Here’s a documentary video from Dupont showing how their company and partner Repshel are using science and technology to improve living conditions for people in poverty.

That’s a good thing to do, obviously, and they do a good job telling the story.

I certainly don’t lead a crazy college lifestyle anymore; I never did really. Nothing racy, I live in a mother’s world of carpools, homework and kids’ activities.

So here I land … at the Barnes & Noble café, waiting out a four-hour gymnastics practice as my son swings like a monkey on the high bar doing stunts with names I can’t pronounce, much less spell.

It’s a fairly typical evening, and many of the regulars are here. I really want to dig into some work so I steer clear of Joe who always wants to discuss Evolution, Intelligent Design Theory and Creationism. It’s usually the same employees during the week. Jane, the friendly barista who talks politics with the patrons, or Christine who typically spends her 15-minute break visiting a new beau each week at the intimate table off in the corner.

My four hours here are always an opportunity to catch-up on new trends or just experience the marvels the public has to offer – crazy clothing and hair trends, screaming children … I’ve even had a young man ask me to pay for his brake repair so he could continue his cross country journey.

But this tale definitely ranks in the top five.

Let me set the scene for you.

I sit down in the comfy café chair with my tall, non-fat, no whip, extra hot mocha … or is it tall, no whip, extra hot, non-fat mocha? I never know the proper sequencing for the order. Anyway, tonight my husband decided to join me for a quick coffee. He’s all set up on his laptop, and I’ve pulled out my Nook when all of sudden … SMACK.

What on earth? Such a noise is not usually part of the café experience.

You’d never guess. A gentleman in his late 60s sitting at a small café table directly diagonal from us can hardly stay awake and that SMACK was his head hitting the table.

He groggily looks around canvassing the café to see if anyone noticed his recent disruption to the excellent café experience. We all heard it, of course, but we act nonchalant about it all.

He continues to bob and jerk up and down, side to side, back and forth. I can hardly contain my giggles when my husband, who I guess just can’t resist, pulls out his camera phone with a great big grin on his face and hits the record button.

“Bill! No! Are you in 5^th grade? What if he sees you?!”

“Oh, Laura … He won’t. C’mon. The kids will love this.”

The bobbing and jerking continues for the next five minutes. This guy is REALLY tired. We all are trying to contain our snickering when two Barnes & Noble employees round the corner. Oh my, how can they miss our sleeper.

“Uh oh,” my husband says, “That’s the lady who told me to take my feet off the coffee table last month.”

That’s her all right – the dumpy, stern-faced woman who walks around the store on a mission, not one to help solve customers’ problems or create an excellent customer experience, but more like a customer police mission.

Here we go! They see him and pause at his table.

The paperback policewoman without a flinch says, “Sir, perhaps it’s time to go on home and get some rest?”

He doesn’t respond. All of us in the café are exchanging sideways glances anticipating what is going to happen next.

Jane, the cheery barista, pipes up, “Oh Barb, don’t be silly!” “Sir, please enjoy a coffee on us. I have our new blonde roast. I’m sure it’s just the thing you need right now.” Jane very swiftly sweeps over behind the counter, pours a cup (large), returns to his table and delicately sets down the hot cup of coffee in front of him.“Thank you very much! I was in jury duty all day. I just stopped in for a break.”

Barb slinks back to her lair to ready herself for her next patrol.

Meanwhile Jane continues talking to Mr. Sleepy delivering a first-rate excellent customer experience. She continues to chat with him, refills his coffee and later delivers a cookie.

Did Mr. Sleepy make a purchase? I don’t know, but I am certain he’ll remember Jane, the excellent customer experience she delivered and Barnes & Noble the next time he needs to make a novel purchase or just stop in for a nap.

Changing just one word can have a tremendous impact on your sales call. The purpose of communication is to trigger a reaction. Every moment you are in front of the customer they are reacting to you either consciously or unconsciously. Word choice is extremely critical to the success or lack of success during a sales call.

For example, in a discussion with my doctor about the salespeople who call on him and what he likes and dislikes, he told me when a sales representative opens the call with words like: I want to discuss . . . or I want to talk with you . . . he says he turns off immediately and at best half listens to the salesperson.

WOW! Just imagine, that salesperson closed the door on him or her before the call even started. Albeit the salesperson even thought the Dr. M was a difficult customer.

Over the past 34 years of selling and coaching sales representatives, I have learned that salespeople do more to hinder their progress during a sales call than the customer ever does. We as salespeople create tough and challenging situations for ourselves based on what we do or don’t do during a sales call.

Word choice is one.

“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain 10/15/1888

Researchers at Yale University psychology department claim that the 12 most influential words are: you, money, save, new, results, easy, health, safety, love, discovery, proven, and guarantee along with different iterations of each of these words. Use of these words can add to the persuasiveness of your sales call. However, let’s return to my opening statement, “every word has meaning.” These words will have a varying degree of impact based on their meaning and emotion attached to them by the prospect you are calling on.

The most influential words you can use come from your prospect. NLP (the most recent studies in the field of linguistics) suggests you need to always match the words your prospect uses. Again, the words you and your prospects use are by design, not haphazard or by accident. Their words carry meaning to them and they have an emotional attachment to those words at some psychological level.

For example, if your prospect uses the word Spreader or Trialist to describe a minimal user of their products, you need to use the word Spreader or Trialist and not minimal users. If they use the word hassle to describe a situation, you will need to use that word and not something like fuss, trouble, or bother with.

Let me share with you a sales call I had not too long ago. I was calling on a prospect that said to me “J.P., any model we use must be valid in and of itself.” Now, I have never had a prospect say that to me in quite that way and he repeated that exact phrase a few times as he described his needs.

After listening patiently, I said, ‘Bob, the model this program is based on is a model that is valid in and of itself.’ The moment I said that, he interrupted me and said “J.P. that is exactly what I am looking for.” And I had yet to discuss anything about the validity of the model! Again, this demonstrates how the words your customer uses carries meaning and emotion to them. Also, when you match their word choice you convey a level of understanding to the prospect that can only occur through word choice.

Remember, all words carry meaning. You need to listen carefully to the words your prospects use when talking with them. Then use those words as you describe your understanding of their needs and what your product or service can do for them.

What’s the most interesting word or phrase a customer has used that has caught you by surprise?

Sales Tip #13: Use the exact keywords your customer uses.

The placement tool is very similar to the search-focused AdWords keyword tool with the major exception that it’s focused on helping you locate placements to target on Google’s Display Network.

How to Use the Google AdWords Placement Tool

To leverage the AdWords placement tool, you can get information from three main inputs:

• Word or Phrase – As with a keyword tool you can insert one or a few relevant terms and get back recommended placements.
• Website – Input a URL of the type of site you’d like to advertise on.
• Category – Input a category of sites you’re interested in advertising on.

Assuming we want to start with a word or phrase, we simply type that in and then set your advanced filters and options (click to enlarge):

Here we can look for specific sites based on:

• Placement Type – Drill down by excluding traditional sites, videos, games, mobile apps, etc.
• Locations & Languages – Return only the countries and demographic populations you want to advertise in.
• Ad Sizes – If you have trouble creating an image ad in the various formats you may only want to return sites that you have ads created for.

You’re generating suggestions here, so you want to think about the type of results you want to get back. If you’re looking for specific types of placements, you probably want to make use of the word or phrase and website options; if you’re looking for a broader list of sites, the category option may be a better fit. Executing any of these options is fairly straightforward.

