Niche Audiences Need Custom Content

When content marketing fails, a post-mortem examination of why it failed should start with the content itself. One of the mistakes companies often make is producing content that has no value to its audience because the content is too generic to meet their needs.

B2B companies in particular make this mistake. Their marketing departments determine that their niche audience needs information on a topic, but the information they provide ends up repeating conventional wisdom instead of illustrating specific examples.

For example, let’s say you are a brewery. You determine that your audience of bar and restaurant owners need help with marketing themselves. So you decide to adopt a content marketing strategy and publish a series of articles on how social media can help their marketing.

Here’s where your company goes wrong: The articles you publish talk about what Twitter and Facebook, are, who founded them, etc. You include such riveting advice as “Don’t tweet what you had for lunch” and “Post regularly.”  There’s probably a Top Ten list or two thrown in there for good measure. The information you provided is already out there. It’s widespread. It’s not proprietary. Its value is minimal.

What your customers need are specific examples of what other companies in their industry are doing successfully and how they did it. In this case, track down the bar and restaurant owners who use social media tools successfully, find out how they did it, ask about their processes and how they keep to them. Ask questions that are specific to the industry itself. The more specific and aligned with what your customers do, the more valuable your content will be to them.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy

Content Marketing Is Like Homebrewing

Besides content marketing, one of the things I’m really interested in is homebrewing. When I first started, every part of making beer was fun except sanitizing the equipment. Unfortunately, the quickest way to screw up a batch of beer is to use equipment that hasn’t been properly sanitized.

A lot of marketers have the same attitude toward writing. Creating  a campaign, setting a strategy and articulating goals are the fun parts for most marketers. Sitting down to write the actual content is the hard part. Unfortunately, the quickest way to screw up a content marketing plan is to use content that hasn’t been properly developed.

So, with apologies to author Charlie Papazian, I’d like to pass on some [modified] words from The Complete Joy of Homebrewing that I think should also serve as a mantra to content marketers and writers:

“[Writing good content] is one of the easiest and most fundamentally important things that you will do. If you do not take care to [write good content], the best [content marketing plan] in the world will result in disappointment. The thing to remember is to relax and not worry…do what must be done. It is easy. It is no big deal.”

By the way, I realize that writing and sanitizing equipment are two different things. One takes training and skill; the other is a task most anyone can do. But what I’m getting at is the importance of your attitude.  Most people are better writers than they think, and they have a lot more knowledge to share than they realize. The important part is to relax, not worry and start typing.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Development, Content Marketing

Be Known for Your Content Products

I’ve been doing some writing for a limousine services company in the area. Specifically, I’m helping optimize their website for search engines. But I got to thinking, how could a content marketing campaign work for them? What would it look like? Given some resources, what could this company do beyond search engine optimization that would set it apart?

Even small businesses with few marketing resources can benefit from content marketing. One way in which they can benefit is to think of “content products” that would set them apart from the competition. For example, a limousine services company could create any number of products with valuable, relevant, entertaining content that would support its marketing:

• Hire five or six writers to take limo rides in their city and write about the experience. Create a book or microsite with the stories. The key is to hire good and/or well-known writers.
• Create a microsite where customers who hired limos for weddings can post stories about the experience and photos.
• Inside the Chauffer’s Mind: content about the tips and tricks chauffeurs know and use.
• A booklet or microsite: The Chauffer’s Guide to Washington, DC (or whatever city). Interview a dozen or so chauffeurs about their favorite places in the city, the must-see, most popular or hidden gems.

These are just a couple I’ve come up with real fast. All of them depend on good writing and proper project management, but all of them could potentially be products of their own that draw customers into a new kind of relationship with the company. Also, they are the kind of products that support SEO when they’re online.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Content Products

Expensive but Not Volatile: Invest in Content Marketing

When creating a content strategy, one decision marketers make is whether to build a model around proprietary content or aggregated content. Each model has advantages and disadvantages. The model built on aggregated content is typically less expensive but also easily imitated.

