Content creation strategies

Image via WikipediaCreating unique content probably sounds daunting, especially if you are running a small business and you are already head cook and bottle washer. To ease some of the burden of creating content you should first come up with a strategic plan for all your inbound marketing initiatives including content. Here are a few thoughts on building a content strategy. If you have other good strategies please share them.
What makes good content?: As described in the previous post, content needs to be high quality, relevant and non-pitchy. 
Forms of content: The items you produce do not need to be a War and Peace sized endeavor. People are already inundated with loads of content so it makes sense to make your materials easily digestible and simple to understand. As such, think of delivering quick snippets from research you have done or read, trends you are seeing in the market and why they are important and what they mean to your customers, and, possibly most importantly, links to other content providers that you consider valuable (see here for a post from Hubspot on the importance of link building). You should also consider developing some white papers and cases studies on how you solved a customers pain.
Shareable: All of the blogging platforms have widgets that allow readers to share your content with others. Make sure you have enabled them.
Tracking: Tracking how readers are reacting to the content is extremely important as it will allow you to spot what your followers are most interested in and not interested as in reading and sharing. There a number of different tools available to track your content (good overview here). At the very least you should use a service like bit.ly for simple tracking purposes. 

These are just a few simple thoughts on how to develop a content strategy. Please share your own.

Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss

Content is still the boss, even more so with the increased use of inbound marketing techniques and the proliferation of mobile devices providing any time access to this content and social media platforms. According to Terametric, 85% of companies us Facebook in their a marketing strategy, followed by Twitter 77%, LinkedIn 58%, and YouTube 49%. These statistics show the reach and importance of these channels but they also highlight that there are a lot of firms out there trying to communicate with customers, potentially the same ones you are trying to gain attention from. So how do you differentiate? Quality, relevant and non-pitchy content.

• Quality: The quality of the content increases when the source is seen as credible and reliable. This could be in the form of a well-known author or a large survey where the methodology is clearly laid out for review. 
• Relevance: Somewhat self explanatory, but you need to make sure the content is relevant for your audience. The content should inform and educate your audience about market trends, customer attitudes or relevant problems.
• Non-pitchy: Do you remember the last advertisement or marketing message you saw? How many of these messages do you think we see on a daily basis? Do you remember the last good article you read? The content should not be a veiled advertisement for your product or service. Your content should inform and educate your audience, not sound like a late night infomercial.If your audience believes that all you are trying to do is advertise to them, they will tune you out immediately. 

Content is and will always be the boss. However, given the amount of content that is out there and accessible you need to extremely strategic in the development and dissemination of your content to ensure you are the one your audience is listening to.

Plan your inbound marketing efforts

After describing an inbound marketing strategy I was asked how I would implement and manage all of the different properties and postings.  It is a good question, especially if inbound marketing activities are only part of your initiatives as managing the different platforms can be very time consuming and difficult to track.  If you do not  have a plan the postings cans lose some of its effectiveness as the messaging can seem muddled and ad hoc. In my last post I discussed the different ways to use each platform, now you need to implement a plan to make sure you are getting the most from your efforts.

You need to draw out a weekly, monthly and quarterly plan of inbound initiatives and make sure you know when these will all fall and who will be responsible for managing them. The plan should take into account any upcoming case studies, white papers, webinars, banner or other forms of advertisement and event attendance or other items so you can schedule announcements appropriately. You also need to assign people to manage these events on the different platforms. For example, if you have  technical white paper coming out in two weeks, it would make sense for someone on the development team to write a blog post about the paper and possibly promote it on LinkedIn. You will need to make sure that person is aware of their deliverables and know when and where they need post. You need to plan like a marketing agency would plan for more traditional activities to make sure your messaging is cohesive and accomplishes your objectives.

Anyone else have thoughts on how to plan or some best practices?

Give up control to gain control

Image by HubSpot via Flickr

Websites have evolved from static brochure-ware to more interactive experiences with video, chat, forums, etc. However, with the new social media platforms, you need to re-think how you design your website to take advantage of the power of these mediums. Just having a Facebook or Twitter badge on your site is not enough. You need to consider these platforms as extensions, if not a discrete part of your website. You also need to treat each platform differently to get the most out of it. Here are some thoughts on how to think about each property:

• LinkedIn: More formal than other social media sites and should be used to promote networking, best practice sharing and industry collaboration. The subgroups are a great way to develop specific topics for discrete groups, such as local user communities.
• Facebook: You should use Facebook to develop conversations with your target market. Think of Facebook as the forum for your customers/prospects to informally interact and collaborate.
• Twitter: Twitter is a "volume" play both from amount of information you should tweet as well as how "loud" you want to be heard in the market. I think of Twitter as a communication platform, where you are sending out messages to people versus interacting with them like you do on Facebook and LinkedIn.