A few things to note in determining whether to use words, website, or categories as an input include:

• In using the “words” input, by entering a single two-term keyword you may get back highly irrelevant results (for instance entering search marketing returns a number of site searches from websites that have nothing to do with SEM).
• In choosing websites, if you input a specific site you’ll get a very limited set of results back.
• In leveraging the category option, you can use very broad or more specific categories, depending on the volume and variety of sites you’re looking for.

Ultimately, it’s often best to create display campaigns grouped around keyword themes and then to monitor placement performance, and use exclusions and specific bids to find the best placements for your display campaign. But if you are running a managed placement campaign, the placement tool can be very useful in uncovering sites that are running AdSense and give you an opportunity to advertise to your target audience.

Here’s one extra clue for you – I have been on the internet for about as long as it has been available here in Australia and one thing I tell all my trainees and listeners over and over is to post only information you are happy to have viewable forever! YES – FOREVER!

Once you ‘get it’, this one small factor about the internet that nothing is ever really deleted and a good hacker or even a bad one can find old deleted content if they want to for any reason and that most if not all your content will be viewable forever – there’s that word again, a different frame of mind comes into effect.

Hopefully this frame of mind alerts you to posting only that which you are proud of, or have thought about BEFORE posting, it is great to be personal just don’t post anything private. That said there are a few keys to posting content that is both interesting and shareable and will create more awareness about you and your brand on and offline.

be INTERESTING:

Interesting content is the first of the I’s to great content and interesting can mean many different things interesting content can include educational content that everyone is looking for (more about this in the next paragraph). Interesting can also mean trending, newsworthy, quirky, funny, Likeable and most of all Shareable.

When something is interesting more often than not someone will want to share it and this kind of content is the stickiest – sticky is a very technical word that means the content tends to stick around because it is being shared over and over again and is transferred and seen everywhere just like that sticky stuff stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

The trick is to find out what your audience finds ‘interesting’ and post more of that in relation to your brand and niche, interesting can also mean using someones name and posting about them or their business, this kind of interesting is also shared well as long as you choose your ‘interesting’ people well. e.g. a post about a list of people under one banner “The 6 Most Interesting People on Twitter”

be INFORMATATIVE:

Being informative means that you are educating your readers on a subject and this can mean on one aspect of your services, products or business, on a trending subject informing them of your view and asking for theirs, something newsworthy, or some aspect in your niche or interests you know interests your readers enough for them to want more information on it.

Being informative sometimes means giving away some of your best knowledge and experience without charging for it, yet the return on this investment pays over and over again in word of mouth marketing, recommendations, and the trust and respect built up for you and your experience and knowledge over time.

be INSPIRING:

Inspirational quotes are all over the web and social media, and some are getting a little old, so the question becomes how can you come up with some of your own or rewrite older ones to re-motivate your readers in new ways? How can you re-purpose content or write new content that inspires your readers in some way and directly corresponds to your niche as well?

The essential trick to being truly inspiring is to think of yourself as a leader, someone who is directly responsible for paving the way. You may not yet believe it yourself, however you will find your readers will if you create great content that inspires them to action in some way. At times this may mean shining a light on your own faults and challenges in business and life, just to show that an ordinary person just like you can surmount them and so can your readers.

As I said to one of my mentoring clients recently “perfection is over-rated”, so don’t expect yourself to be perfect, this will not inspire your audience it is only through empathy that we truly inspire the empathy we have for those in the same situation goes both ways. If your audience knows that you truly understand them, you can then lead them into the light.

These 3 I’s of being Interesting, Informative and Inspiring, are the basis for me of great content and amazing awareness, trust and respect built over time that results in loyal advocates and customers.

How can you use them to do the same?

Do you have anything you would like to add to this post?

I was in Montreal recently at the #140MTL conference. It was a tremendous event organized by Mila Araujo. In addition to speaking about “What’s Your Purple Goldfish?”, I had a chance to watch some great presentations from the likes of Mitch Joel, Sam Fiorella, Ric Dragon, Susan Borst, Ted Curtin, Judi Samuels, Renee Martinez, JC Little and Josepf Haslam. I always walk away from conferences inspired. Josepf used an amusing venn diagram that poked fun at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. It sparked my thinking about the reasoning for giving little unexpected extras and the benefits of going the extra mile?

Here is a venn diagram showing how marketing lagniappe can affect strategy, culture and reputation:

The three benefits of G.L.U.E are:

1. Differentiation – standing out from your competition. Differentiation via added value.
2. Satisfaction / Retention – reducing churn. Physical manifestation that the business cares about its employees and customers.
3. Buzz – giving customers and employees something to talk, tweet, blog and post to Facebook about.

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra thrown in for good measure) – Here’s a little backstory on Venn diagrams courtesy of Wikipedia:

A Venn diagram (first introduced by John Venn in 1880) is constructed with a collection of simple closed curves drawn in a plane. The principle of these diagrams is that classes be represented by regions in such relation to one another that all the possible logical relations of these classes can be indicated in the same diagram. That is, the diagram initially leaves room for any possible relation of the classes, and the actual or given relation, can then be specified by indicating that some particular region is null or is not-null.

As I listened, I heard numbers like this marketing campaign had a 25% opt-in response rate or another campaign had a 16% rate of return and both of these people really felt that their campaigns were a success. I came across another study of network personalities and they had a list of the most effective people on twitter. The numbers were based on the number of people they were following and the people following them back.

I really believe people are spending too much time J-U-S-T-I-F-Y-I-N-G their numbers. Shouldn’t all of us be measuring how many new accounts we are opening. Are sales increasing each week or month. Which numbers would you want to report to your boss?

I really believe if you focus on tangible numbers, you will see results, if you do not see results you might want to change things. Let me explain. A few years ago, I bought paid ads on Google. I gauged my success on how many people I was reaching with my ads and keywords. I was paying more for keywords in order to move up in the rankings, and my goal was to get more clicks. In the end, these ads I later found out did not have any effect on my bottom-line. The reason – the people clicking the links were not the people who were interested in buying our company’s products or services. The people were attracted by the words and once they saw it was for a particular service they did not want, they stopped going any farther.

With social media, I, too started out wanting to build my follower and follow numbers. I quickly learned there were some good and not-so-good software to do this. As my numbers grew, I did not notice any changes in new accounts or sales. My first thought was that my follow numbers and like numbers were too low and I needed to pay to bring them up through automated follower software and Facebook Ads.

Finally, I decided to take a different approach. Focus on content through blogging and engaging more on social media sites. In addition, I worked at maximizing my biggest resource, (Time). I reduced the number of social media sites down to three: Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. I have since added Google+ and Pinterest. Now by focusing on engaging and content, I actually think about what people might be interested in and I try to find a natural way to connect our services to that content. This approach has worked in fewer numbers, but more accounts and sales.

You will not see this type of approach in very many social media or marketing books. I am convinced that people are smarter today and very selective wi th what they read and act on. People know what Google Ads are. When was the last time you clicked on an ad? Give people what they want…Better content and value. Look for ways to execute this at a show or through a direct mail campaign. People like free giveaways, but are these the people who are ultimately going to do business with you.

What does your company offer that people should be interested in? Answer this question and set some goals that matter. Start with sales or new accounts. Bosses always like to see this and show how you use your time to accomplish this.

