In Content Marketing Institute’s latest webinar, 6 Key Metrics that Impact Webinar Performance: Before, During and After, Mike Agron, Executive Webinar Producer for WebAttract, answered some of the biggest questions content marketers have when trying to measure webinar performance, including:

• What are key metrics and their benchmarks?
• How do you gather the information?
• How do you know if you are on track?
• How do you use your intel to convert more prospects into customers?

Creating the win-win webinar

Agron began his presentation by asserting that the objective of a webinar is to get business results while offering a high value to the audience — a benchmark that Agron calls High Performance­-High Impact (HP-HI). This is the content marketer’s “sweet spot” for reaping the greatest returns on their webinar efforts.

But, as Agron stresses, these HP­-HI webinars don’t just happen — you need to have a solid plan. Here are five things to consider to help ensure predictable outcomes:

1. Objectives: What do you want to happen as a result of the webinar? For example, is your goal to bring in more sales leads, develop stronger thought leadership, or achieve better customer retention?
2. Audience value: Is your content timely and relevant? Are your messages and information targeted to your desired audience?
3. Success factors: What are your target benchmarks for the number of registrants and the number of attendees?
4. Calls-to-action: What do you want the audience to do after the webinar, and what are you going to do in order to ensure this happens?
5. Analysis: How will you determine whether your objectives are achieved?

One of the biggest benefits of the HP-HI webinar is that you create a relationship with your audience before, during, and after the event.

Measuring the success of your webinar

According to Agron, the following six key metrics are most effective in helping you gauge the success of your webinars:

1.  Click-through rate

Click-through rate measures the number of people who registered for your webinar compared with the number of those who clicked to the registration page (just because they went to the registration landing page doesn’t mean they registered). This data can give you vital information to help you predict:

• How strong your registration and attendance may be
• The effectiveness of your registration landing page
• The quality of your message and its value proposition for your target audience

Tip: Agron recommends you start tracking your data as soon as your registration page goes live.

How do you know if your CTR is on track? From the webinars he has conducted and measured, Agron has developed a CTR benchmark that can serve as a guideline for other content marketers:

• Excellent: A CTR of 34 to 50 percent
• On target: A CTR of 25 to 33 percent; you are on target, but review your invitation message to make sure it is specific enough to your audience to improve your rate.
• Underperforming: A CTR of  less than 25 percent; you should be concerned if you fall in this range, because it indicates that something isn’t connecting with your audience.

If your registration is underperforming, the answers to these questions might help get your webinars back on track:

• Are you targeting the right demographics?
• Is the information you provide “must have” or just “nice to have;” is it just a converted sales message?
• Are you asking too many registration questions that are invasive? (e.g., “What product are you going to buy?”)
• Are you using words, characters, or phrases in your email subject line that might trigger spam filters, such as “free” or “!”?
• Are you using HTML? (If so, you might want to consider switching from HTML to simple text.) 

2. Attendee ratio

Attendee ratio (AR) measures the percent of people attending as a ratio of those who attended compared with those who registered. This data can give you vital information to help you predict:

• Your audience’s interest in the topic
• The demographic value of your content (was it something the target audience wanted to take the time to attend?)
• Best practices for post-webinar follow-up

How do you know if your AR is on track? According to Agron’s benchmarks:

• Excellent: An AR of more than50 percent
• On target: An AR of 40 percent
• Underperforming: An AR less than 30 perent

3. Online polls

Online polls are your opportunity to find out what your attendees are most interested in about your webinar content by measuring real-time feedback. This data can give you vital information to help you analyze:

• Your audience’s level of engagement
• Audience members’ perspective on the topic
• How you should be shaping your message — this is particularly vital for your speakers, as good speakers can take the information gathered from a poll and use it to shape their delivery on the fly

Agron advises content marketers to always look at the percentage of people responding, as well as how they vote, as this information can be used in follow-up conversations after the webinar. For example, in the poll below that Agron conducted, the knowledge that 40 percent of his audience wanted help on how to monitor their online reputations gave him a starting point for later outreach. 

4. Exit surveys

Exit surveys measure how well you met your audience’s expectations, such as whether the information you provided was aligned with the webinar description and whether the difficulty level was appropriate for the audience you were targeting. The data can give you vital information to help you learn:  

• Your level of thought leadership
• Future topics you might want to cover
• Lessons that can help you as you develop your next webinar

Agron’s standard benchmark for the number of people who respond to an exit survey is:

• Excellent: 35 to 45 percent
• On target: 25 to 35 percent
• Underperforming: less than 25 percent

But Agron says asking your audience members to rate their overall webinar satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5 can be telling, as well. Using this metric, if the percentage of respondents who rated your webinar between a 3 and a 5 is:

• Excellent: greater than 90 percent
• On target: 80 to 90 percent
• Underperforming: less than 80 percent

5. Audience retention

Audience retention metrics measure how well your webinar kept the audience interested in your business. The data can give you vital information on the impact of your webinar in terms of:

• Whether or not you delivered on what you promised in your promotional materials
• Whether there were audio or technical issues
• Your brand’s level of thought leadership
• What post-webinar follow-up opportunities might exist

Here, Agron feels it’s helpful to look at attendee counts at 15-minute intervals throughout the webinar. When it comes to his company’s webinars, “We want to see 80 percent of the peak audience is still there by the Q&A portion,” he says.

6. On-demand viewing

On-demand viewing metrics indicate post-webinar interest and, according to Agron, this phase is where the real opportunities for content marketing begin. Data you gather that can have an impact on your strategy include:

• Fresh, new sales leads
• People who attended the original webinar but watched it again
• Those who registered but didn’t attend
• What your audience considers to be must-have content

Using the data you collect during a webinar

At the end of the webinar, Agron offered some advice to help attendees take the data compiled through these metrics and use it to start a “warm conversation” that can convert prospects to customers:

• Step 1: Archive a copy of the recorded webinar.
• Step 2: Within 24 to 48 hours, send a follow-up/thank you email and include valuable content, such as the slide deck, or link to reporting.
• Step 3: Do final registration, attendance, and performance analysis.

Agron also recommends marketers gather insights by individual attendee (see sample chart, below), including capturing any special questions they asked throughout the webinar process. “This way, when you follow-up, you can start a conversation that incorporates their questions, and you can integrate this into your marketing automation processes,” he says.

If you missed the webinar, there’s still a chance for you to view the full presentation. Download 6 Key Metrics that Impact Webinar Performance: Before, During and After.

Get more great insight from Mike Agron when you attend Content Marketing World on September 4 to 6 in Columbus, Ohio. 

I had the absolute pleasure to interview Jason Falls.   Jason blogs at Social Media Explorer and is the author of No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing.  He is a straight shooter, no-holds-barred marketer and it was a real treat to spend some time with him.  He’ll be speaking at Content Marketing World on “Cut the Bull – Blog with a Purpose and Drive Your Business.”

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

• Some things businesses need to be aware of as we move further into this digital age and social media
• Some of the common fears from business owners who are hesitant to take the plunge into social media
• How to break down the fear of sharing too much competitive intelligence in the age of digital marketing
• The seven business drivers of social media marketing
• How to measure social media
• How to use content marketing and social media strategies to drive sales
• A case study on how to use Foursquare to drive business
• How social media can help with research and development — with a great case study

There are several ways you can get the interview with Jason: 

• Subscribe to Next Stage Online Radio via iTunes. [Note: This feed includes additional topics beyond content marketing.]
• Download the MP3 from Content Marketing 360′s Facebook page.
• Read the transcript below.

Pamela: My guest today is Jason Falls. He is author, speaker and CEO of Social Media Explorer. Of course, social media strategist extraordinaire. I’m very excited to have Jason today. He is also a co-author of a book that was recently released. And, Jason, this title is truly one of the best I’ve seen in a long time, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing.

Jason, welcome to Content Marketing 360 Radio.

Jason: Thanks for having me, Pam. I’m glad to be here.

Pamela: This is so fantastic. This is the Internet so we can swear if we want to. The FCC doesn’t regulate us yet. However, I love the fact that I get to say bullshit as a title. I got to say that.

Jason: It’s really funny. The reaction has been 99 percent of the people love the title. And then, there’s that 1 percent that’s going to be like, “Oh, that’s offensive.” Or, “That’s unprofessional,” or whatnot. And those are the people that, obviously, number one, the book wasn’t meant for them. That’s fine. They don’t have to buy it. But, if they actually read the book and realize why we’re saying that, they might actually come down off the high horse a little bit and say, “Oh, OK, I get it now.” But, we anticipated there would be more push-back against the title. But, quite frankly, most people have the same reaction you have. “Oh, that’s a neat title.” 

Pamela: Yeah. It’s great. And it’s an attention-getter. But, even more than that, Jason, I’ve had the pleasure of following you for a few years now with Social Media Explorer. You have a fantastic blog, and you put out some great information. This is really you. This is your brand. And this is the personality that goes along with who Jason Falls really is. 

Jason: Yeah. And the inspiration for the title actually came from people that I talked to around the country. I tour around and speak about social media and have done so for a couple years now, long before I had a book. And it seemed like every time I would come off stage, somebody would come up to me and say, “Man, I really appreciate your style. You’re kind of a straight shooter, no BS kind of guy.” And it just sort of evolved from that. And I kept hearing that over and over again. So, I thought, “Yeah. That sort of sums up the way I look at the world.”

