Archive for category: Content

How to beat that blank page anxiety syndrome (it’s worse than your first date), how to hit em over the head with cool visual content and why lists aren’t as boring as toast.

Great Content Marketing Starts Here

Give up on the introduction and start at the middle or the end.

Even a crude outline can get you started: napkin, match book covers, menus - wherever inspiration hits.

Write a story: setting, players, tone, conflict, “Romeo and Juliet” elements.

Whip out your phone and start talking for playback in front of the page.

Read more: it’s going to inspire you to be a better writer.

Write in increments: give yourself a timed period to create content and review the results later. But, this may crank up the anxiety and limit the content. Test it.

Use a different medium: pen, paper, video or audio (as above0 to get started or as a platform to share content.

Forget writing content - visual may be the best way to tell your brand story.

1. Your building authenticity with your community: visual’s impact drives relevance.
2. As technology “takes over our lives” visual strikes a chord within others. Sensory currency is “real” to the visitor.
3. Visuals drive cultural relevancy that engages the visitor in ways that text cannot equate with.
4. “Archetypes” have been around since the days of ancient cave man paintings and visuals are a powerful storytelling tools that feature “heroines” and “heroes” embedded in brand storytelling.
5. Visuals cut through the clutter and chatter that’s “smartphone” driven for many consumers and professionals.

Content Pain Points Every Business has to Come to Grips with

What in God’s name is your budget? It’s a moving target; start small, test the content ROI (is is getting read?), talk to your customers, monitor your conversion metrics, start with 20-30% of your overall budget.

How do you make content that the visitor wants to share? Key attributes: useful, emotion laden, factual, practical, newsjacks (events, moments in time, stuff that relates to your biz).

Is your content distributed and published? A blog is not enough: you gotta do more.

In-house or outsourcing; or some combination of the two. Your probably better off with the latter.

Where do you find visuals to insert with your content? They are on your web site, embedded in your social channels and/or part of the visual story every employee tells with their profiles across the web.

What is SEO and how do we optimize our content. Use a keyword in your  title and repeat it maybe once or twice on page of 300-700 words. Google understands more than you will ever know BTW.

How to Use Lists to Drive Your Content Marketing

• Your readers have an attention span of a gnat. So lists help to pull them into the content.
• Lists work well with as images and videos as we sampled below.
• Lists are easy to write. You can fact load them and newsjack  the topics to your heart’s content.
• Your readers, visitors are preconditioned to engaging with content that uses lists: the proliferation of lists embedded in content is everywhere.
• Lists drive immediate engagement and move visitors into a sales funnel.
• People want evidence, perspective and answers in your content and lists help to convey both, especially via blog with baked in frequency updates each month.
• Lists facilitate updates – there is no shame in cutting and pasting updated content via a list. Is this “content laziness?” No: it’s smart, content should be updated
• You can brand jack your biz into a list. Is this self-serving. Yes, but done frequently.
• Lists facilitate content re-purposing via other content forms (email, other blog posts, social content) which is a fundamental “tool” in any content marketer’s toolbox.
• Every good blog post starts with a list for many content marketers: those scatter-shot ideas can then be fleshed or “listed” out, no pun intended.
• Millennials thrive on real time updates and lists are part of the picture and “secret sauce” to reach them according to Twitter and others.
• Brands can be creative with lists: use them as a shorthand way to poll your staff, customers, partners, BOD members and any other stakeholders for company, product, customer wins and content marketing topics.
• See texting as a way of life for many today. These people “live” on lists (stretching the metaphor a bit)- so, map your content accordingly.

Boring Stuff Your Competitors are Proably Doing You Don’t want to Do!

Interviewing the CEO for a blog post. Been done too many times.

Hyping their Product or Service in every piece of content.

Embedding the Company brand ad nauseum (logos, images, pictures, etc.)

Writing boring content with no soul or emotional component (kinda like “kissing your brother or sister” not that we are against it!)

