Photo Credit: Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com

Facebook, which this week filed for an initial public offering that could value the social network at as much as $100 billion, has only just started to recognize the untapped potential of social advertising, fueled by its own technology, according to research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Catherine Tucker.

Social networks like Facebook have in recent years faced skepticism about being fruitful venues for paid advertising. Tucker tested this view by analyzing the ad campaigns of a non-profit organization.

Prior to her study, the non-profit group had used either untargeted ads or demographic-based ones. During Prof. Tucker’s study, the group conducted 18 ad campaigns, including four “baseline” programs, meaning they weren’t socially targeted but were shown to everyone; and three “generic” campaigns, meaning they were socially targeted without openly pushing a relationship. The remaining ad programs directly launched off of a relationship with phrases such as:

• “Be like your friend”
• “Your friend knows this is a good cause”
• “Learn from your friend”
• “Don’t be left out”

The 18 ad programs generated more than 3 million impressions, and of the campaigns, the three generic ones performed the best, Tucker said. These ads often simply described the charity and then had an automated algorithm that underneath the ad would note who likes it. The number of clicks on these ads doubled when compared with the baseline programs, and the non-profit group also saw an increase in conversions in terms of increasing their fan base. The charity did not provide details on financial impact.

“Be Social, Not Commercial”

On the other side of the spectrum, the number of clicks dropped by 40 percent with the ads that openly pushed on a relationship, Tucker said.

“By showing ads to people who are already friends, the non-profit group was picking out charity-minded people in a way that they couldn’t get from the demographic information,” Tucker said. “It’s incredibly effective because you could use friendships to find responsive people.”

Just be forewarned about explicitly commercializing friends. “The evidence seemed to be that people rejected the ads when the charity was in on the action,” Tucker said. “Facebook has a difficult line to walk. It can use its data, but has to use the sweet spot and not encroach on privacy or be too intrusive if it wants to do well.”

The Facebook IPO filing may be one of the biggest U.S. stock-market debuts of all time. According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, the company hopes to raise as much as $10 billion when it begins selling shares this spring. Facebook generated $1 billion in profit last year on $3.71 billion in revenue. About 85 percent of its revenue came from advertising, with the rest from social gaming and other fees, the Journal said. 

The same elements that make a Valentine’s Day message successful can work for content marketers, as well.  Even a message on a piece of candy could teach us something.

Keep it conversational, and from the heart

Authenticity is one of the most important aspects of communicating well. No one responds positively to an insincere Valentine’s Day message, and readers of a blog, website, or newsletter are no different. Being authentic means you really have to think about whom your audience members are, and then write about what’s important to them (here are some tips). Your focus should be on meeting your readers’ needs, solving a problem for them, providing information, or maybe just entertaining them for a few minutes, all while using conversational language and avoiding impersonal corporate speak.

For example, if you’re writing a post about new tax preparation software, show your human side:

• Try not to weigh down the content with extensive technical descriptions that may be hard for the typical consumer to understand.
• Avoid a self-serving sales pitch that merely promotes the item. Instead, write about an aspect of the product that could improve your readers’ lives; for example, how much time it can save them, how it can help cut costs, or how it will speed up their refund.
• Start a conversation. Speak to your audience in a relatable way that shows you understand what their tax concerns are, and offer them something of value to help them find solutions.

Choose vivid, lively words that paint a picture of your value

Don’t be dull. If you want to capture a reader’s attention in a short time with limited space, make sure the words you use paint a spectacular picture. Allow readers to employ all their senses — they should be able to taste the sweetly bitter, dark chocolate you are writing about, feel the sharp pricks of the freezing rain you mention to set the mood, or hear the rapid-fire, staccato rhythm of popcorn popping that builds intrigue or tension in your story.

For instance, what if you’re writing about an innovative new showerhead? Do more than just rattle off the features of the product. Describe what it actually feels like to use it — “a refreshing summer rain,” or “a luxurious waterfall.” Help your audience imagine the benefits rather than just telling them what they are. Once you’ve created a picture for your readers, your content (and your brand) will be harder to forget.

Use an active voice to build excitement and impact

A Valentine’s Day card doesn’t usually say, “You are loved by me.” Changing it to “I love you” heightens the impact of the statement. An active voice — when the subject of the sentence is doing the acting — is clear, concise, and helps readers get right to the point. It also energizes your writing and eliminates ambiguity and wordiness. Active content is easier to read, and will engage your readers longer.

Think of it this way: Many of your visitors are hastily skimming, and won’t bother to plow through wordy, complicated text. An active sentence such as “The waiter dropped a whole tray of mojitos” captures attention more quickly than “A whole tray of mojitos was dropped by the waiter.”

Create potential for action

Almost every Valentine’s Day message has an underlying motive: to get the reader to take another action (“Say yes,” “Be mine,” etc.). Marketing copy has the same goal. What’s the next step you want your readers to take? Maybe you want them to think about what you’ve written and engage with your site by leaving a comment or question, find out more about your company or just talk to others about what they’ve read. Whatever your goal, make it clear to readers what the intended next step should be so that your carefully crafted content will lead to further action. (Here are some more helpful ideas for pulling prospects in.)

When wielded in the right way, words have tremendous power to influence and persuade. But a dozen roses never hurt, either.

Meta descriptions are little snippets of text (about 155 characters) that appear in search engine results and with links shared on social media and bookmarking sites. Although they have very little pure SEO value, meta descriptions are still important for communicating your brand message and for conversions — i.e., getting people to click on your links.

Meta descriptions in action

First, let’s take a look at meta descriptions in action with a recent post on my company’s blog, YouTube Video Optimization Best Practices. This post was originally published without a meta description. When the post cropped up on a Google search engine results page (SERP), this is what you would see:

Notice that for the snippet of text under the link, Google picked up the first 182 characters from the post. This is OK, but in my view not ideal for conveying the primary value of this post or motivating people to click through and actually read it. I added a meta description, and a few days later — after Google had re-indexed the page — the SERP looked like this:

The meta description above has three characteristics I shoot for in almost every situation:

• A quick summary of the content
• A reason to read the content
• Fewer than 155 characters

I’ll get into writing tips for meta descriptions later, but first I want to give you a feel for how meta descriptions look, and where they appear on the most popular social media platforms.