And when Erik, my co-author, and I were sitting down trying to figure out a title for the book, I said, “We’re really doing the no BS thing. We need to call it that.” And, of course, we were a little nervous that the publisher would say no. And the publisher was like, “You know what? We don’t have a problem with it. We need to make sure that the retail channels don’t have a problem with it.”

And so, they had to go to the Barnes & Nobles and the Books-A-Millions and Amazons of the world. And they all liked it, by the way. Nobody ever complained about it. But, it’s funny. You cannot use the word bullshit in an Amazon review of the book that has bullshit in the title because it doesn’t pass the Amazon profanity filters.

Pamela: Oh, that’s good.

Jason: So, the title of the book’s there and the header’s there and everything. But, if you go comment and say, “I read ‘No Bullshit Social Media,’” it’ll flag your comment as being inappropriate.

Pamela: Oh, that’s hilarious. That is fantastic. Now, I think it’s great. And we’re going to be talking about a couple of other things where I’ve got to warn the audience, my friends out there that are listening. There may be some swear words. I should have probably said that when we started the show. One of those disclaimers we tend to see before television shows, that if this is inappropriate, you may want to stop now.

Jason: No. We’re not going to go NC-17.

Pamela: No, no. I think it’s fantastic. It’s an attention-getter and you’re absolutely right. I’ve seen you speak. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you speak in person as well. And you are. You’re the straight shooter. You’re this straight talk kind of guy. And in a world where, gosh, we’re seeing a lot of different media personalities, I think it’s very refreshing. So, I’m very excited to have you participate in our radio show and share a little bit of your straight talk with our listening audience as well.

Jason: Thank you.

Pamela: So, let’s do that. Let’s kick the tires, if that’s OK, and start with an area of the conversation. Like you said, you’ve been doing this for some time. And you’ve seen the evolution, I like to say, when we talk about anything digital, especially social, we kind of talk about like it’s in dog years.

So, one of the areas of your business that you really focus on is how the consumer has changed. And just the way that businesses need to, not only to be aware of it, but how we can start addressing that and working with that. So, tell me a little bit about that. How has the consumer changed? What are some things that businesses need to be aware of as we move in further into this digital age and social media?

Jason: Well, and keep in mind that a lot of this argument that we make in the book is really focused on those businesses that aren’t really touching social media yet. We wanted to sort of draw them in a little bit. But, the consumer has changed. And I think people who have been talking about social media for the last few years sort of understand this. But, the Internet and social media, the lowering of the barrier to entry to get online and to publish your own thoughts and comments and to connect with other people of like mind through social networks and whatnot, has really sort of unleashed this Pandora’s box of consumer behavior.

In the past, when we wanted to share our ideas, we had to be pre-qualified. We had to be edited by a newspaper editor. We had to go to journalism school and learn how to be a broadcaster. There was some barrier to entry for being able to publish yourself. Whether it be convincing a publisher that your book was worth publishing, whether it be getting hired as a writer for a local newspaper, etc., etc. There was some barrier to entry. Although a radio station did put me on the air at age 14, which was ridiculous. So, there were some exceptions to the rule.

But, if you wanted to be heard by a larger group of people, there was a barrier to entry. Now, there’s not. Because the technology has advanced and the Internet is so ubiquitous, really, in today’s world, that anybody who just has access to the Internet, which you can get for free at a public library, can publish their thoughts online and can connect with other people outside of the geographic bounds of their life. And so, it really expands everyone’s world and everyone’s world view.

And so, when you have that sort of power of connectivity and the power of publishing and sharing, what has happened is the online consumer, which is the majority of the people, at least, in the Western world. Certainly, there are some folks in third world countries that aren’t online. But, at the same time, I’ve been told by my business partner who’s traveled there a couple times, you can go anywhere in Africa and, literally, kids who you think are dirt poor are walking around with cell phones.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, people are plugged in. People are connected around the world. And so, what that means is the consumer’s attention has deviated from traditional media. Now, I’m not going to make the argument, and I think it’s a mistake to make the argument, that newspapers are dead or radio’s dead or TV’s dead. I would never say that because they’re not. What I think has happened is the Internet has become the primary screen. The television has maybe been relegated to a secondary screen. I watch TV and tweet at the same time.

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: And I know lots of other people do, too. I know that people still pick up printed newspapers and read them in the morning. I know that I still subscribe to five magazines. Not digitally, the actual analog printed version of the magazine. So, none of these other mediums are dead. But, how people consume them and when people consume them and how long people consume them has shifted and has changed.

What that means is for brands and businesses, in order to reach the audience that you reached 15 years ago with advertising or with direct mail, so on and so forth, you’ve got another channel to consider. And that channel is the Internet. And that channel is broken up into multiple sub-channels. Blogs, social networks, micro-blogging, online advertising, so on and so forth. So, there are lots of more ways to reach consumers now. And what you want to try to do as a brand, as a marketer, is find the most effective way to reach the audience that you want to try to reach and deliver a very relevant message to them.

The digital world offers you some unique opportunities to do that in ways you didn’t do 15 years ago. But, it also offers unique challenges because you’re basically having to fragment and segment your audiences and your messages in ways that you never thought you would need to before. You’re having to reach much, much smaller, more relevant audiences which means your marketing is much more effective, but with a smaller group of people.

And so, instead of the spray and pray approach of the old days, buying a TV commercial and hoping a bunch of people see the message and think it’s cool and come buy your product. Now, you have the opportunity to actually go talk to 50 people in a chat room who are really, really interested in your product. And you can convince those people to try it or even to buy it. And then maybe, if they like it, they’ll turn around and tell their friends as well.

So, the consumer behavior really has further fractured the media landscape. It’s not just about 500 television channels and nothing’s on any more. It’s about there’s millions of options. And finding your audience amidst those options is a bit more difficult. But, when you do find them, it’s a bit more effective because you’re finding an audience that is ripe for your message and ready and willing to listen.

Pamela: And it’s interesting that you mention all these traditional components to the marketing process. I agree wholeheartedly that nothing in terms of traditional has truly died. There’s just an evolution going on of how we use these tools. And man, it’s amazing. And just for the audience, we are actually recording this show here. Where are we at? March of 2012. So, if they end up downloading later, they kind of get a sense of what I’m referring to. But, recently I just saw the first ad on television, Jason. It’s for Lowe’s, the hardware store. 

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Pamela: And, of course, now we’re seeing the Facebook and the Twitter icons at the end of commercials, which is indicating we have a Facebook page. We have a Twitter handle. But, I saw my first Pinterest on Lowe’s. I said, “OK. That was quick.” So, what you’re really talking about is that 360 degrees of how we intake information and media and content. And that it’s all kind of working together. You mention that your book was written for those that are needing to step further into the space.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Pamela: And so, one of the questions that comes up as you talk about this consumer change. If I can ask this, what are some of the fears that you’re seeing with companies that are hesitant?

Jason: Oh, wow.

Pamela: Why they’re not stepping in faster because it’s not going to go away. It’s going to continue to evolve. So, what are some of those fears that you’re seeing from business owners that stop them from taking the plunge?

Jason: Yeah. Well, the fears that we’re seeing today are the same fears we saw three or four years ago. And what we’re having to realize is that the world’s a really big place. There are lots of businesses. There are lots of executives out there. And so, the success stories that we can look back three years ago or four years ago and say, “OK. We convinced this company to take the plunge. And now, they’re seeing some value from social media marketing.” There are hundreds and thousands of other companies out there that are still afraid of it. And the fears that I’m seeing are the same ones.

Number one, they’re afraid that they don’t understand the technology. When I ask my mother-in-law how she gets on the Internet, she still says, “I double click the big, blue E.”

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, she goes to Internet Explorer and that’s how she knows to get on the “internet,” even though her entire computer and every software program on it are connected to the Internet. But, you still have, I think, several generations. Two or three generations of people out there, especially decision makers at large companies, small business owners, so on and so forth, that are just simply intimidated by the technology. They just don’t understand how the web works and how websites work. And they just don’t get it. They know they can open up a browser and go to different places, but they never see themselves being able to create a place for their business online. 

So, fear of technology is one. When you start talking social media, one of the first things you hear is, “Well, there’s no return on it. There’s no ROI on that. So, I’m not going to try it.” And it’s because they don’t understand what social media marketing can do for their business. Therefore, they assume it can’t do anything. And they don’t see case study after case study of businesses saying, “We invested this much money and we got this much money out of it. And, therefore, we had this fabulous ROI.” There are lots of different reasons for that. And we can dive into ROI a little bit more deeply a little bit later. The one that really continues to surprise me is that they’re afraid of letting people say bad things about them on their own website.

Pamela: Yeah.

Jason: And I don’t get that. I really don’t get that because, first of all, if someone comments on your blog, it’s not above the fold right under the headline on your website. It’s buried on one page that very, very few in the grand scheme of things, very few people who visit your website, are actually going to see, first of all. Second of all, you can always establish expectations for your audience and say, “Look, if you want to comment on this blog or if you want to leave a review or recommendation on this website, here are the parameters that are acceptable to us. You can’t use foul language. It has to be on topic. If you call us names, we’re going to remove it.” 

And so, you can moderate and control as long as you establish those expectations for your audience. And I still, to this day, hear executives saying, “Well, we don’t want to allow negative comments on our blog.” Well, first of all, A) you don’t have to and B) even if you did and it was someone being constructively critical, it’s a lot more powerful if you actually just respond to them and say, “Hey, thanks for pointing that out. Here’s how we’re going to address that issue.”

