Content That Works

Facebook is emerging as a very effective part of businesses' online marketing strategies, but take care not to neglect your own blog—or website—for your interaction on the social networking site.

On SmallBizTrends.com, Lisa Barone discusses the importance of continuing to focus on your own blog "to create your own authority and brand." She offers 10 reasons, including:

• "Blogging builds your house, not theirs": Focus on building your site and your authority by placing your original content on your site, not someone else's. It's one thing to syndicate content to Facebook—in fact, we encourage that here at Hammock. But don't give away your content and your audience completely to Facebook.
• Search engine rankings: If you stop posting original, dynamic content to your own blog, it will start to slip in search engine rankings. This not only hurts your authority but can end up hurting your ability to bring in new business.
• "You don't own Facebook": Barone reminds us that social networks evolve, change, and can always fade away (remember MySpace and Friendster?). "While it's never smart to put all your eggs in one basket, it's especially unwise to do it when you don't even own the basket," says Barone.

What do you know about your customers? Besides the fact that they all have at one time used your products or services? Drilling down to more specific information can help you improve your content marketing strategy, says Michael Thompson on btobonline.com.

"Collecting customer preferences allows you to have a better understanding of each customer's interests," he says. "This information becomes even more valuable when married with ongoing activity data, giving you a full view of your customers’ buying behavior and what drives them to take action. Collecting and harvesting this information allows you to create more relevant e-mail marketing communications, providing your customers with information they want, when they want it, to drive significantly higher sales conversion rates."

Lee Odden's article on content strategy vs. tactics got a lot of attention this week, with more than 40 people in his social network expressing their opinion on the value of social media experimentation.

One of my editors back in my newspaper days had a sign above his desk: "Everybody Loves a Dog Story."

Lesson learned: If you can work a cute puppy into your marketing message, people will come. Oh, they will come...

It takes more than establishing a presence on Facebook or Twitter, or launching a corporate blog to make effective use of social media. As Heidi Cohen points out, it takes a lot of work to make your social media marketing plans work.

As the new shiny thing on the marketing block, social media is filled with both mystery and promise. Many businesses are just beginning to get to acquainted with it, and may be infatuated with what it seems to promise.

If you read this blog regularly, though, you know we've said all along that social media is not magic. It's a tool and like any tool, it takes time and effort to wield effectively and to learn what it can and cannot.

Cohen's post summarizes points about effective social media that you'll find in other posts on Hammock.com. These include:

• Frequent updating
• Consistent messages
• Participation by management and employees
• Clear guidelines for contributors
• Dovetailing online and offline efforts
• Buy-in and commitment by leadership

She doesn't bullet-point it, but running through Cohen's post is a point we cannot stress enough: Your social media need targeted, meaningful and creative content—content that instructs, informs, motivates and, yes, entertains those who access it.

We'd also add that media such as blogs and websites should embody good, functional design that makes them easy to navigate and to find desired content.

Each of Cohen's tips suggests metrics to measure the effectiveness—or lack of effectiveness—of your social media strategy. That's something we do for clients—we call it a Content Marketing Intelligence Report or CMIR. Measure early, measure often, and respond to what you learn.

It's impossible not to get hooked on Zillow.com. The site provides historical data on housing purchasing prices and allows you, with a few clicks, to discover not only what your neighbor paid for his house, but also the purchase price of every house on your block. You can further feed your curiosity with the “Zestimate” feature, which provides an estimate on the value of your house today. It’s not hard to see why its site traffic last month was more than 10 million unique monthly visitors.

I won't lie: When the Associated Press announced they were changing the entry in their stylebook from "Web site" to "website," several of us here in the office danced a little happydance. Despite being users (and lovers) of AP style, that was one word we did not agree with them on.

Robert Niles of The Online Journalism Review explains the importance of the AP's change in this recent blog post, referencing a tweet he made regarding the change: "If you're publishing online, Google style (i.e. SEO) always trumps AP style."

