By Patsi Krakoff
June 30, 2009
This article originally appeared on the author’s blog, www.writingontheweb.com, and is abridged and reprinted with permission.
I know a lot of people trying to figure out how to supplement their incomes with an Internet business. Some of them ask me how to go about it. While that’s a huge endeavor involving many pieces, the key is writing on the Web using content marketing.
What you publish on Web pages works to attract a targeted audience of people who are interested in finding solutions to their problems.
Remember, the number one reason people use the Web is to get information.
That’s why I recommend starting with a blog. A blog is a communications and publishing tool you can use to attract readers, those people who are your ideal prospects. Of course the next question is “What do I write about?”
That’s where you need to learn how to do content marketing.
What are the principles of content marketing to abide by? Here are some good tips from Velocity UK, a marketing consultancy firm that just published a great B2B Content Marketing Workbook. (You can download it for FREE.)
Content marketing plays by different rules than traditional, “broadcast-style” marketing. Here are some of the key ones:
- It’s not about you. Your critical first step as a content marketer is to put your own agenda aside and put your prospect’s agenda at the heart of your marketing.
- Pick a single, high-priority issue. Content marketing is issues marketing. Pick a topic that matters to your audience and stick to it. One issue at a time is usually best.You may be desperate to talk about your vision, your technology and the benefits they confer. Suppress the urge. Your prospect couldn’t care less. They want to talk about their problems, their challenges, their opportunities and the very real things that stand in their way.
- Find some clear water. You need to find an issue that hasn’t been beaten to death already by competitors, analysts and editors. If there’s only really one main issue at stake, give it a novel spin; zoom in on a detail; zoom out to put it in context – anything to keep things fresh and make people want to know more.
- Aim for an independent tone of voice. If it’s really not about you, you don’t have to cram your widget into every paragraph. There will be opportunities to allude to your offer but if you over-exploit them, you undermine the value of the piece. The reader knows you have an agenda but will respect you more if you can set it aside and speak as a neutral adviser.
- Support your story with data. A strong story is compelling. A strong story supported by credible data is irresistible. Do anything you have to do to get that data. Don’t argue your case, prove your case.
Patsi Krakoff has a doctorate in psychology and is co-founder of The Blog Squad.
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By Joshua Malbin, Magnificent Publications, Inc.
June 27, 2009
We reported recently on ways for organizations to attract and engage visitors to their sites, based on studies managed by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
There’s more. First, Pew’s studies document the speed with which the Internet is going mobile. In 2000, fewer than half of American adults owned a cell phone, and fewer than half used the Internet. Nobody had wireless connections. (Users made dial-up connections and stored data on their own computers. Remember?)
Today, 85 percent of American adults own cell phones, and 54 percent connect to the Internet wirelessly. More than half now use what is called the “cloud”: “fast, mobile connections built around outside servers and storage,” as Rainie puts it. Think Web-based email as opposed to email you pull down to your hard drive using Outlook.
It was one kind of revolution when we got high-speed Internet connections in our homes. It will be another when we all carry the Internet in our pockets.
Pew’s surveys reveal that not everyone feels the same about the change. More than half of American adults-61 percent-haven’t yet begun accessing the Internet with a mobile device. Of the 39 percent who have, not all are happy about it. Rainie studied both groups and came up with 10 categories, including tips for reaching each. No publication manager will likely need to reach all of these audiences, but it’s worth trying to figure out which ones are yours.
Digital collaborators (8 percent of the population) are married, well-educated, high-earning, mostly male technophiles, about half with children. These guys love their computers and iPhones and know how to use them. You don’t reach them so much as allow them to reach you. They’re the ones who want to collaborate on new projects using your stuff, and they love it if you ask them for advice about new technology you want to try in your website redesign process.
Ambivalent networkers (7 percent) are mostly male college students and recent graduates. The kids don’t use email anymore; they text and chat on Facebook. They have just as much tech savvy as the digital collaborators, but while they feel they must always keep their mobile devices with them, they aren’t necessarily happy about being chained to them. They’re likely to appreciate it if you encourage them not to be online for awhile. More than half also own video game consoles, so think about how to reach them through games.
Media movers (7 percent) are mostly male, reasonably well-educated, thirtysomething email forwarders and vacation-album posters (87 percent own a digital camera). They’re less interested in the Internet as a place to express themselves or find information than as a place to socialize. Entice them by giving them tidbits worth sharing and making those tidbits easy to share.
Roving nodes (9 percent) are highly educated soccer moms who use email or texting to organize their lives. They especially like “cloud” functions they can check anywhere, along with alerts and reminders to help keep them on schedule.
