A “Do or Die” Content Strategy?

Content is important and necessary for every size of business, and in every industry. But perhaps there’s no content more important than to a startup organization. If you work for a larger, seasoned company, you can take a few risks with your content, try things and see where it goes. If it doesn’t work,  scrap it and try something different. As a startup organization, you’re starting from scratch and everything you create must be carefully crafted in a way that people will not only take notice, but fall in love with your brand – and quickly. You don’t have the time or money to try things that don’t work. Every piece of content you produce tells people who you are and what you’re about, and for startups, you often don’t get a 2nd chance. You could say, the startup organization content strategy is “do [well] or die.”

I thought, that’s a great content strategy for ANY size company. What if your organization, large or small, old or new, took a do or die approach to your content strategy?

What if every piece of content you produced could make or break your company?

I would bet you would plan your content more thoughtfully, understand your audience more fully and pay more attention to how well each piece is produced. Maybe we should all put ourselves in that mindset, no matter how big, small or seasoned…

5 Ways to Do Content Like a Startup

1. Carefully and Thoughtfully Craft Your Brand Message – This is very important, and startup organizations are getting pretty good at this. They sit down and hash out their story, their purpose for existence and the 1-3 things they want their audience to know about them. Then, they meticulously craft every word of their tag lines, news releases, website copy so that every word conveys their brand value. And yes, we once got into it over whether to use the word, “the.” To a startup, the message matters just as much as the product. Get that right, and the rest gets easier. A great example of a thoughtfully crafted brand message is F*** Cancer. I met them at Big Omaha. This non-profit startup from Canada has their brand value and message down pat…and it’s a pretty easy message to remember. A great piece of advice from their CEO, Yael Cohen was “keep your message simple and concise.” Yeah, I think she did that.

2. Understand Your Target Market Intimately, and Don’t Worry About Anyone Else – When you talk to a startup organization and ask them who they’re targeting, they’ll not only know, but they will then talk to you for an hour and and half about them. Startups understand their market, they know what value they hold with their market, and they know what to say to them. You could say that a startup organization is pretty much obsessed with their audience. They survey, research, and in some cases, stalk their audience online. This is a great mentality for every business to have. Another group that we met at Big Omaha was Thrillist Media Group. See if you can tell who their target audience is just by going to the home page…[hint] it’s not old ladies. Thrillist definitely knows who they’re targeting, what they want and how to deliver it.

3. Get Creative and Make it Stand Out from the Noise – Startups know that going into it, unless they’re creating a new category, they’re going to be up against some big players. But they’re not scared. Startup organizations understand that they won’t be able to compete with budgets, resources and presence, so they compete with different. I can’t think of a better example of this than the startup, Dollar Shave Club. The industry is disposable razors. I can think of a few major competitors and a universe of smaller ones. Not really a category that you can just sneak into and hope people notice you. Well that’s not what this company did. They decided to compete based on a clear value proposition and their ability to be different. If you haven’t seen their launch video, go watch it now. You’ll be inspired to think about ways you can make your content compete by being different, not by being better/bigger.

4. Listen First, Then Speak – Startup organization tend to go into business, not with answers, but armed with a million questions. They question everything. Why this product and not that? How do you use this product? What makes you like this over that? It’s important that startup organizations ask questions because it allows them to listen. I believe that listening to your target audience is what will make or break your company. People will forgive a lot of things if they feel like someone on the other end cares about their needs. Trust us, we know. We have some of the most forgiving users, ever! Startups know that the more they listen, the better their product/service will be and the more in-tune they’ll be with their audience (see #2). Organizations of all sizes could take a page out of this book. Most companies do the opposite, spending most of their time filling the pipeline with stuff they want to say, as opposed to filling it with stuff their customers want to hear. A great example of a startup doing more listening and less talking are our friends, AgLocal. AgLocal has yet to go live with their application, but they’ve spent the past 8 months listening to their potential users and farmers about what they want. Once they do launch, they’ll already have the product that their target audience wants because their audience helped build it. Genius. You may already be “built,” but never the less, you can always include more “listening” activities into your content planning.

