Healthy Brand Content, Mobile Basics, Tumblr’s New Year’s Eve Gif Ball Drop

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:

Inspiring Healthy Content Marketing Strategies

Econsultancy highlights the content marketing strategies of four successful brands: Coca-Cola, Nike, Jamie Oliver, and Innocent.

Coca-Cola’s content marketing efforts, which include the two-part video Content 2020, along with a caffeine counter and Work It Out calculator on its site, are effective approaches.

Nike’s site called Game On, World, which helps 8.5 million users measure their fitness achievements, and Jamie Oliver utilizes his website to crowdsource and co-create content with his fans. Innocent, a company in Britain, publishes books like “Stay Healthy, Be Lazy” and hosts Fruitstock, an annual festival in London.

Mobile Marketing 101

Greg Hickman of CopyBlogger writes about the ins and outs of mobile marketing. 

Text messaging is immediate and the most likely piece of marketing to be read. It can be used to poll consumers, to ask them to opt in for an email list, or to send video links. Companies can also create apps, which means that their icon will be in full view on a customer’s cell phone screen, and they should tailor emails to mobile customers.

Tumblr Offering New Year’s Eve Ball Drop in Gif Form

Mashable’s Neha Prakash writes that during the New Year’s Eve ball drop, Tumblr is going to GIF the celebrations on its blog. The site teamed up with Times Square Alliance and Livestream for the project.

Prakash says, “Tumblr selected three GIF makers from their community of bloggers to create and upload animated images in realtime. The GIFs will appear on GIFwich.com, much like during the Presidential election debates, when the blogging site contributed to the conversation with memes.”

Vice Acquires British Style Mag

According to the New York Times, Vice has purchase British style magazine i-D. Since Vice is already tuned into the fashion world, the company said the acquisition fits in well with its brand.

“There’s a huge opportunity there to create a huge and robust platform for fashion and creativity,” said Andrew Creighton, the president of Vice. The magazine is going to keep the staff members at i-D and might even add to it.

Visuals and Content Marketing

Shanna Mallon of Content Marketing Institute discusses the power of visuals and how they can improve a content strategy.

She says that when using images, invest in high quality photos, add an “alt” attribute in properties to help search engines recognize them, and consider watermarking original photos.

Infographics should “help your audience visualize data, and how it applies to your message.” She advised, marketers need to think outside the box and “go beyond a spreadsheet or chart.”

Email Marketing in 2013

ClickZ predicts that in the year 2013, most subscribers of email lists will be opening messages on a smartphone. 

Templates will need to rebuilt to accommodate this, since 63 percent of Americans would either close or get rid of an email that doesn’t turn out well on a mobile device. Content is still the number one concern— email marketing can be segmented between demographics and behavioral traits should be tracked.

Store Emails During the Holiday Season

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting on email marketing and how it’s being executed by retailers during the holidays. 

On average, customers are receiving 38 promotional emails a week this holiday season, and the most emails were sent on Cyber Monday, Nov. 26. Stores are carefully studying and crafting strategies to get customers to make a purchase through email.

Elizabeth Holmes writes, “Stores time the arrival of their emails and design them with attention-grabbing subject lines, personalized messages, chatty advice and animation. They study every aspect of your response, from where and how you opened the email to which words and images made you click.”