Wednesday, February 1, 2017
7 Tips to Take Your Content From “Meh” to Amazing
One of the greatest struggles content marketers face right now is creating engaging content. More than 70% of marketers have made it a top priority this year to address that and make stronger connections with their audiences.
I think a primary cause for that struggle is that we’re only just a few years past search engine updates that changed, rather quickly, the way content is produced. The days of short, shallow content for the sake of building links are gone.
But change sometimes comes slowly. If you want to stand out, you have to produce better content. That’s all there is to it.
Your customers won’t settle for something boring, shallow, and uninteresting. They have problems, and they want answers to help them address those problems.
Here’s how you can transform your “meh” content into something amazing that your audience has been longing for.
1. Hook them in the opening
The introduction to your content should be the most impactful, hooking your audience when they first read it. You need a compelling intro that isn’t very long but provides an effective tease about what’s to come.
A smart move is to make an emotional impact on the audience within the first few sentences. If you’ve done your audience research, you can use your intro to create a sense of empathy around the main point of the article.
The next segment of the intro can set up the need or desire for a solution, followed by a promise of information to come. Other strong introductions could include:
- Engaging use of storytelling
- Facts and statistics, especially those that might be surprising
- A position or belief contrary to the norm
2. Add visual engagement
Even the driest textbooks I had in school had pictures and visual aids to help break up the blocks of text in each section. Few things will make someone bounce from your content faster than being greeted by a wall of text.
Images and other visual elements don’t just break up the content to make skimming easier; they create a more immersive experience that helps the reader remember your content. It also makes them more likely to read it.
Adding relevant images increases people’s willingness to read by as much as 80%.
Visuals are so effective at promoting engagement that 55% of marketers say creating visual content is among their top priorities for 2016.
Just don’t rely on stock photos.
Find or create images that are highly relevant and fit the context of the cotent. Use Pixabay, Flickr, and Google’s Advanced Image search to find creative commons images, or try using Canva to create your own.
3. The right headline matters
Whenever you’re creating an article or post, create headlines that match these criteria:
- Short – keep it under 20 words
- Impactful – capture their attention and generate interest
- Relevant – no clickbait; match audience intent to the content.
Even the most value-packed content will be ignored if you don’t have a great title that connects with your readers.
Keep in mind that only about 80% of people will read your headline, and of those 80% only about 20% will actually read your content.
When I’m producing content, I can sometimes get lucky and come up with a great headline quickly. More often than not, I spend as much time coming up with a headline as I do writing content.
4. Find the angle
If you come up with a topic for your audience, there’s a good chance that someone has already covered it. That doesn’t mean you can’t write about it or shouldn’t. You just need to have a unique approach and make sure you’re providing original value.
Every piece of content you write has 3 aspects:
- Topic – the overarching subject for your article
- Point – The key idea you’re trying to get across
- Angle – Your specific position on the topic and point
Go after common topics or even trending, heavily-covered topics. Just make sure you have a good angle. When readers are digging into a topic, it will be refreshing for them to find content with a different perspective.
5. Give your content a voice
One of the purposes of producing content is to build trust with your audience to establish authority. You’ll never achieve that if your content reads like a textbook or technical piece. That content has no voice or personality to it.
If you’re promoting your own brand, write in your own voice. Think about your statements using your voice before you write them. Does it sound like you?
For your brand, develop a voice that matches the personality you’ve already created. Content created by a brand with a lighthearted style, like Taco Bell, has a very different voice from the voice of a more serious, driven brand, like Nike, for example.
When you write with a consistent voice, you make a stronger connection with your audience. Content feels more like a dialogue and less like a learning experience.
6. Chase the one thing
As mentioned, your content has a point or key idea you’re trying to get across.
That’s singular: one point.
Every word and sentence in your content should lead toward that point and support it.
Anything that doesn’t engage the reader and help them reach an understanding of that point is only taking up space. Cut it.
7. Match depth and length
I still stumble across the occasional article that dates back to pre-Google updates.
While researching topics and ideas, I see that one 300- or 400-word post that pops up. No images or subheadings, just a little garden wall of text.
They were short, punchy, and often without much value to them. That’s expected, given the length.
What really surprises me is the posts in excess of 1,500 words that have virtually no substance and could be reduced to 400 words without losing anything. They are as vast as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle.