Mobile newbies (8 percent) are older, less-educated women who rarely use computers but have all the zeal of recent converts when it comes to the mobile phone they just got within the last year. Make it easy for them to take the leap to the Web by offering lots of coaching.
Desktop veterans (13 percent) are middle-aged, well-off guys who have been using their high-speed Internet connections for about ten years now, and are content to keep it that way. They have no interest in using their cell phones to do anything but make phone calls. They want self-directed Web-based content without a lot of hand-holding.
Drifting surfers (14 percent) are middle-aged, moderately educated women who have computers and cell phones, but don’t use them all that much. They want to keep using traditional services or content. When they do turn to the Internet it is to gather basic information, and when they have to use an Internet-based service they want tech support because things often go awry on them.
The information encumbered (10 percent) are older white guys who have cell phones and Internet connections but hate using them. To them, technology is an annoyance and one that’s getting worse all the time. They also want to consume older forms of media, and when they must go online they want information filtered and presented to them using classic methods of organization (like indexes, for example, rather than Digg).
The tech indifferent (10 percent) are older, less-educated women. They don’t use the Internet, and while they have cell phones, they don’t particularly like them. Not much different are those who are completely off the net (14 percent-the final group), also older, less-educated women who have neither Internet connections nor cell phones. You might be able to draw in some of these folks with ultra-basic computing or Internet courses, but for the most part they’re best reached offline, in person or on paper.
Lee Rainie spoke at Julie Perlmutter’s by-invitation-only Web Manager’s Roundtable.
Personally, I’m a desktop veteran. How about you?
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By Scott Loring
June 25, 2009
Managing Director, Tippingpoint Labs. Reprinted with the author’s permission.
If you are spending money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and focused on traffic targets rather than conversion rates – STOP.
Put that cart back behind the horse. Instead of buying the keywords for a specific search term and sending traffic to a page with low conversion rates, drive traffic to valuable content with higher conversion rates.
How? By experimenting. Work your content until it works.
Experiment with user experiences
Maximizing user retention and action means testing your content. Be ready and able to make adjustments.
Tools like Google Website Optimizer can help you measure content effectiveness. Through A/B and multivariate testing, you can see the higher-quality content rise to the top.
Gone are the days when you could expect to drive hordes of traffic to a landing page and hope that something would happen. “Blind faith” is not only ineffective, it actually can result in a user experience that damages your brand.
Open your eyes and get involved with your content. Get your hands dirty. Stop suffering from analysis paralysis. Stop wasting time discussing what you think will work and allow your customers to show you what works.
Pull, don’t push
We find in our testing that simple things like images and headlines can drastically change the conversion rates on a specific page. As you begin to pull in more engaged users with more engaging content, you can really capitalize on the nuances.
Increasingly, this will allow the quality of your content to drive the monetary value of your content.
Page e-valuation
When you’re optimizing your conversion rate, try giving each page – or better yet, each piece of content (video, podcast, blog) – a numeric monetary value.
For example, in our Breville case study, we showcased how content can increase conversion rates. Let’s say the price of an espresso machine is $100. If Page A sells 5 espresso machines and Video B sells 20 espresso machines, then Page A is worth $500 and Video B is worth $2000.
This helps you to visualize what is working and will suggest ways to replicate and build on your successes.
If that doesn’t help, think of your content portfolio as a giant rolling snowball avalanche. You want to keep increasing the ball (converting) so it gains momentum (engagement), building upon itself until it knocks over the decrepit old ski-lodge (your competition).
No matter how you look at it, if you want sales to increase, you have to get rolling with content experimentation.
Takeaway
Increase your conversion rates by experimenting with and testing your content. Continually adjust to what works with your audience.
My question to you
What tools do you use to experiment and measure your content?
Tippingpoint Labs is a digital content creation shop founded in 2002.
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By Joshua Malbin, Magnificent Publications, Inc.
June 23, 2009
Lee Rainie, a pioneer in Internet research, talked to a select group of Washington, D.C. Web managers recently about what the Pew Internet and American Life Project has learned over the past decade.
Naturally, everyone wanted to know how to snag and hold visitors to their sites-and he told them.But first, he reminded them what a very big place the Web is. Internet users expend as much effort filtering out information they don’t want as finding what they do. One-half use a customizable information filter, like a Google News alert.
So how do you get visitors past their filter and onto your site? Rainie suggests a four-step approach to get in sync with today’s “new pattern of communication and influence”:
Attention. Find new visitors in out-of-the-ordinary places, which for many organizations means Facebook or Twitter. Seek out people who are trying to exert influence in your field, whether they are big names in online conversations or humble personal bloggers.
Acquisition. Make it easy to learn about you. Go past search engine optimization and converse about your work, online and in-person. Express collegiality with links or referrals to other entities in your field, some of whom are likely to reciprocate.