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: Makes you look so more invested in your audience. But, there are still executives who feel like control is what they have to exert in their marketing. And I’ve got news for them. They’ve never had control over their marketing. The difference between 15, 20 years ago and today is that 15 or 20 years ago there were several hundred thousand water coolers across the country. And people would go to the one nearest them, and they would have conversations with other people. And sometimes, they would mention brands and companies and so on and so forth. 

Today, there’s one big water cooler where everybody goes and the conversations are documented. They’re indexed. You can search and find them, so on and so forth. That’s the only difference. You didn’t have control over the hundreds of thousands of conversations about your brand when you screwed up really royally, and it was publicized in the media 15 years ago. And you don’t have control over those conversations today. Only now, you can see them. So, it scares the hell out of people.

Pamela: Yes. It’s interesting because I’ve had that same confusion. I just can’t understand why folks get so excited about the idea of negative comments when there’s so much opportunity to actually serve a consumer in front of so many eyeballs. It’s usually the reaction of a bad experience that creates more loyalty.

Jason: Sure. 

Pamela: And I just want to touch on those fears. Because I think just hearing them, if you’re a business owner listening today and hearing some of the things that Jason is saying, maybe we struck a chord. And part of our conversation is to hopefully alleviate some of those myths and fears. And get you to step that foot a little further down the social media path.

And another one that comes up is the whole competition conversation, Jason. I know I’ve run into this myself a few times. I don’t want my competition to see what I’m doing or my competition X. Just this conversation of if I put my stuff out there, my competition can have it. Well, you write some really good stuff in terms of your competition in your book. And I’m just going to say it because, again, I get to say it without FCC regs. Your competition may have already kicked your ass.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.

Pamela: Because if you’re not out there, somebody else might be. Give us just some insight to that, into breaking down the wall of this whole competition conversation and digital marketing.

Jason: Well, I think there are two things that we need to address here. First of all, participating in social media doesn’t mean that you have to unroll proprietary information about what you’re doing. Or insider based secret plans for your company on your blog. That’s not what participating in social media necessarily means. But, let me paint a picture for you because there’s a really good analogy and case study that’s in the book that I think will help people. And for those of you out there who don’t want to get into social media because you don’t want to share things that your competition may see, you’re going to be Telligent . OK, that’s the name of a company. And you’re going to be Telligent in this particular scenario.

So, one day on Twitter there was a gentleman by the name of Chris Geiger [SP]. And he tweeted one day. He worked at the time at a business process management software company. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what they’re called. The name of the company is K2 and they’re in Redmond, Washington. And one day he tweeted, and I quote, “Alternatives to Telligent community server recommendations.” So, you are Telligent and he’s tweeting that he’s a little dissatisfied with a product that you are presenting him or that he’s a customer of. And he’s looking for alternatives to you.

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: And so, you’re not locked into social media, so you don’t know that he’s tweeted this.You don’t know that he said this. But, there’s a gentleman by the name of Michael Fraietta who works at Jive Software, which is a competitor of Telligent. And he sees that tweet. And so, he responds to Chris Geiger on Twitter in a very natural, organic way and says, “Chris, check out Jive Software. If you’re looking for an external community server, here is ours.” And he drops a link to it.

Now, Chris and Mike didn’t know each other. Chris had no idea who Mike was. But, Mike responded to that tweet and said, “Hey, Chris. I saw you were asking. Here’s an alternative, and it happens to be the company that I represent and that I work for.”

Now, the Telligent folks. If it was you and you were afraid of social media and you didn’t want to participate because your competition might see what you were doing, you would not have known that Chris was even dissatisfied unless he told you. You wouldn’t have seen the tweet because you wouldn’t be monitoring the web. But, your competition was monitoring the web. And they were participating in those conversations. And they reached out and said, “We’ve got an alternative solution.”

Now, I don’t know if the deal actually closed because Chris and Mike both left their respective companies shortly after this conversation started. But, I do know that K2 started talking to Jive Software about switching from Telligent to their solution. And so, it was a qualified lead. It was a hot prospect. And Michael Friada, the community manager at Jive Software, potentially won Jive a converted customer that day. And Telligent lost it.

So, you’re Telligent. You’re afraid of social media. You don’t want to be in it. You think your competition’s going to see all your stuff. Well, guess what? They already are and they’re taking your customers away from you.

Pamela: Right. That’s an excellent example. By not participating, there’s an absolute bottom-line loss. And that’s one example but there are hundreds of examples that are going on out on the worldwide web with that. And in terms of the competition and the customer, one of the things that we’ll probably touch on in R&D is writing a little bit of research and development. But, you touched on not being a part of the conversation as possible ROI challenges.

Now, the return on investment conversation is one that I think all of us that work in any marketing or social marketing space, we get this question from business owners and the folks that make the decisions. In today’s world, we’re doing this in 2012, there are some things that are available to us now that weren’t there even two, three years ago in terms of being able to measure and the analytics and things that we can look at. But, this is a passionate area for you. I know it is. You write about it a lot. This is a part of your blog on a regular basis. You do a great job of sharing it in the book. This measuring of social.

Talk to us about what measuring social media means, Jason, to you.

Jason: Well, the first thing you need before you even talk about measurement, you have to understand what social media marketing can potentially do for your business. Because you have to know what you’re going to try to measure. And so, in the book we spell out what we call the seven business drivers of social media marketing. And these are the seven big bucket things that you can use social media marketing for.

So, the seven are, and I’ll try to go through them from memory. I don’t have them written down in front of me. But, I’ve talked about this book enough, I should know them by now. You can use social media to enhance your branding and awareness. So, make people more aware of who you are. You can use social media to protect your reputation. And that can be in the search engines to make sure you rank well. If you deserve to be the number one result for a certain keyword term, there are things that you can do on the social web to help you stay there.

And then, there’s also finding those negative conversations about you and participating in them so that you can mitigate them and, at least, bring those conversations back into a neutral not negative standpoint. Maybe, even turn them from a detractor to someone who is an advocate. So, that’s the second one.

And the third one is it extends your customer service. So, you can perform customer service on the web. It also allows you to enhance your public relations. So, PR has a lot of fingers, and each of them has some sort of corresponding activity online. And social media plays a big part in that. You can use social media marketing to build community. That’s the fifth of the seven. The sixth is you can use it to facilitate research and development. And the last one that we talk about is the one everybody wants to talk about. You can use it to drive sales or leads.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, if you look at those seven and you think, “OK. If my goal is to build community, how do you measure building community?” Well, you measure it by the size of your community. Maybe, you measure it by the value of the members of the community as customers compared to people who are not in the community. So, people who purchase who are community members, how much do they spend with you versus random people who come by and buy things who aren’t necessarily interested in being your community? So, there are a lot of different ways that you can contextualize and measure community and see how successful you’re being there. And money has a play in that regard.

But, let’s think more broadly. If you’re using social media marketing to enhance the awareness of your brand, think about how you measure that. You have to plan to measure your awareness. And wouldn’t it sound silly if I were in a board meeting and the CEO of the company said, “Hey, Jason. How is the branding and awareness campaign going online?” Wouldn’t it sound silly if my answer was, “$57.000?”

Pamela: Right.

Jason: Because you don’t measure awareness in dollars and cents. You measure awareness in how many more people know you. What’s the reach of your messaging? Are those messages resonating with the audience that you’re trying to reach? So, you measure awareness in lots of different things. Number of eyeballs reached. The pervasiveness of your messaging once it gets out there.

And you actually, physically measure that by doing surveys and looking at social media monitoring to see how many people are mentioning your brand. Did they have a positive reaction to you, a negative reaction to you? Q scores fall in there, so on and so forth. But, you don’t measure awareness in dollars and cents.

In fact, if you look at the seven business drivers that I mentioned, there are really only two that are primarily measured in dollars and cents. Obviously, driving sales and leads. And then research and development, I think you can make a really strong argument. Because if you develop a new product based on a social media idea or you enhance a feature based on a social media idea, you can then measure how much revenue you get from that new product or feature being in the marketplace.

So, those two you can absolutely say the ROI of what we’re doing is XYZ. The other five are more primarily measured in intangible benefits. They’re still important. You still need to build community. You still need good customer service. You still need good public relations. You still need branding and awareness. You still need to protect your reputation. But, you don’t measure those things primarily in dollars and cents. Like I mentioned in the building-community example, there are ways to bring dollars and cents into that measurement, but those are more intangibly measured.

And, therefore, asking the question of ROI, I think, is the wrong question to start with. You still want to ask that question because you need to be looking at money and the bottom line. But, ROI is always going to be a financial metric. It’s an accounting measurement. It’s how much money you made, subtract how much money you spent and then divide by how much money you spent. And the result is a percentage. And the key factor there is the two numbers that you need to measure that are dollars and cents.

So, you can’t possibly measure ROI of an awareness campaign because you don’t measure awareness in dollars and cents. So, what I say we need to do is pull back further and say, “What do I get in return?” Because you still are including return on investment. You’re still including money because you can get that in return. But, you’re also including the other intangible things that you can get. You can get more subscribers, better website traffic, lower cost per lead, lower call center costs, higher customer satisfaction scores. There are lots of different things you can get out of social media marketing. You first need to decide what you want to get out of it. And then plan your strategies and your tactics to achieve those goals and objectives so that you can measure them.