STOP JUSTIFYING SOME RANDOM NUMBERS AND CREATE SOME REAL NUMBERS!

Picture via lrargerich

Its true — and A-Players choose to do this all the time.

After all, what would it be worth to you to be able to get into the inbox of your most-desired mentor? Or the game-changing client? Or your future boss?

Yes, it takes guts to email someone for the first time.
Yes, you need to make sure that your email is well written.
Yes, you need a subject line that absolutely POPS!

But, none of those things matter if you don’t know how to reach your target.

Three strategies that work

There are three extremely effective ways to get someone’s email if you don’t currently know it. Between these three, you can get 95% of people’s email addresses. Seriously.

Strategy One: Tap Your Network

Okay, so this one is kind of obvious. Ask around.

Start on Social Media. Linked In, Facebook and Twitter all have easy ways to determine if you have connections with someone. If so, you’ve got your target — so send a nice, candid email to your mutual contact. Include why you’d like to be connected to their contact and exactly what value you will be able to offer the person.

If you don’t have any luck there, try sending out a semi-mass email to your nearest and dearest with the subject line: Anyone know such and such?

Finally, it can be very effective to send out a handful of more targeted and personal emails to people that you quite as close with (that ex-co-worker who you haven’t spoken with in a year who now works with the person). Yeah, send them an email. Be honest and open about what you want — but be sure to lead with generosity if at all possible!

Step Two: Get-a-Googling

LOTS of people are readily available online. You can find their email addresses on a personal home page, you can find them on twitter and simply introduce yourself. You can send them a message on Linked In. Some people’s emails are even up on their company website. Go internets.

Your list of places to check:

• Google their name. If it is a common name, try adding in their location or expertise to narrow your search. Explore, its great research and may turn up their email!
• Their company site. See if you can find their email, if not theirs, another persons (you’ll see why later)
• Check out social media: where to they have profiles? Where are they active? How do they talk to people in these places? Remember — relationships are not built with one tweet. Introduce yourself and add value to them!

Still can’t find a way to meet them? Don’t worry there is still one more, nearly fail-proof strategy:

Step Three: My favorite — Guess!

If you’ve worked at a company before, or even just sent someone who works at a company an email, you know that they are pretty straight forward email addresses.

So you should go ahead and gasp GUESS!

If you don’t get it right the first time, try a different address. The absolute worst case scenario is that someone in IT sees that you are trying to email a person 6 different ways… not exactly a big deal.

Here are some common email permutations of company emails:

• r.rapple@companyX.com
• rrapple@companyX.com
• rebecca.rapple@companyX.com
• rapple@companyX.com
• rebecca@companyX.com (mostly small ones!)

As I said before, there is no “worst case scenario” here. There is nothing to be afraid of. So, start hitting send.

What would your dream relationship mean to you?

Consider what value your dream relationships could add to your life. To your business. To your job search. Relationships are easier to build than ever, but it still takes guts to step up and make the first move. To reach out and introduce yourself.

Relationships are the primary source of success, power, happiness and money. So, tell me, what are you waiting for? Go out there and email your dream.

Author:

Rebecca Rapple has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Keith Ferrazzi’s My Greenlight and more. You can learn more about the fundamentals of a remarkable job search on her site, The Resume Revolution.

Concrete nouns not only bring your writing to life for readers, but signify that you care about them.

Abstract nouns, on the other hand, are usually the sign of a careless writer.

Face it: abstract talk is easy.

Finding the right concrete noun is hard.

The careless writer, instead of doing the heavy lifting, simply labels general categories of things.

The result?

Readers are left with little or no grasp of the writer’s point.

Worse, they’re left wondering if the writer even wishes to communicate.

Here’s an example (from Delta Airlines) of overusing abstract nouns:

Earth Day provides a great opportunity for us as an airline to reflect on the importance of sustainability efforts in our industry. We’re proud to say we’ve made a lot of progress in recent years, yet remain aware of the the work still ahead of us.

How might the writer have better said this by using concrete nouns?

Earth Day is our moment to reflect on airlines’ responsibility to the planet. We’re proud of strides we’ve taken in recent years, yet aware there are more ahead.

© All Rights Reserved by 24point0

This June marks ten years since the first buyer persona development methodology was pioneered and launched by the firm Goal Centric now called Buyerology. Over the past ten years it has been quite a journey. Much has happened and much has changed. The adoption of research-based modeling of buyers that leads to buyer personas has been mixed. The rise in popularity of the term has also been a mixed blessing. It has resulted in many misguided definitions and practices that have not produced the potential results other organizations have seen when the goal-based methodology is utilized. The organizations who have embraced the goal-based methodology for research-based buyer personas have seen tremendous success in uncovering new opportunities for revenue growth.

The State of Buyer Personas 2012

Buyer personas today are becoming more widely used by marketing and sales organizations than ten years ago. Understanding about buyer personas and their place in the grander effort of modeling buyers to inform marketing and sales strategies ranges from harmful misperceptions to evolving maturity levels profoundly transforming organizations. Today’s business leaders can reach a maturity level that allows for a robust practice of modeling buyers whereby buyer personas are one of the tools used for descriptive and predictive buyer modeling.

The following are some reflective thoughts on the current state of buyer personas:

Buyer Persona Sophistication On The Rise

Personas first emerged as a tool for design in 1999 when Alan Cooper published The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. It was in this book that the term buyer persona was first used although to point out that the focus of design should be on user personas as opposed to buyer personas. I was privileged to be a witness and participant to the development of the goal-based modeling methodology created by a cast of innovative thinkers for design personas focused on users. This same methodology serves as a foundation for what later became a specific goal-based modeling methodology for marketing and sales personas focused on the buyer. Today, in 2012, the understanding of this methodology is unevenly understood yet buyer personas are evolving into a more sophisticated modeling tool being used by marketing and sales organizations.

Success Dependent Upon Modeling Methodology

We are seeing organizations attempt researching buyer personas for the first time while others are attempting to take limited success with buyer personas to new maturity levels. There is a direct correlation between success and the foundational understanding of the goal-based modeling methodology when it comes to buyer personas in general. Robust understanding of buyer personas as a modeling tool versus a profiling tool helps to ensure that they are effective and do what they are designed to do – inform marketing and sales strategies. In cases where I have seen poor results, lack of adoption, and inappropriate use, these can usually be traced back to the misunderstanding of buyer personas as a detailed profiling exercise. Business leaders today will need to be more discerning as the proliferation of the term buyer persona becomes more widely used by consultants and agencies to describe what amounts to as profiling. Much of the offered templates and practices are buyer profiles masquerading as buyer personas. Determining whether consultants or agencies are trained and skilled in the goal-based modeling methodology foundational to personas becomes an imperative.

Modeling Takes Center Stage

A development on the rise is organizations today are beginning to make the connection between understanding new and fast-evolving buyer behaviors and the need to understand these behaviors through modeling. Buyer personas are best defined as the modeling of buyer behaviors, the key attributes of buyers, and most importantly the goals of buyers. In the past few years, through co-creation efforts with Fortune 100 companies, we began to see robust modeling expanding beyond just the concept of a single buyer persona to that of modeling key dynamics of the overall buyer experience such as buyer ecosystems, buying scenarios, mental models, values, and experience. Additionally, we are seeing more robust efforts in descriptive, narrative, and predictive buyer modeling that represent a comprehensive view of behaviors associated with individuals as well as with companies.