You need to utilize each of these sites to achieve a connection with your customers/prospects. Let's go through a use case with an integrated site that includes your corporate domain coupled with the appropriate social media sites:

Let's use Bestbuy as our use case. I am looking to purchase a new camera. I have been on BB's site and identified a few options. I have read the reviews on the site to better narrow my options.  I now go out to Facebook to seek other experiences and gather feedback on my options. I go to LinkedIn to also see if there is  a camera sub group to ask for feedback. After this due diligence, I have chosen the camera I want but do I need to go back to Bestbuy's site to purchase the camera? If the platforms are integrated, I should be able to buy it where I am at that moment. Frictionless commerce is an old concept but it is more important and more possible today than ever with these social media extensions. But we are not done yet.

To add to the complexity you also need to add in mobile as a potential platform. Say Bestbuy has my mobile information from our interactions on the website. My phone sounds and it is from Bestbuy telling me  I am right near a Bestbuy and here is a coupon for 10% off in the store for the camera I want to buy. Ask for Jim if you go to the store or you can purchase it now with the credit card we have on file. Friction? Not so much. And that is the point; your corporate domain is no longer the place to go to purchase something. I am not coming to you - if you want my business you be where I am. And that is the potential with these platforms if you use them correctly.

Extension. Placement. Location. Timing. Sales.

Cleaning out the marketing attic of the mind

Cleaning out the marketing attic of the mind.

• We received our first lead from Facebook. I am still amazed when I look at referral traffic and Facebook is one of the highest referring properties.
• Still somewhat skeptical of Twitter, however. Not sure I have gone to a site to purchase something based on a Tweet. It is good for finding interesting articles, but is that all there is to it?
• Need to start thinking about how and if to include Youtube and Flickr in our social media portfolio.
• The soccer world is not helping to get the US as an avid follower with all the fake diving in the World Cup. Brutal.
• The vuvuzela's aren't helping either.
• If you are interested in Inbound Marketing or how to use social media in general, you must subscribe to http://blog.hubspot.com/
• User generated content is going to be the learning platform of the future.
• The golf industry needs to slow down new product introductions. You can get last year's model's for next to nothing. It is like they have not noticed that consumer spending habits have changed.
• I do not have a good feeling about economic recovery in the second half of 2010 or even 2011.
• When was the last time you saw a really funny commercial? 
• I wonder how the marketing folks at the Bruins office are going to spin next year after the awful fail of the playoffs and the lousy 3 decades. "This time we mean it!"
• Obama could use a new PR and marketing person.
• Not quite sure I get what is happening at Google. I get search/ads, android and apps but not Buzz or them opening a music store. Seems like they are trying to be like Apple instead of choosing their own path.
• Worked on my first logo design project this year. Not as easy as it looks. Makes you appreciate some of the iconic logos out there.
• Very clever: http://www.cheeseandburger.com/ Definitely a bookmark for burger ideas.
• Going to be revamping our corporate website in the coming months. Really need to make it more informal and social. Something our brand is not necessarily known for in the market.
• What is the next great idea in the vein of the iPhone, Google, Facebook, Twitter?
  

Ollie Ollie In Come Free

Image via Wikipedia

As my kids get older, I am amazed that they use the  same expressions in their games and daily play that I did when I was their age. I did not tell them any of these but they have picked them up on their own, somewhere. It made me think about how powerful it would be if you could create your own slogan or brand reputation that is passed from user to user or even generation to generation. There are certainly examples:

• Have a Coke and a Smile
• Good to the last drop
• Snap, crackle and pop!
• I'm a Toys R Us kid
• A diamond is forever
• Got Milk?

And then there are famous characters from Ronald McDonald, the Donut Man, Burger lady, Marlboro man, Flo, and the Geico Gecko as well as  iconic firms like Coke, IBM, Apple, and others that have enjoyed a long held brand respect in the market they serve.

I am wondering with the noise of all the social media platforms if it will be easier or harder to have a long lasting  impact in the marketplace like the ones referenced above. The item that was "it" yesterday can be torn down and replaced extremely easily now and that has huge implications on developing brand equity. Given the power that has been transferred from marketing departments and media agency's to the end user we may see the consumer become the generator of the next great brand or slogan. The hard part will be giving up the control over the message, but that is already happening so the sooner you can embrace it the better off you will be.

Ollie Ollie in come free - who will be next?

