How sharable is your content?

Traditional public relations practitioners know this challenge well. They can write the best press release in the world, but if it doesn’t get picked up by a news source, the story isn’t getting out. This kind of roadblock is a big part of the reason content marketing is so exciting. It empowers the brand with more control over distribution.

Before you shoot a video, create an online guide or write an article, you need to think about how the content will be shared. This is not a strictly technical function. The content itself plays a key role in how well it will be passed around. Here are three critical areas to consider when you’re creating content to…

Set yourself up to be shared.

1/Story Angle

If you have a vague idea of the story you want to tell, narrow it. When was the last time you shared a vague story? Speak directly to your audience by honing in on one or two things they value. Do not try to be all things to your audience in one piece of content. It won’t be pointed enough to inspire sharing. You should have multiple audiences, which you can develop through personas, so pick one and focus on it. Take this example:

Brand/Audience: Law firm/Entrepreneurs

• Angle Too Vague: Several attorneys talking about how they serve business clients, giving the audience a broad overview of services available at the firm
• Angle Getting Better: One attorney talking about one client he has helped through the firm’s many services.
• Angle Sharable! One attorney talking with one client about how they have worked together to get financing for the startup and shift the business direction as needed.

The “Too Vague” version is the easy way out. Put a few people in front of a camera and let them prattle on. This version of the content also feels very much like you are marketing to the audience and trying to sell them something. The “Sharable!” version has much more of a storytelling quality. You have two main characters participating in a conversation. They are giving pointed examples of what actions were taken and they will reflect on the success they have had. That is a story worth sharing.

Think about what kind of content you share. Is it personal, highly relevant to you, relatable to your situation or the situation of the person you’re sharing with? Don’t take the easy, “Too Vague” route with your content. It won’t get shared. As you are polishing your story angle, ask yourself how it will inspire someone to click a social icon or email button for sharing.

2/Content Medium

The magic of digital content is that it is highly sharable. There are no stamps or envelopes to lick. There are no phone numbers to dial to tell someone about a story. Instead, there are social media channels, easily recognizable social icons on web pages and blogs, and the “forward” button on your email account. If you want your content to be shared, make it digital.

Determining the best digital medium is part of telling the story. You want to give your audience digestible pieces of content, and different people will stomach content different ways. You may want to make your content an ongoing campaign in which content (such as blog posts) trickle out weekly.

For example, if you are a pediatric medical center offering your website visitors answers to your 50 most-often-asked questions, you can keep the momentum going by offering an answer or two per week through your blog instead of offering a 50-page download of FAQs.

As far as sharing goes, passing along one blog post to someone is much more appealing than hoisting a 50-page PDF into their inbox. A mom might want to share question No. 29 with another mom because she thinks it’s pertinent to her situation. Being able to easily share just question No. 29 (or blog post No. 29) instead of a PDF with directions to scroll down to No. 29 is much more useful.

Tweeting or Facebooking about the post or series of posts can give users of those media more chances to share your content, so be sure they are part of your content strategy.

3/Content-Sharing CTAs

Don’t be shy about asking your audience to share content. Certainly don’t beat them over the head and turn them off, but we all need a little encouragement sometimes to pass along a story or piece of information. And if your content is truly interesting and useful, then your audience will want to share it.

Consider what you want the content to do for you and craft your call to action accordingly. Sometimes including social icons and an email share function are all that are needed. A more direct way would be a prompt such as the following:

• Enjoy this post? Share it with your mommy friends.
• Broaden your influence. Share this post with a peer.
• Don’t keep it all to yourself. Share the love and this download.
• Our cookies taste better shared with a friend. Forward the recipe.

You knew this was coming … if you enjoyed this post, share it. And thank you!

Whether you’re an Apple fan boy or not, you have to respect the way Steve Jobs – and by extension Apple – is not afraid to be decisive with how they offer technology. With selecting carriers for the iPhone, creating operating systems, or accepting new programs into the App Store they dictate how things are going to work, and they don’t shy away from upsetting people who don’t like how Apple does things.

It’s a great business model because everyone can be safe and boring. While everyone technically can pick an edge, very few actually do it.

So ask yourself, “Would I like to be a little more like Apple?”

Topics Covered:

• Trying to appeal to everyone is going to result in stale, boring marketing that doesn’t resonate with anybody
• Understand the difference between picking an edge and engaging in controversy marketing

Resources Mentioned:

• ShipIt is out-of-print, but you can still get Seth Godin’s Linchpin, for which ShipIt was a companion workbook
• Crispy Frickin’ Chicken campaign by Sheetz that caused such a hubbub (this is admittedly pretty mild as far as controversy goes, but it illustrates the concept behind controversy marketing)

Ever hear someone say that they don’t seem to be getting anything out of their blog? It happens. For some people this is because they don’t take simple steps to make sure they don’t bore their readers, but it also happens to bloggers that do everything right. Their posts are relevant to their audience and well formatted. They develop and stick to an editorial calendar. The blog even has a modest, growing group of regular readers, but the marketing needle doesn’t seem to be moving.

I submit the problem might be they have overlooked the most fundamental aspect of any marketing piece regardless of medium. What are they missing? A call-to-action.

What is a call-to-action?