I don't completely agree with Niles; I think it's still important for journalism students to learn AP style. But it's also important that they learn to write for the web.

People are using Google to look for your content, and if you're still writing like you're publishing a magazine or newspaper, by default you're making it more difficult for Google to find you and, therefore, connect a potential client, customer or reader with your content.

That's not to say that all AP style is Google offensive, because it's not. But if you're writing a piece for your website or blog, you can't ignore what search engines look for. SEO (or "Internet marketing," for those who think SEO is a negative term) isn't just making sure you have your title and alt tags in place. It also involves using words and phrases that accurately describe what your article or blog post is about in a web-friendly way to help Google connect the right searchers to you.

Read more from OJR: The Online Journalism Review.

Content marketing can be a cost-effective way to get the word out about a company, putting the small guys on a more even playing field with the big boys. One reason it's an economical strategy is because you can repurpose your content in dozens of different ways, turning a blog entry into a white paper or an article into the script of a video. The idea is to recycle content so that it "takes advantage of the different ways that your readers absorb information," says blogger Beth Hrusch.

So it's probably no surprise that Joe Pulizzi's blog on Junta42 is one of my go-tos for great content marketing insight, and Joe's latest post illustrates just why that is.

The post is a tough-love tirade about content marketing and how a company's content marketing strategy will fail if the content is all about the company and not about the customers' needs. He gives an example of content marketing that doesn't work (sorry, Ford Motors) and challenges companies to take this content marketing test.

Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign gained immortality for using the simple slogan "It's the economy, stupid" to beat incumbent President George H. W. Bush. Today's content marketers should remind themselves that "It's the content, stupid," that ultimately attracts, retains and persuades readers.

We've always said that, and it's nice to see another content marketing company, Pace Communications, agreeing with us in this blog post by account director Kerry Andrews – plus she quotes one of our favorite marketing bloggers, Seth Godin.

To expand on what she says about relevance, your messages have to work well with whatever formats or media you choose to convey them. Apple's new iPad has re-agitated the debate over online vs. print design, as well as how best to craft content for a new means of delivery.

Integrating medium, message and design should be part of your overall marketing strategy, and it brings into play designers, writers and marketing specialists. Ideally, the result will be, as Alexander Pope put it, "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Did you know that the average visitor to your website spends less than two minutes on each page? So you better get to your point—and fast. Writing for the web is different from writing for print, and so it’s important you adapt your content for those who skim, because the reality is that most of your visitors will only scan your content, rather than read it word for word. Ginny Redish’s book "Letting Go of the Words," focuses on how to create content that will "answer people’s questions and let them get on with their lives."

Blogging for your business is crucial, but working the right amount of marketing into your posts is also important, according to this recent article. It's one thing to blog, but if you want it to help boost your business, you've got to have a goal in mind and tailor the content of your blog to meet that goal, whether it be offering information, asking visitors to watch a video, or showcasing an example of your company's recent work.

Blogs are a great way to discuss business in a more laid-back manner than you might in a white paper or memo to a client, and you can't underestimate their value in connecting with customers -- current and potential.

Just remember: Content is king, but only if it's targeted, quality content.

If your content marketing plan incorporates online reviews of your product or service, don't fake them.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert makes some compelling arguments about why a company's social media programs should be about helping, not about selling, and lists several companies that approaching their social media programs in this correct way. From a content marketing standpoint, Geek Squad really stood out among the companies Baer name-checked. He said:

"Geek Squad makes its living providing technology configuration and repair services, via BestBuy stores everywhere. But yet Geek Squad has a YouTube channel that includes hundreds of videos showing people how to do it themselves. They aren’t trying to sell you services –- at least not at that point –- they are being helpful."

Sounds a lot like a good content marketing strategy, too.

One sign that social media are maturing is that content tricks such as lists and how-tos do no longer satisfy readers who have had their fill of hors d'oeuvres and hunger for something substantial.