Integrate Social Media activities into your CRM/MAP systems

The power of a CRM system and a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) is that you are able to see a comprehensive view into the activities around your customers. The lense gets even stronger when you integrate your CRM and MAP so you can see both offline and online activities for your customers. The inability to integrate social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging into your CRM/MAP systems is a negative but it also represents a great opportunity for the vendor that can figure out how we can do this.

Imagine if you looked up a customer in your CRM system and you had a view of all offline activities such as show attendance and phone calls along with all marketing campaigns from your MAP and all interactions with your various social media sites (retweets, blog visits and comments, FaceBook fan, LinkedIn groups). That would be a true Digital ID. I know Eloqua and Hubspot have done some things for tracking social media activity but I do not think anyone has been able to integrate it all into one view. I am not even sure this is possible, but it would make life a lot easier!

Very Good Slideshow

I am also trying to figure out the impact of social media on the b2b buyer. It is not nearly as clear as it is in B2C land. Here is a good slideshow that reviews the potential of social media for B2B firms.

B2B Social Media Marketing: Building the B2B Business Case for Social Media

How many handles should you have on Twitter?

Image by stevegarfield via Flickr

I just came from a meeting where the topic of how many Twitter handles should we have to message out to our customers. This particular unit currently has five different handles and different parts of the business are approaching the social media group to ask for a handle so they too can tweet.

I believe that there is a danger in diluting your overall messaging with too many people tweeting. While the theory is you should tweet more to get your message out, that does not, in my mind, mean that you should have multiple handles tweeting the same or different ideas. To me, that sounds like Twitter spam.

Additionally, the more people you have the greater the risk of someone tweeting something inappropriate.  Everyone has a different ideas of what "Do not post anything stupid" means. A 20-something may think it is ok to tweet anything as that is they the way they have been brought up. An older worker who has not grown up with these technologies may not understand the reach that they have and the impact an off-hand comment could have on your firm and brand.

Your marketing message needs to be clear and concise and the more people voicing that message the greater risk there is in being tuned out.

An integrated approach to technology and market strategy is critical to success

Image via Wikipedia

The firm I work for has several new products being released over the coming months that will require a technology acumen that we are not currently best suited to handle. As a result,  we need to develop a long term technology strategy to support the release of these products. Additionally, our marketing needs to be aligned with the technology road map to ensure that we are messaging our new capabilities in a cohesive manner. If you are a technology company, you can no longer think of your technology and market strategy as mutually exclusive.

SaaS firms like Salesforce.com understand that there is no difference between its technology infrastructure and go to market planning and messaging. However, some firms, in particular mine, do not view technology and marketing as related to one another. An approach like this will dilute our overall messaging and branding and could lead to confusion about who you are in the marketplace. Additionally, if you do not implement a strategy road map that looks at technology and marketing strategy as an integrated unit then you will end up supporting multiple one-off technologies and have to craft multiple messages.

In the past, the positioning of my firm was one as a content provider or publisher. However, we are releasing a new platform that will make us more of a service provider that delivers content, with as much if not more focus on the technology than the content. Our approach to date has been to explore individual technologies like vcms and mobile, an approach that only addresses weaknesses and is not an overall road map. The goal now is to work with the technology group as they map out their needs so we can also adapt our messaging to fit this new world order.

So my advice is to integrate your technology and market planning to make sure each one knows what the other is doing so there is no disconnect.

Utilizing Financial Formulas to Determine the Value of Community Equity

Image via Wikipedia

A very interesting post by Radian6's David Alston entitled: Can We Calculate “Community Equity?”

David states that: Community equity refers to the marketing, public relations, sales, recruitment and customer service effects and outcomes that accrue to company that engages in community building compared to what would accrue if the same brand did not invest in efforts to find, build & care for their community.

His premise is that Community Equity is much more valuable than buying eyeballs as your community is much more involved and engaged. They are there because they want to be not because they were coerce. How to calculate this equity is an interesting dilemma.

David further states, It becomes clear why 500 passionate community members on Facebook or Twitter are no comparison to the 500 eyeballs or even 1 million eyeballs purchased in a media buy. It becomes evident that community building goes in the investment column while buying media buy goes in the expense side.  

So if this is an investment, I would propose utilizing existing financial calculations such as Net Present Value (NPV) or Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to calculate the value of a community. NPV is a common calculation done to determine if you should invest in a project or not. NPV is the defined as the difference between Initial Cost Outlay and present value of expected cash inflows. A positive NPV value is acceptable where as an NPV of zero yields the internal rate of return. A negative value for NPV suggests that investment is not worthy of the money we are about to invest.