Research-Based Understanding Gaining Momentum

Personas are developed from primary qualitative research with real customers. Specifically it calls for the type of qualitative research that is grounded in a robust understanding of goal theory. Many business leaders are discovering that this may not be as simple as assigning this task to marketing personnel and that outside expertise in goal-based qualitative research and modeling ensures the highest return on such efforts. Personas are not created, crafted or constructed as in the world of profiling. Personas represent a distinct set of patterns uncovered in research and represent the illumination of buyer’s behaviors, goals, and experiences that inform. At this state of buyer personas in 2012, companies are beginning to realize that poorly researched and template-based persona profiling may be proving to do more harm than good. This important aspect of buyer personas and buyer modeling is beginning to grow solid roots in the minds of many business leaders – particular those who have wasted budgets on poor profiling based efforts imitating as personas.

Addressing Complexity

The significant shifts in buyer behaviors in the past few years have left companies struggling to deal with increasingly new dynamics of complexity. Particularly those who have large bases of existing customers and have seen the mix of channels used by customers become more diverse as well as integrated. Organizations are beginning to address newer forms of complexity by improving understanding of buyers by behavioral groups and focusing on the goals of buyers. At this state, the adoption of this approach has been mixed. Some organizations have come to misunderstand buyer personas as a tool only for messaging and content marketing. Thus, the focus can shift to a narrow profiling view intended to help with writing content as opposed to the intended focus on helping business leaders and stakeholders to make informed decisions based on an outside-in view of customers. Efforts in buyer modeling and buyer personas help companies to cut through the complexity and to prioritize tactical and strategic measures that best connect with customers. The highest return on the modeling of buyers with the use of buyer personas and other modeling tools is when they help to optimize all facets of the buyer experience as opposed to a limited scope of just messaging.

Buyer Persona Lifespan

The rapid pace of changes occurring in technologies and the impact they have on buyer behaviors means that the lifespan of research-based buyer personas has considerably shortened. This is causing a shift in thinking about qualitatively researching buyer personas from a periodic one-time event to a view of ongoing buyer research whereby buyer models are continuously updated. This is one of the most profound changes occurring in the field of buyer modeling and use of the modeling tool we know as buyer personas. Companies striving to remain relevant to their customers will need to constantly update their knowledge of evolving channels and buyer preferences and how they relate to buyer goals. Business leaders will also need to evaluate their own in-house capabilities to conduct appropriate goal-based qualitative research with customers versus use of outside expertise in light of this change.

The Next Frontier: The Rise Of Sales Personas

After ten years, I’ve witnessed the rise of buyer personas as a concept embraced by primarily marketing albeit with mixed results. What I am witnessing over the past couple of years is what may be counter intuitive to the current notion about buyers being elusive, hidden, invisible, becoming buyer 2.0 or 3.0, and many other similar descriptors. I do not buy into these views based on results from conducting qualitative research directly with buyers. Here’s what I am seeing as the next frontier: buyers are seeking more interaction and connection and not necessarily more content to read. Our definitions and concepts of interaction and connection will undergo transformation due to rapidly changing technologies. Buyers today see new technologies as a means to enable stronger interaction and connection – not as a means to be elusive or to hide. However, it ups the game for companies to be even more relevant than they ever had to be in their existence. Based on ROI and revenue growth impact alone, in the totality of the buyer persona development efforts conducted by Goal Centric/Buyerology, the most impact from an ROI standpoint have been those originating from sales.

This leads me to another belief that may be counter intuitive: poised to enable this stronger form of interaction and connection is sales. Sales as we know it today will undergo further transformation yet I see its role becoming more prominent in developing the closer connections buyers seek. Buyer modeling and the modeling tool of buyer personas will be an enabling process for companies to transform their sales organizations into a gateway for buyers to make the interactions and connections they seek. While marketing personas and the proliferation of the term buyer persona have gravitated towards a specialized focus on messaging and content marketing, I see the rise of sales personas emerging to inform understanding and strategies that result in stronger connections with buyers. I am excited to be working on specific goal-based modeling methodology that address the role of sales personas utilized towards lead development, lead nurturing, social selling, inside selling growth, account-based marketing and sales, sales effectiveness, and buyer conversation effectiveness.

We’ve come a long way with the concept of modeling buyers and the tool of buyer personas. Yet, we have a long way to go. One constant we can count on is that buyer behavior will continue to change just as rapidly as new technologies are evolving. The use of descriptive and predictive buyer modeling tools such as buyer personas and buyer scenario models will become an important part of helping companies to make informed decisions on their future strategies.

Years ago I worked in retail on both sides. I started out working for an electrical goods chain store, then moved onto a smaller local one.

Both jobs were great (at least for me), because they satisfied the tech geek in me. Surrounded by home theater kits and massive TV’s? Sign me up!

But as much as I loved working at the big chain store, it never felt fulfilling.

We had to pretty much stick to a sales script and only if we were lucky could we occasionally offer our own take.

We weren’t encouraged to be ourselves.

Same went for special promotions. If a brand was paying to be highlighted that month, you had to sell toward that brand, even if another product was clearly the better one for the customer. It was snake oil salesmen tactics at their worst.

Jump to the little store, however, and the difference was palpable. You actually talked with your customers; asked what they wanted; offered your advice; agreed on essentials versus luxuries; and built an understanding.

Most of all, you were talking as if you were the customer.

No BS; no sales crap; no false advertising. Just simple customer-to-customer selling. And it worked. And continues to do so today.

Think about it. When you last went to a record store, or DVD store, or video games store that belonged to a chain, did you come away with just a purchase or a transaction? Because there is a difference.

Did you feel that you had bought your purchase yourself, or had bought it because it was sold to you? And I don’t mean because the salesperson picked it up and showed you what was on sale; I mean it was really sold to you.

The Indie Effect

From my experiences, independent retailers score every time over the chain stores. Sure, you get the occasional bright spark at a major retailer who lets their passion shine through. But generally, it’s just a job to them.

Indie retailers, on the other hand, love what they’re doing. They live the atmosphere that the small store brings. They know customers by name. They know the difference between Product A and Product B because they use it and learn about it, and not because they’ve read some manufacturer spiel. Then they pass that learning on.

Sure, the major stores might get the big deals from the manufacturers, but as the collapse of some of the big brands in business show, it’s not always about the best deals. At least, not price-wise.

Instead, a lot of the success is coming from the little independent guys jumping in and making people know about their service. By talking to them. By listening to what their customers want. By being the customer.

Sound familiar?

Be an Independent Retailer

Social media. Marketing. PR. Advertising. Customer service. Business deals. Business building. Branding. Unbranding.

Everything you do day in, day out – are you being a major retailer or are you being the independent retailer? Are you saying and doing what all your competitors are doing or are you doing what you’redoing?

There’s a big difference in approach and sales time is fast approaching. So. What are you?

OK, punch line completed (I hear the jeers already echoing in the room) so let’s get to the purpose of writing this post.

Many people who have historically been involved with writing content for websites have got into the habit of systematically adding in at least one exact match anchor text link (usually in the opening paragraph of text) to an internal page on their website.

If you haven’t picked up this habit you may be asking why people do this. There are many reasons for this ranging from potential historical SEO value add by sharing authority between pages, the idea that in some way it helps the user journey or just that you like to link similar pages together through content (or a combination of all the areas above).