Assessment. Make it easy to assess the value of what you offer. Of course, the user ultimately decides whether your work is relevant, but you can demonstrate that you’re trustworthy. Link to all of your sources, archive everything, and when you make mistakes, apologize.
Action. It’s also up to the user to take action in the real world, but you can make it easier to take action online. Offer opportunities for meaningful comment, and be sure to respond.
Lee Rainie spoke at Julie Perlmutter’s invitation-only Web Manager’s Roundtable.
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By Josh Kamensky
June 18, 2009
Last year, The Editorial Advantage took a long look at Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion, with posts on scarcity, keeping it simple, calling attention to your faults to get your audience to invest in your strengths, and priming your audience for a large request by first making a small one.
We were pleased, then, to see that software engineer Alex Moskalyuk had placed his own summaries of all 50 secrets on his Website. (Secret #6 is “Giving away the product makes it less desirable;” nonetheless, please check out the link to the book itself as well.)
At Magnificent Publications, we create publications to persuade, so of course we read all 50. Number 8, about the importance of giving specific instructions, is particularly-well- persuasive:
8. If a call to action is motivated by fear, people will block it, unless call to action has specific steps. A group of people received a pamphlet describing the dangers of tetanus infection. It didn’t describe much else. The second group of people got a description of tetanus infection, plus a set of instructions on how to get vaccinated. The second group exhibited much higher sign-up rate for tetanus vaccination than the first one, where many participants tried to block out the high-fear message urging that something as rare as tetanus would never happen to them.
This one is useful in pitch meetings – and also just fun to know:
30. People like the sound of their name, and that defines their vocation. There are three times as many dentists named Dennis as any other names. Number of Florences living in Florida is disproportionately high, same goes for Louises living in Louisiana.
For even more, see The Editorial Advantage’s “persuasion” tag.
(The idea for this post came via The Rumpus.)
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By James Cosco
June 15, 2009
Chief Content Officer and Founder, Tippingpoint Labs. Abridged and reprinted with the author’s permission.
The art of storytelling has been around since the dawn of humankind for good reason – people love to be engaged and entertained. The essence of good content often falls back on a good story.
You can tell a good story if it ….
…is emotional.
If you want to produce an effective video or television commercial or an email campaign, make sure it’s emotional. You’ve got to make your audience feel something. Make them feel happy, excited, sad, or make them giggle. If it’s emotional it’s memorable.
… has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I don’t care how short your TV spot is, or how small your banner ad is, if you don’t have a logical beginning, middle, and end to your story, it’s not a story! To connect with your material, your audience must feel a catharsis. They must feel like they can connect with your message. They can’t connect if they don’t understand the story.
… is simple.
Many of our clients are possessed with the desire to over-complicate their stories or their customers’ stories. Keep it simple. Leave out all the technical mumbo jumbo that complicates the story. Stick to the emotional aspects that resonate with your audience.
… is memorable.
Chances are, if you tell a simple, well-formed, emotional story, it will be memorable. But make sure that it is. Audiences love to retell a good story, and if you’ve created a memorable story, you’re enabling your audience to pass it along.
… is told in their words.
Don’t over-script your talent, or over-write your copy. Let them tell the story the way they want to tell it. The more honest and unrehearsed your talent is, the more powerful and emotional your story can be.
So, next time you’re working on a video production or some new blog content, remember you’re telling a story. The outcome will be more successful, more memorable, and more emotional than you thought possible.
Tipping Point Labs is a digital content creation shop founded in 2002.
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By Douglas Davidoff
June 9, 2009
Founder & CEO, the Imagine companies
Abridged and reprinted from The Fast Growth Blog with the author’s permission.
I hear it all the time: “I just need a brochure that explains what we do better,” or “If we could just create a piece that gets people to see how we’re different.” While I’m not (necessarily) against brochures or corporate collateral, the vast majority of them (like 95+%) are not only bad – they kill profits.
How? They completely commoditize you. They’re like watching a home slide show, without the entertainment. They not only bore your audience, they make you completely indistinguishable from your competition (remember, they have access to stock photos too).
I’ve said it before – and I’ll say it again (and again) – your buyers don’t have the time, the desire, or the inclination to care about you. What they care about is what you can do for them. What you need to provide is context. Stop telling them about what you do, and start enabling them to understand how what you do impacts them in relation to the results they want at this moment in time.
To do this, you must stop thinking of the world from your perspective and start thinking about the world from your client’s perspective. It means that you must know and understand your customer better than they understand themselves. It means start creating demand, rather than merely fulfilling it, and creating value in all (and I mean all) aspects of your business development efforts.
Now, if you want a brochure that drives profits … read more.