Using Social Media to Blab about whatever the hell the exec staff thinks is important in the last “content review meeting” (see: “a camel is a horse designed by a committee”)

Flogging the brand repeatedly via all content. (Remember, it’s not always about you, it’s about your customers and users.)

Thinking and marketing like they are the next SalesForce or BMW (not that we don’t love German beer or engineering). Most don’t have the right budget or personnel.

Stellar Content Has these Hallmarks

A great blog post is between 700-1,500 words, has three images, with a conclusion section, integrates calls to action to drive a desired action leading, uses lots of “white space” and font size is from 10-12 points.

Mobile usage is driving 30-50% of content “consumption” (be mobile savvy) but “brand stories” may drive significantly more engagement: mix and match the size of your content (long or short form).

Content syndication is critical in today’s “technology drenched’ world: use rinse and repeat cycles to reach today’s distracted consumer and professional. (Note: embedded link will take you to a post with a list of the top 25 platforms & more).

Personalty still drives content engagement for both B2B and B2C brands and it’s becoming increasingly more important to use imagery that gets attention in the marketplace.

Content Measurement is Critical: have a finite grasp of these ROI drivers: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Return Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Engagement, Virality: (ReTweets, Shares, Likes, Comments, Revenue or Lead Generation.

Mix and match “snackable” short form content (images, video, infographics) with “evergreen” high value content to drive brand engagement, incremental traffic and revenue.

Build in cross platform marketing on all top tier platforms: Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook using plugin like Snap to automatically “push” content to other platforms or pure play content syndication cloud based services.

Great content is a mythic beast embedded within your business DNA

It “lives” within each of you and in the DNA of your company. Dig deep and look for it.

Just remember, great content requires creativity and lots of trial and error, coupled with “listening” to your conversion metrics (newsletter sign ups, lead inquiries and/or revenue metrics).

Iterate your way to success: look for patterns of engagement using analytics and social engagement and adjust your content marketing initiatives accordingly.

Be patient, content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

For a deeper dive sign up for our newsletter or jack in to our Twitter account for 140 character bon mots.

 

 

Lists are everywhere and the headlines with lists are proliferating faster than rabbits imbibing unlimited amounts of Jack Daniels.

Anybody and everybody is using embedded lists in their content. Or, they are writing “mea culpas” vis Medium, exposing every aspect of their personal and professional lives.

Great content is somewhat list driven and we can all thank smartphones for some of this popularity. Your content is getting reduced to a small screen: so no lists, maybe no reads.

1) We aren’t the New York Times or a start-up with $25M in the back that can hire writers, editors and reporters away from a top tier publisher. So, we too use cheap theatrics and lists to help us get a blog read now and then. That’s tongue in cheek.

• Your readers have an attention span of a gnat. So lists help to pull them into the content.
• Lists work well with as images and videos as we sampled below.
• Lists are easy to write. You can fact load them and newsjack  the topics to your heart’s content.
• Your readers, visitors are preconditioned to engaging with content that uses lists: the proliferation of lists embedded in content is everywhere.
• Lists drive immediate engagement and move visitors into a sales funnel.
• People want evidence, perspective and answers in your content and lists help to convey both, especially via blog with baked in frequency updates each month.
• Lists facilitate updates - there is no shame in cutting and pasting updated content via a list. Is this “content laziness?” No: it’s smart, content should be updated
• You can brand jack your biz into a list. Is this self-serving. Yes, but done frequently.
• Lists facilitate content re-purposing via other content forms (email, other blog posts, social content) which is a fundamental “tool” in any content marketer’s toolbox.
• Every good blog post starts with a list for many content marketers: those scatter-shot ideas can then be fleshed or “listed” out, no pun intended.
• Millennials thrive on real time updates and lists are part of the picture and “secret sauce” to reach them according to Twitter and others.
• Brands can be creative with lists: use them as a shorthand way to poll your staff, customers, partners, BOD members and any other stakeholders for company, product, customer wins and content marketing topics.
• See texting as a way of life for many today. These people “live” on lists (stretching the metaphor a bit)- so, map your content accordingly.