When someone finishes reading your blog post, what would you like them to do? Pick up the phone and call you? Maybe download a white paper or a guide? Forward the blog post to a friend? Surely you’d like them to do something, but how do you expect them to know what that is?

The answer is you tell them. At the end (or middle) of your blog post tell your readers to register for your seminar right now. Your CTA might be a form, a button, or a fully-designed digital ad. It doesn’t have to be that fancy, though, if that’s not right for your blog. The last sentence of your blog posts can just tell readers what they should do next.

Why does a CTA matter?

No one reads to the end of a blog post out of some sense of duty. If they got to the end, it’s because they see you have valuable information to share. They view you as a trusted authority. While you are fresh in their mind is the most effective time to suggest how they can get even more valuable information from you.

We also know that someone needs to see your message 5-9 times (depending on what research you cite) before someone will take action to buy your product or service. Many readers of your blog will certainly read 9 posts, assuming you are following best practices about what type of content you put out and how frequently you are presenting it. By making sure you have a call-to-action in each post, you are more likely to help your reader see that message enough times to take action.

Note: You certainly don’t need to include the same CTA in every post. You probably have several actions you’d like a reader to take, so you can include whichever one is most relevant to the content of each post.

Can I just put a CTA in the sidebar?

Nope, and I’ll tell you why. Regular readers of your blog will either:

1. Quickly develop a blind spot to your sidebar, only noticing the unique content on each page
2. Follow your blog via RSS feed that does not display your sidebar

In either case if you only include a CTA in your sidebar, you lose the multiple impression benefit I described above.

So what action do I want you to take right now?

Go to your blog and look at the last 5 posts. What call-to-action do you include in each of them? If any of the 5 is lacking a crystal clear description of what action you want the visitor to take, log into your blog platform and add a sentence to the end of the blog post with a clear call-to-action. Do this now.

To keep things simple, there are two kinds of authority:  1) The dictator who knows what they know, tells everyone what they know, never wrong in what they know and are typically rude and on and on for all things bad, and 2) Someone who knows a great deal of knowledge, shares kindly and is open to opinions toward a topic that can take many routes. For this post, we’re going to talk about how to be successful in the style of example number two.

Just like many examples in business, building your authority comes in a give-and-take fashion. When you’re trying to build your business through networking, giving referrals first is typically a good rule of thumb. When you’re looking for people to do business with you, giving yourself the right tools to be a good person to do business with needs to come first. Where content marketing and building authority come into play, the rules don’t stop – you need to give away some of your best, most valuable knowledge in order to be considered an authority on the topic. Give + Share = Receive

This will come easily to some, and quite difficult for others. Trust the process, give away only what you’re comfortable giving away, and do so in the form of content:  video, white paper, blog posts, etc. Build great information that answers painful questions and challenges for the people you want to do business with. You help others, they’ll help you… and keep coming back for more.

So how do you actually do this? Answer some of these questions with your best knowledge, figure out how you bundle your information up into a content marketing piece or product, and plan out how you’ll share this great bit of information. You’ll be well on your way before you know it.

1. How are we helping some of our best clients solve problems?
2. What are some of my industries greatest challenges?
3. What’s new in my industry that I know well and could teach others?
4. What do our employees do really well that other companies may find helpful to know?
5. When does our company perform best? Why?
6. What are some of the top questions clients ask us?
7. What are some of the top questions prospects ask us?
8. What are we doing that’s different than our competition?

These questions will prompt you to think of other questions, so make the time to tackle these in your chosen medium to start building your authority among your audience.

If liked this post, chances are you’ll love our Podcast. Join us on Marketing Brainpower each week either on our website or through iTunes.

Statistics and predictions can lead people to do darn-near anything. Mobile phone statistics are big offenders. Read some of these panic inducing mobile statistics and predictions:.

• 46% of US Consumers own a smartphone (American and Internet Life Project, March 2012)
• By 2013 more people will use mobile phones than PC’s to get online (Gartner, 2011)
• By 2015 there will be one mobile device for every person on the earth (Cisco, 2010)

These statistics are usually used right before a sales pitch that has to do with mobile advertising or creating mobile websites. Before you decide to spend any marketing dollars let me help defuse some of the panic so you can make an informed decision. Here are a few reasons why you wouldn’t want to use mobile:

1. Money could be better spent somewhere else. This is the primary reason to make an informed decision on going mobile. Everything is relative. Even though phone usage is growing money made via mobile may be a drop in the bucket compared to other channels.
2. People are used to pinching and zooming. At least for the time being, people accept pinching and zooming to navigate non-optimized websites. There are reasons to assume that this may change in the future. While people won’t keep coming back to a site on their mobile phone if it isn’t optimized, it doesn’t necessarily drive them away. Why fix it if it’s not broken?
3. You’re not getting any mobile traffic. This may seem counterintuitive. Why not spend money on mobile ads or a site optimized for mobile usage to get more traffic? Getting mobile traffic is a good indication of whether it’s a good decision to put more time and money into mobile. Unless mobile users represent a key demographic you want to reach then your money could be better spent somewhere else.
4. Your clients wouldn’t look for you on their phone. Think about the service you offer. How many scenarios can you come up with where someone would look for your business on their phone? If you can’t imagine any situations then money could be better spent somewhere else.