Imagine Business Development helps small and mid-sized business enterprises throughout North America achieve fast growth.
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By Josh Kamensky
June 6, 2009
With the launch of Kaiser Health News, the Kaiser Family Foundation now offers newspapers and bloggers a free, editorially independent source of high-quality, in-depth reporting on health issues. To the publications industry, it could be a peek at the future of content creation and distribution.
Health policy wonk and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein writes that the Kaiser Health News model “cleaves content production from distribution.” For Klein, this resembles the wire service model that Agence France-Presse pioneered in 1835 and AP and Reuters follow to this day. But without “the artificial strictures that the wire services place on themselves (short, dry, etc).”
Blogger Peter Suderman calls Kaiser Health News “exactly the sort of publicly minded, non-profit, niche journalism that I expect to flourish over the next few years as the news industry reshapes itself in reaction to the net.”
Until now, the prospects for non-profit journalism have been driven by investigative websites. For alt-weekly veteran Paul Bass and the New Haven Independent, or entrepreneur Buzz Woolley and Voice of San Diego, there was a regional void to fill. Political reporter Josh Marshall took a non-profit route to a commercial destination, transforming Talking Points Memo from a solo political blog into an investigative powerhouse by soliciting donations from his readership until he could grow large enough to sustain his enterprise with advertising revenue.
Kaiser Health News departs from those models. It’s an in-house initiative of a foundation, rather than a grant recipient. Instead of competing with existing (read: declining) newspapers in regional coverage, it’s trying to own a content niche nationally. The only comparable services in this regard are the business wire services. Since most papers have a daily business section, however, that can hardly be called a niche.
Perhaps the model is a one-shot deal. What other content area combines major media attention (around federal health care reform efforts) with a critical mass of 501(c)3 interest? The Kaiser Health News mark can already be found next to bylines in national news chains. Time will tell if it will remain there alone.
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By Suzanne Harris, Magnificent Publications, Inc.
June 1, 2009
You can skip this if you’ve read the book Nudge and you’re already incensed about the proliferating “most popular” lists on the Web.
But maybe you want your organization to present “most popular” information in a positive way and need some more ammunition. Carl Bialik, “The Numbers Guy” of The Wall Street Journal, recently slammed the growing scourge of “top 10″ news stories on Websites. He went on to cite several well-regarded academic studies explaining why people behave like herd animals.
Here are a few more findings for your collection, from Nudge:
- People who took an easy test and gave the answers on their own were almost always right, but when everyone else gave an incorrect answer, the test subjects made mistakes more than one-third of the time.
- Asked to pick the most important problem facing the country, only 12 percent chose “subversive activities” on their own, but when shown a phony group consensus for that option, the percentage shot up to 48 percent.
- Additional studies in the same vein help to explain the origins of Nazism, in case you’re not depressed enough already.
But there is a silver lining. You can use herd tendencies to achieve socially desirable ends. Suppose you own a hotel and want guests to save water by using their towels for a second day instead of requesting fresh ones. As Carl Bialik reports, it’s simple. Just post a sign saying that towel reuse was the No. 1 choice among other guests. You’ll get 34 percent more compliance than if your sign stresses impact on the environment. Of course, word the sign carefully (”Among the guests we asked, more people said …”) because lying in the interest of social betterment is still lying.
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By Suzanne Harris, Magnificent Publications, Inc.
May 26, 2009
The future of publishing is taking shape on the Web, and it is a mega mall.
The Nieman Marcus of the high end sites is Danilo Black, which designs and produces digital magazines. A co-venture of eminent designers Eduardo Danilo Ruiz of Monterrey, Mexico, and Roger Black of New York, Danilo Black has introduced “dynamic media” for a handful of publications. The showcase is FLYP (pronounced “flip”), which dazzles readers with video, photography, and good writing in an array of subject areas. FLYP has been called the LOOK magazine of the Internet.
FLYP is reportedly put out by fewer than 20 people. They probably could afford to hire more, but according to Danilo Black, the magic in dynamic media is to conceptualize the story concurrently in words and pictures. Not that many people have those skills, although the best print designers have advocated the approach for years. If only more publishers had listened to them, we might see a future for print media.
But no matter. Effective storytelling can be achieved with simple animation and an engaging narrator. Consider The Story of Stuff, narrated by Annie Leonard, the highly effective polemic against consumerism that was funded by the Tides Foundation and The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. Deceptively simple in execution, it tells a compelling story from both an historical and an environmental perspective.
Wouldn’t it be great to see more storytelling like you see in FLYP and The Story of Stuff? Publishers will need to figure out how to put together teams of terrific storytellers and manage them like film production companies. But now, at least, we have paradigms.
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