2) Kapost shared this recent post about the power of Lists. You can easily cut and paste lists into a blog post to drive engagement, as they have done with this post.

3) Don’t make the mistake of thinking visitors “read” your content like a Newspaper. They don’t - they are snacking and scanning your content in an F-shaped pattern. They’ll do a horizontal scan, then another and then move to vertical scan. Visualize a list in this image and it will help you understand why lists drive content ROI.

4) We love the work Econusltancy does - typical (sorry Americans) bright, savvy technical Europeans who bake in great strategy along with “list loaded” headlines - the Headline, Column under the headline, screen right (newsletter at top, then two stacked ads and trending blog posts).

 

5) Lists help to organize your content is give you an easy way to drive the user into your web site. Some might argue with us and say embedded lists on a page are just User Interface; but, it’s a fine line between the two, no pun intended.

This is excellent on page “list centric” content formatting by Marketing Sherpa - the universal menus stand out, the content is layered to catch the visitor’s attention and calls to action (screen column right and bottom of page) stand out as embedded text.

 

6) Great Lists are a Part of Storytelling and Pixar is a great content role model - if you are a better filmmaker than Pixar then call us we have some work for you. Thanks to Emma Coats for creating this list.

7) Lists are moving from text to visual and “visual” drives engagement. There’s a reason why Buzz Feed has a monthly audience of 150M per month and morphing to a full blown media company.

8) Lists are the heart of any great landing page and Sales Force has this down to a science: factual, brief, powerful content focused on generating conversions.

 

 

9) Rethink how you think about lists. Embed them in your Headlines too and tweak the fonts: “7 chic buys” is a list embed in Net-A-Porter’s Ad for their Publication on their Home Page - this is not brilliant copywriting, but the text size, color of the fonts against the background and multiple headers in the content are all done with a sophisticated design. “The devil is in the details” is apt.

10) If you are embedding visuals in lists be mindful of these attributes.

1. Your building authenticity with your community: visual’s impact drives relevance.
2. As technology “takes over our lives” visual strikes a chord within others. Sensory currency is “real” to the visitor.
3. Visuals drive cultural relevancy that engages the visitor in ways that text cannot equate.
4. “Archetypes” have been around since the days of ancient cave man paintings and visuals are a powerful storytelling tools that feature “heroines” and “heroes” embedded in brand storytelling.
5. Visuals cut through the clutter and chatter that’s “smartphone” driven for many consumers and professionals.

Every blog post, especially one about lists, should end with no lists whatsoever. Give the poor list a break when/where you can and use them judiciously and creatively to drive more engagement with your content marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

Defining great content is no easy matter. To some CMOs or execs the definition may be similar to Potter Stewart’s quote: “I know it when you see it.” That sounds cool but we think there are distinct and unique characteristics that define business to business content.

B2B Content Marketing Strategy Drivers: facts, figures and numbers drive credibility and are inherent in great business to business focused content vs. “consumerish” content.

That’s not to say the content has to be nothing but geeky fact driven writing but data and figures help to drive back end conversions with businesses interested in working with your businesses.

Structure, story and presentation still drive conversions; but, other businesses are looking for brands that educate with their content.

The sell cycle for B2B focused brands is much different that consumer facing businesses: a sell cycle for an average B2B brand can be from one month to a year,  it’s fraught with peril as “leads” can and do drop out of the sales funnel process.

Built in complexity in the process underscores how important it is for B2B brands to recognize the length of the sales cycle and create and distribute content that informs and engages a “thought leader” in a tiered manner.

It’s building a relationship like consumer facing content, but it’s going to take longer and critical to “drive” engagement with a sales funnel for measurement.

It’s all about relevance too. Your content has to be credible and relevant to the business executive you are targeting.

Scott Monty uses the term “P2P “Relevance - his point is whether your content is consumer or biz targeted it’s about reaching people with content messaging that connects.

Content syndication must be an inherent component to any good B2B focused brand. Whether your targeting a C-Level executive or a small business owner, they are all drowning in content and data. Channel proliferation is an issue as the Gartner image underscores. Throwing up a blog and praying for leads is no longer a viable marketing strategy for any B2B brand (or consumer focused). The sheer popularity of content marketing is driving barriers to entry. Getting heard above the “digital din” requires a well thought out marketing strategy.

