While this was a very casual occurrence, and something we have been getting a good chuckle out of the last few weeks, it reinforced a key point that we see all the time with companies – that your message is more important now than ever.

The Messaging Guide – Alive and Well

In the digital age, all too often the messaging guide is now neglected, incorrectly discarded into the marketing trash heap with the 4Ps and athletes pitching tobacco products.  But whether it’s for crafting the elevator pitch, describing to your neighbors what your company does, or serving as the go-to reference for how you talk about the company, in the era where content is king you need a consistent set of key points where all language flows from.  The messaging guide serves that purpose, and gives you the key points to talk about the company in a way that is unique, stands out, and resonates with your clients and prospective clients.  The more complex the offering, and the more crowded your space, the more important it is to have that unique value proposition and supporting messages in order to stand out from your competition.

How Your Messaging Guide Drives Your Content Marketing

When we talk about the value of content– whether it’s website copy, blog posts, eBooks, white papers, webinars, videos and a host of other formats – it’s imperative that you clearly and consistently articulate and support your company’s value proposition and key messages.  These key messages should serve as the ultimate bellwether for whether that content advances the company and the business, or is essentially useless filler.  The messaging guide helps to truly serve as the checkpoint for all of your content – is it in line with the business, does it support the way that we work and think, or is it just fluff?

As an example, we recently completed a brand strategy engagement with a B2B technology company.  As part of this, we interviewed clients and internal stakeholders to get to the core of the business, and ultimately to the unique value proposition and key messages and incorporated all of these into the messaging guide.  That messaging guide content then serves as the barometer of the content in their blog posts, drove the content that lives on the pages of their redesigned website, in their 2 page and 4 page collateral pieces, PowerPoint deck, recent webinar, proposal templates, email signatures, elevator pitch, and company golf shirts, and a host of other places.  In short, the messaging guide drives every type of content about the company.

Building Your Messaging Guide

For all the reasons above, the messaging guide is frequently among the first places that we start when working with a client.  While it can often be beneficial to get outside assistance to do the proper qualitative research and develop the guide, you can learn step by step how to build your key messaging guide in the post –  Who Are You? The 5 Key Components of a Core Messaging Document.

What do you think?  Have you built or recently revisited your messaging guide?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Looking to turn your message into great content?  Want to get started with content marketing but don’t know where to begin?  Download our free eBook How to Grow Your Business with Content Marketing where we explain how content marketing can not only enhance your marketing efforts, but grow your entire business.

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There are a number of reasons businesses decide to come together through merger or acquisition, whether it’s to acquire proprietary technology, offer complimentary services, expand a geographical footprint, or a host of others. In our case, this wasn’t Facebook acquiring Instagram, but rather a way to bring BMore Integrated and founder Michael Teitelbaum into the fold to expedite our growth.

One of the things that attracted us to BMore Integrated is that they are guided by the same principles that guide Right Source Marketing—strategy before tactics, messaging before communication, education before execution, and a relentless focus on the client and results—and that makes this a perfect fit. We have aggressive growth plans for 2012-2013, and the addition of BMore Integrated and Michael to our leadership team comes at a critical time—his experience guiding companies through high growth periods will reap benefits for our staff, clients, and partners immediately.

We’re excited to continue to improve our digital marketing consulting and services, and stay ahead of the content marketing curve. We welcome BMore Integrated. You’ll be seeing more of Michael on the blog and as an active leader in our business.

For more information:

• To learn more about what we do, visit the Right Source Marketing website.
• View the press release.
• Subscribe to receive our monthly email newsletter with marketing advice, news, and updates.
• Download our latest eBook How to Grow Your Business with Content Marketing.
• Or of course, just pick up the phone and give us a ring. After all, isn’t a conversation one of the most critical pieces of content?

Clients often ask us what their teams can write about, and how they can ensure they don’t run out of topics after the first few posts.  Writer’s block hits just about everyone at one point or another, but sometimes coming at a topic with a different approach can help you to get un-stuck.  With that in mind, here’s my 11 Ways to Take a Break from Lists and Bring Variety to Your Content.

Writing a Blog Post – What Can I Write About (besides lists)?

1. Answer a Question: What do your customers always ask you?

I put this one at the top of my list because it’s the most obvious, but often most overlooked.  It’s also what inspired me to write this post in the first place.  What questions do your prospects or customers often ask you? Answering these questions will help address buyer’s concerns, help educate your audience, will be interesting to readers, and may just be the same questions people type into the question answering machine (AKA Google) setting you up to be the company they see first when they use this “machine.”