And I think the one mistake that most companies make, even mature companies in the social media marketing world right now, the one mistake they make is they don’t plan to measure.

Pamela: Hmm.

Jason: They say, “We’re going to do this for branding and awareness. And they don’t ask, “How are we going to measure that?” until three or four months into the campaign. And they go, “Well, how many ‘Likes’ do we have on Facebook? Did they go up? OK, I guess we did well.”

Pamela: Right.

Jason: You’re always going to be dissatisfied with your measures if you don’t first define what measures are important.

Pamela: That’s an excellent point because you can only manage what you measure.

Jason: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Pamela: A couple of things that you mentioned throughout today is this qualified prospect who becomes then converted to a sale. Which is what excites me about today’s world. When we were in the industrial model, it was so much more 100 calls a day. As much as you tried to get qualified, there’s nothing like the qualification process we can do today with the data, the intel and the conversations we can have.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: So, when I talk to business owners I say, “Would you rather have 100 people and have 20 percent convert or would you rather have 10 and have 80 percent convert?” That’s really the kind of numbers we’re able to deal with today. And you’re talking about, creating almost a sales funnel with some of this process.

I want to talk a little about research and development. But, since we’re talking about the sales piece, if it’s OK, let’s touch on that because this is an area, I think, is very confusing for some businesses. How can I use these different strategies of content marketing and social media to really drive sales? What does that really mean? Obviously, measurement. Knowing what you want to measure. But, what are some examples or, I guess, insight you can provide, Jason, when talking from that sales conversation?

Jason: Well, let’s start out with a small business example because I think that’s going to help a lot of people sort of wrap their brain around how social can really help you. Miss Shirley’s is a restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland. And they have an awesome Sunday brunch. And the Sunday brunch is so good that they often have a two hour wait for a table. So, apparently, Miss Shirley’s is the place to go on Sunday mornings if you’re in and around Baltimore. They have two locations. So, look them up and go check them out.

Pamela: Excellent.

Jason: They sat down and said, “You know what? We’ve got Sunday under control. But, we want to drive more sales during the week. We need to figure out how to drive more Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday sales. And so, they started brainstorming and looking at all the options out there, both social media and digital and then offline as well. And they landed on Foursquare. And for those out there who don’t know, Foursquare is a mobile app you pull down on your phone.

And when you go to a place, you check in and you tell your social networks, “I am at this place. I am at Miss Shirley’s. I am at the bank. I am at the grocery store.” Whatever. And your social network then sees that and the potential is, “Oh, they are shopping at this store. Or they’re dining at this restaurant. Maybe I should, too.” So, that’s kind of the nuts and bolts of how Foursquare works.

Well, Foursquare also has this sort of silly little thing where if you check in more frequently than someone else at a given location in a certain amount of time, Foursquare names you the virtual mayor of that location which sounds really stupid. And, quite frankly, it is really stupid unless you think about it. It’s kind of rewarding people for checking into the location.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: But, if you’re the business, and you don’t have any control over who the mayor is, that’s all Foursquare activity, you can actually use that to your advantage. And what Miss Shirley’s decided to do was, “We’re going to educate everybody that comes to Miss Shirley’s about Foursquare. We’re going to put table tents and posters and we’re going to do emails. And we’re going to say, ‘Download this app on your phone, and when you’re here, check in. Because we want to know when you come to Miss Shirley’s. We want to be able to identify our loyal customers.’” So on and so forth.

And so, that motivated people probably to download the app and start checking in when they got to Miss Shirley’s. But, then they added a little incentive. They said, “If you come in on Sunday morning and you are the mayor of either location, you don’t have to wait for a table.”

Pamela: Oh, nice.

Jason: So, now all of a sudden, instead of having to wait two hours for your Sunday brunch with your family, if you come to Miss Shirley’s several times this week and check in and you become the mayor, you don’t have to wait. Well, they saw a 427 percent increase in check-ins on Foursquare.

Pamela: Wow.

Jason: Which is a little bit of what we lovingly refer to in the book as a hippie and tree-hugger stat.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: Because it doesn’t actually mean anything for your business other than you taught people how to use Foursquare. Good for you.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: But, they also measured a corresponding 18 percent increase in sales. Because in order to be the mayor, you had to check in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and other days other than Sunday. You had to come in more frequently. And when you came in more frequently, you probably had a beer or you bought lunch or you bought dinner or whatever. And so, they noticed that because they did this one little isolated social media thing, they had an 18 percent increase in sales over a three month period. And that’s an 18 percent increase in sales in the middle of a recession in the restaurant industry, which is incredible.

Pamela: That’s amazing. That is amazing. And there are so many other elements that you talked about, Jason. They did; they know their community, so they worked with their community. And their brand awareness probably went up as well if more people were checking in. There are a lot of different components to that. And I think the most important is they knew what they wanted to measure before they went for it.

Jason: Yep. Absolutely. They knew that Foursquare check-ins would be an important metric for them. But, they also knew that they needed to watch sales. And from what I understand, that was really the only sort of marketing thing that they changed over that three-month period.

Pamela:  Wow.

Jason: So, they can definitively say that 18 percent increase in sales was most likely the result of this Foursquare promotion and what we were doing on Foursquare. Now, you can always say, “Well, there are marketplace changes and fluctuations and weather.” And all that stuff has a lot to do with it. But, from what they were doing for spending their marketing dollars, they can attribute that 18 percent increase in sales to Foursquare.

Pamela: I think that’s fantastic. That’s a great example and a great small business example. Let’s face it. That’s the majority of what we have out in our wonderful country. And these are the folks I think have the greatest opportunity with the level playing field that has become marketing. Because you could be a Coca-Cola or you could be this little restaurant in Maryland, and you could be using the same tools.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: I think that’s phenomenal. I mean this is just an unheard of opportunity for marketing and small business. And one of the pieces I just want to touch on as we kind of wrap things up and we’re moving into that space here, Jason, is research and development. Again, I think small business owners sometimes miss the boat on this. And I know that this is an area that you share about really well, is using social as a research tool. Launching new product. Getting intel or due diligence on your customers. So, tell us a little bit from your perspective about how this space can really help a company with research and development.

Jason: Sure. And when we’re talking R&D, we’re probably talking larger businesses, because those are the ones that have the money to invest in research and development. But, social media also, though, makes it very, very possible for small businesses to conduct R&D on a reasonable level. Now, you’re probably, if you’re doing a customer survey or a consumer survey that you’re throwing out there on your Facebook page, will not. You have to worry about sample size and how many people are going to answer the survey and is it really relevant data.

But, at the same time, a small business can very easily throw up a poll or a couple of questions on their Facebook page and start getting intelligence from their customers right away. So, R&D in social media sort of levels the playing field to a degree.

Probably my favorite R&D story is actually a big brand. But it’s a big brand that saved a ton of money and did not have to spend a ton of money to get some really good insights. And they’re my home boys here in Louisville, Papa John’s. I don’t work for them. I’m not endorsing them at all. But, they’re in Louisville and I’m in Louisville. So, there you go.

But anyway, the Papa John’s folks did a Facebook contest. And on the surface it appeared to be just a gimmicky way to get “Likes.” They basically said instead of going to our executive chef and getting a new pizza recipe to put in stores, we’re going to turn to our Facebook fans and say, you guys submit a new recipe to us and we’ll choose a winner and we’ll put that in the stores.

And so, it looked like this gimmicky thing. But, they actually formulated the contest for a specific reason. And that reason was R&D. And the requirements of the contest were if you’re going to submit your recipe, you have to videotape yourself making the pizza. And we want to know why you’re putting the ingredients in. We want to know how much paprika and how many pepperoni slices and how you’re going to knead the dough. And how long you’re going to put it in the oven. And you have to explain to us the logic and the reasons why you’re putting all this stuff in this pizza. So, that was the video requirement to enter the contest.

Well, they got hundreds of entries. And, therefore, they literally got hundreds of hours. I don’t know if it was hundreds of hours, but they got dozens of hours of actual consumers looking in the camera and saying, “This is why I make this pizza the way I do. This is why the ingredients go in.” Can you imagine how much money they would have had to pay to a market research firm to go out and get that from focus groups and whatnot in the field?

Pamela: That’s phenomenal.

Jason: It would have been millions of dollars.

Pamela: And not only that, but it almost feels competitive. You talk about the Foursquare checking in process. There’s something about this competitive nature of human beings that you can tap into as well. That’s fantastic. I love how they asked all those specific detailed questions. You have to literally give us your reason why you did X, X and X.

Jason: Oh, yeah. And the winning entry, by the way, was Cheesy Chick Cordon Bleu. It actually made it into the stores. They sold it. So, they were able to say, “Hey, Facebook contest has an ROI because we sold Cheesy Chick Cordon Bleus.” They also put a bunch of the runners-up in stores as well. I think they gave the winner $10,000 or something in honor of having their pizza in stores.

So, it was a gimmicky little contest. But, the reason they ran it was to get all that consumer insight that they would have literally had to pay millions of dollars for. So, that whole thing had an element of gaming, because there’s competition between the people. It had really high engagement levels because people were looking into a camera and talking to the brand. But, they were able to glean insights that really helped them understand their consumers a lot better. And they didn’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

In fact, you can go out and do a video contest on Facebook. And you can probably find some third-party applications and whatnot that you can do it for probably under $10,000 if you wanted to. Now, Papa John’s is Papa John’s. They probably spent a lot of money to make it, design it nicely and have all these bells-and-whistles functionality. So, they probably put a little bit of money into it. But, I promise you, they didn’t put as much money into it as they would have had to have done if they’d gone to a market research firm and gotten the same information.