All marketing is to a certain extent plagiarism (that’s another post); so, borrow from B2C brands to drive engagement: use snackable content to get the attention of your target market in your content stream. It’s a two screen world and every exec today is running around glued to a smartphone.

Clutter cut through is critical to getting your messaging heard and visual content helps to do this.

Understand the impact of the buying decision on your customers. Consumer buying decisions are at times emotive or brand driven: the price of the purchase is much lower.

But, for B2B brands your customers are frequently making decisions that impact careers, profitability or even sustainability of their business. Accordingly, they want content that educates, answers questions and that builds trust in your brand. Content measurement is a critical component to any B2B content marketing process.

That can range from basic Google Analytics analysis to building a complex sales funnel with real time measurement using MixPanel - big data analysis is rapidly becoming the mantra for any B2B marketing who wants to generate content marketing ROI.

Editorial Calendars are great for a solo marketing exec or teams: they help you or anyone on the team understand process, timeline, platform, content frequency and integrate your content marketing initiatives with your company’s real time processes: PR, Tradeshows, Marketplace Wins.

This link will take you to our public Dropbox folder with a link to a sample Editorial Calendar and for a deeper dive on how to use an Editorial Calendar click here.

Content curation should be part of your marketing strategy: you don’t need to create everything from scratch.

We are not advocating piracy, just underscoring the importance of using guest bloggers as part of your content mix, sharing content that may have been written by a thought leader in your industry or using a video interview that’s chunked up into multiple content initiatives.

Top Tier Marketing Tactics Used by your Peers

• Blog: 76% use blogs to drive content marketing and see 2x increase in traffic and a 5x in leads.
• Articles on web site
• Newsletter
• Case Studies and White Papers
• Webinars
• Mobile Apps
• Podcasts
• Branded Long Form “evergreen” content
• Infographics
• Microsites
• Videos

Channel Strategy is an Inherent Component of B2B Content Marketing

How to Curate Content

• Know starting out “content curation” requires hand picking specific types of content and automation is not part of the process in most cases. There is a human element behind all great content curation.
• Twitter is a great example of content curation: your Twitter stream will be comprised of Tweets back to your own blog but 80% of the content is curated using lists, hashtags, keywords and/or targeted Followers.
• “Curation” should combine your own created content with sourced content: some thought leaders don’t differentiate between “aggregated” (which may mean some level of automation) or “sourced” content that is “manually” selected.
• Be picky and selective with content you are sharing that is not original. If your brand is sharing the same content everyone else is you are not going to stand out from the crowd.
• Build a “social voice” - something your business, brand or you as an individual are known for.
• Know your audience (who you are curating for) and serve their interest. Your content curation has to align with your business goals.
• Identify key thought leaders in your industry, top tier pubs, keywords and topics that dovetail with your audience using content curation platforms like Curata, Scoop.it, List.ly, Feedly.com and Trap.it.

Best Practices for B2B Content Marketing

• Start slow: content marketing is a marathon
• Establish benchmark measurements at the outset.
• Keep moving forward: don’t get bogged down in the proverbial trenches.
• Align content marketing with other strategies.
• Involve your entire organization whether it’s five or fifty people: great content ideas come in all shapes and sizes: sales, customer service and/or exec staff.
• Great content marketers “newsjack” and “borrow” from others.
• Mix and match snackable short form (images, under 300 word blog post, videos) with long-form “evergreen” high value content.
• “Chunk” and repurpose content to leverage costs.

As a business, how you create, structure and define content will define your success in today’s digital eco system.

Your business is a mini media company publishing on an almost unlimited number of platforms.

Leads and revenue begin with engagement on a social platform and content is the fundamental driver for visibility.

Thinking about content strategically requires your business to identify who your targeting (persona or customer) and how, when and where you want to reach them: Blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr,  Slideshare, Twitter, YouTube: the list is almost endless.