So what’s the ‘dealio’?

The ‘dealio’ is that best practices in SEO now see this type of excessive internal linking as potential spam and certainly potential damaging indicators for a website content quality and therefore SEO success. I won’t go into this area in great depth here but there are a lot of well documented opinions on this online just check out posts quoting reference to ‘Penguin update’, ‘Google Penguin’ and of the like – reference to ‘penguin’ I kid you not, Google loves a good animal name reference for updates to algorithms and ranking criteria alike.

So some more one liners (although I’m making light of the issue each of the following are important consideration areas for your website content):

You know that you have too many internal links in your content when…

Every link pointing to a specific page on your website says the same thing.

Again, this can be linked to habit BUT it doesn’t scream out ‘natural link’ when you scan your internal links (there are numerous tools for doing this both free and paid for) and they all use specific key terms that you want to rank for.

What to do about this?

Simple, get a blank spreadsheet out, list every page on your site (based on a small-medium sized site – for larger sites target the top level pages to begin with), have headings for URL, internal links, link text, number of links and comments. Go through your site populating these headings and then manually remove everything that is not needed. Only by doing this will you get a real understanding for the quantity and repetitive nature of the internal links on your site – this will also be a great internal link rehab for you and you will never want to build excessive internal links again after this – I promise!

And one final one liner…

You know that you have too many internal links in your content when…

Your footer has more text in it than most of the pages of your website.

Again, there are historical reasons for this (I did exaggerate a little on the level of links but that was for creative reasons so I’m allowed) and some good intention reasons for this BUT please look at your footer and remove anything that is not a regulatory requirement, a link to selling pages (keep your T&C’s, privacy policy, site map, home page) or are not 100% needed and valuable to the user.

You know when you’re spamming your footer and the amount of links in the footer looks like the New York skyline so please update this and update it now. It won’t take long and it will be beneficial to your website content.

Rule of thumb, if you have to think about how to get a link into content don’t add a link as it’s not needed and may be seen as spam.

When you’re reading blogs like this one, you hear about all those things you should be doing to promote your brand. Write a blog, do a webinar, etc, etc. But it’s really not enough to just do the blog or webinar – you need to engage people and pull them in when you do so. And that’s the harder part – as I saw so clearly in the boring product development webinar I witnessed the other day.

Here are two things you must do if you want to bring people in when you’re making a presentation about your personal brand.

Show your enthusiasm

At the end of the über boring presentation, I was shocked to hear the speaker say in his dreary monotone: “I hope that you’ve come out of here today inspired by my enthusiasm and motivated to get to work.” What?!!! Honestly, I had no idea that he was really interested in the subject. I thought he was just going through the motions because not one aspect of his voice conveyed that he was engaged.

If you’re enthusiastic about something, you need to show it. That can make all the difference in the world about getting your message across and make people want to learn more. Not sure of that approach? It works.

When I was in middle school, the high school economics professor stopped by my math class to interest the incoming 9th graders in taking his AP Microeconomics class. I’d never considered taking an economics class, much less an advanced, intense one. But Mr Rowe spoke with such enthusiasm about economics that by the end of the class, most of us has signed up for the next year. And throughout the year, he never let up. He pounded college-level economics into the brains of 9th graders with such enthusiasm and interest that we absolutely adored his class.

Enthusiasm matters. Twenty minutes after the monotone product development webinar I listen to last week, I couldn’t remember what it was about. Nearly 15 years after my 9th grade economics class, I – a Classical Languages major in college who never took another economics class – can still discuss supply and demand on a high level.

Tell Stories

The presentor in the webinar gave us plenty of useful information. I think. To be honest, the only part I remember is him saying “It’s all about getting the right product at the right place at the right time.”

Why didn’t I remember anything from a webinar that was really relevant to my field? Because the entire webinar was conducted in boring generalizations. “You should do this…” “It’s really important to do that…”

The human mind isn’t designed to remember particles of information. Instead, stories are what stick. We might not remember where or when Benjamin Franklin was born, but we’ll always remember that story about him taking a kite with a key attached out into a thunderstorm.

If you’re talking about your business or something that you personally do, you have all the stories you need. You just need to bring them out. Instead of talking in general about the right product at the right place at the right time, talk about how Steve Jobs timed the market perfectly in bringing out the iPod/iPhone/iPad. Or use an example that you worked on for your industry – and how it came about. It’s the story that will make the difference.

Trust me, making sure you include enthusiasm and stories in whatever personal branding vehicle you choose will make a huge difference. They will draw your audience in and help them to remember you – which is the whole point of doing those activities in the first place.

Author:

Katie Konrath blogs about creativity, innovation and “ideas so fresh… they should be slapped” at www.getfreshminds.com. She works for leading innovation company, Ideas To Go.

Image courtesy of aaipodpics via Creative Commons

Like I said in my last post, I am not a fan of Apple products. I have a Windows Phone, I love my Zune, and a month after I joined Rackspace I retuned my MacBook Pro to the IT department to get a Dell Windows 7 laptop. I have worked with Apple products for many years, I sold many Macs when I was in the digital imaging business in the early 90s and here are iPods, an iPhone and an iPad in our household.

Yet, as a marketer and a business man it would be foolish not to recognize the unique ability in Steve Jobs to transform industries: personal computers, music, cell phones, animated movies and publishing. Steve also had his share of failures : The Apple Lisa, hiring John Sculley, NeXT, Apple TV (so far), Ping FM, and others.

You have probable read a dozen ‘Leadership lessons from Steve Jobs’ articles, but I have a slightly different perspective that I want to share. These are the three reasons Steve had an incredible ability innovate, according to the Adaptive Marketer:

1. Steve clearly understood customer needs

Apple is famous for not doing traditional customer research . A few days ago Guy Kawasaki came to Rackspace and told a group of us at Rackspace “the day you see Apple doing a focus group is the day you must short your stock”. It is easy to come to the conclusion that Steve ignored customers creating customers on his own.

It is true Apple does not do customer focus groups, there is no feedback section on the website and after 5 years there is only one iPhone form factor despite customers who have asked for a physical keyboard, larger screens or a smaller, lower-cost version.

But there is a difference between not accepting direct customer feedback and not understanding customer needs. Steve was frustrated with the user experience in the first iTunes-enabled phone, the ROKR. Steve understood customer’s frustration with smart phones in general. He understood customer needs, and used his technology and user experience genius to create products that served those needs.

In fact, Steve Jobs’ first press quote, published in the July 1976 issue of Interface magazine read “If we can rap about their needs, feelings and motivations, we can respond appropriately by giving them what they want.” referring to his customers for the Apple I, hobbyists.

2. He understood it success is not a result of having the best technology, but in offering the best user experience.

This ability is especially important in the technology industry where most product managers, marketers and executives are fixated on the virtues of the latest technologies that we often miss or misunderstand customer needs. Steve was a geek at heart, but he also deeply understood the importance of customer experience.

Probably as important, he understood the power of simplicity. If you look at his product launch keynotes (and if you are a marketer you must), the message was concrete and simple to understand.

In 2005 when he launched the iPhone, he did not have slides with a hundred features, technologies and capabilities. Instead, the iPhone was presented as a phone, a music player and a browser: three concepts that everyone understood. He did not talk about how many megapixels in the camera, how many megahertz in the processor, or the details behind multi touch technology. It was simply a phone, a music player and a browser.