Meta descriptions on Google+

Google+, the latest and greatest social network, picks up meta descriptions on shared links. Again, let’s look at the difference. Here’s what people saw on Google+ before:

And here is the same post immediately after I added the meta description:

I hope you agree that the second version tells a better story, fits the Google+ format by eliminating truncated text, and does a better job of encouraging people to read and re-share the post.

Meta descriptions on Facebook

Facebook displays meta descriptions as well. Here is the post before:

And here is the post after:

Again, a meta description gives your social sharing more persuasive power and an all-around more professional look.

How to add meta descriptions to your web pages

If you’re not sure a published blog post or web page has a meta description, check your browser’s “View Source” option and look for the code contained in the red box (note: the box was added by me — you won’t actually see the box in your code):

If this line of code is not there, it means that search engine and social media text snippets associated with that page will probably default to:

1. the first several characters of text (as we saw above), or
2. text surrounding keywords from the page that matches up to the search phrase entered by the search engine user

Any decent content management system (CMS) allows users to add a meta description. We happen to use the All in One SEO Pack plug-in for WordPress, which looks like this in the post editor:

If your CMS does not allow you to add/customize meta descriptions and titles, I urge you to upgrade.

Tips for writing stronger meta descriptions

Use relevant descriptions. A good meta description provides an overview of the page’s core message and purpose. Descriptions should be fully relevant: There is nothing more detrimental to conversion and reputation than setting up people to click through to a link that contains content other than what they are expecting. You never want to mislead users and leave them feeling used and abused.

Highlight a reason to read. A gentle (or sometimes not so gentle!) call to action influences click-throughs. How will people benefit from reading your content? The meta description is an ideal place to tell them. Here are some examples:

• Learn the essentials about…
• Discover why…
• A complete guide to…
• Order by January 31 and receive…

Leverage your credibility. I once had a client that increased traffic to its remodeling services home page by adding, “BBB approved” to the meta description. For brands that are not household names, phrases such as “since 1975” and “more than 10,000 clients served” may strongly influence searchers to click.

Make it specific. The meta description examples above are powerful because they are specific, concrete and, therefore, meaningful. Empty words and phrases like “innovative” and “world class” are a dime a dozen. They do not inspire confidence and can even be counterproductive in terms of conversion. Make sure you speak to the real benefits that your content provides to readers, in terms of what they want — not what you want them to do.

Keep it short and sweet. Avoid your natural inclination to use all 155 characters. By virtue of its novelty, a short meta description may attract more attention in the sea of lengthy, keyword-stuffed descriptions that are out there.  

Other important considerations

Speaking of keyword-stuffing, there are other important things you should be thinking about when you create and execute your meta description strategy:

Keywords and SEO. While it’s a good idea to include keywords in the meta descriptions you create for pages that are optimized around high-volume terms, recent changes in search engine algorithms are making this a less important consideration. In many cases, Google and other search engines pull text from the page itself based on the search query, rather than displaying the meta description. Given this fact, along with the more consistent and controllable display of meta descriptions on social media sites, focus on persuasiveness over keywords.

Uniqueness and SEO. Every blog post and site page should have a unique meta description or none at all. Duplicate meta descriptions influence Google to ignore them globally on your domain.

Create “default meta descriptions.” As we’ve seen, Google and social media sites sometimes pick up the first lines of content on a web page in lieu or in the absence of a meta description. For that reason, it is helpful to write those first lines of content so that they can double as a strong meta description, if necessary. For example: Take a look at the first two sentences of this post, which were written with this idea in mind.

Rewriting meta descriptions. Here are some final tips:

• There is no harm in rewriting or adding meta descriptions to previously published content. If you come out with an exciting new offer, consider adding it to the meta descriptions of your high traffic pages.
• It’s also helpful to add persuasive elements to meta descriptions on pages with high search rankings but low traffic.
• You can recirculate old blog posts and web pages on social media with new meta descriptions — this will make them fresh to old and new connections alike. 

After 16 games and a January jammed with nail-biting playoff battles, two teams remain to face off in the biggest brouhaha in all of sport. Behold the undefeated ruler of the media universe: the Super Bowl.

What does this have to do with content marketing?

We’ve got the “Brady bunch” along with “Manning and his miracles.” Juicy. You really want me to change the channel and get back to work on content marketing?

Let’s meet in the middle. We’ll call it the Super Content Marketing Bowl, where scoring points means expanding your audience and establishing authority in the things you do best. Before we play ball, we’ll meet at the 50-yard line and introduce some new rules for taking home the content marketing trophy.

It’s time for the kickoff

Welcome everyone to The Google Dome, where we’re coming to you live with the much-anticipated battle for content marketing supremacy. It’s game time. Let’s look at how you score:

Point #1: You need a great site to compete

You’re not going to be a content marketing champion without a great website. The 1990s variety won’t do. Here’s the new game plan:

• You have to constantly update your site with valuable content.
• Your content plan must trace to your SEO plan in every way, so create and refine a short list of keywords and build your content with strict adherence to the game plan.
• A blog is going to be your star player, your authority builder, your captain, so make sure to feature one prominently on your site.
• The head coach will rely on a super-duper playbook. (We happen to have a great one right here: CMI Content Marketing Playbook — 42 Ways to Connect with Customers, sponsored by Eloqua and PR Newswire.)

Point #2: Go for the goal

In football, to punt is to surrender. You had the ball, but failed to make the necessary progress. But as a content marketer with a well-planned strategy, you won’t find surrender on any page of your playbook.

Content marketing champs don’t play it safe; they take chances. They persevere. The team you play for will aim to put some points on the board. Go for it by putting a variety of plays together that use video, presentations, or other formats that score points with different types of audiences consuming different types of media. Distributing your content online opens all kinds of new possibilities; tune into the conversations surrounding content publishing and you’ll find an ever-expanding number of them.

Point #3: Score points

You can’t always score a touchdown. Sometimes you go for a field goal and get some points on the board. Field goals aren’t touchdowns, but they add up.

These content marketing tactics will keep you in the game:

• Promote your blog relentlessly by using the social media tools available to you, creating links where you can, and joining relevant conversations on other blogs.
• Write guest posts for other blogs, and syndicate your content by finding relevant outlets for publication.
• Forge relationships with strategic allies.
• Offer curated content in the form of ezine-type services. I’m a fan of Scoop.it, Summify and paper.li, but I encourage you to explore relentlessly because new options appear almost daily.
• Monitor your competition’s activities and what’s trending in the media.
• Plug social media into your marketing strategy. Be active on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and the social networks that are relevant to your fans.
• Create a variety of free resources your customers will find valuable, such as how-to articles, case studies, checklists, expert interviews, and reviews.