Owning proprietary content, on the other hand, is like investing in real estate. There can be peaks and troughs in its short-term value, but it generally always increases over time.

Another downside to aggregated content is that is undervalues content development overall. There’s a general attitude among business owners that content is inexpensive to create or that it should be. To the extent that it does cost something, why pay to create it when it can be aggregated inexpensively from other sources?

I’ll tell you why—. Anyone can set up Google alerts, find stories on particular topics and link to them through their website or blog. The barriers to entry for competitors are low. Any organization with enough cash can replicate the technology and scale necessary to reach many eyeballs with aggregated content. What starts to distinguish companies is original content, whether that’s adding value to aggregated content or creating new content completely.

Content can be easy and inexpensive to create. Good content, on the other hand, is much more difficult and costs more. The dividends are also greater.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Marketing Strategies Articles, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy

Two Ways to Spruce Up Aggregated Content

A simple way for companies to engage in content marketing is to aggregate and disseminate content of interest to their customers on their website, through e-newsletters, etc. Aggregating content has a few benefits, including low cost and time commitment relative to creating original content.

The downside to aggregating content is that it’s not that difficult to do. Your competitors can just as easily find and distribute the same content that you do. In fact, it’s just as likely that your customers will find the content themselves through Google Alerts, RSS Feeds, etc. In other words, the barrier to entry is low.

Therefore, companies that want to distinguish themselves by aggregating content must do more than e-mail links to news stories and blog posts that they think are interesting. Here are two examples for sprucing up aggregated content:

Idea #1: Add commentary to your aggregated content.
Example: Fanball.com

When you join a fantasy football league at Fanball.com, you can choose to receive its NFL Newsbreakers e-mail. The newsletter consists of football news aggregated from various sources, mostly newspapers. Each news item contains three parts: A Headline, The News and Our View.

Aug 19, 2009 11:47 PM CDT
Murphy returns to practice

The News
Louis Murphy returned to practice Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle . He has been nursing a hip injury.

Our View
The fourth-round pick is a great athlete and will push for playing time in the future, but his fantasy value looks to be limited as a rookie while learning the ropes as a deep reserve.

Too many companies mail newsletters with a headline and link and nothing else. The lesson here is that aggregated content is more valuable when it contains a summary and, more importantly, analysis.

Idea #2: Compile aggregated content into a narrative.
Example: New York Magazine (It Happened Last Week)

New York magazine used to publish an item every week that aggregated the week’s news, but two features distinguished it. First of all, the news was organized by a theme, which was suggested in the title. Second, the news was presented as a narrative, a single story, centered on the theme.

A good writer can compile aggregated news quickly in this fashion, yet the difference is huge compared to companies who don’t polish the raw content into something valuable.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy

Prompts for CEOs Who Blog

Getting CEOs of companies to blog or write columns can be extremely challenging, but as part of a content strategy, their writing can have great benefits. Here are just a few quick prompts to help your CEO get started:

1. How do you balance work and personal life?
2. What’s the hardest management challenge you’ve ever faced?
3. What’s the smartest business decision you’ve ever made?
4. What’s the biggest sale you’ve ever made and how you did it?
5. How you keep employees motivated?
6. How you keep yourself motivated?

One reason people read columns and blogs is to get to know the person writing them, so anything that draws on your CEO’s personal experience as a successful businessperson would be good material.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy

Why Journalists Aren’t The Best Content Producers: Defending the MFA

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad I went to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing. My motivation to study writing was not because I thought I’d be the next great American novelist or poet. I always knew I was going to graduate and get a  job. I went because I wanted to study with good writers, and I liked the workshop format, where you write and get feedback from other writers on a regular basis.

Now that I’ve been in publishing for a decade and have seen firsthand how journalism and content marketing intersect, I’m glad I went to writing school. I’m glad because it turns out that having an MFA gives me a competitive advantage. When I hear formally trained journalists and tech gurus talk about “content development,” I almost always feel like I’ve got a leg up on the competition.