2. Stories: Talk about a recent relevant business experience

You are blogging because your business has something interesting to say (right?) – and everyone loves a good story.  Recent business experiences that can help your customers and prospects are a great way to engage them, show them more about your business, and show them the human side of the company.

3. Instructional: Tell your audience how to do something

Educating your audience is a great way to share your expertise, but many are afraid to do it and give their “secrets” away.  Our friends Joe Pulizzi and Jay Baer made a great point about this in their recent post Content Marketing for Professional Services: Does It Cannibalize Your Business? – I particularly like the point that “having a grocery list doesn’t make you a chef.”

4. Reviews: Product or service reviews

Reviewing a product or service in your industry can allow you to spotlight some useful characteristics and show your company as forward-thinking and sharp evaluators.

5. Interviews: Recap discussion with interesting people

Interviews are great ways to introduce your audience to somebody that they may not yet know, showcase a partner or customer and give them some exposure, or show your company as one that’s connected to the right people.  It also takes some weight off of you the author (though you do still have to ask great questions).

6. Case Studies: Show problem/solution/results

Taking your audience through a challenge and how you addressed it will show them how you think. This might ultimately help readers solve similar problems that they are currently facing or position you as someone uniquely qualified to assist with a related issue down the road.

7. Link: Provide a link to an interesting article with commentary

Share your viewpoint on a hot topic, interesting article, or something that recently struck you.  By curating content for your audience and providing viewpoints you help expose them to different authors and perspectives.

8. Contrast: Compare two options

These posts serve as a great way to evaluate the pros and cons of different approaches – Mac vs. Windows, hiring vs. outsourcing, “tastes great” vs. “less filling” – help your audience understand the benefits and downsides of each.

9. Rant: Bring the passion

Rants can often be powerful particularly if you hit on the right hot topic.  Of course you’ll want to make sure that your stance is something that aligns with your brand (and any company policies) but a good rant can get the juices flowing on a post and draw a passionate audience.

10. Research: Recap your study or someone else’s

This is a great way to position your company as a thought leader in the industry, as well as turn your post into one repeatedly referenced and visited by information seekers.  And, if you pick the right topic you may see increased inbound links and continuous traffic from search engines on relevant terms.

11. Predictions: Tell us what will be hot in the coming year/quarter/etc.

Predicting the future is hard – there can be some hits and some misses (at least we’re hoping the Mayans were off on that 2012 thing), but it’s a good way to show that you and your company are looking forward.  Bonus idea – ask partners and colleagues to submit their predictions and “crowd-source” the post.  They’ll get extra exposure, help with the content, and even drive their network to you.

I hope these 11 ideas will make it easier to occasionally break free from lists and explore other blog post formats.  What other tips do you have for getting away from lists?  Tell us in the comments section below.

For more about Content Marketing, and ways to be more successful with your blog, download our free content marketing webinar:  What if You Build It and They Still Don’t Come? – The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy.

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Planning – Your Content Marketing Map

Last month, Mike laid out the right approach to developing a content marketing map in 12 Questions That Should Guide Your Content Marketing Plan. Creating the plan is incredibly important and the place where many companies fall down right out of the gate – but what you do with the plan is just as critical.  When you set off on a trip to a new destination, you typically want a map.  Whether that’s the old school atlas, a printout from a site like Google Maps, or a GPS in your vehicle, planning your trip with the map ahead of time and watching it as you go makes it a whole lot likelier that you will get to your destination.

Execution – Your Journey

When you prepare for a trip, you may have the best map money can buy – showing every back road and alternate route, and providing voice activated turn-by-turn directions when needed.  However, if you don’t have a car, haven’t budgeted for gas, and planned your stops accordingly your map isn’t going to do you a lot of good.  Similarly, you can invest in the best content strategy and create a detailed plan, but you need to have the resources and dedication to implement that plan.

Speed Bumps and Detours

Executing on the plan is where the rubber truly meets the road (I’m sticking with the analogy) and where companies most often get stuck.  While the plan starts off right, it’s all too easy to backburner a blog post, webinar or eBook that requires input from a subject matter expert to be meaningful. Companies need to keep those experts billable, and justifying that senior level expert’s time to work on “that content for the blog-thingy” can often be a tough sell internally.  It’s the reason why you see blogs that haven’t been updated in months, or have sporadic posts, and it’s why quarterly webinars become annual ones, and eBooks languish on the side of the road never to get moving again.