The length of the content isn’t really important; it’s the depth that you have to be mindful of.
Seth Godin is well known for his short, pithy blog posts. They work for him.
Buffer, on the other hand, is known for long-form posts packed with insight and takeaways.
No matter how long of a post you write, make sure the depth matches the length.
Conclusion
A lot of content marketers I talk to say the same thing: “I’m having a hard time making our content really amazing.”
I get that. It’s not easy.
To make the struggle even tougher, more companies than ever are doing content marketing!
Today, to do better, you have to outdo hundreds of other competitors.
Easy? No. But doable? Yes.
What I’ve found to be effective is sticking with it and going back to the basics like the depth of content and the engagement of the headline.
You don’t necessarily need more skill or talent. By taking the right steps in the right area, you’ll be able to level up and improve your content game.
Do you struggle with creating better content? What do you do to step up the quality and value of your content?
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How to find protests in your city when you don't know where to start
If you feel a policy, law or even a world leader needs changing, the first step is simple: you protest.
Protesting has long been a way for marginalized communities to combat oppression. But the act of defiance and dissent is currently having a mainstream moment, thanks to the newly minted presidency of Donald J. Trump.
With many progressives passionate about contesting Trump's policies and actions, marches and protests have been popping up across the U.S. on a weekly — and even daily — basis. It's now common for at-risk communities and their allies to take to the streets after work, between errands and around their regularly scheduled lives. Read more...
More about Social Media, Advocacy, Activism, Protest, and Social Good
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The 'resistance' is loving conspiracy theories about a power-hungry Trump
Conservative bloggers and opinion writers don't have a monopoly on spreading their political conspiracy theories.
After President Donald Trump signed his executive order prohibiting people from Muslim-majority nations from traveling to the U.S., activists mobilized against the constitutionally questionable ban that caused chaos in airports nationwide over the weekend.
But their protests may be just what Trump's inner circle wanted, according to conspiracy theories that have been blowing up left-wing corners of the internet.
More about Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Immigration, Politics, and Social Media 
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4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football
Author: Randy Frisch
They say the toughest position on a football field is the quarterback. You’ve got hundreds of plays to learn and optimize. You need to learn how to play in the scorching sun (think Miami) and adjust to the bitter cold a week later (think Green Bay). You get hit with a blow when you least expect it and need to dash to an opening that presents itself. Your team counts on your strategies to win the game and you take the blame for losses. Whether your name is Montana, Favre, or Brady, you are in control. And there’s nothing better than holding the ball and knowing what’s possible when you have control.
Before I lose those of you who are not football fans, I want you to reread the entire opening paragraph with a revised first sentence: “They say the toughest position in a high growth company is the demand generation quarterback.”
Okay, I guess we don’t have to truly adapt to the weather as marketers, but geography plays a factor! With Super Bowl 51 just around the corner, I decided to have some fun and draw some parallels between football and demand generation marketing. Feel free to drop yourself into the quarterback slot here and see if you can relate.
1. It’s a Game of Inches
Has a bad football movie ever been made? My wife, who’s the last person to suggest watching a real-life game, is always up for a football flick. And perhaps the best line ever is the reminder from Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday that “it’s a game of inches.”
After hearing that line, can’t you relate as a marketer? From the subject line tweak on your email campaign to the right CTA beside your latest blog post–the details are what make the difference. Don’t count on the Hail Mary.
2. Control and Optimize
Just as a football team can always prepare a bit more by analyzing videos, you’ll never hear a modern marketer tell you they have nothing to optimize. The field is always changing. One of the tools our team uses to ensure we can optimize and maintain control is Unbounce. Many of our campaigns require landing pages either to gate content or create an event sign up page. With Unbounce, our team is able to control and optimize the little details as the campaign progresses by making changes on the fly.
When we launched our first user conference Uberflip Experience last year, we were constantly adjusting messaging, pricing, and CTAs to entice customers and prospects to take a chance and come check out our first big event. With Unbounce, we were able to adjust these variables within minutes, as often as needed, to drive registrations to the conference.
3. It Takes More Than One Play to Score
In 2016, the Patriots scored 3.6 touchdowns per game but needed 66.3 plays per game to get there. Sometimes in football, we see exciting plays where a kickoff is returned for a touchdown, a first pass of the game is thrown downfield for 6, or an interception is converted without the offense coming on the field. But the reality is that most points in a game are the result of several downs to take a team into the end zone.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing better than having a prospect Google your company and phone in to say, “I just want the best price and need to be up and running today.” Love those days! But let’s be honest. Most businesses create a sequence of experiences and events that they offer in the right place, and at the right time to get a prospect over the line.