The purpose of this blog post is not to discount mobile websites or mobile ads. They’re extremely powerful in certain arenas. It’s just meant to challenge those panic inducing statistics that may lead people to make bad decisions about whether or not to go mobile. Everything is relative, even this. The one thing that’s hard to speak definitively about is the importance of an optimized brand experience when it comes to mobile. It’s very possible that a good brand experience on a smart-phone could be what seals the deal on a lifetime of brand-trust.

Raquel writes in her just released ebook, Five Steps to Telling Your Most Engaging Stories, that “love” gets a bad rap. Same goes for the word “emotion.” When someone says they were emotional, tears and tissues come to mind. And maybe weakness. No one wants to be associated with weakness.

Emotion makes you human

When you were in preschool or your child was in preschool, did you practice making faces showing different emotions? My sons and I have practiced our happy, surprised, fierce and scared expressions. Keeping this very elementary, basic definition of emotion in mind helps us see how evoking emotion can mean many things. It also points out how basic and human emotions are.

Emotion closes deals

People make buying decisions based on feelings and emotions. Geoffrey James discusses this in a recent Inc. article. He says that sales are made because of a change in a customer’s emotional state. No matter how compelling your argument is at a logical level, it’s the heart you have to convince.

“The emotional change you’re seeking in your customer will probably result from the expression of new information and the reframing of old information,” James says.

Tap into the emotion

Every good story evokes some emotion, and that includes brand and business-related stories. If you aren’t evoking emotion in how you communicate who and what your brand or business is, your story needs work. Here is an exercise to help you land on the right emotion for your brand story:

Q. What is your brand’s “only”? What is the one thing your company focuses on to do as well as it can be done? What is the one thing you do that no one else comes close to doing as well as you? How are your culture, client interactions and processes different from anyone else’s?

A. How does that “only” make your audience feel? Do your personal relationships with clients make them feel powerful, at ease, catered to or special in some way? Does your service make your customers feel responsible, smart or protected? Tap into those feelings and create a narrative around them. Turn a feeling into a case study, a blog post or a brand message. Don’t let these emotions live just with your audience. Embrace them and communicate them to tell your story.

Beware emotional clichés

When you’re working on the emotion in your story, beware the pitfalls of stereotypes. Just because you’re in the business of car insurance doesn’t mean you have to evoke a “fear of not being covered in case of an accident” or “happiness that you aren’t paying too much for insurance.” You might tap into pride or calm or some other emotion that rings truer to who you are and separates you from your competition.

Use Raquel’s ebook to help you tell your most engaging story, one that will bring about an emotional change in your audience.

Silver Square is placing a lot of emphasis this year on storytelling. Good stories are the foundation of our approach to marketing, and we believe using stories to engage your audience is the future of marketing as a whole. Raquel has written a downloadable guide on the subject, and in this episode of the podcast we talk about the ideas that shaped both the guide and our approach to storytelling.

On a related note, we talk about the recent incarnation of our monthly newsletter. In keeping the with the idea of good storytelling, we’ve revamped our monthly emails to better communicate valuable content to our audience.

Topics Covered:

• The process of storytelling and how we use it to consistently achieve great results for our clients
• When and how to give away your secret sauce
• Why content is not king – and what the other half of the story is

Resources Mentioned:

• Five Steps to Telling Your Most Engaging Stories – the free downloadable guide where we give away our secrets on great storytelling
• Silver Square newsletter – you can subscribe to our newsletter from (literally) every page of our website, head to the home page (or any other) and add your email address in the bottom left corner

What about business owners and strategic decision makers who just need to understand what’s possible with goals? Do they need to know the code syntax for creating a virtual page view? No, but they do need to understand what type of data virtual page views let you capture.

I spent a few minutes walking through the goal creation screen and talking about why the different types of goals are useful. I recorded my screen as I went along, so if you’re interested in understanding what type of information you can track (and why on earth you would care) take a look.

video link: http://youtu.be/QzJ17vGFdBk

Most of the sales people I have talked to really get behind a content marketing approach. They like that marketing is helping them gather leads of the right kind of prospects to help them close a sale. Below is a short list of tactics to consider for your content marketing approach and how each can help you and your sales team create the perfect content marketing team.

NOTE:  This is a perfect time to think about how to repurpose some of your content, or, how to get some extra mileage out of your content. Our worksheet helps you think about this in a bit more detail, if you’re not sure what I’m referring to.