Point #4: Reach the end zone

When you score a touchdown in football, the crowd goes crazy. It’s magic; a player might even jump into the seats to party with elated fans. And the celebration is well deserved because you accomplished what you came to do — score against the competition.

In content marketing, you score big by creating something of real value — content that educates or entertains, or both. The crowd responds by saving it, sharing it, praising it, or paraphrasing it in their own work. Your ideas go viral; you’ve inspired people to take action, and it’s possible that you’ve even done something remarkable that people will remember for years to come.

You might accomplish this with a blog or some tactic we qualified as a field goal, but your real touchdowns, your top plays, are likely to require some extra effort. Here are some content marketing plays that could possibly get you dancing in the end zone:

• White papers, which switch on light bulbs of inspiration and education
• Industry reports, which demonstrate that an investment was made in the interest of uncovering answers
• Events such as shows, broadcasts, and webinars
• Videos crammed full of valuable insight and perspective
• Books and eBooks, which inspire readers to invest their time and money to discover the secrets to success

Point #5: Conversion is key

Admittedly, in football, the extra point is a chip shot. The majority of the time, the team succeeds in getting the extra point and the touchdown drive ultimately becomes a 7-point score.

But extra points are far from insignificant. They could be game winners. And you know what they call it when you make it? A conversion. (Sometimes metaphors can be so sweet.)

In online marketing, conversion isn’t strictly defined as invoking a purchase; however, your audience does need to “buy” something, even if it means buying into the point of view you’ve presented. Think of content marketing conversion as getting the visitor to do something, to take action, such as:

• Tweet your content or pass it along one way or another
• Submit lead information such as an email address or phone number
• Bookmark the page where your content resides, either locally or with a web-based bookmarking service such as Digg and Reddit
• “Like” it on Facebook, share it on LinkedIn, or +1 it on Google+
• Dig further into your website or resource library for more valuable information
• Follow up with a compliment, comment, or question for you
• Try your product or service

Point #6: Play solid defense

Now and then in football, a “safety,” or two-point play, is scored. It generally occurs when the defense stuffs the opposing team behind their goal line. And then, to pour a little salt in the wound, the rules dictate that the humiliated team must immediately give up the ball by punting it to the team that scored.

Keep this defensive strategy in mind by protecting your “turf” when it comes to your content. There’s no coasting in content marketing. To win is not only to keep gaining, but you must also refuse to give up ground to the competition. The best teams tend to have the most fearsome defense. So establish trust, build authority, and consistently work at reaching your goals by hosting webinars, publishing guides, and curating content like the industry leader you are.

Point #7: Go to Disneyland

Prior to the big game, the media fixates on every detail. Every practice and press conference becomes part of the storyline, and the fans place bets, enter pools, and plan some serious parties to extend the experience of the game beyond pure spectatorship.

When the game comes, an astounding number of TVs are turned on. Advertisers invest gazillions in showcasing some of the silliest commercials ever. A few hours later, one team gloriously hoists the coveted Lombardi trophy. Invariably, the MVP announces he’s going to Disneyland.

You’ve got to get on that team. Be valuable. Exult. Celebrate your success by sharing it across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the new media services your audience tunes into daily.

Are you forging a plan to become a content marketing champ? Please tell our audience a bit about it right here and now.

Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies

It’s estimated that in just a few short months, Facebook will have 1 billion users. With those kinds of numbers, it’s hard to believe that the company didn’t even exist 10 years ago!

Despite its global popularity, Facebook is a tough nut to crack for marketers and small business owners, who have expressed their frustration with the numerous changes that it has undergone. But as it is such a compelling platform that can drive high engagement, they have no choice but to figure out ways to make it work for their goals.

Recently I spoke with someone who knows a lot about how Facebook works: Amy Porterfield. She is a Facebook marketing expert and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. During our talk, Amy offered some excellent Facebook techniques that really work. Here are some of the important themes we discussed: 

Facebook community management

Patricia Redsicker: In your book, you speak of the importance of having a community manager for your Facebook Page? What is the role of a community manager?

Amy Porterfield: A Facebook community manager is the one that literally manages your Facebook Page on a daily basis. Their job is to monitor conversations; start discussions using great content in the form of questions, pictures, and video; and to really mix up the media in order to attract different audiences. 

The community manager should also make sure that people aren’t advertising on your Page or leaving links to their websites. Once your Page starts to get cluttered you can lose an audience very quickly. The community manager has to make sure that your Facebook Page stays clean and focused.

When I worked as the Facebook community manager at Social Media Examiner, we made sure to respond to everybody who posted on our Page (they still do this). We would thank them, let them know that they were heard, and that we were listening; and my job was to make sure that a comment didn’t go by that I didn’t address.

Building a fan base — the right way

Patricia: How do you attract a large following on Facebook?

Amy: This is a question that is asked often; but, it’s also important to know that if you have a bunch of fans that aren’t taking any action, then Facebook marketing becomes a huge waste of your time. Attracting quality fans is really your number one objective in building a strong Facebook foundation.

There are a few ways to do that:

• Make sure that people know you have a Facebook Page. Step outside of Facebook and make sure that [a link to] your Page is prominently displayed on your website.
• Put a link to your Page in your email signature.
• Put a link on your marketing collateral as well — both on your print and digital material.

Then go one step further and let people know why they should “like” your Page. It’s not enough to say “like” us on Facebook — you see that everywhere, and marketers are really missing the opportunity to persuade people to come over to their Page. So tell them why they should like you:

• Are you going to give them tips and strategies to learn something new?
• Are you going to help solve a problem for them?
• Are you going to give them valuable information to make their day easier?

The big question is what’s in it for them. Once you establish that, make sure that you communicate that everywhere your customers are located.

Welcome tab

Another thing you want to do is have a custom welcome tab on your Page. That’s a unique tab created using iFrames. Anyone who’s not a fan of your Page is directed to the welcome tab the very first time they visit your Page. And your main goal here is to have a very clear call to action that says, “Click the ‘like’ button above.”

Studies have shown that you can increase your “likes” by 50 percent if your non-fans land on a custom welcome tab the first time they visit.