Back to our quarterback, our VP of Marketing, Shannon uses a combination of tools, such as Marketo and Bizible, to track the various “plays” needed to get a prospect over the line. Just as the quarterback would like to execute a set number of plays when there’s a minute to go and they’re down by 5, the goal in content marketing, naturally, is to minimize the number of touches needed to get someone through the buyer’s journey. We can’t rush it or skip some steps. We must learn which plays are the most important and impactful.
I’ll give you a quick example. Last year, I was standing with our CEO at an event we sponsored, Sirius Decisions Summit. We were talking about going bigger on that event for the next year and debating whether we could pull out of another industry conference to create the budget. Just as we landed on cutting the event, a prospect walked over and said, “Hey Randy, we met at last year’s conference and this time I’ve got my boss here. Could you give him that demo you gave me last time?” As he walked away more or less ready to buy, I couldn’t help but laugh since that was the same event we were about to cut. I learned last week that this prospect recently became a customer.
Although we wanted to throw our investment all into one play, we realized that winning this prospect’s business happened throughout multiple plays. In fact, this event was probably just getting him into the end zone, with a steady drip of relevant emails and sales touches to add the final nudges.
4. The Quarterback Can’t Win Alone
I started by giving all the glory to the quarterback. Don’t get me wrong. Shannon has some mad demand gen and marketing skills, but there are only so many quarterback sneaks or runs that can happen in a game. The marketing quarterback needs a strong offensive line and receivers to make each play happen. On our team, Shannon relies on our offensive lineswomen: Kelly (product marketing), Tara (demand generation), Maya (events and community), and Katie (social). She also needs help from the sidelines from people like Quentin, our graphic designer. And of course, no play would start without a solid snapper–luckily we have Jermaine Reyes, our content manager. Bottom line is that every member of her team ensures she gets time to release the ball.
So if you’re into the analogy, you’re probably trying to figure out who the receivers and running backs are. Well, sales of course! Assuming the ball is the prospect (and unless you’re running an online sale), most of us rely on salespeople to get the deal over the line. On our team, we have a sales team of just over 30 members, all ready to take an MQL and work through the plays to get the deal done. Our salespeople actually need to wear a marketing hat too, because some prospects require a bit of guidance to progress.
One way our sales team coordinates with the marketing quarterback is by choosing which content to share with their audience. This is easier said than done. In many companies, salespeople search a dated wiki article, bulky excel file of links, or actually search Google for their company’s own content. Fortunately, our team has full access to our marketing content hub so they can quickly send off successful content passes to their prospects.
This ensures that the entire sequence from first-touch to last follows our brand guidelines and overall core messaging. The last thing you want is a wide receiver celebrating too quickly while heading downfield.
At the end of the day, as marketers, we need to always be dialed in to keep the leads and customers coming. Just look back to about a year ago from this time today, where neither of the 2016 Super Bowl teams even made the 2017 playoffs! What worked last year may not work tomorrow. There is no such thing as auto-pilot for marketers. Those who purchase an engagement platform and assume it’s cruise control are destined to early elimination. So whether you’re cheering for the Pats or Falcons, let’s hope the coach and quarterback have rallied their team with a few trick plays to win the customer (I mean game).
What other similarities have you seen between football teams and demand generation teams? Share your observations in the comments below!
4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post 4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
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4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football
Author: Randy Frisch
They say the toughest position on a football field is the quarterback. You’ve got hundreds of plays to learn and optimize. You need to learn how to play in the scorching sun (think Miami) and adjust to the bitter cold a week later (think Green Bay). You get hit with a blow when you least expect it and need to dash to an opening that presents itself. Your team counts on your strategies to win the game and you take the blame for losses. Whether your name is Montana, Favre, or Brady, you are in control. And there’s nothing better than holding the ball and knowing what’s possible when you have control.
Before I lose those of you who are not football fans, I want you to reread the entire opening paragraph with a revised first sentence: “They say the toughest position in a high growth company is the demand generation quarterback.”