5. There’s No Time to Waste on Useless Content. Every Piece Needs to Help Build your Brand – This is a big one for the startup crowd. Time is the only thing a lot of these entrepreneurs have to give, so every minute must be spent on activities that will move the business forward. This is a great lesson for organizations of all sizes. Every piece they produce ties in their brand value and main message and is in line with their strategy and voice and targeted to their audience. Imagine what that kind of focus could do for your organization’s content. I love everything that this startup gal, Princess Lasertron, does. She knows her brand, loves her brand and lives her brand in every piece of content she writes. Plus, she always has on really cool shoes.

So tell me, how might approaching content like a startup impact your organization?

Present:

9 Steps to Building Your Internal Publishing Department

May 23rd – 10 a.m. PST

Featuring:

Jayme Thomason Co-founder and CEO DivvyHQ	Pelin Thorogood Managing Partner Schulman+Thorogood Group

Webinar participants will learn how to:

1. Establish their content strategy
2. Determine their ideal content marketing vehicles
3. Establish their daily/weekly/monthly publishing schedule
4. Assemble a great editorial team
5. Utilize editorial planning tools to execute consistently
6. Utilize content optimization tools to create more compelling content
7. Build an efficient production, distribution and promotion workflow
8. Reach and engage their audience through search and social channels
9. Monitor their results and make adjustments on the fly

Join us on May 23rd to learn how you can start thinking, acting and delivering like a publisher.

Bios:

Pelin Thorogood, Managing Partner, Schulman+Thorogood Group

Pelin Thorogood is a new media marketer and entrepreneur. Throughout her career as a high technology executive, she has consistently been in the forefront of emerging technologies and trends, including as CMO of WebSideStory’s award-winning suite of cloud-based online marketing optimization solutions (acquired by Omniture/Adobe in 2008). In 2011, Pelin was named one of the “20 Women to Watch” in sales lead management. As managing partner in Schulman+Thorogood Group, Pelin sits on boards and advises new media and cloud computing companies. She also serves as Executive-In-Residence for Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. Pelin holds a BS in Operations Research, M.Eng and MBA degrees, all from Cornell University.

Jayme Thomason, Co-founder and CEO, DivvyHQ

Jayme is on a mission to take her simple approach to content marketing to the masses. Growing up on her family’s farm in rural Kansas taught her a lot about being able to appreciate life’s simplicities. Those ideals are now inherent in her career, first as a copywriter, then as a content strategist, now as the co-founder and CEO of DivvyHQ, the simple, spreadsheet-free editorial calendar application. DivvyHQ was created specifically for content managers who manage multiple projects, clients and teams and are longing for a simpler solution.

Jayme is also a contributor for the Content Marketing Institute and Spin Sucks.

There’s certainly no secret that our marketing strategies change more quickly these days. But, sometimes it feels like, rather than changing – things are simply accumulating. New platforms, new tactics, new content and engagement strategies, and new ways of measuring; it only seem to add to our ever-growing mountain of to-do’s.

And, maybe even the most radical is how fast we are latching our brand to more and more social networks. New networks and methods of conversing with our customers seem to come online every day.  And I’ve noticed that the accumulation of all these networks is a very real distraction.

Really, It’s Not You – It’s Me… Right?

Now, okay, some of this is the business I’ve chosen. As a content marketing consultant in the digital space, I’ve got to keep up with “what the kids are dancing to” so I’m a “joiner” by nature. But I’ve noticed this entering into my client’s worlds as well – mostly by comparing two recent extremes.

I walked into Client A’s office recently to talk with them about Social Media and Content Marketing. They have no social media or content marketing strategy going at the moment.  They’ve done some basic research – and they are simply overwhelmed at the prospect of having a “Blog/Facebook/YouTube/Twitter/LinkedIn/FourSquare/Quora/Pinterest” strategy. They are much relieved when I tell them that they shouldn’t even consider all that – and we begin to talk about what the “right” content marketing process is for them before they even consider which channels to converse on.

