Coca-Cola Pours Content, MTV Shake-Up, Content Marketing Pitfalls

The Strategist picks the day’s most relevant and interesting stories about the world of content from around the web. Here’s what you should be reading today:

Coke’s New Website

On Monday, Coca-Cola revamped its website, putting an emphasis on the history of the company, reports The New York Times.

The new site include articles on the environment, health and sports, and entertainment, and photo galleries, audio and video clips, opinion columns, and interviews will be posted as well.

Ashley Brown, director for digital communications and social media at the company, said, “We have this belief in great, real content and creating content that can be spread through any medium as part of our ‘liquid and linked’ strategy.”

Change-Up in MTV’s Programming Department

Susanne Daniels, who led the WB network and programming for Lifetime, has been appointed as MTV’s new president of programming, the Times reports.

While MTV’s reality shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Teen Mom” have done well, its scripted shows haven’t. The network is bringing on Daniels, who was responsible for putting “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and “Gilmore Girls” on WB, along with “Army Wives” and “Drop Dead Diva” on Lifetime, to ramp up its scripted division.

Pitfalls of Content Marketing

Tom Webster, vice president of strategy at Edison Research, writes on his blog about the downside of content marketing and the traps professionals often find themselves in. For example,while people will always want content, sticking to an editorial calendar is not always the best option. He says he only puts out his best ideas and does not stick to the calendar if he has nothing to say.

Writers are also not always experts — the people who figure out the ideas and information are usually not the same people writing about it, which content marketers need to remember.

He also cites Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell in his third pitfall, which is not to confuse information and evidence. He says that writers need to be trying to prove their theories wrong instead of finding facts that supporting them. Ideas should be formulated after finding out the facts on both sides of an argument, instead of taking an idea then trying to prove it after (such as Gladwell’s “10,000 hours to mastery” theory).

Content Marketing vs. Search

According to a study from the Young Entrepreneur Council, when performing a Google search, conversion rate of guest posts on websites was about twice that of search, Forbes.com reports.

Instead of simply putting out press releases for products, companies need to create content on websites related to the product. Distribution is also necessary — companies need to contact bloggers in the industry and get them to write about products/services to appear high on searches.

Of course, marketers should be looking to educate customers with their content instead of sell to them.

Red Bull is the Most Powerful Branded Content Publisher

According to CoolAge and goviral’s Social Video Equity Report, Red Bull is the number one social video strategist for 2012 out of 100 brands.

Hannah Syrocki writes, “Brands were audited based on volume, total views and engagement for content uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook in 2012, before being evaluated by goviral for quality, purpose, innovation and audience relevance. This then produced the final social video equity score.”

Google came in second, while Samsung came in fifth, and Apple came in 11th.

Finding Paying Blogging Gigs

Business Insider posted a list of where freelance writers can find jobs. Included on the list was ProBlogger, which is a job board, Blogger Jobs, Elance and oDesk, People Per Hour, and Freelance Writers Den.

Writers can also put “(your niche)” plus “write for us” into Google, or “top (your niche) blogs” and find websites to write for. They might be able to find jobs just by cold calling local businesses and asking if they’d like their own blog writer.

Wonderful Pistachos is Holding a Twitter Contest

According to Mashable, Wonderful Pistachios is holding a contest on Twitter that will award the winner $10,000.

A new video ad challenges viewers to enter the contest, which involves unscrambling a @getcrackin tweet.