Facebook advertising

Another way to increase your “likes” is to use Facebook ads. I prefer to call them engagement ads; Facebook engagement ads are ads that you run to build your fan base. People can click “like” inside the ad, and every time they do, they become a fan of your Page. 

I have a client who’s a personal trainer in New York, and we ran a series of ads for her to grow her fan base. First we targeted her ideal audience — that’s what’s great about Facebook ads: You can really get down to a laser-focused level of who you want to go after. Once we did that, we created ads that said things like, “Click ‘like’ if you don’t want to gain 10 pounds over the holiday season,” or “Click ‘like’ if you want to break up with your scale.”

Her audience is mostly women in their 30s to 50s, and these ads really struck a chord with them. Every time somebody clicked “like” on the ad, she got a new fan. Now she’s almost up to 1,000 fans in just a series of weeks.

Patricia: Some people wonder if Facebook ads are worth it. How do you respond to that?

Amy: Facebook ads can be a little technical, and I will say that it takes some time and patience as well. But you have two options:

1. Educate yourself and understand the Facebook ads dashboard. Read all the tips about what makes a great campaign — e.g., running five or six different ads at one time to see which one pulls the best results. [Use] really dynamic pictures — usually faces of smiling women tend to pull better results than logos or pictures of men. So do your research; you could waste a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing.
2. The other option is to hire someone to manage the campaign for you; someone who is experienced in Facebook advertising. You want a person who has achieved great results in the past. This is important so that you don’t spend money where it really isn’t going to make a huge difference to your overall results.

Patience and hustle are key

Patricia: Talk to the person who has been using Facebook marketing but hasn’t had great results. What advice can you give them?

Amy: Facebook marketing success does not happen overnight, so patience is the key. But you also have to hustle and really get in the game and be consistent with your posting — you will start to see results. And when you start to see results, you’re going to get a little bit more engaged and excited and start to think, “Ok, maybe this really could work for my business.”

The second thing is that you really need to understand your audience at a very precise level. Your content has to be tailored to the point that it can break through all the other noise on Facebook. Knowing what content works gives you a huge advantage on Facebook because you can get right to your target audience.

Patricia: Where can people find you online if they want to get in touch?

Amy: I am at AmyPorterfield.com, so make sure to come over and say hello.

To hear the entire Q&A session with Amy Porterfield, listen to the podcast here.  To read the full Q&A session transcription with Amy Porterfield, click here.

Over to you: Have you used these (or any other) techniques to draw people to your Facebook Page? Please share your experiences below.

The company captures the video and audio streams of shows broadcast by the major networks as well as cable, and then analyzes the Twitter feeds to see what the audience is saying about them as they’re watching. By monitoring all three sources of information, Bluefin can analyze what TV networks are pushing to consumers, and, in turn, what their audiences are watching and saying back. It helps anyone that uses television advertising to measure not only how big the audience is that they’re reaching, but how much reach they’ve earned through Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bluefin recently raised $12 million in a Series B round led by Time Warner Investments and with participation from new investor SoftBank Capital and return investors Redpoint Ventures and Lerer Ventures.

“Everyone has audience-size data,” said Tom Thai, Bluefin’s VP of Marketing. “The ones that have access to Social TV data are incorporating [the information] into their pitch that they’re not only delivering the audience size, they’re delivering social engagement.”

Generating Brand Buzz: The Celebrity Twist

As one example, Thai pointed to a commercial campaign that Best Buy Co. launched during the Superbowl last year about its electronics buyback program. The Super Bowl ad featured Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne talking about the program, with Osbourne quipping, “What’s a Bieber” during the ad.

An analysis of Twitter conversations about the ad showed that viewers were talking about the stars, about Ozzy, and about Ozzy’s quote, but only intermittently talking about the Best Buy brand. The buyback program was never mentioned, Thai said.

Best Buy then came out with a second ad that featured a father and his daughter. The father, after purchasing a 3-D TV, was called a “silly head” by his daughter for not getting the “latest” 4-D TV. While this ad didn’t achieve the same volume of conversations, the Best Buy brand and its buyback program were more widely discussed.

Companies can “start incorporating this feedback from the social channel to make business decisions faster,” Thai said.

Not Just Live Event Feedback

The use of Bluefin’s technology may seem obvious to companies looking for feedback on ads during reality TV events such as the voting that takes place during American Idol, or other major live broadcasts such as sporting events, political events such as the GOP debates, or the Oscars. But Thai says not to dismiss its usefulness for traditional programming as well.

“What we are seeing is that people tweet about all shows on TV across the board,” Thai said. “At this very moment, leading companies are looking at data over the course of an entire TV season and trying to observe all the things the data says – examining certain shows, sports vs. reality vs. comedy.”

At the start of the television season last September, TV networks on both the broadcast and cable side were paying close attention to the audience responses to new shows. The Bluefin analyses helped them understand what elements people were responding to.

“Any show on TV, whether big or small – X Factor, Extreme Couponing or The Biggest Loser – there will be material amounts of people who use Twitter to comment on what they’re watching,” Thai said.

Bluefin’s clients are a mix of networks, marketing firms and agencies, including CBS, Fox and Discovery Communications. The $12 million in new funds will be used to expand Bluefin’s sales and service staff in addition to bolstering R&D, Thai said.

TV image via Shutterstock.

Every message begs for a video. Every product. Every offer. Online visitors expect video. And since messages, offers, and products change constantly, you need to keep churning out updates before your precious online video assets go stale.

But the uncomfortable truth is that demand for online video is growing much faster than the budgets necessary to produce it. Without a modern approach, and a whole new strategy, creating video can chew up your precious content budget before you know it. You can tame your video content budget, however.

Until recently, online video often required specialized skills, fancy equipment, big budgets, and lots of effort. A super-slick video could cost anywhere from $10k to $100k or more to produce. Small armies of camera people, gaffers, lighting specialists, and makeup artists descended on the world of marketing. And while it’s impressive to see a little bit of Hollywood unfold on your company’s production floor, the new reality is that you don’t always need Hollywood production values to make a video that delivers value. 

You can stretch your budget to fill all those video needs, by being smart about three simple strategies to tame the online video content beast.

1. Segment your video needs into three tiers, and employ different approaches in each one

Imagine you have $60,000 in your annual content budget earmarked for online video. Would you rather spend your entire budget on producing three Hollywood-style video assets at $20,000 a pop, or can you live with just one video masterpiece and save the remaining $40,000 to create dozens of perfectly good videos for scores of different campaigns?