But, then – that same week – I go to Client B’s Office. These guys are grizzled veterans of social media and web content marketing. The have attachments to everything.  They’re quite handily managing their Blog/Facebook/YouTube/Twitter/LinkedIn/FourSquare/Quora/Pinterest” strategy. But, now they’re just not seeing results.

They complain that they just simply have to outsource all the “content production” because of all the channels that they are managing.  Their editorial calendars are way more complex than they need to be – as they add new channels immediately as they come online.  They just have to make sure they don’t “miss out” on the next, big thing.  ”What about deleting that LinkedIn Group?”  I ask. I’ve suddenly grown alien tentacles.  “That’s Mary’s job you’re talking about.  She’s never going to give that up.”

And what about those of us that have slowly but surely attached ourselves to every social network out there. One day you wake up and you’re spending your entire morning checking out new followers, updating status and maintaining your “status quo”.

Figuring Out The Dip

Way back in 2007, Basex research estimated the business loss due to “unnecessary interruption” at $650 million.  That was five years ago! And, interestingly, as I was writing this post last week – an article came out discussing how social media can now be considered as addictive as cigarettes and alcohol.

Oh, and yes, the writing of this post was interrupted by the Tweet that informed me that this article existed.  But it felt right to go read it.  Irony duly noted.  Moving on…

I just got through reading (for the second time) Seth Godin’s The Dip.   In it, Seth, discusses how when you learn a skill – the very beginning is fun.  New information comes in, new capabilities seem to be right at your fingertips, and the experience is exciting.  But then, shortly thereafter, the long, slow and difficult climb toward mastery begins – and it makes you want to give up.  Of course in many cases we are programmed to “not quit”.  We can’t quit – because then we’ll be “quitters”.

Seth’s point – and it’s a good one – is that any short term task that isn’t benefitting a longer term strategy is a great candidate for quitting.  In fact, he quotes Jack Welch who, as CEO of GE, would pull the company out of any industry that they couldn’t be #1 or #2 in as it was a waste of time and resources.

It was a lesson that I learned (in very real and difficult terms) during my eight years at a startup company.  One of the most valuable things I learned (dare I say am still learning) was from one of my board members.  He would say “hire slowly, and fire quickly”.  What he meant by that was to take your time and hire the best people that you possibly could.  But if they aren’t working out – fire them as quickly as possible – as that’s a gift to both you and them.

Chinese Proverb: If You Must Play, Choose The Game, The Rules & The Quitting Time

These are important lessons to us as Content Marketers. It’s always hard to know when to let go of creative that isn’t working (can’t we just give it a little more time to go viral), or a tactic that isn’t providing the results we need, or just continuing to add on more and more and more platforms because it *MIGHT* be the next big thing.

It’s Okay To Be Wrong.

It just has to be.  We have to have the flexibility and give ourselves (or our team) the permission needed to be wrong. It may be a mistake to quit Twitter because we haven’t been able to develop a community on it – and we barely use it. But a year and a half later and 24 Tweets and 150 followers later – is it furthering the brand story?  Is it furthering our marketing?  How much will it hurt if it sits out there unused.

We need to periodically check in with ourselves – and give ourselves permission to quit things that aren’t furthering our adventure. And we should do this – despite what conventional wisdom or how “cool” that thing might be.

As for me – I quit (well you could say I never really started) Pinterest.  I’m afraid I just don’t get it.  I’ve given it a good solid try for almost three months – and I find it’s now a distraction to me. I may come back to it some day.  But for now – I just can’t find the reason to continue.  I know that makes me just slightly less hip. But, I have to say… Being a little more square can feel pretty good.

How about you – what have you quit recently?