I think the purview of content development belongs to writers more often than journalists. What’s the difference? From what I’ve heard, journalists don’t learn how to write in J-School or at least not how to write broadly in any number of genres. They learn skills that I didn’t have, namely how to conduct effective interviews, but those are skills that came quickly to me when I actually worked for a publication. In fact, having the confidence and experience as a writer to take any raw content and transform it into readable, relevant material made learning to conduct interviews even easier.

Content marketers, including a lot of former journalists, stress the importance of content, but unless they’re students of the craft, the kind of content they can advocate and produce is limited. A good creative writing program promotes inventiveness and risk-taking. You learn to master genres and then reinvent them. When I took my first job writing for a trade magazine, I recognized what I was writing as another genre.

A good creative writing program also sensitizes you to the words you choose, how they relate to each other and, most importantly, how they’ll be received by an audience. The origins of form and genre are important, so when I write a how-to story, it’s informed by models as far back as the Kama Sutra.

The same goes for lists and tips. So many marketers advocate the use of tips, as if the form precedes the content. It might explain why so many of the tips that get sent around are superficial (“Set Goals,” “Listen to Customers,” “Be Proactive”). I’m positive that if lists like these made it into a creative writing workshop, they’d be torn to shreds.

A misconception about creative writing programs is that the students are poor writers or dramatic personalities and flaky, wanna-be literary elites. Some of that is true, but it’s also true that many talented writers—masters of the craft—study in creative writing programs. The best of the best in these programs are just as smart, ambitious and hard-working as the best of the best in a J-School program. Keep that in mind when you’re looking for content producers, especially if you’re paying someone to develop content that isn’t straight news.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Development, Content Marketing

Content Products Equal Cash

First of all, don’t think of content as something you must give away for free. Content is widely available and, frankly, it’s easy to produce, but it’s not easy to produce good content. You get what you pay for, and if you pay for good content, you should look for ways to get a return on that investment.

Some content marketing consultants will tell you to focus on non-revenue returns, or they promise that offering valuable, relevant content for free will pay off in sales down the road. That’s a viable business model, but I challenge you to think about how to generate cash immediately. I challenge you to create content products that generate revenue directly.

To start, does your organization think about its content in terms of product? When you talk about the value you offer customers, can you point to tangible products? Or do you use vague terms such as “expertise,” “education” and “community?”

Expertise isn’t a product, but books, magazines and catalogs are. Education isn’t a product, but webinars, videos and podcasts are. Community and networking aren’t products, but events and online forums are.

The kinds of content products you create are going to depend on a number of variables, including your target audience, and budget and staff resources. Whatever products you choose to develop, remember that it’s not the platform that makes the product valuable. It’s the content the product delivers. For example, a newsletter is a product, but it’s not a product that generates cash if the content is awful, because no one will read it.

Developing content for products that generate cash is different than content development for marketing. In some way, the stakes are higher. As soon as you start asking customers to pay, the content you offer has to meet different standards. Here are some suggested criteria for content products designed to generate revenue:

1. Invest in Proprietary Content: Develop one-of-a-kind content that can’t be easily recreated. In terms of product, create content that by its very nature creates a barrier to entry for competitors. One example might be a comprehensive, year-long research project that results in proprietary statistics.
2. Invest in Exclusive Content: Developing exclusive content means a few things. On the one hand, it means cultivating sources and conducting reporting that leads to exclusive knowledge or information. At the same time, it means disseminating the information exclusively. It’s nearly impossible to keep information contained for long, but if it’s truly exclusive, enough people will pay to see it instantly, and you have an opportunity to generate revenue.
3. Invest in Long-Term Projects: Again, if you think about research as the basis for content products, think about funding long-term projects. They can create a barrier to entry, lend themselves to exclusivity and they are easily repurposed into a variety of platforms. Instead of a book, think of a series of books based on a single topic or study.
4. Invest in Professional Packaging: Templates are useful and have allowed many companies to arrange and disseminate content, but they limit flexibility. Hire a good designer to package your products, someone who can apply design theory to your strategic goals.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing and Sales, Custom Publishing, Content Products