In my experience, marketers are well-served by dividing their video efforts into three tiers — each with different levels of visibility, production values, and expenditure/effort per segment:

• Showpiece videos: These are the splashy pieces that grace the front door of your website. They play in your trade show booth. They kick off your sales meetings. They are meant to turn heads, grab attention, get the heart pounding, and stop a visitor in his or her tracks.  Kind of like this one from Olympus or the General Motors video-enabled homepage. Pull out all the stops on these videos, for they help define your company, your brand, and the aura that surrounds them.
• Workhorse videos: These videos explain your most important products, highlight your key technologies, and introduce your most visible people to help move prospective buyers along in the buying process. They’re important because they show and explain at a high level. They are crisp, clear, and are typically the videos that get passed around when a group is involved in a buying decision.  Take, for example, this simple product video from Salesforce.com — one of more than 2,600 on their website and YouTube channel. You don’t need to be splashy or cute here — just focused, authoritative, clear, and in a style that conveys the personality of your organization. And the expenditure per minute can be one-fifth what your showpieces will cost.
• Long-tail videos: Video is a great way to provide prospects with a much deeper understanding of your products (and the thinking behind them), as well as to answer frequently asked questions. This is where the involvement of subject-matter experts in your company — the people who invent your technologies and support your customers in the field — can really add value. The topics covered in these videos typically apply to more of a niche-based interest — they exist on the “long-tail” of interest. Here’s an example of long-tail video content from Alcatel-Lucent: an online video presentation that’s really a chalk-talk about a key technology. This content can be critically important to a content marketing strategy; the key is to preserve the power of video while keeping the expenditure very, very low.

Allocating your marketing budget among these three tiers — and making sure you spend appropriately for each video you produce — is a critical first step. But it’s just a start.

2. Broaden your definition of what a video is

Over the course of years, network television ingrained in us a concept of what a video is: a linear story, with a beginning, middle, and end, designed to be viewed in its entirety. All the action happens within a 16-by-9 frame. It creates a largely passive experience — the choices are to watch it or turn it off. And it’s got a certain “look”, characterized by high production values. Take, for example, this example of a showpiece video that DigiNovations produced recently for Piper Aircraft.

That’s what your showpiece videos should look like, too. And in fact, these showpieces can break through some of the network TV boundaries by becoming more interactive, engaging, and non-linear.

But what about the rest of your video portfolio, where you can’t afford to do the “full Spielberg” on every bit of workhorse and long-tail video content? That’s where it’s helpful to broaden your definition of what’s acceptable — and even what’s defined as video. Consider these options:

• Short, educational mini-segments: When you discover a good, expert storyteller in your organization, take advantage of the asset to create a series of mini-segments. In addition to the showpiece video shown above, Piper Aircraft created a much simpler series of “Tech Tour” videos — consisting only of an engineer, a computer, and a mouse — that take viewers inside the design of this new aircraft. Here’s one short segment, and here’s another. Six of these segments were filmed at a single 90-minute seating, keeping the per-segment budget low but the impact high.
• Formula-based videos: Clothing retailer Zappos has evolved a formula approach that takes creating workhorse and long-tail video down to a science. The company has posted literally thousands of “video descriptions” of its products, like this and this. Each is less than 60 seconds, very simply produced (the budget per video is probably under $50, since their shop produces around 60 to 80 per day), and is reported to raise conversions by between 6 and 30 percent. That’s a high ROI!
• Text-and-still videos: Not every video needs to be a documentary, complete with interviews and b-roll. Nestle Waters, for example, has a long-tail video series that addresses frequently asked questions about bottled water. Each segment is mostly a series of text slides, complemented by still images, but each one is search-optimized around keywords that reflect the most common concerns about bottled water. And because videos like these are highly modular, they can be created and added to the collection one at a time, spreading the effort and expense out over time.
• Man on the street: The material you use doesn’t always need to come from inside the organization. Sometimes you can get surprising results just by taking a camera out on Main Street and asking passers-by to help create your content, like a suburban Boston auto dealer did. Total field production time: about 3 hours.
• Online video presentations: Perhaps the easiest way to make video assets is by taking PowerPoint presentations, combining them with your best communicators, and weaving them together into online video presentations. What organization doesn’t have a library of presentations and a really great storyteller for each of their products, technologies, and concepts? For example, the international strategy consulting firm Parthenon Group puts out a regular economic outlook video presentation, featuring its chief economist, Roger Brinner. These are simple to produce, but powerful in effect because they combine the detailed analytical charts with the authority and color that Mr. Brinner’s commentary provides.

These are just some of many ways to create video content without pulling out all the stops. The key is to keep it simple without compromising on basic production values like good sound, good lighting, and a steady camera. (Notice that none of these is shot by an intern with a Flip-Cam — a technique that, more often than not, conveys production values that hurt your brand image more than helping it.)

3. Enlist the help of a video-creation community in your organization

You really can produce a lot of great online video by yourself. By why not share the effort — and the glory — with others in your organization? Many companies are bursting at the seams with valuable, re-useable digital content, and great storytellers. Use these resources! Let your subject-matter experts focus on the content, and assure them that you’ll take care of the rest.

The first thing to realize is that potential video content is all around you, every day. Every time an executive keynotes a conference, a product manager gives a briefing to the sales team, or a technologist gives a customer briefing, that’s potential content marketing fodder. Smart content marketers keep their antennae up, watching for opportunities to videotape these sessions for possible re-use. Even if you don’t use that exact presentation because it may be situation-specific, you can ask the presenter to recreate a more generic version for content marketing purposes.

Sure, some will run the other way if you mention you need help with a video — being recorded is the last thing that some folks want. Change your tack with the more timid types and just point out that you need their subject matter expertise. They’re sure to warm up over time and share their valuable knowledge in the form of existing slides, graphs, charts, etc. You can narrate the online video presentation for them, if they aren’t willing to appear on-camera. Once they see the finished video, they may come to you with their next great idea, ready and willing to make their video debut.

Using video for content marketing doesn’t have to be hard. And it doesn’t need to be expensive. By dividing your content needs into tiers and matching production process to these tiers, you too can stay within budget and unleash the full persuasion and conversion power of video on your prospects.