In terms of technology, there was nothing revolutionary in the iPhone. The Windows Mobile phones available in 2005 could do everything an iPhone could do. But Windows Mobile was not simple. The best technology does not always win. Otherwise we would all be using Amiga computers.

3. Steve was relentless in making his dreams a reality.

In a previous post, I summarized Marcus Buckingham’s perspective on leadership: Great leaders are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. The possibility of a better future burns them and propels them. Great leaders see the future so vividly they have no choice but to do everything in their power to make this future real.

Steve really was an example of this. When the iPhone was announced, there was no market for $599 phones. There were only a handful of phones that were so expensive. If you worked at Motorola, for example, and proposed launching a $599 phone, the response would be that market research showed there were not enough buyers willing to pay so much for a phone, especially a phone that did nothing new.

“Apple iPhone will fail….The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.” – said Mathew Lynn, from Blomberg in2007

Yet, Steve said Apple would sell 10 million phones in the first 18 months. And he did.

There was no market for iPads, either. Tablets had been available for years. Microsoft issued me a Toshiba tablet when I joined in 2004, which was interesting but I used mostly as a normal PC. When the iPad was launched people were confused about the use case. Why would anyone need one? Seemed like a cool toy for people with a couple hundred bucks laying around.

As my friend John Smolucha points out in a recent blog post: “Even more impressive, nearly 75% of Apple’s revenues come from just two products: the iPhone (53%) and the iPad (20%). The first iPhones began shipping in June 2007 and the iPad only became available a year ago, on April 3, 2010. I don’t know about you, but I’m not aware of any other company that generates nearly 75% of its revenue from products that didn’t exist five years ago, while doing it during a global economic downturn.”

Steve believed in his dreams beyond what rationality, beyond market research, beyond corporate practices and policies. He had a vision and worked tirelessly to make it a reality. Yes, he was a micromanager, but only because he was a perfectionist and did not accept any deviations from his dreams.

If you want to learn more about Steve, I recommend the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

If you enjoyed this, please share it.

Taking a look at Curalate

Let’s take the story of Curalate as an example. Curalate recently launched, and it’s basically a monitoring and analytics platform that specifically caters to socially curated sites such as Pinterest. It’s an excellent example of how a company found a void in the current market today and set about filling it.

You see, though there are already many social monitoring and analytics platforms available in the market, most of them cater toward social networking sites that involve written content such as Facebook and Twitter. These platforms help you make sense of how your Facebook and Twitter campaign is doing: if you’re getting the results you want or not, and so on.

But Pinterest is no ordinary social networking site. It’s become highly popular due to the fact that connecting within the site involves visuals, not words. People enjoy creating the most fabulous virtual pinboards showcasing the things they love, as well as visiting, liking, and commenting on other pinboards.

Since Pinterest has become so popular, it’s no surprise that brands, both personal and business ones, have started adding it to their marketing mix. They want to know the best way to connect and engage with the users of Pinterest, in order to promote their brand, increase brand awareness and engagement, and increase their sales.

Finally the ability to measure Pinterest

And so Curalate arrived just at the right time, finding and filling a void. Brands wanted to know how to track their content on Pinterest, whether or not it’s driving traffic to their site, who their top responders and repinners are, how they measure up to other brands, and if this platform will drive revenue. Curalate gives you all that and more.

As the brainchild of Apu Gupta, Curalate’s CEO and co-founder, Curalate already has a seed funding of around $750,000 from NEA, First Round Capital, and MentorTech. It’s also recently signed up more than 150 brands and agencies that are ready to take their Pinterest campaign to the next level.

Why exactly has Curalate quickly become an invaluable tool in the market? It’s because there was a void before – the lack of a social monitoring and analytics platform that specially caters to socially curated sites – and it has materialized to fill it. There was a current lack in the market, and Curalate’s founders decided to address the problem, turning their product into an invaluable tool for those who aim to monitor and track the success of their campaign on socially curated sites such as Pinterest.

What can a personal brand learn from this?

There are valuable lessons to be learned here. As a personal brand, it’s essential that you don’t blend in with the crowd. Don’t offer just the same old thing that hundreds of other people offer. Stand out. Be different. Look for a void in the market and fill that void. Be the solution to a problem that is begging to be solved.

Don’t be a statistic. Don’t be a random face in a sea of strangers. After all, every person is unique in their own way, so it’s important that you really understand yourself and what unique traits and skills you have so that you can be an invaluable brand.

Take a lesson from Curalate. The company saw that there was a lack of tools that specifically catered to socially curated sites, and so they created the perfect tool to meet this need. Finally, brands no longer have to rack their brains trying to understand if their Pinterest campaign is working or not. They only have to use Curalate, so that all the information they need is laid out in its easy to use interface.

They can see how their Pinterest campaign is driving traffic to other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They can see who their top repinners and commenters are, and can even respond within the platform. They can see how they measure up to other brands that offer similar products or services. Basically, they can easily monitor and track their brand’s progress, so they can adjust and make changes if their campaign needs improvement.

Find a void in the market and work your behind off to fill it, so that you can ensure that you will always be an invaluable brand who will never run out of clients or customers.

Author:

Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.

But how can retailers interact with user-generated content without losing consumer trust? Is UGC headed for professionalization? We recently took an in-depth look at the industry and interviewed leading researchers to answer these questions and find out what benefits UGC brings to retailers.

Can Reviews Be Trusted?

Would you be more likely to stay at a hotel with 30 reviews, some positive and some negative, or a hotel with 1 glowing review?

“We’ve found that reviews are quite important to shoppers–at least ten reviews, to be exact. Ten tends to show varied enough opinions to aid shopper confidence in their decision making,” explained Expedia’s user-generated content guru Emily Pearce.

But as e-commerce becomes dependent on unique content generated by shoppers themselves, the line between amateur and professional content is blurring. Consider the results of a Cornell professor’s study of Amazon’s top reviewers: 85 percent had received free products from publishers, agents, authors, or manufacturers.

In an interview about opinion spamming and the science of detection, computer scientist Bing Liu likened the state of consumer reviews to an arms race: “[Opinion spamming] is a hidden form of advertising and marketing, and it is extremely cheap… However, as the detection algorithms are becoming more mature and sophisticated, it will become harder to spam, so the number of fake reviews will decrease.”

Stories of behind-the-scenes manipulations of UGC abound these days. Companies hire writers to write positive reviews of their products and negative reviews of competitors’ products. Some retailers have simply offered compensation to their customers for positive reviews. In 2011, The New York Times profiled one Amazon merchant, VIP Deals, that offered refunds in exchange for positive (5 stars encouraged) product reviews.

The trend: UGC is becoming less and less independent of the commerce itself. So embrace it, retailers, if you haven’t fully done so yet. Product reviews are a rich source of information, and also lend themselves to e-commerce’s trendiest new nouns: search and social. Here are four major benefits to featuring reviews on retail sites.

1. SEO

Graham Jackson of Bazaarvoice called UGC ”Google juice” for good reason: it is the best unique content available to e-tailers. Over the past couple of years, Google has incorporated UGC into SERPs, and as we speak, the search engine is rolling out semantic search. These changes are shifting emphasis from words and facts to phrases, intent, and meaning, which makes the natural language of UGC that much more valuable.