Pamela: Well, the hit-the-streets factor is so different.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: The manpower it would have taken before social media to get that kind of intel at that scope.

Jason: Yep.

Pamela: It would not have happened.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: I just don’t think it would have happened because they would have started going through the cost process and say, “Ah, we’ve got to try a different route.” No, I think it’s fantastic. And I love these examples because even though it’s a large organization, I believe that we as small business owners or folks out there listening as a small business owner, you can take an idea from that.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: There is something in that, like you said. And you mentioned the quality. We seem to be a little more forgiving in terms of quality since YouTube.

Jason: Yeah, that’s true. It’s really funny. I’m actually seeing bigger brands are becoming more and more insistent upon higher quality, which I find ironic. Because, I think, we in the social space have tried to show them over the years that it’s OK to just throw up a flip cam and ask somebody a question.

Pamela: Yeah. 

Jason: But, the more bigger brands get involved in it, the more they say, “Well, this is a way we can separate our video content from others.  We can still put some production value into it.” I don’t see any problem with that. I really don’t. But, at the same time I still think it’s cool to have . . . If Scott Monty from Ford Motor Company is at a trade show and opens up a flip cam and interviews somebody for two minutes and throws that up on the Ford page, that’s much more compelling to me than some slick video of a car driving around a beach.

Pamela: Well, it’s authentic. It’s the real deal.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: It’s kind of the straight shooter approach.

Jason: Yep. Absolutely.

Pamela: Well, Jason, I always enjoy hearing you speak on the topic of anything social and digital and content. And you have a great way of getting the information out to the audience that I think is pretty much no BS, straight shooting, direct. I could talk to you again and again. I think there’s a lot of stuff here, especially in your book, that folks need to embrace, understand and move on. Let’s do it, people, because now is your time. Now is the time to get involved.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: So, Jason, as we wrap up, I always want to make sure that our audience knows all the different ways that you would like them to connect with you or the easiest way to do that. So, how do we do that, Jason? What’s the best way to connect with Jason Falls and Social Media Explorer?

Jason: SocialMediaExplorer.com is a real good starting point. That’s the blog and then you can find links to our events and the other things we do there. I’m really easy to come by. I’m Jason Falls on most social networks. I’m on Twitter probably more frequently than I’m on anything else. But, I’m happy to connect with folks on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ or whatever else. I’m out there and when I have time, I respond as frequently and as in depth as I possibly can.

Pamela: And I highly recommend that you do check out all the stuff that Jason has. Connect with his blog. Put that in your RSS feed because it’s good stuff. In the meantime, I want to also remind folks that his book that he’s co-authored with Erik Deckers. Is that your co-author? We want to give him a shout out, too.

Jason: Yep.

Pamela: OK

Jason: Yep. That’s Erik.

Pamela: Hi, Erik. Thanks so much for being a part of the book, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. Jason, it’s a great book. You do a great job. I look forward to seeing you again live really soon. And I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be a part of our show today.

Jason: Well, thank you for having me, Pam. It’s an honor to be here.

Pamela: Excellent. Thanks so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Jason: You, too.

Now, look at your blog. Are you wondering what you’re going to write about today? Don’t you wish you had a “fridge” full of ingredients (aka, topics) and a tasty post simmering in draft mode, scheduled for publication in the morning?

You are well aware that blogging regularly brings new prospects in and keeps your clients coming back to your website, right? Interested and engaged clients and prospects = more money in your bank account. So why aren’t you approaching your blog like the pro you are?

Guess what? You do have a slow-cooker for content, and you can plan beyond just today’s post. In fact, I’m going to show you how to plan your posts for the next year.

Here’s how:

1. Brainstorm strategic topics

Your blog’s purpose is to establish your expertise, showcase your unique voice and approach, and demonstrate your professionalism. There are several content types that will support this mission. Here’s where to find and keep track of them:

• Start tracking questions you get from your customers and your prospects. Remember, you are blogging for your clients, not for your peers. What kinds of questions do you get in your e-mail or on social media? Even if the answers to those questions seem very elementary for you, the answer likely contains valuable information for your customers. 

• Start keeping a file in a notebook, a folder on your computer, or an e-mail folder. Whenever you receive questions from your clients or prospects, save the question in this folder or document. It can be a simple spreadsheet, a word document, or a group of saved e-mails. How you track this isn’t important — what is important is that you make it a habit to save this information in the same place whenever it comes in. 

• Actively seek out what people are talking about in your field. Search social media sites, blog posts, and forums to see what people are talking about in your industry. You can use Google to find these sites, and then simply bookmark the websites you find that tend to address what people are talking about in your field. 

• Brainstorm topics that will allow you to answer questions with a solution provided in your business. Your blog’s purpose is to promote your business! This is not a time to be shy or worry that you’ll offend people by making offers or by promoting your products and services. You are providing a logical solution to questions they have, right? Don’t worry about self-promotion, you’re not going to offend people — this is why you are blogging! 

• Think about the internal things going on in your business that might interest your customers. Depending on your business, showing what’s happening behind the scenes can help your customers in their own lives or businesses. For example, this approach works well for LKR: We run an online business, and many of our clients are also seeking to build profitable businesses online. By showing them behind-the-scenes action at LKR, we are teaching them the techniques, tools, and strategies we’ve used to build a successful company online. 

The more detailed your list of topics/questions the better! You can even break a single question down into content for more than one blog post. For example, answering a question about how to build your e-mail list could be broken down into a weekly series for four straight weeks covering multiple list-building strategies.

2. Narrow down your list of topics

Go through your list and refine it into the 24 most compelling topics. Good criteria for narrowing your list? Think about whether you LOVE the topic, if it’s a subject you have gotten questions about multiple times, and whether it aligns with any upcoming product or affiliate launches you have planned. Make sure they are fantastic subjects that you are excited and motivated to write about. At 2x per month, this is one year’s worth of topics!

3. Now, enter these topics into a calendar

Google Calendar fits our needs best; it’s easy to share, change, and can be accessed from anywhere. And, most importantly, you can easily automate it and set it on repeat – very useful for those goals that you want to make a part of your routine.

However, if you prefer a different system, such as software, or a big paper wall calendar, that’s fine, too. Go with what works for you. Make writing blog posts a part of your routine. For example, add an appointment to your calendar every Monday to write your post. It doesn’t have to be at a set time; it’s enough that you set aside time for it to happen every Monday. (Though this depends on the person. Maybe it works better for you if you schedule an actual time slot for it. Try it both ways and see what works best.)

Take the time to create a calendar of topics and commit to writing regular updates at least twice per month. There is no strict rule of thumb for frequency — but this should be your minimum guideline.

4. Commit to your schedule

Once the topics are entered into the calendar, you need to commit to actually writing about the topic when you say you will. That’s why it’s so important that you love the 24 topics you selected from your brainstorm list.

If it’s on the calendar, it’s on the schedule. Your schedule closes the gap between your everyday reality (writing blog posts and customer service) and your big goals (making more money and traveling). So set the expectation that you’re going to be there regularly and show up like the professional you are.

Remember, if you stop blogging, people stop visiting. If customers come back to your site and you aren’t updating the blog regularly, they won’t likely return again.

Now, Take Action!

Just like you wouldn’t let the food you buy rot in your refrigerator, don’t let your intentions to create an editorial calendar fester.

Remember, here’s all you need to do to plan out your blog for the next year: 

• Start tracking customer questions and industry chatter.
• Brainstorm 24 great topics.
• Schedule twice-monthly blog posts using your 24 topic ideas.
• Commit to writing about these topics when you’ve said you will.
• Rinse and repeat. 

Take some time today to set up the systems that will help you publish content like a pro and draw in the website traffic, prospects, and clients that you need to fuel your business. We’ve used these same techniques to build a seven-figure online business, so we can say this with confidence: Follow this recipe and you can’t fail!

To learn more about blogging, check out our Ultimate Guide to Blogging.

Chief Content Officer magazine asked a few of its contributors what their opinions were on the best PR tools available.  Here are their answers.  

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

Sign up with HARO to receive queries in your inbox from reporters seeking comment on a developing story in your field. With a premium subscription, you can even get advance notice, giving you more time to craft your response to a particular query.

Muckrack.com

Use Muckrack to (a.) identify journalists who are talking about the issues you care about most, (b.) engage them in conversation and (c.) pitch them more effectively. You can also get an early notification of breaking stories about your company or industry among journalists, letting you join the conversation in the critical early days.

PR Newswire

The press release should be considered essential for digital content marketing. Why? Because press releases are structured content that are easily optimized, distributed and consumed across the Web.  And distribution such as that offered by PR Newswire not only reaches thousands of websites, search engines, social networks and the like, offering unparalleled scale and reach, but also includes manual editorial review to help ensure the authenticity of the content and to make sure it is targeted to the relevant media partners only.  What’s more, PR Newswire’s ARC platform integrates text, video, multimedia, infographics and other content assets into a single platform that is distributed across the PR Newswire network, offering even broader storytelling capabilities across many more channels (each asset has a relevant distribution channel).