Below are six of the most common mistakes content marketers make when promoting their white papers, and some simple ways to counter them:

Mistake #1: Not creating a proper landing page

A white paper can be anywhere from a few pages long to dozens of pages in length, which can make reading them a daunting task for prospects who are not already familiar with the value and insight your business can provide. Quite often, white papers are placed in an obscure location, like the website’s resources page, or on a page that doesn’t have a way to highlight its value. Placing your white paper on its own dedicated page, in the context of the benefits it provides the reader, can help to convince potential readers that downloading and reading your insight will be worth their time.

There are a few core components every white paper landing page should feature:

• A short, persuasive letter that lets the reader know what the white paper contains, and why they need to read it. This sales letter needs to have an attractive headline, and should be around 100 to 300 words long, so it’s quick and easy to read.
• A keyword density of 2 to 6 percent, so your white paper can be found through relevant consumer searches.
• Don’t forget to provide a link so viewers can download the white paper, or a form that they can fill out to request a copy.

Another important decision is whether to include ads on your landing page. The sole aim of your landing page should be to get visitors to download the white paper. When you include ads on your landing page, you risk distracting them from your landing page or, worse, chasing after the ad offers and not returning to download your content . So it’s best to get rid of all the ads if you want to optimize the your white paper conversions. (More tips to improve your white paper conversions can be found in this post by Rachel Foster.)

Mistake #2: Including company promotions in your white paper’s marketing material

Some people promote their white paper through landing pages, press releases, etc. But these marketing materials can’t do their job if they are poorly focused on the mission at hand (i.e., selling the white paper), or contain more information about the company, the brochure section of the white paper, and your other offerings than they do on educating consumers, building a trusting relationship, and turning them into leads.

People read white papers because they want to learn from others’ expertise and experience. If your promotional efforts focus on how your white paper provides vital insight and information, you will build the trust — trust that will make them want to learn more about your company and its products and services. So you see, by not selling, you actually create a more successful sales pitch for the value your business provides.

Marketing the education value of your white paper is all about sharing the benefits it provides with those who might read it. You want to let them know what they are going to learn, and how this information can help them reach their goals — such as improving their company’s performance, increasing profits, or producing better products. If you can demonstrate that reading your white paper can help them be better at something they want to be good at, it will motivate them to download and read it.

Mistake #3: Asking for too much personal information

There are two ways you can provide access to your white paper: by letting visitors download it directly through a link or by offering it in exchange for providing some personal information (such as their contact information, their company name, their job function, etc). It’s always good to get as much information as possible on the prospects that download your white papers; but if you ask for too many details up front, or consume too much of their time filling out forms, you risk losing their interest — and any ability to connect with them in the future.

• If you want to encourage downloads, the information you require should be as minimal as possible. In the beginning, just their name and the email address where the white paper should be sent should be more than enough.
• Once they’ve read your white paper and have grown to trust your expertise, the connection you’ve forged should provide you with additional opportunities to gather more information from them directly.

Mistake #4: Forgetting to make your white paper social media friendly  

There are over 800 million active users on facebook, 200 million users on Twitter, 100 million on Linkedin and 62 million users on Google+. These figures indicate a huge potential audience you can reach through social media outlets. Even if only a small percentage of these users are searching for good content to read, it still provides a tremendous opportunity for targeting and marketing your white paper.

But if you want your white papers to be shared regularly on social media, you need to make them social media friendly. The first step you can take is to add social sharing buttons at the top of your landing pages, to make it easy for people to “like” it on Facebook, retweet it on Twitter, or share it on LinkedIn.

This can be done by visiting the respective social media websites, copying the HTML code for the button, and posting it on the header of each page of the white paper. You can also add these buttons to your blog or other website pages by downloading and activating an appropriate plug-in, or go one step further by including them directly in your white paper documents. (You can learn more about how to add these buttons by reading this post.)

Once you’ve set up this functionality, readers only need to click on the button to share it on their social media profiles. There’s no need to go through the tedious process of opening the social site page, shortening the link to your white paper, writing a message, and then sharing it.

Another advantage of enabling social sharing is that it can add credibility to your content. When people see that a particular page has been shared multiple times, they are more likely to want to know what’s so special about it — which can drive them to check out your white paper landing page for themselves. 

Mistake #5: Not taking advantage of white paper distribution services

There are many distribution services available to help you host and promote your white papers, and they can offer some distinct advantages over self-distribution, such as:

• Access to an established audience of people who want to read white papers
• Experience with successful white paper promotion techniques
• Newsletters and social media channels they can use to increase the reach of your content
• Many of these services are available for free and have made the process easy for content creators at any experience level.

If you want your white paper to get more exposure, it’s best to place it on a few distribution services at once, and see which ones perform best for you. Depending on the topic of your white paper, its intended audience, and your ultimate goals, you can start with those that specialize in targeting your niche business area, or you can cast a wider net by going with services that market to a larger range of audience interests. A few good white paper distribution services are CIO White Papers, Information Week, and Bit Pipe.

How do you promote your white papers? Are there any tricks and techniques you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments below.

We, as community managers and content marketers, are well-positioned to create relevant, useful, and interesting content that serves both our audience’s needs and our goals. We live and breathe those goals, and we know our brand identity almost as well as we know ourselves. 

But just because we can do it all on our own, does that mean we should? The truth is, our brand belongs to our community as much as it belongs to us, if not more so. That identity is not a decree that gets passed down; it is shared and, more to the point, it is co-created. While we shape and communicate it, they are out there living it.

It’s tempting to approach community management like we are conducting an orchestra. We want to lead a performance of everyone playing the same song in tune. But I think of it more like the scene from “Big,” where Tom Hanks’ character is playing “Heart and Soul” on the giant keyboard with the CEO of MacMillan Toys. In truth, we are writing and playing the song together.

Simply put, if our brand is a story, our community members are the co-authors. Their investment in our brand is a potent commodity to tap into. Finding ways to leverage that investment is powerful — the authenticity of their external perspective can bring tremendous value to our content marketing efforts. To that end, here are a few ways to integrate our community members into the content creation process.

1. Let their expertise take center stage

Whether it’s through the contact form on our website, an old fashioned phone call, or a query via Twitter or Facebook, we may spend a good part of our day answering questions from customers, prospects, and other interested parties. While we are perfectly able to answer their questions, there are likely experts within our community who are just as qualified to address issues and share their experiences. Queries present a great opportunity to highlight their expertise.