Roll Up Your Sleeves and Relentlessly Execute 

Truly effective content marketing requires allocating the resources and making a real dedication to the effort.  It often requires having outsourced partners or resources on call for when the effort cannot be sustained internally.  Most of all, it requires a continuing commitment to doing things when you “hit the wall” and aren’t sure you have the energy to execute.  It may require carving out time at midnight to write a post like this, or closing yourself off in a quiet room to finish it up the next morning…and then doing it again then next day, the next week, and the week after that.

In short – it requires rolling up your sleeves and relentlessly executing.  Are you ready?

How do you relentlessly execute your content marketing plan?  Please share your experiences in the comments below.

For more about Content Marketing, download our free content marketing webinar:  What if You Build It and They Still Don’t Come? – The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy.

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• Getting content from subject matter experts, when these experts are also required to focus their energy on billable hours
• Occasional missed deadlines and the need to build a backlog of content before this happens
• Varying levels of commitment from different authors

While I’ve seen many companies experience some or all of these challenges at one point or another, as I listened and started to ask questions I realized what was happening to them – blogging had become hard because they weren’t getting anything back from it.  The above challenges really were just addressable symptoms presenting themselves from the larger malady – they hadn’t established a content strategy that showed them direct return on investment from their blogging efforts.

They needed Better Content, Not Just More Content—this broke down in to three main areas:

We Don’t Know What They Want to Know About

Simply put, my colleagues didn’t know what their audience was looking for anymore.  I think each of us at one time or another has hit a temporary wall when it comes to content ideas, but in this case they were really stuck.  Initially they turned to their Analytics, but there was no clear indication of the types of posts that performed better than others.  The solution here was easy – go back to the basics of why you are ultimately blogging for your business.

Think of the stages in your buyer’s journey and where there are most often questions, where people get stalled, or where they have objections that can best be addressed with a great piece of content.  If you think about What’s Missing in Your Content Marketing Approach – for many companies it’s creating content that functions as a part of your sales team.  This isn’t the self-promotional overt selling piece we all dislike, but instead content that is designed to subtly overcome objections and move people to the next stage in the buying cycle.

We’re Not Sure We Know What Their Buying Cycle Is Like

Thinking about content as part of the buying cycle, however, only helps if the marketing team knows what the buying cycle is like—a problem for this group. Sure, they had suspicions, they had spoken with members of their sales team, and even relied on published research from an industry think tank, but they still didn’t have anything concrete.

In this case, the best thing to do is to find a way to ask your clients.  While your own marketing department can call some clients and prospects to get insights, it’s often effective to engage an outsider, as many clients will open up more to a 3^rd party.

I’ve had a number of these conversations recently on behalf of our clients. In addition to learning about the buying cycle and selection criteria, I have heard that our clients’ fees could actually be much higher than they currently are, and in one case, learned that there was a big opportunity about to open up.

We’re Not Turning This into Business

While we all like to help and educate people, most corporate content budgets are predicated on the idea that at some point it leads to business.  If your content marketing program isn’t generating any business, in most cases it’s only a matter of time before you can’t fund your content marketing program.

If you are suffering from the first 2 challenges we outlined above, then it’s not surprising that you can’t turn your blog posts into business.  However, even when you do iron out these issues, too often I see companies missing the basics.  If you take all that time to create a great blog post, and it addresses a key buyer, at the right time, at the right stage, in just the right way, you absolutely need to ask them to provide some basic contact information to access another, more extensive piece of content.

It’s critical to map out key anchor pieces of content (white papers, eBooks, recorded webinars, email newsletters, other content valuable enough for readers to provide their contact information) and match them to themes or topics of posts.  You can them use these anchor pieces as calls to action to take buyers to that next step.

So, if your buyers are reading about content marketing, you can suggest they can also learn more in a recent webinar, The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy (hint, hint).  Or think about how Amazon does it on the Kindle: when you finish book 1 of a series, it automatically asks you if you’d like to buy the second book. By taking people to the next step with a clear call to action, you convert some of the anonymous readers into interested, named visitors, and can determine which readers are valid leads and ultimately which may turn into business.

If you start turning blog visitors into new clients, you’ll certainly feel like you are getting something out of blogging again.

What other tips do you have for solving these issues?  Are you getting anything back from your blogging efforts?  Tell us in the comments section below.

For more about Content Marketing, download our free content marketing webinar:  What if You Build It and They Still Don’t Come? – The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy (See how I did that again!).

