But all of this functionality already existed on the internet before web cards came along. What web cards changed is how we experience and aggregate our web content. They have turned your web experience into a deck of playing cards, and they are waiting for you to play with them.

The post For The Future of Digital Cards, Look To The Past appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.