• Blogging – This one if often missed in consideration of content marketing, but it’s part of your strategy. One of my best bits of advice for using your blog to help you sell isn’t really my advice at all, but a little tip we picked up at Content Marketing World last year from one of the speakers:  Think about the top 50 questions you get from your prospects and answer them on your blog. We have taken this approach for one of our clients, Brenneco Fire Protection, and it’s starting to gain traction. If you look at their blog, you’ll notice we’re addressing exactly the type of questions and objections their sales team is asked on a daily basis. We have taken one of their most popular blogs and turned it into a handy and beautiful guide that helps their audience determine if they need a backflow device. Check out both of these examples for using your blog to sell and to repurpose content when appropriate (the guide).
• Case Studies – These are probably the most common and best used tactics for bridging marketing and sales. I’m not going to go into these much, but I’ll provide a few examples. When you can, introduce more than one side of the story, and be authentic. Don’t try to sound professional or work too hard on getting your point across – this will feel more promotional than it should and that’s a fine line to walk. Just let the story unfold naturally. A few samples:  Law Firm case study, case studies for a technology company, and to get one more view, a case study about a campaign for a manufacturer.
• Podcasts – These can be really fun and a different way to get your story told. In our podcast, Marketing Brainpower, we have a lot of fun, laugh a lot, talk about content marketing and our perspective and opinions on marketing tactics. When you listen to this, you get a really good idea of who we are, how we work and what we believe about marketing. If you like listening to us talk about marketing in this medium, you’ll probably like working with us. Likewise, if someone finds your podcast and calls your sales team to follow up on a topic, your sales individual has a really solid chance of closing a sale. To warm up a lead, you can also put a few podcasts on a CD (yeah, that old thing) and invite your prospect to listen to your latest topic while driving. Have fun with this one.
• SlideShare – You’ve probably done a few presentations in your time, and placing them on SlideShare to help you find new leads is a great medium. This nifty tool is also great for using their code to embed the slides on your own website (it’s one of those tools that makes you look really slick and is a good usability experience for your visitors). Here are some of my favorite branded SlideShare pages: Eloqua has some really sharp presentations; they’re engaging and fun. IBM does a good job with their page and I like how they showcase a few “thought leaders.” Lastly, Salesforce.com puts an emphasis on social and further sharing – nicely done.

The point here is that all of these tactics help you sales team do a few things key things:

P.S. We talk a lot about content marketing in our Marketing Brainpower podcast. If you haven’t already checked it out or subscribed, I invite you to do just that!

If you’re planning an event and need to drum up interest on a tight budget, taking out a series of ads or investing in a direct mail campaign are out of the question. And really, they might not be your best choices anyway. With content-marketing principles and tight budgets in mind, here are five great ways to promote your event.

1. Site and Blog. Set up a simple website and blog to promote and brand your event. This will be the home of your event’s story, so establish a consistent message and tone that represent the event. In addition to the 5 Ws, tell the event’s story. If this isn’t the inaugural happening, tell about past years and how this year will be the same and different. Tell a story that will intrigue and excite your audience. Provide downloadable pictures for use by the media. Create simple videos featuring event planners or participants and upload them to the site. Write blog posts about how the event is progressing.

2. Facebook. Set up a page early and post often. Add an event to the page that allows you to invite Facebook users so those users can RSVP. As sponsors, details, menu items and features are nailed down, post those to your page. You’re building the blocks of your event’s story. Invite your friends to “Like” the page and they will begin to become vested in its success and energy.

3. Twitter. Those details and announcements found on your events Facebook page should have a similar presence on Twitter. Create a hashtag and work your contacts.

4. PR: Press Release. Hopefully you have a media list with contacts. If you don’t, pull one together. Target the places where your event-goers live, work and play. Go after the media that speak to your audience. Write an event press release and send it out. Be sure to personalize your pitches, showing how your event has relevance for each media outlet’s audience. Show some effort. Getting on an online calendar or in an online newsletter can be as easy as filling out a form or sending an email. The trick is doing it, so do it!

5. PR: Entry Giveaways. Everybody likes free stuff. Offer free tickets to influential people in your network. Ask people who might be interested in being associated with your event if they would be interested in setting up an entry giveaway contest in their business. If it’s a restaurant, for example, a fishbowl labeled “Win a Free Ticket to X Event! Drop in your business card to enter.” will pique interest and help spread the word. Get creative and come up with your own game or giveaway.

Below are some behind the scene photos of our time at Wellfount with Jeff Kirk and Paul Leamon.

May is the month where large groups of mostly young people cast off the moniker of student and assume a new role as working professionals. As a few of these graduates are the Squares of Tomorrow™, we have a vested interest in making sure they get the best possible advice on being successful, productive, and happy.

We get into some specific advice from each Square in the episode, but there are a few common threads that appear over and over. Don’t take whatever job falls in your lap. Think about what you want to be doing with your days, and pursue a career that lets you do that. If you aren’t sure what you want to do, then discovering that is your top priority. You can interview professionals, take assessments, ask friends, or do some old fashioned trial and error – but do not wait to be struck with inspiration. Figure out what area you want to work in and go get a job that lets you do the meatiest parts of that process each day.

If your dream job hasn’t walked up and smooched you on the face yet, it’s probably not going to. You need to go seek it out.

Topics Covered:

• The importance of writing in a professional environment – every professional environment
• The unique opportunity you have to network right now
• Being intentional with the decisions you make from this point on
• Keep continually learning – especially from sources that are outside of your wheelhouse
• How employers think about your generation in terms of loyalty and entitlement

Resources Mentioned:

• Conan O’Brien’s commencement speech – given June 12, 2011 to the graduates of Dartmouth College
• Stranger Dreams – the mystery point-and-click video game that Dean created for his capstone project
• Getting Real – ostensibly about web development, this book is packed with tips and insight on running a lean, effective business
• Success Principles – the staple of the Silver Square bookshelf with timeless principles for personal and professional success

Pick a Format

While most of the tactics you use to build your email list apply to any format, how you describe the benefits and craft your message will vary based on how you plan to use these emails. Here are some of the most common options.