Okay, I guess we don’t have to truly adapt to the weather as marketers, but geography plays a factor! With Super Bowl 51 just around the corner, I decided to have some fun and draw some parallels between football and demand generation marketing. Feel free to drop yourself into the quarterback slot here and see if you can relate.
1. It’s a Game of Inches
Has a bad football movie ever been made? My wife, who’s the last person to suggest watching a real-life game, is always up for a football flick. And perhaps the best line ever is the reminder from Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday that “it’s a game of inches.”
After hearing that line, can’t you relate as a marketer? From the subject line tweak on your email campaign to the right CTA beside your latest blog post–the details are what make the difference. Don’t count on the Hail Mary.
2. Control and Optimize
Just as a football team can always prepare a bit more by analyzing videos, you’ll never hear a modern marketer tell you they have nothing to optimize. The field is always changing. One of the tools our team uses to ensure we can optimize and maintain control is Unbounce. Many of our campaigns require landing pages either to gate content or create an event sign up page. With Unbounce, our team is able to control and optimize the little details as the campaign progresses by making changes on the fly.
When we launched our first user conference Uberflip Experience last year, we were constantly adjusting messaging, pricing, and CTAs to entice customers and prospects to take a chance and come check out our first big event. With Unbounce, we were able to adjust these variables within minutes, as often as needed, to drive registrations to the conference.
3. It Takes More Than One Play to Score
In 2016, the Patriots scored 3.6 touchdowns per game but needed 66.3 plays per game to get there. Sometimes in football, we see exciting plays where a kickoff is returned for a touchdown, a first pass of the game is thrown downfield for 6, or an interception is converted without the offense coming on the field. But the reality is that most points in a game are the result of several downs to take a team into the end zone.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing better than having a prospect Google your company and phone in to say, “I just want the best price and need to be up and running today.” Love those days! But let’s be honest. Most businesses create a sequence of experiences and events that they offer in the right place, and at the right time to get a prospect over the line.
Back to our quarterback, our VP of Marketing, Shannon uses a combination of tools, such as Marketo and Bizible, to track the various “plays” needed to get a prospect over the line. Just as the quarterback would like to execute a set number of plays when there’s a minute to go and they’re down by 5, the goal in content marketing, naturally, is to minimize the number of touches needed to get someone through the buyer’s journey. We can’t rush it or skip some steps. We must learn which plays are the most important and impactful.
I’ll give you a quick example. Last year, I was standing with our CEO at an event we sponsored, Sirius Decisions Summit. We were talking about going bigger on that event for the next year and debating whether we could pull out of another industry conference to create the budget. Just as we landed on cutting the event, a prospect walked over and said, “Hey Randy, we met at last year’s conference and this time I’ve got my boss here. Could you give him that demo you gave me last time?” As he walked away more or less ready to buy, I couldn’t help but laugh since that was the same event we were about to cut. I learned last week that this prospect recently became a customer.
Although we wanted to throw our investment all into one play, we realized that winning this prospect’s business happened throughout multiple plays. In fact, this event was probably just getting him into the end zone, with a steady drip of relevant emails and sales touches to add the final nudges.
4. The Quarterback Can’t Win Alone
I started by giving all the glory to the quarterback. Don’t get me wrong. Shannon has some mad demand gen and marketing skills, but there are only so many quarterback sneaks or runs that can happen in a game. The marketing quarterback needs a strong offensive line and receivers to make each play happen. On our team, Shannon relies on our offensive lineswomen: Kelly (product marketing), Tara (demand generation), Maya (events and community), and Katie (social). She also needs help from the sidelines from people like Quentin, our graphic designer. And of course, no play would start without a solid snapper–luckily we have Jermaine Reyes, our content manager. Bottom line is that every member of her team ensures she gets time to release the ball.
So if you’re into the analogy, you’re probably trying to figure out who the receivers and running backs are. Well, sales of course! Assuming the ball is the prospect (and unless you’re running an online sale), most of us rely on salespeople to get the deal over the line. On our team, we have a sales team of just over 30 members, all ready to take an MQL and work through the plays to get the deal done. Our salespeople actually need to wear a marketing hat too, because some prospects require a bit of guidance to progress.
One way our sales team coordinates with the marketing quarterback is by choosing which content to share with their audience. This is easier said than done. In many companies, salespeople search a dated wiki article, bulky excel file of links, or actually search Google for their company’s own content. Fortunately, our team has full access to our marketing content hub so they can quickly send off successful content passes to their prospects.