*PR Newswire is a sponsor of The Content Marketing Institute.

GroupHigh

Want to court the blogosphere more effectively? GroupHigh lets you search more than 1 million blogs in North America and the United Kingdom, identify the niche blogs you want to engage with and capture contact information for influential bloggers (including Twitter feeds and other social media contacts). The site also helps you manage your relationships with bloggers over time to help sustain the relationship and keep your name top-of-mind. 

Constant Contact

Use Constant Contact to distribute press releases and send out announcements on events. The service makes it easy to create email lists, incorporate pictures, and monitor opens. You can also seamlessly distribute through social media.

This article originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free print subscription.

Whatever our objectives are for marketing ourselves (establishing a reputation as an industry expert, selling a book we’ve written, or finding a new job are just a few ideas that might apply), our personal brand can help us familiarize our target audience with the facets of our character that make us an appealing investment.

In other words, they reflect our personality.

Brands have a personality, too, and it’s up to the marketers responsible for promoting them to discharge this personality to their target customers. Social media offers an invaluable opportunity to do this well. In our modern world, a consumer’s investment in a brand doesn’t necessarily take the form of a purchase. It might be a Facebook “Like,” a word-of-mouth endorsement, or another piece of content that ultimately leads to a loyal fan. Regardless of the action, maintaining a consistent brand persona is absolutely critical to success.

But there’s a problem. All of the social media touch points we employ to create and sustain our brand online require ongoing maintenance. And the individuals maintaining them have personalities of their own.

This issue has grown particularly thorny with the rise in popularity of sites such as Twitter and Pinterest. In order to retain an audience and attract new followers, brands must post regular updates. Brand marketers have two options: They can delegate this job to an in-house employee of the brand, such as a member of the marketing team, or they can outsource it to their interactive agency’s social media division. Time constraints often make the latter the more sensible choice, but outsourcing social media efforts requires a thorough understanding of the brand voice. How can brand marketers be sure that the updates made on behalf of their brand are consistent with the persona they’ve worked so hard to create?

Developing a social media style guide

The first step in safeguarding your brand online is to create a social media style guide. You already have something comparable for your offline marketing materials, ads, and site design — a brand style guide that meticulously outlines everything related to the way your brand’s presented, from the required minimum clear space around your logo to your acceptable typeface. If it also includes information about copy lingo and image tone of voice, all the better; this can become the foundation for your social media style guide.  

While, like your brand style guide, your social media guidebook should feature very specific guidelines about your brand tenets as they relate to the production of online content, it should also focus on two things in particular: tone and imagery. Together these two elements can get you and your staff through every social media content development situation imaginable.

The tenacity of tone

Brand tone is important not only because it conveys to the consumer the overall character of your brand, but also because it distinguishes you from your peers. It’s a brand’s most powerful tool and, therefore, will require the most attention from those responsible for managing your brand’s social endeavors.

Some possible considerations:

• Does the language used in your previous online content portray a brand that’s warm and fuzzy or staid?
• Youthful or mature?
• Feminine or distinctly male?
• Is it represented by formal or informal language? Is that language exclusively English?

Subject matter aside, a Facebook post on the “Dora the Explorer” Facebook page (“Beautiful Dora cakes, made by our fans! ¡Fantástico!”) is going to sound very different from a post on Monster Energy’s page (“Props to Monster Energy riders Paulin Gautier and Tommy Searle, who just bossed the Motocross GP in Bulgaria”). Using contractions such as “wanna” or “lemme” in a Facebook post might be deemed acceptable by a brand like Adidas, just as terms such as “rad” and “chillin’” might be commonplace in Converse tweets, but they aren’t choices competitor Nike tends to make.

These are important distinctions, particularly if you’re about to hire a social media manager who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish or uses nothing but contractions in everyday conversation. If your hires go on to break from the copy tone that consumers have come to know and understand as being specific to your brand, your loyal customers may begin to question whether they know your brand at all.

The implications of imagery

The emergence and growth of social media applications that focus entirely on photographs has required brand marketers to take a closer look at the way images reflect on the brand persona. The way in which Instagram and Pinterest take the persuasive power of pictures to a new level, creating engagement between consumers and brands based entirely on visual cues, demands that the imagery put forth on behalf of your brand is coherent.

One of Instagram’s claims to fame is its filters — a series of photographic overlays that change the look and feel of pictures taken with a mobile phone. While brands can expect to see more Instagram marketing opportunities now that the service has been acquired by Facebook, some are already using it to upload images to a Facebook page.

Even something as seemingly trivial as an image filter warrants careful study when it’s going to be made public as part of a brand’s persona. Brands must therefore educate their social media managers in the acceptable language of their visual assets. Would a company like Apple, with its clean lines and cool color palette, be comfortable applying a retro-looking Instagram filter to an image of the latest iPhone? Probably not. But it might be just the thing for In-N-Out Burger, which has a history that dates back to the 1940s and still maintains a vintage look.

With a site like Pinterest the challenge is similar. Here again marketers must put their brand persona in the hands of social media managers tasked with pinning (or tagging) photographs that have some brand relevance; but if a brand fails to define its pressure points, the results could be damaging.

For example, would Diapers.com be comfortable pinning a slightly revealing photograph of a breastfeeding mother? What would happen if Whole Foods pinned an image sourced from an article about genetically modified tomatoes? These are questions brands must ask of themselves and talk about with their employees — who, let’s not forget, have interests, beliefs, and a comfort level all their own — in order to avoid potential embarrassment and controversy.

The branding opportunities provided by social media are beyond compare, but so is the importance of sustaining a brand persona when faced with the infinite production of online content. Recognizing the different ways in which you can define your brand can help. So, too, can relaying these to the people who, regardless of their own personas, can create a seamless portrayal of your brand.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples. 

For companies who want to tell stories with their own “big data,” Visual.ly offers partnerships to visualize new datasets and promote the resulting infographics through sites like The Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post.

Finally, Visual.ly hosts a great library of infographics, uploaded by designers all over the world, to inspire you and open up your mind to the elegant art of infographics. Among our favorites:

Diagrams Rule: A Satirical Look at Infographics

The Trustworthiness of Beards

 

This article originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free print subscription.

When we create the story that drives our content marketing efforts, we should already know who our audience is and what we want to tell them. When it comes to the platforms, we know how we want to say it (text, video, audio) and where we want to tell it (website, blog, social media, etc.). And typically, we stop there because we have so much to monitor, measure, and manage that we become overwhelmed.

Yet, content marketing ought to be called constant marketing, because it’s always happening. David Meerman Scott talks about real-time marketing and how we have to be ready at any given moment to react and respond to relevant public conversations. What we often forget is that stories happen in real life all the time – informally when we are on the subway, on a plane, or at a cocktail party, as well as formally at a conference or business meeting. We are always telling and re-telling our story — it happens when someone asks, “So, what do you do?” or when we are up on the stage giving a presentation.

For the purpose of this post, let’s focus on the presentation aspect of content marketing. Whether you are pitching in the boardroom or delivering the keynote address at a conference, it is your job to educate, engage, and inspire the audience. Good storytelling is the strongest, most reliable way to do this.

Truth be told, not everyone is a proficient storyteller. Some people are just born with the skill — Bill Clinton, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Louis C.K., to name a few — and have an innate ability to spin a good yarn. While most of us may not go down in history as a notable orator, there are a few presentation tricks we can use to polish our storytelling skills and prepare ourselves to win over any audience.

Avoid telling the entire story

Chances are you have a limited amount of time when you are presenting. But you can use these limitations to your advantage.

Presenting is not an exercise in how to spew out a ton of information in a short amount of time — your audience is savvy, and you will likely lose their attention within minutes if you don’t give them an opportunity to focus on your most important points, or if you fail to meet their expectations for being engaged and entertained. It’s your goal to meet those expectations and, more importantly, to keep their eyes on you (and not their iPhones).

Two weeks after your presentation, the audience may not remember everything that you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. So don’t go crazy and try to cover everything you know about your topic. Choose two or three ideas that a.) you are passionate about and b.) you know will be attention grabbers. By focusing on a few points, you will come off genuine, authentic, and relaxed — a win-win for everyone in the room!

Swab the decks

Stop relying on PowerPoint. Seriously, stop using it. Presentation tools like PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi are becoming crutches for presenters who feel like they will fall down unless they have their slides!

If you cannot tell your story without the use of slides, then you are in more trouble than you think. Slides are for support only! They are to be used to evoke an emotion, or to make a point. The best decks should be meaningless without the presenter’s own voice to provide context and color for the story.

If you feel you must use slides, keep these tips in mind:

• Use only high-resolution images — no clip art, and no stock photos. And have them bleed out to the far edges of the slide.
• Use only one idea per slide.
• Avoid using bullet points.
• Get rid of the cheesy animations.
• If you have a Q&A portion of the presentation, or you go off on tangents as part of your presentation, hit the “.” (period) key — this will make the slide go to black, bringing the audience’s eyes back to you, rather than staring at a slide that has nothing to do with what you are talking about.
• Use as few slides as possible. Too many slides are distracting and can dilute the power of the presentation.

Remember: A presentation is not a meeting — it’s a performance

Pete Townshend once said, “The audience is thick and doesn’t appreciate quality . . . you do something big on stage and they go ‘Ahhh!’”