That's the viewpoint of Drew Hawkins, who recently commented in a blog post titled "The Fall of Content" that "When creating content, whether it's your blog or Twitter or some other platform, you should ask yourself: are you posting something that you are genuinely passionate about? Or are you just trying to drive traffic at the expense of your reader?"

Customers are ready to move past design gimmicks - fascination by bright shiny objects - in favor of design and capabilities that make information easier to find and use. "Thou shalt not direct a visitor away from thy site" was never more true than today.

Thus content and design must work together - and also with your other marketing and communications strategies.

Hawkins isn't alone in this viewpoint or the first to express it — it's something Hammock has believed since its founding in 1991. Your online presence needs to provide potential customers and clients with content that helps them evaluate and use your products and services—what we call contextual content. And the design must be clear, easy to navigate and use.

Whether in print, online or skywritten, content and design must be not only creative, but also meaningful and helpful to our clients' audiences. Otherwise, it's like an ad that gets everyone talking - but no one can remember what the product is.

And isn't the point to have content that works for your product or service?

More than 350 blogs were reviewed by Junta42 and their lead researcher Janet Robbins for their selection of the Junta42 Top Content Marketing blogs. This is the eight installment of this list for Junta42. Congratulations to Jay Baer from Convince and Convert for his spot at the top. Here are the top ten blogs:

Despite what some might think, simply setting up a few social media accounts isn't enough. You have to have a strategy of how to use them.

Once you've outlined your objectives, if you're having trouble deciding which social media platforms to use to best market yourself, check out this handy chart from Revenflo to get an idea of which social media platforms will help you achieve your goals. For example, Facebook and Twitter have ended up in the Most Effective Customer Communication and Most Effective Brand Exposure categories, while Digg and StumbleUpon are considered effective in driving traffic to your website.

Kudos to Junta42's Joe Pulizzi for appealing to burger freaks and content geeks all at once. He took a very long but interesting (not to mention mouthwatering) article about Five Guys Burger and Fries from this month's issue of Inc. magazine and turned it into lessons about content marketing. One of my favorites:

Never cut corners on content. Your customers will notice: "Jerry (Murrell) and Five Guys gets potatoes north of the 42nd parallel because they grow slower and are more solid," Pulizzi says. "They soak all their fries in water so they won't absorb any oil when they are fried. The beef is never frozen and all burgers ordered are fresh. My favorite: always two slices of tomatoes...no matter what and even in the current tomato crisis. That's Five Guys secret sauce. Your content marketing must be different in some way. I'm getting tired of all the sites I go to that simply just aggregate content all day or say the same thing as everyone else. How does that help your brand story?"

The others are equally thought-provoking. Thanks, Joe!

"People don't care what you say about your products. They want to know what other people say about your products."

After hearing that message from marketing speaker David Meerman Scott and embarking on a seemingly unrelated search for New York pizza, ClickZ blogger Sage Lewis realized just how much user-generated content dominates his decision-making process.

When a visitor arrives at one of your landing pages, it’s critical the page is designed to make it easy for the visitor to perform a desired action. These actions can be varied—for some of our clients it can be to fill out a form or to watch a video. For others, the action can be to spend more time on the site, clicking to other pages. Good, relevant content makes these actions happen and we help clients create this type of content that meets their goals. Michele Linn of socialemailmarketing.eu has some great tips for how content marketers build better landing pages:

In what is billed as the "First-Ever BtoB Buying Survey," researchers found that potential purchasers increasingly are forgoing the traditional buying model in favor of combing social media sites for content that provides information and application results about products and services.

The survey, called "Transforming the B2B Buying Process", was conducted by DemandGen Report, a G3 Communications Publication.

Considering that most consumers are more likely to do business with a company they trust, as a 2009 survey found, it makes sense for businesses to work on building relationships with their customers. And good, relevant content -- updated often -- can help achieve this. Practical eCommerce suggests setting up a blog as the most obvious content hub, and recommends adding video (creating it, embedding it and distributing it) as well.

The more you communicate with your audience, the more your relationship with them will grow, which could lead to more conversations -- and sales.