• Newsletter – a regularly scheduled email – often monthly, can be thought of as an online periodical with issues, no endpoint
• Online Course – a series of daily or weekly emails designed to train the reader on a particular topic, clear endpoint, best used with an autoresponder
• Sporadic – emails sent out whenever you think of a tip or news story, no rhyme or reason to schedule or frequency, least useful for marketing purposes

Other Considerations

1. Have a privacy policy and stick to it. There are few things as frustrating as getting spam email, and you don’t ever want your subscribers to suspect their receiving unsolicited email because you gave their email address to someone else.
2. A large number of subscribers is good, but the most important thing is finding people who are willing to engage with you. Would you rather send an email to 10,000 people who ignore you or 100 people who click your links and end up doing business with you?
3. Whenever you send an email to your list, make certain you are providing value. That can mean original content, special offers, or even aggregating industry stories so your readers don’t have to go hunting for it.

Tactics

Give something away. While all of these tactics work together and you should try to integrate all of them into your online marketing, this is usually going to be the most powerful. If you only implement one of these tactics, giving something away in exchange for an email address should be the one. It can be an online guide, a special report, a private link with valuable information, a discount code, or anything that your ideal customer will care about.

Create a landing page. Telling someone to go to your website, scroll down a little, and find the box in the right column where they can sign up for your newsletter is making it too difficult. Create a page on your site that talks exclusively about the visitor providing their email and what they can expect to get for that. Then you can share that link on social media and emails without needing to include a list of instructions. If someone gets to the landing page, it should be clear exactly what action they need to take.

Use modal pop-ups. Interruption marketing is annoying – unless you are interrupting someone with exactly what they are looking for. If you’ve ever been to a website where after a few seconds the page goes dark and a small colorful call-to-action appears that you need to address or close before you can use the site, then you’ve seen a modal pop-up. They’re not for everyone, but if they fit your brand voice they have been shown to be very effective.

Place a CTA in blog posts. When someone reaches the end of a blog post, you’ve just demonstrated your expertise. Now is the time to prompt them to take one small, simple action like subscribing to get more of this type of wisdom and insight from you in the future.

Ask for a forward. As you start to build up email subscribers, you can snowball growth by asking your readers to forward the email on to someone they know who would find it valuable. It doesn’t even need to be fancy. You can ask them to forward it right in the body of your email.

Use social media. Ever scratch your head wondering what you should be putting on your business’s Facebook page? How about a teaser of whatever information is going to be included in the next issue of your newsletter? Create some urgency by reminding people that they need to subscribe by a certain day and time in order to receive it.

Leverage transactions. When you interact with a paying customer, invite them to get updates from you by sharing their email address. They’ve just demonstrated that they value your product or service enough to spend money on it. That’s exactly the sort of person you want to stay in touch with.

Go into the real world. Have you ever made a good connection with someone while you were networking and wondered how to tell them more about what you do? Ask if they’d like to receive your business’s email updates. More often than not people you’re having a positive first impression on will say yes. Note: make sure you ask them in person if they are interested in receiving these emails – don’t just sign them up or you risk damaging the trust you are building.

One of the biggest differences in traditional promotion thinking and content marketing is how you speak with your audience. Traditional practices tend to be persuasive and, well, promotional. In content marketing, you have to train yourself a bit to tone this down, or, do away with it completely, and focus your effort 100 percent on content that simply brings value to your reader.

This focus to help your reader, and nothing else, is at the core of what makes content marketing work so well. 

When I presented our content marketing workshop at the 2011 MBO, I asked if there were any sales professionals in the room. I was happy to see about a dozen hands go up. I then asked this sales group if they were doing any content marketing at their company; things like white papers, case studies, etc. and most hands stayed up. Of those hands remaining, when I asked if content marketing was helping them sell and added credibility and trust to their sales effort, every single hand stayed up! That’s a huge testimonial for the power of a well done content marketing project or campaign.

When you’re creating your content, putting yourself in your audience’s shoes is vital. If you fail to provide relevant, important, helpful content, you could potentially move your audience in the opposite direction and adding up a fat “ding” to your reputation… so be careful here. Practical, educational and meaningful content is how you’ll build your credibility and trust.

Think about your favorite magazine or reporter. One of my favorite reads is Inc. Magazine. I know the articles inside this magazine will be useful for my business, will inspire me to think of new ideas for myself and my clients, and, introduce me to tactics others are using in their company. They are highly credible and I have a high level of trust in their brand because I have experienced their repeated, valuable content. I continue to buy, read, share and learn from their content. This exact idea is what you’re shooting for when you create your content.

Now you know reason #2 you should be working content marketing into your marketing mix. Your sales team will thank you for creating content that’s educating your audience so they can spend their time selling!

Other related posts:

• Building trust in your branding
• The road to raving fans
• Make sure your online and offline networking builds trust together
• Using images to build trust and credibility (8 ways to use Flickr)
• The balanced diet of your marketing

P.S. We talk a lot about content marketing in our Marketing Brainpower podcast. If you haven’t already checked it out or subscribed, I invite you to do just that!