Five Content Ideas for Communications, Public Relations and Marketing Professionals

Although communications, public relations and marketing functions are separated in many organizations, content is the bridge that connects them. Offering useful, compelling content is a sound strategy for anyone engaged in these roles. Here are five tips to help you move in that direction:

1. Research and Statistics

Communications and PR: Media love proprietary research and statistics. It helps them answer the question, “why is this story newsworthy?” If you don’t have the resources to generate your own statistics, visit census.gov and other public sites to find relevant information. In this way, you can help the media by doing some research for them.

Marketing: Share some stats with customers about what’s selling the most, or conduct a focus group and share the results with prospects and customers. Open a window to your processes and watch them respond.

2. Roundups, Rankings, Lists and Tips

Communications and PR: Press releases and story pitches that organize info into roundups, rankings, lists and tips are easy for the media to scan and even easier to publish in the format you send. Because tips and roundups are scalable, media outlets can easily add, subtract or modify the content to meet their needs.

Marketing: Customers and prospects want to know about your products’ features and benefits. Why not offer them a list of list of ways to use your product, or tips on how to get the most out of the product?

3. Have a Sense of Humor

Communications and PR: Some companies issue “fake” press releases on April 1, filled with tongue-in-cheek news.

Marketing: Hire a cartoonist to draw a one-panel joke about your  company or industry.

4. Seasonal and Other Timely Events

Communications and PR: If it’s Christmas, make a list or ranking of the best gift ideas. Always look to the season or current events for news pegs that will attract media interest. But make sure it’s relevant. Don’t shoehorn your company and its products into an angle that makes no sense.

Marketing: Use your delivery platforms to keep customers and prospects up-to-date on current events in your industry. Relate what’s happening and illustrate how your company fits in.

5. Q&As

Communications and PR: The Q&A is another format that’s easy for media to read quickly and even easier to incorporate into their publications. Choose a compelling subject from your company to interview, ask candid questions about your industry, publish candid answers and steer away from questions and responses about your products. Let the attribution be the link to your company, not the content.

Marketing: If you issue e-newsletters, include Q&As with prominent members of your customer’s communities. Again, focus on candid questions and responses, not on your products and services.

Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing, Marketing Strategies Articles, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Strategy

Marketing with YouTube Videos

Videos—especially those uploaded to YouTube—can be powerful marketing vehicles, but they’re still only as effective as the content they deliver. Before you decide to use videos as marketing vehicles, determine who’s going to develop the content. Do you have in-house staff with experience writing, filming and editing video? Do they need it?

Many publishing organizations now purchase Flip cameras for staff and have them record interviews and otherwise develop content. It seems like an inexpensive way to create video content, but a little expertise can go a long way toward making your videos more effective. And that expertise doesn’t have to cost a lot more.

To illustrate my point, compare the following videos. First, a disclaimer: These videos were not solicited, sponsored or endorsed by Turkey Hill. My brother and I made “Man Loves His Turkey Hill Iced Tea” as an act of love and slightly obsessive fandom and not as part of Sway Engine.

I hope the differences are obvious. Ours has a narrative structure with varied cinematography. It was filmed and cut by a trained, skilled editor (my bro). It has a purpose and an audience in mind. Is it perfect? No, but it also didn’t take long to make, given the difference in quality.

Imagine if your organization wanted a similar video. Our relatively quick project took less than 36 hours total to write, film, produce and upload. With basically no marketing, at least 300 people have watched it already in the last three weeks.

For those of you to whom ROI matters, how much is this worth paying for? Let’s say that instead of 300 people, you’re going to reach 10,000 people. When you consider that this is the kind of content that will last forever, how much is a good investment for the life of the project?

My point is, a little expertise goes a long way, and eventually organizations that engage in content marketing will need that expertise to maintain a competitive edge. And not just to produce videos.

Filed under: Content Delivery, Content Development, Content Marketing, Content Development, On Video, Viral Marketing