Like NPV, the IRR is a rate of return used in capital budgeting to measure and compare the profitability of investments.

Instead of using a dollar amount, could you use number of people in the community you would like to capture over a certain time period? What would be the initial outlay - possibly the total amount of people you want in that community? What about the discount rate - 10%?

Using IRR, I did a calculation as follows:

Year	0	1	2	3	4	5
Amount	-10000	1000	1500	2000	5000	7500

Discount rate of 10%
IRR was 15%

Not by any stretch perfect but I hope it starts some discussions and other ideas.

Sequencing Change

Image by Todd Huffman via Flickr

It used to be that technology was adopted first at the corporate level and then by consumers. That sequence has now changed. It is the consumer who is driving the adoption of technology by corporations. Social Media and mobile are prime examples of this switch.

According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites. I would bet that this traffic is primarily consumer driven. That said, what does this mean for corporations, especially in the B2B space, as it has been shown that the Internet is one of the top places buyers begin their research on a product. Will they now be shifting from Google searches and SEO to FaceBook Fan pages? Searching Twitter for end users or stories? Mining LinkedIn for Groups and people that can help them with their decision? Yes, they will be.

The ramifications for corporations is that they must have a presence on all these sites, regardless if they are B2B or B2C. At my firm, we are really just ramping up the use of FaceBook, Twitter and LinkedIn to support the launch of our next generation product, Harvard ManageMentor. I am the primary person updating all these sites, as well as contributing to our new blog, and I know that it takes a lot of time and effort. As the use of these mediums becomes more prevalent in buying decisions, the need for a full time person in the marketing department will be mandatory.

Additionally, marketers will need to rethink which marketing automation platform they use and your messaging to fit to these sites. Can you explain your value proposition in 140 characters or less? Firms such as HubSpot are going to become even more important to help analyze the new inbound marketing results. It will be interesting to watch VC investment in this area of analytic's.

It has been interesting to see the new traffic being referred by these sites and I hope it only increases.

Twitter traffic report

HubSpot report on Twitter traffic.
http://bit.ly/4nU7A3

Does this help support my previous posts on breaking through the noise as well as prediction number 5 on my Top 10?

A few musings on 2010

Looking back in 2011 this list will probably read closer to a David Letterman Top 10 but here are a few thoughts on things that could happen in 2010.

1. Microsoft buys Salesforce.com. MSFT needs to get into the SaaS world in a better/bigger way and SFDC would be an instant, game changing move
2. Walmart does not buy Amazon again.
3. Google buys eBay to boost its mobile strategy and m-commerce
   
4. Leadership development in corporations becomes a hot topic to retain and reward people who have survived.
5. Twitter will have to change its business model or die. Big danger in it just becoming a spam platform.
6. In the theme of #5, new technologies will emerge to help marketers calculate an ROI for different SM platforms. Those that can't prove it will become irrelevant.
7. The economy will slowly recover as the consumer starts to spend in the second half of the year.
8. Infrastructure tech firms will do well in 2010 as companies replace old systems that have been neglected for too long.
9. The SaaS model continues its rise in importance for several reasons including a move away from the  perpetual/maintenance model, the variability (add/subtract users) and the impact on the balance sheet.
10. Clouds everywhere but end users become confused on how, when and why they should use them.
    

Good example of a nice initial approach

I recently received the below email and I thought it was a very good way to approach someone who may have a need for your service. No hard sell, just an introduction and a request. Well done. Here it is. I left out the senders name but check out the firm.

Hi Barrett-

I was recently doing some marketing research and came across your blog. You offer some great insights in to the world of marketing, particularly online marketing. Your post about "Death of a Salesman" had some great points. The more the consumer can be directly involved with the process, the more it becomes being what they are looking for, and less about selling to them.

I work for an online marketing start-up, Kutenda (Kutenda.com). We have created a toolset with PPC management, email marketing, website management, SEO and more- all in one place. Our goal is to help small businesses increase their visibility online and grow their business. To this point, online marketing is often seen as overwhelming and complicated, especially for small to mid-size businesses. That's where we come in. Our suite of tools is simple to use, with expert knowledge built in. In addition, we also provide training too, to walk people through the process, start to finish. We are working on getting our name out there and having people experience all we offer. I know how busy life gets- particularly after a holiday!- but if you have a moment, it would be great if you could check us out. Kutenda.com- we offer a great free trial program and a demo to learn more.

If you feel we would be a good resource for your readers, a link would be much appreciated. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for your time and happy new year!

Sincerely,