404 error. This is the technical code for what happens when someone tries to get to a page on your site that doesn’t exist. It could have been a typo or maybe they clicked a 10-year-old link to a page that isn’t on your site anymore.

What happens when a 404 error comes up on you site? Do you guide your well-intentioned web visitor through the experience or do you make them feel stupid?

Most default 404 pages are designed to give a web developer the information they need to troubleshoot the problem. If all of your customers are web developers, that’s great! Otherwise your going to make your web visitors feel confused. Regardless of whose fault the error is, it feels like your entire site (and by extension your entire organization) is in some small way flawed.

The worst part is showing someone a little personality with your 404 page is easy. Take a look at Silver Square’s 404 page.

Best practices on display

• Explain what might have happened so visitors aren’t confused
• Suggest possible content to go to next
• Show a little personality
• Mention 404 on there somewhere so web developers can still diagnose the technical problem

Need some more inspiration? Check out 35 funny 404 error pages from Mashable, then ask us about creating a 404 page that fits your brand story.

Spoiler: No, blogging is not dead. Didn’t mean to ruin the surprise, but there’s no good way to introduce this topic that doesn’t include pointing out that blogging is alive and kicking. The blogs of 2012 are dramatically different than the blogs of just a few years ago, though. The strategies, content, and audience have all matured recently – meaning the way you use blogging in your marketing mix needs to mature, too.

Topics Covered:

• How has the emergence of social media changed the role that blogs play in the web-sphere?
• Originally the antithesis of traditional journalism, the independent blogger doesn’t look so different from big media anymore
• The role of blogs in content marketing and SEO
• What will blogging look like in 5 years?
• Bonus: hear what the Squares thought of Clay in the local production of 12 Angry Men

Resources Mentioned:

• The Web is Dead – an article appearing in Wired discussing the rapid changes to how we use the Internet
• Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter – NY Times article from the beginning of 2011 citing the Pew Research Center’s study on (among other things) blog use
• Huffington Post – an online news source that began as a small niche blog and grew to a Pulitzer Prize winning news giant

When we listened to this episode after recording it, we realized that you can occasionally here Matt’s voice in the background as he was on the phone with Apple support. (Macs don’t always just work, by the way.) Ultimately we decided to publish this recording in spite of those infrequent and very quite murmurings because we crammed so much great information into a scant 19 minutes of auditory wisdom.

1.  Final Cut Pro doesn’t run on windows
As you may know, I work on a lot of video projects and I prefer FCP over Adobe Premiere.  While working at a job throughout college, we used Premiere on Windows machines.  It seemed like every week a new issue was arising. While working in Terre Haute for 2 years, there were only a couple hiccups.  I’m sure Premiere on Windows as come a long ways since.

2.  The little things
Here is just one example, creating a controlled screen shot by pressing ⌘ + shift + 4, without opening up some extra program.

3.  Appearance
Every thing just looks nice and works together.  It’s refreshing and feels good.  It’s like the new car smell, but only visual.

4.  If something goes wrong, I know where to take it
Microsoft makes the software. Dell, HP, Sony, along with many manufacturers make the Windows PC. With Mac, made by Apple, I know where to take it.

5.  Strong, stable machines
For everyday email, sure a $200 Acer may be your thing.  When rendering video, burning a disc, and scrubbing through an animation needs to get done at once, I can count on a Mac.

Unfortunately, when some people think of their business story, they think of a website’s About Us page. They think of “Our company was founded by Wilbur Harris in 1975… we now have offices in six states… we strive for the best in customer service.” This type of story is not only a bore to read, but it also is not compelling, entertaining or useful to your audience. Give them a better, more authentic business story by following these four steps.

Step 1. Define Your Immediate Audience. This might be trickier than it sounds. If your business provides outsourced IT services for other businesses, you might consider the end users of your services the real audience for your story. But who is the decision maker? It’s probably not the graphic designer whose computer you set up last week. It’s more than likely a business owner or someone who handles purchasing. Know who you are talking to before you open your mouth to tell your story. You probably have several audiences, so develop those personas to better understand who they are, what they want and what influences them.

Step 2. Ask Thought-Provoking Questions. Your story will not emerge from dates and names. You have to ask and answer some tough questions in order to get a good story. Try these on for size:

• What are some of the challenges you enjoy facing in your work?
• What have you learned the hard way?
• What kind of value do your clients get out of your product/service?
• How are you improving and growing your business?
• What is your best advice for your clients?
• What do you see as the future of your industry?

Conduct an interview like a journalist, digging and seeking to find what’s interesting and thought provoking. Think about what types of questions your audience would ask. Better yet, ask the questions your clients and potential clients might want to ask but won’t because they might seem too prying or tough.

Step 3. Determine What’s Compelling. Guided by your audience’s needs and values, evaluate your notes and answers and figure out what’s entertaining, useful and compelling. Leave the dry, boring details on the cutting room floor. Focus on what your immediate audience will consider share-worthy and moving. For the IT services business, it could be

• an obsession with the next big thing in technology
• how their crazy-fast response time saved one client a bundle
• how their love for equipment means they want clients to love it, too

Step 4. Define Your Angle. Before you start storytelling, write down the angle. To do this, take those things that are compelling and turn them into a statement or two. Don’t make your angle longer than two sentences, and the keep the sentences personal, brief and focused. This statement or statements will serve as your story angle and will guide your story development. That IT services business might see its angle as:

• “We are a small shop with big brains. Keeping up with technology for our clients keeps our clients on the cutting edge.”
• “Our clients need help fast and we deliver. In fact, our response time saved one company $25,000 in one day.”
• “We love technology and don’t want it to fail. That’s why we offer maintenance classes to clients so they can take the best care of their costly equipment.”