What he meant is that the audience won’t get hung up on fancy charts, specific data points, or minutiae. They won’t know if you skipped a point or forgot something you were planning to say. What they will notice is if you look nervous and fidget. For many people in the audience, your presentation might be just one in a long series of meetings they have to attend – chances are that at least half of them don’t really want to be there. Take a chance, and make it fun, entertaining, engaging. Get them to pay attention. This skill only comes with practice and experience. So, rehearse your presentation. Practice it in the mirror. Record it on your smartphone and listen back. Take the time to create a compelling performance and you will win every time.

While we continue to craft our content strategy and proliferate it across all media, let’s not forget that there is no better way to tell your brand story than in person — so they get their information right from the horse’s mouth. So from this day forward, I urge you to make your presentations an integrated part of your content marketing strategy. When you have the opportunity to present to an audience, it’s critical to be interesting, captivating, and focused on the story itself — not fumbling with a bunch of slides and data that may only confuse the audience. If we take half the time we spend on creating effective presentations, audiences all over the world will be more than thankful.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Audience image via Flickr Creative Commons

Breathe deeply. We’re about to document the 25+ tools marketers need to know about if they’re serious about real-time marketing.

Real-time marketing—the ability to monitor, manage and guide your marketing efforts as they occur — is one of the most important areas of marketing today. Fortunately, new tools that show breaking trends on Twitter, revealing how an individual customer interacts with your content, identifying your brand’s social influencers and making sense of all that data to make it actionable, are available to CMOs in 2012. The challenge most face: Where to begin?

The landscape of real-time monitoring tools is particularly wide and deep, so let’s focus on digital channels. Further, let’s divide real-time marketing tools into two categories: onsite and offsite. Onsite is any customer interaction that occurs on any digital property you own, such as your website. Offsite is simply everything else, including social sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Most marketers already employ a suite of tools for onsite analytics reporting. Omniture and Google Analytics are two popular tools for viewing your site’s visitor data. These standard site reports won’t be phased out anytime soon, but there is a relatively new breed of tools such as Woopra, Chartbeat and Clicky that offer the ability to view real-time interactions with your site. They answer, “How many visitors are on my site right now and which specific pages are they viewing?” (Google and Omniture also offer real-time tools, but they are not singularly focused, as with the others.)

While these real-time tools are an improvement over the previous generation, they still essentially provide a “web-centric” view of the data, meaning they are designed more for technologists than marketers. Marketers want to know, “How many visitors, at what time, resulted in how many conversions?” Fortunately vendors now realize the importance of this data to marketers and are introducing software that add context to the raw site statistics.

Real-time analytics guides real-time content

Mixpanel offers sophisticated, real-time segmentation, funnel and retention analysis, while GoSquared provides real-time views of top content, top referrers, top searches and social media influence. GoSquared and Lexity also offer customer-centric views of your site. Both of these tools can report on a single individual in real time as the visitor arrives on your site, how he or she got there, what pages were viewed and if an order was placed — or not.

Onsite tools are pivoting from passive monitoring to actively guiding the generation of socially relevant real-time content. InboundWriter monitors your audience’s interests and online conversations, and then instructs you on how to craft content your audience will find compelling. It even coaches you on how to tailor your content for different mediums, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. This active shaping of content is very reminiscent of search engine optimization. But unlike SEO, it happens in real time and you can see the results immediately.

Offsite tools are evolving even faster than onsite tools, fueled by apps offering new social experiences. Marketers once only worried about Twitter and Facebook. Now add Foursquare, Instagram, Path, Pinterest, Fancy and others.

Real-time social media

There are many tools for managing your social effort, such as HootSuite, CoTweet and TweetDeck (now owned by Twitter). I like to call these “meta-tools” because they add additional functionality on top of existing applications. These tools can post to multiple networks, schedule tweets and filter your stream so you can hone in on important content. HootSuite also provides niceties like CMS functionality (e.g. team collaboration, messages drafts, analytics) and offers a custom URL shortener, Ow.ly, which enables click-thru link tracking.

SocialMention is a stream aggregation tool. It monitors more than 100 social media properties and creates a single, searchable stream. Want to know what’s being said about your brand (almost) anywhere on the web? SocialMention might help you with that challenge. On the other end of the spectrum is PostPost, which is a surgical Twitter search scalpel. It only searches through content from your Twitter followers.

Other social monitoring tools worth mentioning are Radian6, BuddyMedia, BuzzMetrics and ScoutLabs, all of which provide the ability to monitor, measure and report on social activity.

Once you have identified who is talking about your brand, you would probably like to know how influential they are in the social media landscape. Klout and PeerIndex are attempting to attach some context to users’ online persona by monitoring their social stream, and then ranking their influence on specific topics and with other people. Both indexes are nascent, but it’s interesting to watch them try to establish themselves as the index of record.

Making sense of so much data

OK, so you have tons of onsite and offsite data, and very likely a truckload or two of offline data. While linking the data is critical, making that data actionable in real time, whenever and wherever you see a user, would be the “killer app.” Well, this is possible right now with Data Management Platforms. DMPs are essentially large, fast, real-time data warehouses; they store and link together data based on cookie data or other unique keys, and provide an interface for asking questions against the data. You can import first-party data from your site and your offline campaigns; you can import second-party data from partners with whom you share data and you can import third-party data from providers like BlueKai, TargusInfo, Bizo and Excelate.

Once the data is married in the DMP, you can analyze it, aggregate it, slice it, dice it, report on it and most importantly, make it actionable. For example, you can, in real time, identify the audience a visitor to your site belongs to (e.g. male, 45-50, divorced, kids, into cars and motorcycles) and then, again in real time, tailor the site (content, ads, even layout) directly to that visitor.

You’re a marketer. You’re familiar with audiences, demographics, psychographics and now on/offsite social data; but up until recently, it was a passive undertaking, requiring long cycles of content planning, months of site design and development, weeks of deployments and days of generating reports. With DMPs, you can leverage all of the social data you’re collecting, combine it with your offline data and act on it all in real time. Right now.

Technology alone will not run your marketing strategy. The best tools are only as good as the people using them. CMOs who put together the right combination of talent and technology will have the edge in today’s real-time world. 

This article originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free print subscription.

While many brands rush to leverage these direct to consumer channels, few have altered their brand narratives and their approach to content creation as they move from paying others to broadcast their brand content to leveraging it themselves for direct consumer engagement.

Despite the existing opportunities, it would seem that few brands — and only a few more of their agencies — have the content, process, and methodologies in place to fully benefit from direct distribution to the audience. The current brand-agency paradigm has been effective in leveraging search and social algorithms for more efficient distribution of “brand” assets, but the efforts stemming from this approach have failed to deliver some critical elements: engagement, efficiency, and scale.

Brands looking to achieve this “holy trinity” of digital effectiveness need to shift their content creation approach even further.

Owned media, redefined

Strategist Jim Cuene recently proposed a state of constant content to help marketers behave as publishers. And the Altimeter Group’s Content: The New Marketing Equation does a great job of illustrating a “path” for brands to follow in rebalancing their marketing efforts, shifting “from push to pull.” In fact, Cuene and Altimeter both reference the need for this shift in their content creation. But what characterizes this shift, and how can CMOs get started when looking to alter the manner in which their organizations influence consumers?

The shift they both reference is to a state of “owned media” — not the narrow, “brand-controlled” definition that seems to be pervasive across many media strategy blogs. Rather, it’s to a state of “media ownership” — a more progressive definition of owned media. By simply flipping the words and adjusting the grammar, we add clarity around the model. Jim Cuene is right. Brands need look no further than many online publishing properties for a model on how to create content using an operational discipline that ultimately leads to better results.

Do you own media?

Does your brand stand to benefit from media ownership? Answer the following questions to assess your brand’s state of media ownership:

• Always-on: Are you publishing content for an audience on a daily basis?
• Editorial: Are you publishing content that an audience needs and shares?
• Independent: Do you own the technology or the platform delivering the content? Do you have the final say in all aspects of the user’s experience?
• Networked: Is the content on your platform optimized for distribution?
• Measured: Are you evaluating how efficiently you are producing media, or the consumption of your content?
• Monetizable: Could your content platform be someone else’s paid media?

If you answered yes to all of the questions above, then congratulations, your content marketing initiative is optimized for better business-building results. If you answered no, then the next step is to assess where your organization is in its journey to operating as a publisher. 

Ownership makes for better content

This assessment of owned media is important because it instills a level of accountability with content creation.

Online publishers operate by exacting principles because they need their audiences to consume, engage, and share the content they produce. Operationally, these publishers need to ensure that their editorial efforts are efficient and yielding high-quality content that resonates with their most important critics — the audience. Their very businesses depend on it. 

Brands want their audience to consume, engage, and share content, as well. By applying the same business acumen in planning and evaluating your audience engagement as any publisher would, brands can effectively achieve the three goals of engagement, efficiency, and scale. Not employing this methodology, in my opinion, is the single biggest reason brands are finding underwhelming results in their current search and social efforts.

Discovering the path

With some brands, asset creation evolves into a content strategy, wherein incremental success can be achieved by delivering the same old brand narrative but doing so with a slightly broader focus on types of content, and through innovative channels such as Facebook and Twitter. But the issues of reach and engagement are not addressed by this approach.