Use your social media channels to solicit responses to a query you feel others may be able to answer. Be sure to share those responses (just the accurate ones, of course) with the original requestor; you can also collect them into a knowledge base of questions and answers powered by your community.

Highlight their responses on your website, give credit where credit is due, and make this type of crowd-sourcing a regularly scheduled item in your editorial calendar in order to keep the knowledge base growing and up-to-date. After all, customer service is often the best marketing.

2. Activate your community in real time

The value of real-time content can be short-term, but high-yield. When a window of opportunity presents itself — say, due to a breaking news item or a special event —relevant content has tremendous potential to be viewed (and appreciated) by a large audience. Once that window closes, however, the content’s value and potential drops sharply. It’s a tricky proposition that requires being in the right place at the right time, ready to turn around and execute on short notice.

The same goes for soliciting content from your community. Activating your community members in real-time will help you see their true colors. Here are some options you can explore:

• If there are current events with relevance to your organization, ask people to weigh in while they’re still hot topics of conversation.
• Repost customer questions, and let others respond with their answers.
• Share reporter queries with your audience and encourage them to post their take.
• Use both online and offline channels to encourage event attendees to post pictures of themselves (preferably holding something with the company logo with a big smile) or share feedback on the day’s activities.
• Got a deadline you want people to hit? Get your community to spread the word for you.

Also, pay attention to what is happening in the world at large. Anything from a particularly striking sunset in your city to Thanksgiving dinner to an awards telecast can spark a conversation and content creation around your brand. Tools such as Storify — which allows you to curate bits of content from various online sources and stitch them together into a narrative — can help tie all of the responses together.

3. Leverage the power of the hashtag

Whether it’s on Twitter or emerging channels like Instagram, hashtags are the topical threads that bind people and conversations on the web. By spurring conversation around a popular hashtag — whether it’s related to an event, a product launch, or just a brand theme — you can not only get your community talking about you, but you can trace and organize that conversation.

Using social conversation tools like Storify or Cover it Live, you can capture tweets from a selected hashtag and embed the collection on a webpage, blog post, or online article. A Twitter widget can simply scroll a raw feed of all tweets with the chosen hashtag (though be aware of the attendant risks of publicizing a feed you can’t edit). Alternately, you can simply mine the hashtag thread for interesting tweets that you can retweet, highlight as testimonials on your website, or use to inspire blog posts.

4. Curate and celebrate

Psychologist Carl Rogers once said, “Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.” Listening to our community members is integral to communicating in a way that will resonate with them. By listening, we can monitor our brand and find our fans (and foes); but, more to the point, it also helps us discover a trove of content and conversation. Turns out, the community is already talking and creating content about us, so why not use it to your advantage?

Tracking terms or hashtags on Twitter, finding blogs that mention certain keywords via Google, and subscribing to tags on Flickr and YouTube are just a few of the ways you can listen to the community chatter. Then, you can curate the resultant tweets, blog posts, photos, and videos to create a community-authored reflection of your brand. Don’t be afraid to celebrate content that isn’t your own. In the end, it doesn’t matter who created it; it just matters how well it tells your story.     

5. Reach out and ask them to contribute

Along the same lines as the earlier point about letting your community members be the experts, sometimes getting your community involved in content creation is as simple as asking the right questions. Use your social platforms, newsletters, and other touch points to solicit responses to queries. You want your audience members to be interested in you, so it’s only fair to show some interest in them.

The questions you ask could be about your product or organization, for example, “What should we do better in the new year?” or, “What’s the most interesting way in which you’ve used our product?” But you can also use this as an opportunity to get to know your community members, and let them get to know each other, by asking questions that will be interesting to them, such as, “What are your new year’s resolutions?” or “How do you beat the winter blues?” or “What’s your favorite vacation getaway?” These are easy, straightforward topics people like to talk about and for which pretty much everyone has an answer.

6. Get a little chatty

In an e-commerce context, live chat functionality has been shown to lead to increased conversions and time on-site. In a content marketing context, live chat can help make our websites more dynamic, draw visitors who may not regularly go to our sites, and give our audiences the opportunity to shape our content with their questions and to feel heard. A live chat is great content both during the chat and as an archive after the fact. Also, topics that come up during a live chat may inform future content.

Rather than just publishing a Q&A interview or a two-minute video with a subject matter expert or notable individual, schedule and promote a live chat with them. One of my favorite services that deserves more ink than it gets is Cover it Live. As mentioned before, it not only can help you curate social conversation, but also allows you to host and moderate live web chats that you can embed on your website.

7. Add the sound of music

Music is the soundtrack to our lives, so make it the soundtrack for your content, as well. Social music services such as Spotify, Grooveshark, and Turntable.fm have become popular spaces for audiophiles to build networks around musical tastes. Spotify and Grooveshark are centered on the creation and sharing of playlists, while Turntable.fm combines a chatroom with collaborative DJ function.

Find relevant themes — they could be related to travel, holidays, exercise, geography, current events, you name it — and use your social platforms to ask people to suggest songs they think would fit. Create those playlists via Spotify or Grooveshark then share the links. On Turntable.fm, you can create your own room and encourage your community members to join and play songs around a chosen theme.

What other ideas do you have for integrating your community into your content creation efforts?

Image Credit: Marcin Wichary (flickr creative commons)

While governmental entities do not market products or services in the same sense as most businesses do (many government services are not duplicated in the private sector), by their very nature they compile a great deal of information. In fact, the websites of local and federal government entities in the U.S. are often designed specifically to share content that informs and educates — just like the best B2C and B2B content marketing does.

Unique considerations for government-related content

Though the purpose may not be to sell anything, content created for a government website must still engage readers and earn their trust. To make sure the content you create in the public interest fulfills its responsibilities, there are a few standard rules you should follow:

• Use plain English and avoid jargon, as the diversity of the audience will likely span the socio-economic spectrum.
• Focus on what the consumer needs to know, and how the particular services or information offered on the site can help. Limit information about why or how the government entity achieves its goals, as this extra information can confuse or frustrate people who visit the site looking for answers.
• Format content in a clear, compelling way. Government websites must compete with consumer websites that offer similar information (and all the bells and whistles they offer such as compelling graphic design, widgets, social media icons, and content rich blogs).
• Check — and double check — your facts. For many citizens, information shared by the government has an innate relevance and gravity, while others automatically doubt information from any level of government, and dismiss it as self-serving. To gain the trust of both audiences, it is critical that the content be factual, accurate, have transparent input, and be beyond reproach. It may also be appropriate to have your content reviewed by experts to ensure accuracy.
• Information needs to be easily accessible and relevant, even though government services rarely compete with private sector services.
• A .gov (or equivalent such as gov.au, gouv.fr) extension provides an air of authority, so be sure to reserve these URLs for your content, if possible.