Now you can proceed with the storytelling, which can take a lot of forms depending on the best way to reach your audience. The important thing is that you’ve tapped into a strong angle that will reach your business story’s immediate audience. Happy storytelling!

(photo courtesy By jlz, Jukka Zitting, on Flickr)

In this episode we talk about the message your are sending to your employees with your internal marketing. (And, yes, doing zero internal marketing sends a message, too.) Without some form of internal marketing you are practically guaranteeing that you will leave some employees confused and unmotivated.

In the podcast we mention that Zappos offers new employees $1,000 to quit after they complete their initial orientation – after recording we discovered that our information is out of date, Zappos now offers $4,000 for people to quit. What does that say to employees both old and new?

Internal marketing is one of your most powerful tools for communicating with your team. It gets everyone on the same page about the direction the business is going, which is a key to creating consistently effective brand experiences like what Apple achieves in their Apple Stores.

Topics covered:

• The way internal marketing influences employee morale and a consistent brand experience for customers.
• Should you segment your internal audience?
• How do you determine how transparent to be with what you tell employees?
• Is internal marketing best delivered through formal or informal channels?

Resources mentioned:

• Content Marketing World – an annual conference where content marketing experts share new ideas, best practices, and thoughts on the industry
• 8 Things Your Employees Need Most – Jeff Haden shares the things you need to provide your employees for them to perform above and beyond (pay is not one of the 8 items listed)
• Office Space – 1999 cult classic about life in corporate America

Getting someone to your landing page is only half of the battle. The next summit to mount is Conversion Ridge – How to convert this blip on Google Analytics into a sale or a subscription. This is where interactivity comes into play. Creating an engaging experience helps guide conversions. Below I describe the ‘anatomy of an interactive landing page’, various elements that we’ve recently employed on landing pages for Silver Square clients.

• Attractive branded design – The landing page’s design counts for a lot. Even people who wouldn’t consider themselves designers can tell when something isn’t right. The correct imagery and design doesn’t necessarily draw attention to itself, functioning instead to continue the client’s branding and guide the viewer’s eye through the page.
• Content heavy – Content is obviously one of the most important aspects of the landing page. Filling the page with content that a potential client wants will help fufill the viewer’s expectation. Search engines ‘love’ content too. Without the proper content the search engine won’t know to direct people to your landing page in the first place. The design insures the content is readable.
• Visual cues – If someone interacts with your landing page they should have immediate confirmation an interaction is actually taking place. This affirms the viewers expectations and sets future expectations. It will also help craft an experience. For example, if a site visitor presses a calculate button, a loading graphic might be shown whether or not it technically takes any time to load. In this case it creates a responsive experience that furthers the sense of actual calculation taking place.

Visual cues in this landing page let the user know that they've completed a checklist item and that their selection has been registered

• Sophisticated back-end –In general, a visitor to a landing page doesn’t have anyone they can consult if something doesn’t work. They’ll simply leave the page. Error handling is then essential. An interactive landing page with a sophisticated back-end doesn’t necessarily bring attention to an error – choosing instead to handle the error as a regular happening with a smiling helpful demeanor.
• Calls to action – The intent for a landing page is often to drive conversions. A good landing page will likely have more than one call to action.

Before we started spreading the news, we contacted Cook Biotech to be sure the company was on board for a little publicity. The Cook Biotech team was excited and engaged, snapping a photo of the award presentation and sending it to us for our use.

Randy Peters of Cook Biotech accepts the Sprinky Award from Wayne Flora of Brenneco Fire Protection.

Following our own advice when it comes to PR, we first posted the news through Brenneco’s own channels: blog, quarterly newsletter, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Next, we hit the more traditional route, contacting local media outlets, industry publications and organizations.

We are waiting to see what kind of media response we receive, but one big takeaway from the push was the interest it generated internally at Cook Biotech and Brenneco. Showing a client that their relationship with you is valuable and that you appreciate them is so important. A little PR love can show that kind of appreciation.

The title of this episode of the podcast is taken from a post that Casey wrote back in 2010. This is a fundamental idea in how we approach marketing for our clients. All of your tactics and messaging are going to spring from this idea that you have a story that your ideal customers love to hear and be a part of. We talk a little more about what the means and how it works in this episode.

Topics Covered:

• What to do if your story is boring. (spoiler: find the right audience)
• How to get started framing your story
• Creative thought exercises that can help spark your brain to shape your story
• There is no such thing as anonymity for businesses anymore
• The two critical questions to ask yourself when creating  your story
• Raquel makes up words

Resources Mentioned:

• Marketing, Journalism, and Truth as Competitive Advantage – an article that talks about how marketing can take a page from journalism to deliver a competitive edge

Bonus: We didn’t mention this article in the podcast, but we do briefly mention negative feedback. Here’s an article from a few years back from Ask Silver Square (a site we are looking at rebooting in 2012): What do I do when someone leaves a negative comment on my blog?