An Editorial Calendar helps you to identify key content marketing objectives and tactics. You can start crude: napkin on the dinner table, or notes on your iPhone or in a more systematic way using a Spreadsheet or a Dedicated Document.

Every stellar content marketing program begins with a carefully planned and well executed editorial calendar. It’s the best way for integrating content into a cohesive story for your targeted market.

It’s not a document that needs to be adhered to verbatim; just having one will make you more consistent, imparts structure and discipline in your content marketing initiatives and it’s a living breathing document that can and should be updated on a regular basis.

 

Editorial Calendar Components

• Alignment with your buying cycle phases and your audience.
• SEO Elements: keywords that dovetail with other content and embedded in Topics and Titles
• Who’s on First: Department or Individual content “owners” - when content will be produced, on what platforms and social channels.
• Timeline and Schedule with built in Rise and Repeat Cycles
• Categories: highlighting: Newsletters, Event Attendance, PR Updates, Key Marketing Initiatives
• Distribution and Syndication (Platforms, Apps and Process)
• Industry News that’s topical
• Images, Videos or Infographics Integration sourced via: Blog, Web Site, Pinterest, etc.
• Should be coordinated with social media marketing initiatives: links shared, docs, White Papers, blogs, emails. etc.

You don’t necessarily need all of these elements we just listed. What gets in the way for most brands and businesses is the “OMG” factor: “you mean we need all of these geeky marketing elements.

In a word: No. Start small and build up and out.

Here’s a basic Editorial Calendar in a Color Coded Spreadsheet (click image to enlarge)

Here is a Stellar Example of a Very Sophisticated Editorial Calendar: used with permission via Pam Dyer and it can be Downloaded Via our Drobox Folder

An Editorial Calendar is only as good as the source material your curating and sharing. It’s somewhat of a horizontal  marketing tool that’s now in vogue, driven as we said at the outset of this post, by the glut of content streaming in via all devices. But, it will any business add more structure and discipline to your content marketing processes, which is always a good thing.

As you become familiar with an Editorial Calendar come back to it once a quarter and drop in another element or tow to improve your overall content marketing strategy and tactics.

Seven Key Content Marketing Metrics

1. Stellar curated content still drives engagement: an editorial calendar is just a horizontal tool.
2. Mobile usage is driving 30-50% of content “consumption” (be mobile savvy) but “brand stories” may drive significantly more engagement: mix and match the size of your content (long or short form).
3. Content syndication is increasingly more important in today’s “technology drenched’ world: use rinse and repeat cycles to reach today’s distracted consumer and professional.
4. Personalty still drives content engagement for B2B and B2C brands and it’s becoming increasingly more important to use imagery that gets attention in the marketplace. Note: LinkedIn’s move to an image centric feed.
5. Content Measurement is Critical: have a finite grasp of these ROI drivers: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Return Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Engagement/Virality (ReTweets, Shares, Likes, Comments), Revenue or Lead Generation.
6. Mix and match “snackable” short form content (images, video, infographics) with “evergreen” high value content to drive brand engagement, incremental traffic and revenue.
7. Build in cross platform marketing on all top tier platforms: Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook using plugin to automatically “push” content to other platforms or pure play content syndication cloud based services.

Smartphone Takeaways

Your business should be spending as much time marketing your content as creating it.

Every market is crowded and over 2 gigabytes of content are uploaded to the web every second. That’s a lot of content.

Think of an editorial calendar as a tool that will help your company take a more disciplined approach to creating and syndicating content.

For a deeper dive into content marketing platforms and processes this blog post will give you a good 30K foot perspective on process, apps, tools and twenty five top tier marketing platforms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the web morphs to a more visual medium creative storytelling is moving front and center as way for brands to build engagement and virality.

GoPro is leading the way, which you would expect with a lifestyle product that records every conceivable type of physical activity anywhere and anytime.

GoPro has done a wonderful job with their “GoPro: Lions The New Endangered Species” featuring Kevin Richardson a South African Zookeeper and naturalist along the lines of Jane Goodall.