While we have some clear priorities in the short-term, we want to continue listening to our user comminity to keep our “functionality pipeline” full of stuff you actually want. So, with that in mind, we’d like for you to weigh in on which big-ticket items we add to the top of our priority list with a rousing game of, “WHAT COMES NEXT?” (cue gameshow music)

Ready to Play?

In this round, we’ll be considering the following features. Bob, tell us what we’re looking at! (Use your best announcer voice, it will be funnier)

Sure, Jayme! First up, we have the full-screen layout! Users will enjoy using DivvyHQ with an expanded, responsive, full-screen layout!

Then, we have the DivvyHQ Mobile version. Perfect for those Divvyers on the go. This little diddy will give users a slick DivvyHQ experience on any mobile device!

Next we have the ever-popular Dropbox Integration! Connect your dropbox account to Divvy, sync files between your team members and access them from anywhere.

Don’t forget about Calendar Syncing! This feature is sure to please those Divvyers who juggle multiple personal calendars. Sync your content deadlines to your personal calendar so you have no more excuses! (Special note…iCal integration is coming VERY soon)

And last, but certainly not least Jayme, we have the WordPress Plugin! A perfect addition for users who publish to WordPress!

Now, back to you, Jayme!

Thanks, Bob.

Alright, now that you know what’s up for consideration, it’s your turn to weigh in on “WHAT COMES NEXT!” There are multiple ways to play:

1) Vote via Twitter by sending your favorite feature to @divvyhq and adding the hashtag #WhatComesNext

2) Make your case on our Facebook Wall

3) Vote via the poll below

So there you have it. Please weigh in because your voice is super important to us. And realize that the results of this little game are real. When the winning feature is determined, we will put it into production immediately. #FACT

Now we just have one question for you: What Comes Next?

What is evergreen content?

1. It is not dependent on a news cycle, so it’s always valuable to your target consumer
2. It is keyword rich and consistently drives traffic to your site

For example: You are a small law firm that specializes in family law in the state of Maryland. You know that your consumers are going to need an attorney to draw up wills and legal trusts.  You blog about these issues to attract new leads and demonstrate your knowledge in this specific area of the law. Your evergreen content is content that focuses on wills and legal trusts. If something changes, like a politician discussing potential changes to the laws that govern wills or legal trusts, you may need to create a piece of content that addresses that change. This timely piece might attract new audiences, which is great, but the timely nature of the post means it’s not evergreen and could be irrelevant in a matter of days, weeks or months.

How do I create evergreen content?

There are a number of great ways to create evergreen content but you need to do two things first:

1. Messaging Architecture

What does your company stand for?  In other words, what is your brand? Your brand is how users will identify you, so you need to be rock solid in representing that identity.

Brainstorm on words that represent your brand—don’t stop at two or three—go until you have nine or 10. Post-its are helpful for this exercise—you can put one concept on each post-it.  Weed concepts down until you are convinced you have the three or four concepts that best represent your brand.  The law firm may have the following: Family Law, Wills and Trusts, Excellent Customer Service and Expertise in Changing Law.

2. Editorial Calendar

How often are you going to publish evergreen content? Whatever your blogging schedule; every day, twice a month, once a week, you need to mix evergreen content with timely content. That way you can attract the maximum number of eyeballs to your site.

Remember, your audience will return and expand based on your evergreen content, but your timely content demonstrates your mastery of whatever your subject is:  it proves you have your finger on the pulse of that industry.

Five Ways to Create Evergreen Content

Now that you understand evergreen content’s purpose, and you have your editorial calendar and your messaging architecture solidified, let’s talk about five ways you can create that evergreen content:

1. Make a top 50 list - What are the top 50 most frequently asked questions that your customers ask?  Make that list.  Brainstorm with others in your company or your industry.  Look at other popular blogs for similar ideas. There’s no end to these questions. Focus on short, tight blogs that examine one issue and give people practical ideas on how to manage.
2. Use your analytics - Look at the keywords that are bringing people to the blog. Examine the long-tail keywords that bring people to your website. Scour the words that attract people to your LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Watch who retweets your information. All of this information will give you great ideas for evergreen content.
3. Watch the comments - Very often, your commenters will give you great ideas for blog posts. Important clues to conversations happening in the blogosphere are left in comments—use them to create a list of important evergreen content posts.
4. Watch your listservs - I belong to a number of groups in LinkedIn and other listservs. Often my colleagues are talking about things on a high level that are perfect for evergreen content for my audiences. Not everyone specializes in content marketing—it’s a thin slice of his or her day. Some of the high-level questions asked on the listservs are perfect for evergreen content.For example, one of my colleagues was talking about public literacy in healthcare.  She wanted to know very detailed specifics, but it was the perfect topic to write about in general, because people are always looking for that information.  It was also a post consistent with my brand, which is plain language content.
5. Write about your passions - If you’re in this business, there must be something you love about it. (If not, go do something else. Seriously. Life is too short.) Every once in a while talk about what makes you passionate about what you do.  I once was inspired by an episode of Mad Men and it was my most popular post ever. My inspiration from that episode infused my enthusiasm about digital communications into that post. People are attracted to passion—it won’t hurt your blog to reveal your own, unless they violate laws or fall under TMI.

One More Thing

Make a list of your evergreen content and check it quarterly to make sure nothing has changed. You don’t need to write a completely new blog post, you can just republish with an update.  Demonstrate to your audience that you are paying attention to change: it wins trust and loyal readership.

(Tip from DivvyHQ: If you’re using Divvy, get in the habit of filling in the “Review Date” so you get an email notification that will prompt you to review your evergreen content pieces at a future date. )

Remember, you are the holder of important information people want. Listen carefully and they will tell you exactly what they want to read and consume.

Your turn. I’d love to hear your thoughts on creating and managing evergreen content.

“Send To” Multiple Team Members

So let’s say that I’m a content producer for my team and I’ve been tasked with writing a blog post that is due to publish next week. I’ve created the first draft of the post in MS Word, uploaded it into Divvy and now I’m ready to send it to my editor for review. I also need to send it to my graphic designer to find a good photo that will fit the content.

Using Divvy’s new-and-improved “Send To” feature, I’m now able to send a content item to multiple team members. Previously, you could only send it to one person at a time. So I select my copy editor and my graphic designer, add any notes that are relevant to them, hit send, and then change the status to “In Review”.

Both team members will now receive an email notification with my notes and a direct link to this content item. They can log in, download the file, check the production deadline and do what they need to do. My editor can make her changes and re-upload the revised word doc. My designer can source a photo and upload that. Then each of them can send the content item back to me for final review and approval. With all these pieces ready to go, this post is ready to publish.

Thanks to all of you who suggested this new feature. You just made DivvyHQ a little better. See you next time!

For more DivvyHQ how-to videos, subscribe to our YouTube Channel! 

In our defense, we were working against a hard deadline to release our product, and it just got left out. But that’s not a good excuse. We’ve now seen the error of our ways and we’re asking for your forgiveness! As of last week, we have created a better “getting started” experience. Now when new users sign up or log in for the first time, there are three pieces of content in your sample calendar that are designed to help you learn to use the application.

Here’s what you’ll see now when you create a new account:

1. Getting Started with DivvyHQ Ebook – On your dashboard, at the top of the the My Calendar section, you’ll see your first content item, the Getting Started with DivvyHQ Ebook. Click on this content item, grab the link and paste it into your browser to download the ebook. This ebook with walk you through the application step-by-step.

My First Guest Blog Post Ever

In early 2011, I was asked to guest blog for the Content Marketing Institute, which actually came from a consistent blog commenting strategy that I have executed for years. With their heavy focus on “how-to” content, I whipped up a post on the “12 Things You Need to Do After Writing a New Blog Post”. The checklist-style post was well received with thousands of retweets, likes and shares.

Now fast forward to March 2012. The infographic craze is in full swing, so I was perusing my content archives looking for something that I could turn into a good visual. I quickly recalled many CMI comments talking about how they had printed out the text-based checklist and had it pinned to their cube wall. BINGO! The rest is history…in the making.