2. Product information

Even conscientious companies leave details out on product pages. Some shoppers will notice that and move on. But more–particularly those primed to convert–will read reviews to look for additional information. Any don’t worry about negative reviews; they may actually increase sales. As Panos Ipierotis explained, customers “feel more comfortable about a product when they have facts and opinions about the product’s good points and bad points.”

3. Social engagement

Every review is a social opportunity. Whether it happens on Twitter or on a retailer’s site, responding to customer feedback helps; people have been known to remove negative reviews, share positive opinions, and become repeat shoppers after receiving a response to a negative review.

4. Data mining

Consumer reviews are not only rich in keywords, they’re also full of opinions and experiences. Reviews can provide excellent feedback about what to change in your marketing and content strategies, as well as what to change about your products.

On the cusp of a new, social commerce model, businesses are just starting to use UGC in these ways. Check out our complete series on UGC to learn more about review platforms, verification methods, and how to increase the value of product reviews.

How can you get smarter? Greg breaks it down into these three areas:

• Build a Database of Experience
• Break Out of Your Comfort Zone
• Deliberate Practice

After reading Fast Company’s,“100 Most Creative People in 2012“ I was inspired by so many forward-thinking innovative individuals I decided to highlight the ones that stood out for me.

• Adam Brotman  - Finding the intersection of consumer mobile, the bar-code scanner and how to let customers pay faster is breaking through the traditional retail model.
• Leslie Berland - Defining social currency; bridging the gap between business development and social media has skyrocketed American Express’s digital efforts. It can certainly serve as a model for others to follow.
• Andrew Yang - Creating jobs and solving our unemployment issue is more than huge — contributing to this problem is historical. Andrew’s company connects graduates with entrepreneurs who can create economic value.
• Rachel Chong -  Matching volunteers with non-profits, as Fast Company describes, “an eHarmony for not-for-profits–a service matching volunteers with charities, built with the help of former Hulu and Etsy engineers.”

Innovation occurs on many levels.Whether you are at your corporate desk or sitting at the kitchen table, I hope this inspires you to break out of your comfort zone and take your idea from paper to reality.

I do. I need an onion.

I want to make the wonderful organic sausages I have in the fridge, along with the organic yellow and orange pepper… but, I don’t have an onion.

Time for some radical honesty. Sometimes, I am incredibly lazy.

I live in New York City. There are stores ALL around me. Quite literally, one elevator ride, a walk across the street and into the 24 hour grocery store would get me an onion.

It wouldn’t be organic, and I want organic. To get that, I have to walk 1.5 blocks between avenues (those are a lot longer than blocks between streets), and deal with the crowds that THRONG the store. It’s unbelievable how busy that store is…

And, I don’t want to go out. I’ve been working all day, and I have ZERO desire to go out. It doesn’t matter that it would only take 10 minutes. I like the quiet of my apartment right now, and I don’t want to go out into that busy, buzzing world.

So, my sausages will get cooked with just peppers.

Now, you’re probably asking, “Why the heck are you telling me this, Payson?”

Darn good question, and I’ll tell you.

It’s because, in marketing, we need to focus on what people WANT, not what they NEED.

Yes, I do ‘want’ the onion, but not enough to get my butt up and go out and get it.

If I was eating ice cream or chocolate right now (I’m not), and I didn’t have that in the house, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d go out for that.

So, when you are thinking about your product or service, you want to make sure that you are talking about it in a way that connects it to a driving, over-whelming, all-consuming WANT your person has.

It’s not enough to tie it to what someone needs – we’ll go without something we need for a long time, all the while spending time, money and resources to get what we want.

What do your peeps want so much that they’ll do pretty much anything to get their hands on it? How does what you have give supply that intense desire?

I’ve heard this many times by people in blogs, TED videos, books, webinars, etc. I get it. But can I tell the Gurus and Visionaries something?

Duh.

Of course you have to be different to help yourself stand out from others. Easily said. Not easily done. Yet the people who say it with such ease create witty presentations with this sentiment, collect a check and gain a few more disciples.

I call BS on it. Because being remarkable definitely has merit, but it’s not enough. It’s been conveyed in a way that suggests all an idea needs is originality but as many people in Advertising, Marketing, PR and similar industries can attest to, we could fill graveyard after graveyard with remarkable ideas that should’ve been used but weren’t.

We even have award shows for remarkable ideas that never made it.

Strive for the remarkable. But remember the logistics of what you still have to navigate that brilliant idea through – it’s a Lord of the Rings-level journey to get your idea to fly. Twists and turns of presentations to higher-ups.

So how do you do it?

Part of what I’ve done in my career to help the “really different idea than what the client is used to” medicine go down with a client is really what they deserve – tying strategy back into the rationale for why I’m suggesting what I am. If I’d just gotten up there in a boardroom and said, “You have to be different, which is what this idea is, because there’s no reason to keep doing what you’re doing like everybody else,” that’s not convincing enough. Sure, maybe they do honestly want to change. But how can they be sure your change the right one?

You want to speak to how the concept can resonate with the specific audience it’s intended for based on the research you’ve done. And the metrics all parties intend to use to measure the idea’s success.

See, what you’re doing here is methodically peeling away the risk and building in greater comfort with concepts the client can relate to. There’s a method and a reason to why the change is good. Not just, well, because it’s change.

It’s time to demand more of ourselves than simply demanding others be different and calling it a day. We have to show them on a regular basis. With real research, real metrics, and real tools, we can select to guide others on the path that’s right for them.

Think different? You should. But if you want it to thrive for years to come, recognize that there’s still a lot of work ahead of you once you have the idea. It’s not going to be as easy as some make it out to be.

But then, achieving anything worth the label of “remarkable” rarely is.

Author:

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based consultant focused on brand strategy and content marketing. Dan has guided a variety of CEOs and Marketing Directors at small to medium-sized companies, providing hundreds of strategic plans to help businesses identify their best niches and areas of opportunity. Dan blogs on Chicago Brander, mentors advertising students and cheers relentlessly for the Chicago Bears. Dan graduated from Drake University with a degree in Advertising.

If you are a marketer or business owner and you have heard that content is where you should be spending your energy, here’s a quick guide to what it actually means.

Content falls into two main categories

There are two main categories of content: timeless (or evergreen) and time sensitive. The latter includes news stories or other types of content that has a deadline, like a survey, petition or poll, a prize draw or a special offer.

Evergreen content is not reliant on a date, generally. A ‘how to’ feature or an analysis article can be evergreen, but even evergreen content can go out of date when new information becomes available or things change. This is worth thinking about when you write something you think is evergreen. Cast an editor’s eye over it to make sure it is as timeless as possible. There’s no point in putting a special offer in the middle of a story that people should be able to read forever.

Even though timeless articles can become old or be superceded by new versions, they can still be considered timeless compared with time-sensitive news which is literally only useful for posterity. For example, a story that says “Acme Company looking to hire staff” is out of date as soon as it has hired staff.

There are several types of content

As well as the two categories, there are several types of content. An article is mostly words, but there are also images, which could be related to an article or published as pieces of content on their own merit (infographics, for example). You have video and audio, of course.

We can also break these into different sub-types. You may be writing an opinion piece (or recording an opinion on video for YouTube), analysing a topical news story, writing a ‘how to’ or reviewing one or more products.

There are three ways to think about publishing

Your content can be created for one of three reasons: for your own website, for a third party website or for syndication.