This ensures that the entire sequence from first-touch to last follows our brand guidelines and overall core messaging. The last thing you want is a wide receiver celebrating too quickly while heading downfield.
At the end of the day, as marketers, we need to always be dialed in to keep the leads and customers coming. Just look back to about a year ago from this time today, where neither of the 2016 Super Bowl teams even made the 2017 playoffs! What worked last year may not work tomorrow. There is no such thing as auto-pilot for marketers. Those who purchase an engagement platform and assume it’s cruise control are destined to early elimination. So whether you’re cheering for the Pats or Falcons, let’s hope the coach and quarterback have rallied their team with a few trick plays to win the customer (I mean game).
What other similarities have you seen between football teams and demand generation teams? Share your observations in the comments below!
4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post 4 Ways Demand Generation Marketing Is Like Football appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
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4 Brands That Hit A Home Run With User-Generated Content
In the early days of the web, brands were solely responsible for managing their own content marketing strategies. However, over the last few years, content marketing and branding have become far more collaborative. The result is a focus on user-generated content marketing.
However, some brands are reluctant to relinquish control of their content marketing strategies. They haven’t embraced user-generated content because they fear losing control of their branding message. This is a big mistake.
Your customers can be your strongest brand ambassadors. They can also help you scale your content marketing strategy far beyond what your resources would otherwise allow.
Here are some brands that have thrived off of user-generated content:
Burberry
Even after 160 years in the fashion industry, Burberry is still growing. The brand’s sales have nearly quadrupled in the last decade, and in 2016, it generated over $3 billion in revenue. Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts’ user-generated content strategy has played a large role in the brand’s growth. She launched a website called Art of the Trench, which allows Burberry customers to share photos of themselves wearing the brand’s products. The site also features a miniature social network, allowing people to interact and comment on other users’ pictures. The impact of this campaign was extremely tangible—within a year of the site launch, e-commerce sales rose by 50%.
Warby Parker
Many people are self-conscious about buying glasses, but Warby Parker gave customers a way to become social media superstars in the process. After introducing its home try-on service, the company asked customers to take pictures of their Warby Parker glasses and share them on social media with the hashtag #WarbyHomeTryOn.
Jordan Con, Marketing Manager at Inside Social, said that Warby Parker’s user-generated content both raised brand awareness and promoted its new service. “That’s two big steps in the customer journey taken care of.” Con told Skyword.
The company’s marketing strategy had other ancillary benefits. Based on the success of the #WarbyHomeTryOn campaign, Fast Company rated Warby Parker the most innovative company of 2015, an accolade which boosted brand awareness even further.
Square
Square is a payment processing software that businesses can use to accept payments from any location. Because the company’s product relies heavily on user experience, Square encouraged customers to share testimonials of their experience with the product.
Many customers participated which helped boost brand exposure considerably. These customer reviews took many forms, including video. For example, Applicable Geek, a well-known YouTube publisher, shared a Square review video with hundreds of thousands of viewers.
There are a couple of reasons why Square review videos were so successful. First, they did an exceptional job at generating brand exposure for Square. The videos also provided a very unbiased testimonial (even including some of the drawbacks), making viewers much more likely to trust the information they got from a review than from a sponsored advertisement.
Marc Jacobs
Fashion designer Marc Jacobs definitely has a knack for social media marketing. For his line Marc by Marc Jacobs, he created a very successful campaign that relied on user-generated content on Instagram.
Marc Jacobs’s Instagram campaign was different from typical user-generated marketing strategies in one key way. Jacobs offered fans a compelling incentive to participate—the chance to become a Marc Jacobs model. The campaign asked fashionistas to post Instagram videos of them discussing their fashion and beauty inspirations. All the entries were labeled with the hashtag #CastMeMarc, further amplifying the campaign.
The contest was even more popular than Jacobs anticipated. Over 70,000 people submitted entries in 2014. Because the campaign sparked so much interest, Jacobs relaunched the contest in 2016.
You Can’t Go Wrong With User-Generated Content
User-generated content can be a powerful way to get brand exposure. Don’t be worried about giving customers some influence on your brand—they already have that influence. With user-generated content, at least you have some control over the direction of your brand’s message.
The post 4 Brands That Hit A Home Run With User-Generated Content appeared first on Social Media Explorer.
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