What government sites are doing it right?

When it comes to best content practices for government entities, there definitely are government-owned or sponsored websites that do a great job of sharing information and educating the public. However, many government sites seem to be stuck in the internet of a few years ago, in “government 1.0″, so to speak.

Here are three examples of government websites that make educational content available to constituents, with varying levels of success.

BabyYourBaby.org

Baby Your Baby

Baby Your Baby is run by the Utah Department of Health in conjunction with two non-government entities. The site is designed as a resource to help mothers understand how to take care of their newborns — and themselves after giving birth.

Content description: The content is created by nurses, medical doctors, and public health professionals. There is not much information to validate the trustworthiness or expertise of the articles, though that is likely not an impediment to the target audience.

Some of the articles contain links to source articles (though some links are broken) and the name of the author of the article. However, most of the articles lack a publication date or information about peer reviews (as is the case with many medical sites).

User experience: For the most part, it seems that users are expected to only use one way to navigate to any piece of information — via the site’s navigation bars.

• Navigation: Each page includes a top navigation bar, with drop-down menus of subtopics. The right navigation bar remains the same on all pages (except for the blog page).
• The topmost navigation bar provides links for the entire Utah Department of Health, as well as a link to search the state website, Utah.gov. This provides a high level of access to the state sites, if desired.
• Search: The search function searches the entire state website and other Utah government websites, rather than just Baby Your Baby, and results can be less than satisfactory. For example, in a search for the term “breast feeding,” results from the site were fifth from the top. 

In search results for "breastfeeding", Baby Your Baby ranks fifth.

Content: Content is freely available to all who visit the website, and users do not need to register before accessing content.

The information is divided into topics that make sense for the audience and make it easy to hone in on the information needed. Topics and subtopics include:

• Pregnancy — Before, During, and After
• Infants — Overview, Breastfeeding, Dental Care

Format/Layout: The overall format is clean and simple and remains the same on all pages, making it easy to navigate. However, there is limited use of graphics or photographs, and some topics could be more useful if presented as video content, rather than text.

Social media: The Utah Department of Health has its own YouTube channel and Twitter account, which are both accessible from the department’s website (linked to from the topmost navigation bar) but not the Baby Your Baby pages. Yet, Baby Your Baby does not have its own dedicated social media channels, and the link to the Baby Your Baby blog takes visitors to a page without any blog posts.

Nutrition.gov site

Nutrition.gov

Nutrition.gov is a U.S. federal government website run by some pretty powerful agencies with a focus on promoting health and nutrition: The National Agricultural Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in conjunction with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Unfortunately, this is an old-style website overflowing with information that is difficult to find and isn’t presented in a graphically interesting way. The information may be useful, but it is hard to imagine a consumer spending much time searching for the information they need before becoming frustrated and, possibly, abandoning the search. The site could use a makeover to be more contemporary and user friendly.

Content: The subject matter is broad across the general topics of health and nutrition. The site organizes the content into categories such as:

• What’s In Food
• Life Stages
• Shopping, Cooking & Meal Planning.

However, the content itself is a mishmash of links to next-level pages, other government websites, and PDFs. While the federal government does indeed provide a wealth of information, a site like this would be most useful if it curated its content and focused on providing the best and most recent information available. Deeper-level pages and links to more detailed or professional levels of information, if offered, could help to ensure that all of the site’s content would be accessible without overwhelming consumers.

There is a news section (see image below), though most of what is covered wouldn’t typically be described as news, and this section does not appear to have been updated recently. Moreover, no dates are provided on articles in this section, and most link to other government sites, rather than news accounts on a given topic.

Nutrition.gov news page

Authority: Each link or piece of content contains a short description and a brief description of the government agency that is the source of the information. Government information is considered public and for the most part is not attributed to a specific individual, though in some cases PDFs show authorship.

Unfortunately little effort seems to have been dedicated to making the information readable by a general audience, as is evidenced by this PDF listing fat and fatty acid content of selected foods.

Nutrition.gov listing of fatty acids content

User experience: Though there is a general navigation bar and search box on the left side of the page, the design of the site makes seeking information or drilling down to sub-pages unintuitive.

Social media: Nutrition.gov has a Twitter site (11,266 followers, to date), which seems to be the only social media outlet for this information. Also, the site does not provide tools to share information via email or social media sites.

New Orleans Office of Homeland Security

This section of the New Orleans city website I reviewed is dedicated to Emergency Preparedness. This site provides information for citizens on how the city deals with emergencies and provides information about what to do in case of an emergency.

New Orleans city's emergency preparedness site.

User experience: Users can follow a link from the New Orleans City home page to the Emergency Preparedness site. Visitors to the site will likely find the most educational content under a link to General Disaster Preparedness in the left navigation bar. Though not elegantly designed, once you are on the Disaster Preparedness site, it is easy to navigate to the general topics a citizen would most likely need.

Content: Not all of the content listed on the website is available, and what is there is often out of date. For example, the News page is empty, and the link to Learn about Hurricanes and Natural Disasters is broken.

The section on Current Disaster Information is helpful and provides clear pathways to find the information people commonly seek in an emergency, such as school closings, closed streets and bridges, and other sources of emergency information.

At the bottom of every page is a long list of links to the rest of the city’s services, though the great amount of information provided there can make scrolling all the way through each page a chore. The site might be more user friendly if the city found a more elegant way to help users connect to its other departments and services.

Social media: Neither the city nor the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security appears to have a blog or any associated social media sites. However, users can sign up for text or email alerts — if they know where to find the link, which is somewhat hidden (it is located under General Disaster Preparedness, Preparing to Evacuate, below the first screen of information).

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, governments do not generally market services in the same way businesses do. But these and other efforts do demonstrate their recognition of the need to provide public information as an online service. What do you think about these efforts to create and share educational content? And what are your thoughts about how governmental entities can take the next steps?