Let’s look at syndication first, because this includes press releases. The great thing about press releases is that you can send them to lots of publications and you may gain exposure in multiple places. Some may publish your press release verbatim (don’t worry about duplication – this type of duplication is not bad, no matter what others might tell you), others will take parts of your press release to create their own unique story. Ideally, each publication that runs your story will include a link back to your website or, at the very least, include your brand.

The downside of press release syndication is that it takes either a bit of work to do it yourself or it costs money. There are some great newswires you can pay to distribute your press release to a wide range of journals and writers. The other thing is that you don’t control the final story. The writer may not use all the information from the press release you would like them to, there’s no guarantee anyone will publish the story. I’ll write about online PR in a separate article another day.

To get more control over the article you publish, you could write one exclusive article for a third party site that complements your target market. Maybe you have some great evergreen tips they would like to share with their readers. In return, you are credited and the article links back to your website, hence encouraging their readers to pay you a visit. Such articles work best when you identify a quality partner site that is well run and that does have an actual readership. You want your great content to be published on a website that is there for people and not for search engine robots.

The third area to consider is your own site (and I am including any spin-offs you may have, such as a blog, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube channel etc). Let’s say you have a ten page website for your small business – your ability to attract organic visitors from search results is limited by the text on those ten pages. If you do some keyword research to identify what your customers look for, you can create more pages of your site to provide this content. Suddenly, you are giving search engines more reason to show your site in search results.

In summary…

The active word in ‘content marketing’ is content. If you create things that people want to read and share and publish them in the right places, the marketing should naturally take care of itself. If you just create a load of articles to blast out to a range of places and promote them on social media without really delivering what people are looking for, then you are simply marketing (potentially bad) content. The reader should come first, not the marketing plan.

Not all of these are really content creation ideas. Some are just smart activities to kick yourself in the seat of the pants, and open you to fresh ideas. They are all good and worth reading.

Content Marketing Case Study

However, the reason I wanted to share this is because it is actually a case study of great content marketing. Brian Clark at Copyblogger, one of the blogs I read and tweet regularly, and you should to, served up a big pile of his own dog food and lapped it up with a spoon. Yum. (Not really sure what that means, but just go with it, okay?)

Reimagining Old Content In New Ways

Almost a year before the infographic was created Brian had Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing as a guest blogger. Danny wrote 21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue. Now, what Brian did was go back to that older post and turn it into an infographic, and add a 22nd idea about exactly what they did: Recycle good content.

Think Bigger

This is a stellar example of thinking bigger. Looking at your content and recreating it in interesting new formats. You could call it repurposing, but I wouldn’t. Let’s just call it reenvisioning. Is that worse? Probably, but I kind of hate repurposing as a word. It just makes me think of copy and paste content marketing. Yuck!

Spinning Digital Assets Into Gold

Take a read, but really take away the big lesson here: think how can you slice your own digital content up and turn it in to tasty morsels.

Your Turn To Put On Your Thinking Cap

If Danny wrote the original post for you, how might you reimagine it for other formats? Please leave your content marketing ideas in the comments here.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click is a marketing method that is primarily offered by search engines like Google. With this strategy, you sign-up for an account as an advertiser and then create an ad campaign. You come up with an ad, a link to your site and keywords that trigger the ad. You set the amount that you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. Then when someone types in a keyword that you have listed in your campaign, your ad will show up in the advertising section of the search engine results. If someone clicks on the ad, they are taken to your website. You then pay a fee for each person who clicks on one of the ads.

1. Pay-per-click works with your branding strategy by increasing traffic

One way that you could effectively use pay-per-click marketing is to increase the overall traffic to your website. Pay-per-click marketing can be a highly effective way to bring targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the niche that you are targeting, it may not be that expensive to get visitors to your site. The best part is that the people who come to your site from these ad campaigns are actively seeking what you have to offer. This means that you’re not just throwing money away to get people to your site who may or may not be interested in what you have to offer. This makes it more likely that you will be able to increase sales or conversions. However, the positive takeaway you can count on is the brand awareness associated with starting a pay per click campaign.

2. Pay-per-click is effective for conversion testing that increase sales

Another advantage when it comes to taking advantage of pay-per-click marketing is to use the traffic to test your regular site pages or sales pages. If you are building a new site, it probably doesn’t have much weight with the search engines yet. This makes it difficult to get any traffic to the site. Without traffic, it can be difficult to tell if what you are doing is actually working or even something that people will purchase. By purchasing some traffic for the site with pay-per-click marketing, you can get a lot of people there quickly, so you can see if your design actually works and whether your market is actively seeking to purchase your product or service.

Something Important To Consider

When it comes to using pay-per-click marketing, you can definitely get results quickly. However, you have to be careful that you don’t spend too much money with this technique. If you set your daily budget too high, you could end up paying a very big bill for all of the traffic that you get. Make sure and set a spending daily spending limit to your campaign. And remember, Google may go above that limit in any given day but it will offset the over spending less in another given day. Google does this in order to try and maximize your click through ratio.

It’s always interesting to see what storytellers see as the building blocks of story, or even the X Factor for what separates an ordinary story from a great story.

This video reminded me of an old favorite – Ira Glass from “This American Life” explaining how he approaches story in this series of videos we posted a while back. Check them out if you’re interested in the art and structure of story.

What action?

You may want them to do one of the following:

• Share your content
• Leave a comment
• Opt-in to your Email list
• Subscribe to your blog
• Download a PDF, mp3, video, etc.
• Contact you directly
• Buy a product or service

You need to create good content for any one of these actions to take place, let alone if you would like two or more to happen!

Creating good content

Fact: Anyone can create content. Newspapers published every day are full of content. Does that make it good content? Not really.

How often do you cut out an article from a newspaper to keep and show others? This is a reason why I dislike the new Timeline function on Facebook; I don’t care about average general media content. I much prefer a manually chosen link just as some of you may create by sharing this post when you have finished reading it. That to me is an indication of good content.

The key to good content is remembering you are writing for people. Not robots. Not drones. People!

“Yes, we know that Stuart.” I hear you say. So let’s analyse YOU for a moment…

Can you remember the last time you subscribed to a blog?
You felt it would positively be of a benefit to you.

When you last shared a YouTube video, you know the one with the funny cat where it jumps 3 foot in the air?
You were positive that all your friends would find it just as funny!

That last piece of clothing you bought?
You were absolutely positive that it would look great on you!

Good content evokes a positive emotion

Good content does one or both of the following; it either educates and/or entertains the reader. A successful product sales page has good content on it that educates the potential customer why they need to purchase it. A comedians sketch has enough good content in it to make the viewer roar with laughter.

A good example of this is the ‘DollarShaveClub.com – Our Blades Are F***ing Great’ video. Not only does it educate the viewer that they offer cheap high quality razorblades for a dollar a month, but it is highly entertaining at the same time.

I know, creating high quality videos is an expense that not everyone can afford, or has the skills to do so. So let’s roll back to basics. When writing your content, can you educate people and help them?

A post over at Social Media Examiner by Marcus Sheridan explained how his swimming pool company’s blog addressed the cost of installing a swimming pool. If you were to do a similar post, you would give a positive image of being transparent about the price of your product/service and educate people about what they can expect to pay.

Conclusion

When looking to create good content, look around you for examples. There are plenty of people writing not just good content, but great content that is shared by your mentors, peers and friends. Look at it, study it and ask yourself why it was shared so you understand the answer to ‘What makes good content?’ in future.