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Many People Still Need an Explanation of What Content Marketing Is

People in the industry don’t believe it, but it’s true – the term content marketing sounds great but many marketers, presidents, and CEOs have never heard it or don’t know what it means.  A great example of this occurred yesterday.  Mike and I looked at Google’s keyword research tool and see a term like “content marketing firm” has a very high level of competition  - see how many sponsored listings come up when you search it – and yet only 170 or so searches a month worldwide.  By comparison, the term “advertising firm” has 301,000 searches per month, huge difference.

So, it’s clear people aren’t out there asking for it by name, so the idea of effective content marketing takes some explaining and education.

Content Touches Almost Everything You Do

Take a look at your 2012 marketing plan and I’ll bet most all of your initiatives involve content in one form or another.  Whether it’s webinars, blogging, website updates, social media or so many more initiatives, they all require well-planned and well-crafted content.   Like Seymour the monster from Little Shop of Horrors, you need to continue to feed your marketing initiatives great content, or they’ll shrivel up and die.

Feed Me – Your Marketing Automation Tool is Hungry

One of the fastest growing markets right now is marketing automation software.   We talk to many companies that are in the process of deploying or have deployed the latest and greatest marketing automation and lead nurturing tools like HubSpot, Marketo, Eloqua and many others.  What do they all need?  You guessed it—a content strategy that takes into account the buyer’s needs and behaviors, and how to address each stage of the buying cycle.  All too often companies invest heavily in licensing marketing automation software and then realize mid-way through deployment that they don’t have a content strategy and haven’t identified or created the right content.  The landing pages you visit, the blog posts you read, the lead nurturing emails you receive, the webinars you sign-up to attend, the white papers you register to download, the eBook you get – all of these elements marketing automation tools need to thrive and they all fall apart without the right content.

Don’t let your 2012 marketing approach turn into a Little Shop of Horrors. Make sure you have your 2012 content plan in place and if you haven’t yet developed it, here’s 12 Questions That Should Guide Your Content Marketing Plan.

Agree?  Disagree?  Have a marketing automation story to share?  Hungry for more (sorry couldn’t resist).  Share your comments below.

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——

Big Moves by Big Names
1. Buy, Not Build. There will be a slew of top brands that start to buy established niche media properties instead of starting from scratch.
2. Google will undergo FTC scrutiny for trying to corner the market on the purchase funnel…they buy one too many media companies (i.e. Zagat in 2011) that finally sets off some opposition from social influencers.
3. Facebook indeed surpasses $100 billion in market cap after going public (probably not a stretch, but worth saying… since Facebook is the only company that scares Google).

Freshness and Search Results

Google may not be as “fresh” as Will Smith or the MC Hammer Search Engine (yes, seriously). But, last week, Google added search results to the best-when-fresh list with a major update to its algorithm. For many sites Google is a kingmaker (or Fresh Prince maker?), and this update certainly affects all SEO, social media, and content marketers. The goal of the change was to give you fresher, more recent search results. On its official blog, Google estimates the changes will impact approximately 35% of searches, or 3.9 billion searches a month (according to September 2011 data). To put that in context, that is almost 3 times larger than the Panda update which impacted 12% of searches, and people are still talking about Panda’s impact.

What type of searches may be impacted? To quote directly from Google:

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy Oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Consistently Creating Great Content Makes You Fresh and “Fresh”

In light of these changes, how do you make sure your potential customers continue to find you?  How do you make sure you rise to the top of the search results like Will Smith’s movies rise to the top of the box office lists?  The new Google update makes having the proper content marketing plan and program in place even more important, because your content must be not only “fresh” as in cool and timely, but fresh for search.  Of course, frequently and consistently creating high-quality content will continue to be one of the most effective ways to engage potential customers once they find you. But now, an active and consistent content program will be an even more important factor in helping potential customers find you to begin with – just like Will Smith has 15 projects listed as in production for 2013.

So how are you planning on becoming the Fresh Prince of your search category? Is this update changing your content marketing plan? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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One session that really stood out to me was Thursday morning’s panel on “Content Marketing Metrics: Justifying Content Marketing Spending.”  The panelists addressed a topic I am passionate about – planning your content to align with buying cycles and buyer objections.   Two major points made by one of the panelists, social media and content strategist Jay Baer, were of particular interest:

Everyone’s a Publisher – and Collectively We Create Mass Amounts of Content

Jay hit the nail on the head by reminding everyone that “All companies now find themselves in two industries: the business they are actually in, and the publishing business.”  Jay just talked about this today on his own blog.  I see marketers and brands picking up on this, and agree that it’s a trend that will continue to accelerate.