Introducing “Your Blog Post Promotion Checklist” – Printing Instructions Below

Printing Instructions

1. Click the infographic above to open the PDF version.
2. Save it to your computer/hard drive.
3. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat or any PDF Reader application.
4. Hit Print.
5. In the PDF print setting dialog box, look for “Tile Scale” or “Print Scale” and set the percentage to 54%. Your print preview should now be showing that the infographic will print on three 8.5 x 11 sheets. If not, adjust the scale percentage until it fits.
6. Hit Print.
7. Tape the pages together.
8. Check your to-dos.
9. Hang it on your wall.
10. If you need help managing your blog or social media activities, you may want to try our 30-day free trial.

Embed Code

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Micaela Clarke, design intern at Brockton Creative Group, for helping on this fun little project.

Just for Fun

We’d love to see these hanging on your wall! Take a picture and put a link in the comments or post it on our Facebook wall!

Dead Bugs

• WYSIWYG Issues - Some of you have been experiencing issues with content saving in the WYSIWYG editor. Some content would be cut off, some would save, the rest would not, etc. Sorry about that! We  fixed it. Now, you should not have problems with copying and pasting from Word or anything else for that matter. Be sure to use the “Paste Plain Text” and “Paste from Word” buttons to make sure it ignores the funky Microsoft code that tends to hide in your clipboard’s suitcase.
• WYSIWYG Character Limit – And while we’re on the subject of the WYSIWYG editor, we upped the character limit from 2000 characters to 16 million. If you happen to hit the that limit, we want to know about it, because you deserve a prize for writing the longest piece of content ever!
• Session Timeout – We also increased the timeout limit to 40 minutes. So if you are on a page without saving, or doing anything, the page will remain active for 40 minutes.

Feature Enhancements

• “Send To” Multiple Users – Our user group asked us for the ability to send content items to more than one person. Now, when you click “Send To” you will be able to check multiple people who will get an email stating they have content to review.

• No More Blank Slate – When new people sign up for a DivvyHQ account, there’s now some helpful content already plugged in. Every new account comes with two helpful “Getting Started” content items and a Parking Lot item that explains how to use the DivvyHQ Parking Lot. We’ve also added some Recent Activity notes that explain how the Recent Activity section works. If you’ve had questions about this feature, please refer to our post about it.
• Email Assistant is “On” by Default – Also for our new users, the DivvyHQ Email Assistant now defaults to “on.” So new users will receive emails about deadlines and status changes by default and can manage the frequency of those emails in My Account>Email Settings.

So that was our week in a nutshell! Please continue giving us your feedback, and we’ll continue to build a great editorial calendar tool for you.

DivvyHQ Team Out!

Version Control Issue #1: Your Excel-based Editorial Calendar

It amazes me that content teams are still using Excel to manage their editorial calendars. As soon as someone makes a change to that file, everyone else’s copy is now outdated. Even if you have your editorial calendar file on some sort of shared server like Dropbox, you’re still going to run into conflicted copies of the file from time to time. And God forbid someone deletes the file accidentally.

DivvyHQ is cloud based, and has been built as a real-time, collaborative workflow tool so your entire team can input content ideas and participate in your editorial process.

Version Control Issue #2: Managing Content Revisions

This issue relates to the actual versioning of the content itself. As an individual content item flows through your workflow process, and probably gets revised at every step, it’s important to track the changes that were made and maintain the older versions in case you need to revert back. But unless you have a specific file naming convention that your entire team understands and uses, you might be wasting valuable minutes trying to find the latest version.

We’ve built Divvy with a simple file uploader tool that allows you to easily upload the latest version of your content, and then important file details are stored and displayed so that you can quickly determine the latest version of the file, or find a previous version if you need to revert back.

For more how-to videos, check out our YouTube channel or subscribe here to get our videos and other helpful content in your inbox.