For those of you dying to get the list right now, it’s below (not saying I may not add to it, but hey, it’s my post!) and if you’re in to the finer details of each point, make sure you sign up for our blog to get posts related to these reasons in your inbox.

Several reasons to make sure content marketing is your preferred lead generation approach:

1. Attract the right kind of new leads
2. Create credibility and build on it with trust
3. Shorten your sales cycle
4. Be an authority
5. Deal with the objections up front – Always bring them up before they do!
6. Tell your own story
7. Be search engine dating

Let’s get started with the first:  Attract the right kind of new leads.

If you’re like most of the people we talk to, you’re not exactly sure what your batting average is for closing a new lead. This is typically because you’re only really tracking the ones that you engage in your sales cycle. Let’s say you’re getting 300 new leads a month. You believe you’re only getting about 20 per month because 280 of them never made their way into your sales process. Nevertheless, someone in your company is spending time and money on these 280 individuals to qualify them in some fashion. Not getting enough leads, or not getting the right leads, are two common challenges businesses face.

One of the first steps in creating your content marketing approach is to create personas. Creating personas can be an insanely fun process for you, your sales or marketing team, or even your entire company. This is one of the first steps in the process because this step helps you get inside the head of your buyer. Learning about and creating personalities for your main target audience types allows you to build content that speaks to them, thus, attracting the right kind of lead.

Here are some resources to help you craft your persona message(s) and start the process to getting the right kind of leads:

• Creating the Perfect personas – A Marketing Brainpower Podcast
• Why knowing your audience is so important to marketing and how to hit gold
• Quick video from Raquel on how to get started with content marketing
• Notes and more resource links from 2011 Content Marketing World
• The Teen perspective/audience persona
• A well balanced diet for your marketing approach

Our monthly newsletter is also a gem for resources that don’t make a debut on our blog. Sign up for tips in your inbox (box in the blue footer) the first Thursday each month.

I’ll address our next reason, building trust and credibility, in my next post. If you have more tips for resources or ideas on attracting the right buyers, do add them in our comment section below. Your ideas are welcome and appreciated!

I love to run. It clears my head, gives me an excuse to meet up with girlfriends every Saturday morning — come hell or high water — and it helps counter the effects of my salt-and-vinegar-kettle-chip addiction.

Long-distance running also helps me at work. In honor of my love affair with running and the upcoming Mini Marathon on May 5, here are 4 ways running can help you market your business.

1. Networking is part of the game. Running is a social sport made up of people from different industries and backgrounds. During my 14 years of consistent running, I have found runners to be an ambitious, disciplined group who like to challenge themselves and have fun. Unlike many traditional networking groups, you aren’t paying a fee to get in, trying to look presentable or working hard to make connections. Instead, you are paying your way by pounding the pavement, sweating and working hard with your group, and making connections serendipitously. Those connections can turn into valuable contacts. Joining a local running group such Indy Runners or Carmel Runners is a great way to get started.

2. You gain smart, new perspectives. Chris Sikich reported on Frank Sullivan in this week’s Indianapolis Star. Sullivan has run the Boston Marathon several times and he’s wicket smart. He’ll be leaving his post on the Indiana Supreme Court to teach at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law this summer.

I’ve never run with Mr. Sullivan, but I’m sure that running alongside him would be thought provoking and insightful. When you run with someone for an hour or two, you really get to know them and have rich conversations. Use that time to discuss what you’re doing at work. Ask for others’ opinions. Find out what they’re doing to market their businesses. It can be eye opening.

3. It makes you smarter. Gretchen Reynolds reported for The New York Times that scientists are linking exercise with improved brainpower. She writes that research shows exercise can help with our thinking and memory well after we’ve showered up and headed into the office. I always feel a little smarter after a run. It boosts my creativity, curiosity and energy at work.

4. It enables covert market research. People on bikes are always on alert for risks such as cars, dogs and fellow riders. People in gyms may be moving and getting heart rates up, but they aren’t really going anywhere. Running helps you slow down and notice things. It gets you away from your computer screen and online research to do some first-hand observation.

Marketing takes creativity and an understanding of different personas. When you’re running, you’re covertly carrying out market research. You overhear conversations and visit new neighborhoods. You can create reasons for checking out where your audience lives and plays simply by wandering through on a run. A 9-minute-mile pace is perfect for observing something new.

When we record the Marketing Brainpower podcasts, we are not reading from a script. That’s by design, and while we do plan ahead points that we want to address on a given topic, when it’s time to record we just talk. The organic narrative structure makes the podcast more fun to record, and hopefully more fun to listen to.

But that means sometimes in the process of discussing building personas for your brand, we end up on a tangent about astrological signs. Surprisingly we were able to create a segue (albeit a loose one) back to marketing.

Topics Covered:

• What’s a persona and how does it help you understand your customers?
• How to create personas from your existing clients
• What attributes are helpful to define in your personas
• How many personas can/should you have?

Resources Mentioned:

• Masters of Business Online – annual conference for marketing and tech where we ran a workshop on content marketing last year
• Harley Davidson – example of a company with a clearly established brand persona that permeates everything they do as a company