Think about how much content you engage with on a daily basis and how much that has grown in the past quarter, 6 months and year.  We frequently cite a quote from Google’s Eric Schmidt that “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003” – which is still astonishing to me every time I say it.

Where the problem lies is all too often companies don’t spend much time planning their content so that it is mapped to buyer personas, needs and objections. Instead (to borrow from a South Park inspired internet meme) they take the approach of:

Step 1 – Create Content

Step 2 – ?

Step 3 – Profit

As nice as that would be, content marketing simply does not work that way.

Content – A Part of Your Sales Team

To quote Jay again, another essential aspect of content marketing is that you “need to think of content as a way of handling sales objections – and baking original content around that.”   Effective content helps move your prospects through the buying cycle by overcoming objections.

Jay also stressed that you “build the action into the content at the end, and build with the end in mind.”  I’m glad Jay pointed this out as far too often I get to the end of a piece of content and there is no next step to continue to move me through a process and get me to take an action – instead it just ends.

Viewing yourself as a publisher without taking into consideration the ultimate goal of using content to grow your business you may ultimately find that instead of being in 2 businesses (the business you are in and publishing) you are out of business because you focused all your energy on publishing any content you could.

The Critical Missing Piece (Step 2)?

It’s getting that content in front of buyers with the messages you know resonate with them based on their role/persona, place in the buying cycle and needs/objections.  And of course to effectively execute Step 2 the hard work really comes before Step 1 – proper content planning.  With a smart content plan, well written content, and the right content delivered to the right people at the right time, content marketing truly becomes one of your sales team’s most effective weapons.

Agree? Disagree? How have you aligned your content marketing strategy with your buyers? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

You can also learn more in our recent webinar, What if You Build It and They Still Don’t Come? – The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy.

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On Content Marketing As “New”

John Deere did The Furrow magazine in 1895 because farmers had problems and they needed to solve those problems.  Were you going to do an ad for that?  No – so they produced the magazine which by the way they still do to this day.   So content marketing isn’t anything new, what’s changed is the fact that technology is new and we can create content virtually for free from a technology standpoint and get it on the web so people can find it.  And with technology, it is going to change even more – if this is a 9 inning game we’re still in the dugout.

The second part that has changed is the buying process – customers can get information how and where they want to anywhere in the world.  We as companies aren’t competing just with our competitors anymore, we’re competing with media companies, we’re competing with Google.

On Marketing Departments as Publishers

So at Content Marketing World we will learn from the experts and practitioners — Here’s what we are doing well which, when you think about it is publishing.  So marketing departments are becoming publishing, which is a big change.

We are seeing this evolution of marketing departments and the changeover of marketing departments to publishers.  So day one the conference will deal with things such as how are they structuring it, how are they managing it, how are they creating content that gets found, how are they dealing with regulated content issues in healthcare and financial?

And then dealing with all the platforms, print, in-person, online, mobile, social – content and social are intertwined at the hip, and if you look at it one way it’s changed the way that we do business.  But it’s also a distribution platform for your content marketing.

On Marketing Integration and Storytelling

What we should really have is a group that focuses on content and content distribution and not just focused on tools.  We have an email marketing department, we have a social media department but what we should really talk about is content and how we tell our stories.  You have multiple silos here   and they are talking to customers in different ways and what a shame that is.  Your story should be your story to your customers regardless of where it’s coming from.  You need to integrate these areas and know which content pieces to use at the right part of the process so it’s not just push push push.

The intersection of lead generation and social media is storytelling – and that’s content marketing.

On Content Marketing World

Day 1 is all about successes and failures, Day 2 is some real hardcore tips on taking this back to my organization.  We will have senior level marketing professionals from Dell, HP, WGN, Intel, DuPont and others that have expertise to share from multi-channel content marketing.

There will be lots to take away, multiple tracks (i.e. small business, B2B) with real things you can take home and do.  There are strategy, big idea, TED-type speeches, but also hardcore “roll up your sleeves and do” sessions.  And on top of that there will be a ton of fun stuff to do including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and famed producer/director Kevin Smith.

It was great to have the opportunity to meet Joe and Pam in person and we’re looking forward to seeing them (and hopefully some of you) at Content Marketing World.

Have comments on Joe’s thoughts? Want to make sure we meet up with you at Content Marketing World?  Comment below or drop me an email to make sure we connect.

If you’d like to learn more about content marketing, watch our featured webinar:

What if You Build It and They Still Don’t Come?
Will Davis and Mike Sweeney outline the anatomy of a content marketing strategy.

Watch the video >