Immersive Storytelling Cuts through the Cluttered World Your Customers Live In!

Not just recording the story but jumping in and helping to make the story come to life! The product is part of the story.

Their cameras are the di rigeur equipment, from aging week-end warriors to awe-inspiring young athletes who are not only redefining the boundaries for athletic activities, but how they are recorded and shared!

In today’s on the go, live it share it anytime/anywhere generations - content is everywhere and anything and its being blasted so fast across the social web it’s mind boggling!

This sheer volume of web content is making curation an essential skill for any brand that wants to ride this new wave of endless lifestyle loops.

GoPro Defining Modern Immersive Content Storytelling

All great content is curated for impact, brand resonance and piquing the interest of the viewer. This just under fifteen minute all GoPro filmed vignette does that: it grabs  and keeps your attention not in a cheap “twerking selfie” image but showing how a human and animals have bonded in a shape-shifting way that redefines your expectations.

But, it’s not cheap theatrics, there’s an embedded story here that informs and engages the viewer in a meaningful way.

Something has resonated with the broad web community. This YouTube video has been viewed 5.7 million times, has 50K likes, generating a Huff Po article and USA Today and countless blog posts, Tweets, shares across the broad social web.

It’s a meaningful story with just a touch of commercial “interruption” at the start (just a second or two) and at the end. GoPro wisely opted to minimize their brand’s embedded commercial - it’s tasteful and well done.

Not in your face, as some would expect for this younger skewing demographic brand.

Did GoPro consciously choose a video with an environmental theme to broaden their reach with a demographic that is environmentally aware?

It’s difficult to know; but, if they did, it’s a masterful way to get their cameras and brand in front of an audience that up till now may only have minimal awareness of their brand.

Why this Long Form Content Rocks & What it Teaches us About Content Marketing

High quality story is the foundation of any long form content. This video grabs you within thirty seconds (“lions hugging a human”) and then keeps your attention blending jaw dropping shots of Kevin Richardson with lions and hyenas, with am embedded message about the environment.

There is minimal video production and authoring - part of the visual appeal is the natural look and feel of the video - it’s not slickly produced, with 20-something models lounging around and posing for the camera.

GoPro stayed out of the way of the content story. The “commercial” components are again subtle and minimal. No cheesy voice-over: “shot with a GoPro………”

The product (Go Pro’s Heroe2+) is part of the story. It’s used and embedded in the filming and takes product placement to a new level, while demonstrating (subtly) how sturdy the cameras are. Can your camera stand up to a lion chewing on it? Or, strapping the camera on to the back of a lion as GoPro did?

As a viewer, there’s an immediate connection with this story that draws you into the video  - who doesn’t like animals, especially top of the food chain lions hugging a human and hyenas making Kevin Richardson part of the pack hierarchy.

It connects GoPro’s brand with legacy content arching back to Jacque Costeau -  helping GoPro reach a demographic that doesn’t necessarily skew towards millennials, helping GoPro broaden their brand with boomers and environmentalists.

It’s curated content - the story, subject matter and  filming process done via human or animal mounted cameras and one crew safe & sound in an enclosure all reflect an awareness of good content marketing precepts.

 What Makes a Brand Stand Out Using the Power of Visual Storytelling

1. Your building authenticity with your community: visual’s impact drives relevance.
2. As technology “takes over our lives” visual strikes a chord within others. Sensory currency is “real” to the visitor.
3. Visuals drive cultural relevancy that engages the visitor in ways that text cannot equate with.
4. “Archetypes” have been around since the days of ancient cave man paintings and visuals are a powerful storytelling tools that feature “heroines” and “heroes” embedded in brand storytelling.
5. Visuals cut through the clutter and chatter that’s “smartphone” driven for many consumers and professionals.

Well Crafted Beautifully Written Content may still be Ugly for the Reader

You may not have the content marketing resources of a GoPro.

Regardless, tell your story with all the passion you can muster for your business.

Story and passion are so much more important than artificial artifice with the words you are using in content.