I’ve had brands with significant search and social programs in place confess to me “We’re not getting enough traffic to the website,” and “We have 1 million Facebook fans, but very little engagement.” And, these brands are sustaining the same paid media spend to maintain the necessary share of voice in their respective categories. This is not the kind of efficiency brands are looking for when executing content marketing strategies. 

The good news for brand marketers is that their preliminary efforts in content marketing put them squarely on the path to owned media. It’s within these initial phases of content marketing that brands soon discover how important some level of editorial process is in generating quality content at a faster rate, and at higher volumes. By editorial, I mean the constant process of determining what the audience needs. It’s also at this stage where brands discover how important the investment in a centralized platform is in helping them manage to and optimize content marketing across multiple digital channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

There are several successful, brand-owned media programs that can help guide other brands. Home Made Simple, Nutrition Possible, and The Responsibility Project are all examples of how brands can take an editorial approach to engage the entire audience — not just limited segments of it, which is where most brand marketers seem to focus. This audience-centric approach is paying dividends for these respective brands while amplifying their earned and paid efforts, as well.   This shift to true “always-on” editorial is the biggest challenge most brands will face on the path, but it is critical to creating quality content that audiences prefer, and realizing the full potential of owned media.

Editorial shift

So how do marketers go from content that represents their messages to consumers to content that audiences themselves are looking for? It first requires thinking beyond the brand’s target segments and focusing on understanding the needs of the entire audience in much greater detail. This can be particularly challenging, as marketing operations are almost exclusively geared toward distilling layers of consumer research into one-size-fits-all insights and, consequently, focused messaging. And for good reason — brands don’t have the resources to talk to the entire audience through traditional paid means. But they can accomplish this through the right owned media strategy.

For most brand marketers, becoming more informed editorially simply requires organizing all of the available data around audience behavior to define and understand consumer’s content needs. For example, Man of the House publishes dozens of articles that present unique perspectives on personal grooming — from the best grooming gifts for dad to rationales for getting a manicure. This content might fall outside the focus of brands like Gillette or Art of Shaving, but Man of the House content is informed by extensive consumer research. And by interpolating this existing audience data, Procter & Gamble knows its articles are falling in line with what interests the site’s primary audience (dads), which is likely much larger than the consumer segments Gillette advertises to.

Once this audience editorial analysis is complete, it will continue to guide your brand’s editorial strategy development and help you determine the right level of owned media investment.

Having worked with a multitude of consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers, I’ve always been somewhat amazed with the sheer depth of consumer knowledge each organization possesses — and equally amazed at how little of this knowledge actually factors into its content creation. When brands take a deeper look at their broader audience, there is always a more detailed set of topical categories to map, and brands should follow this map in creating the content they deliver to this broader audience. The appropriate level of data analysis can help brands chart this map.

Editorial mapping

Beyond existing consumer data, analytics should be used to inform the editorial on an ongoing basis. The resources required to develop and sustain an owned media strategy can usually come from the brand’s existing investment in analytics. But even free resources, such as Google or Compete, can provide a wealth of information — especially if they are used in conjunction with more robust paid tools.

The process for mapping an editorial approach should rely on at least four key data channels:

As the chart illustrates, this process is well informed by analytics and can yield a detailed editorial map of topics that are based on the audience’s preferences. Revisiting our example around Man of the House, these various data sets are advising the editorial focus for the entire grooming channel:

• Google Analytics data is being used to identify the most popular articles, which are then served up at the top of the page to drive further content consumption.
• Google Trends helps to advise on topics that are trending throughout social media,
• Google Adwords is being used to track topic popularity by reviewing search query volume across a host of long-tail keyword phrases related to grooming. 

Lastly, it’s critical that publishers keep track of the competitive space for topics. This article in particular is a great example of observing what is being talked about and joining in the discussion. This editorial map is the foundation of an iterative process that’s always on, and optimized for producing content that gets consumed, creates engagement, and gets distributed.

And, not or

To be clear, the editorial shift required to create owned media impact is not an “or” that could replace another approach. It’s an “and” that supports a brand’s broader marketing strategy. Advertising and other paid media still work, but technology has now made direct distribution to an audience an affordable strategy (with the proper approach).

Regardless of where a brand might be in its use of owned media, it should consider developing an editorial voice that guides sustained content creation to address the needs of its audience that aren’t being met through that brand’s other marketing efforts. 

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

An interview with Mitch Joel—a founding father of blogging and president of Twist Image—about the art of the podcast and what ‘screen’ marketers should keep their eyes on.

Joe Pulizzi: You’re an incredibly prolific blogger for Twist Image. Do you single-handedly write it all?

Mitch Joel: It is 100 percent human me. No one touches it but me.

J: What made you begin blogging and how do you keep up with the pace?

M: My background is in music magazine publishing. Prior to that, I was a music writer. I loved writing about things that were of interest to me. Back in 2002, I was wondering how Twist Image could get its message out there. At that point blogging was just coming into popularity and I thought, “This is unbelievable. I don’t need an editor. I don’t need permission. I don’t need a printer. I can just put my thoughts down and share them.”

If you go back to those terrible, early posts, the content was “navel-gazing” and narcissistic. But as it started building, I realized blogging was a platform for me to be a journalist again, and to pursue the writing that I loved so much and missed. Eventually I expanded to podcasting. I’m going on 300 episodes this week. With the podcast, I realized that perhaps — like God — I needed a day of rest! The thinking was “I’m tired of writing all the time. One day per week I’ll talk. That will be easier.” Little did I know that an audio podcast is not at all easier than producing one blog post!

The blogging and the podcasting cumulatively have led to the point where I’m asked to write for traditional outlets, like a book deal and speaking. It’s led to a very strange model for us as an agency: Our business development efforts are cash-flow positive because of the speaking and the writing. We actually generate a significant amount of income, and all that still drives new business.

J: For a business starting out today (and let’s assume they have fantastic writers with interesting things to say), does blogging still have the same potential it did in 2002?

M: I just published a post called “How to start a blog in 2012.” In short, definitely yes. I look at someone like Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner and just think, “Wow, this guy started a social media blog a few years ago. It’s a multimillion-dollar business now.” So yes, I’m a strong believer. The challenge is most businesses publish stuff that’s so terrible and narcissistic — about their updates and upgrades. That’s not value.

The majority of people who read my blog are not my clients. But when clients come to us to potentially work with our agency, the blog is social proof. They look at a blog post and think, “There are 60 comments on a single post. They’ve got to be good.”

J: Podcasting is a largely unexplored content marketing tactic. Tell me what makes it worthwhile for you?

M: I see it as a very simple way for me to corner a major thought leader and ask them everything I ever wanted to ask them. The listener gets to be the fly on the wall. I’m a massive fan of people like Charlie Rose and Howard Stern. As diverse as those two characters are, they are both excellent at engaging in conversations. When I interview Seth Godin, I’m not going to ask, “Why Purple Cow?” I’m going to ask what his day is like. What’s it like to be him? Where does he go to work? I would never say I’m at the level of Charlie Rose or Howard Stern, but I try to copy them a lot. I’m trying to give the marketing industry an in-depth conversation with really unique people, posing questions you may not have heard before.

If you’ve ever been on one of those [press] junkets in the music industry, they put the artist in a hotel room and they walk the interviewers in like cattle, one after another for short intervals. I always knew going in that the last reporter asked, “Tell me about the new album. Tell me about the producer. What are your touring plans?” I’d go in there and say, “Tell me why you first picked up the guitar?” I’d ask them questions that would spark a conversation. I never wrote down my questions, but I knew the artists and I actually cared about them and their music. When you parlay that to our world, the critical error is that the person creating the content doesn’t care. They don’t know the back-story. They haven’t studied the subject. They write down their questions and read them one after another.

J: Great. Now you’re making me self-conscious because I have a bunch of questions written down.

M: Just keep on going down the list!

J: Marketers have this hunger to discover the next big thing first. It’s a “gotcha” of sorts. What do you think that new big thing is?

M: For me, it comes down to concepts more than tactics. One thing marketers don’t understand well yet is the idea of “screens.” Yesterday I spoke at a conference and the speaker before me was talking about “four screens.” (I thought there were three. Turns out tablets are the fourth screen.) I talk about one screen. In a cloud-based, hyper-connected, super-untethered world, the only screen that’s going to matter to the consumer is the screen that’s in front of them.

Think of it this way: Say you read a page in your Kindle. You put it down then pick it up again on the subway on your iPhone app. You come to the office and maybe you read another page or two on your screen. It’s asynchronous. As you move to a world where anything in front of us can become a screen — which is something else we are going to see — that changes the game! In the world today, I can see how you would say “four screen” or “three screen.” Mobile is not the same as an iPod Touch, which is not the same as a computer. That’s fine. But don’t you see that the smartphone looks a lot like the iPad? The interaction is very similar, and becoming closer and closer. And as TVs are becoming more and more web enabled, they will be operated by voice or touch. It’s all very obvious. So what are you going to do today as a content professional as we rapidly ascend to this one-screen world?

About Mitch Joel: When Google wanted to explain online marketing to the top brands in the world, it brought Mitch Joel to the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. Mitch is president of Twist Image—an award-winning digital marketing and communications agency. He has been called a marketing and communications visionary, interactive expert and community leader. He is also a blogger, podcaster, passionate entrepreneur, and speaker who connects with people worldwide by sharing his marketing insights on digital marketing and new media. Mitch is also a keynote speaker at Content Marketing World 2012.

This article originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free print subscription.