I’ve been asked this question too many times in the past month or so, ever since I took on my new position at Staples.  One quick way I describe it is that it’s digital marketing still, and it’s a close cousin to social media.  That can’t be too far off – Jay Baer has been known to say “if content media is fire, then social media is gasoline.”  Sometimes that gets people to change the subject.  But sometimes it doesn’t.

Those who are generally interested ask for more.

So, what is it?  Let’s all acknowledge the elephant in the room here: the fine folks over at Content Marketing Institute have already asked and answered this question.  You can read that here.  But either skip that link, or indulge me for a moment.  Here’s how I describe it.

Marketing is the lubricant of sales.  It’s what makes “it” happen.  Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes its in your face.  Marketing in this sense is often confused with promotion and the selly-selly-sell-sell approach.  “Buy this!  It’s cheap!  It’ll do this!  It’ll fix this!”  Is that wrong? Not necessarily.

Content marketing in my mind is the amorphous, nebulous blob around the product or service you want to sell.  You’re not talking speeds and feeds, features and functions.  You’re giving the product or service depth, style, and color by creating the backstory and speaking to it, rather than about it.

Joe Pulizzi cites an example often of Jell-O.  Jell-O itself is an inexpensive dessert item.  But when salesmen went door to door, giving away a cookbook (thereby showing multiple ways to use and prepare Jell-O), sales shot through the roof in 1906, to the tune of $1m.  I doubt the book was 32 pages of “Buy This!” ad nauseam.  Instead, it gave Jello-O a life beyond the one recipe you get off the box.

Another example I like is ebags.  I bought a Timbuk2 bag from them a while back, and love it.  The pictures, videos (which are hilarious AND useful), and even the laptop sizer widget are all great examples of really using the site to determine the best bag for me.  There’s less “buy this bag now!” and more “you’ll like this bag for all the neat things it can do, plus what 100s of other users say, plus we know it’ll fit your laptop, plus ….”

When the sell is less apparent to you, the consumer, as a sell, and more about the ‘thing’ around the ‘thing’ – that’s content marketing.

There are lots of good examples.  And there are lots of bad examples.  One of the problems is that more and more companies are ‘doing’ content marketing.  And we’re about to get deluged.  So the defenses on consumers are back on the rise.

Tell the brand, product, or service story.  Honestly.  Consistently.  Communicate and embody purpose and value.  Offer value.  Be serious.  Be funny.  Connect.  Focus on utility, share-ability, and remarkability.

What about you?  If you were new to content marketing before this post, is it clear now?  For those that weren’t what would you add to this?

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What is Content Marketing? is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this), I start a new position in my professional career.  This isn’t an April Fool’s joke (and I really hope my new employer isn’t pulling a fast one on me!).  It’s exciting and a bit nerve wracking, all rolled into one.  And that’s pretty awesome.

I worked at PTC for almost six years, and for almost the last four, I led the global social media efforts.  I remember when I took on that role: I was excited, but a bit scared (you can read that post in all of its glory here).  And as I re-read that to link it here, I kept nodding my head about how very true it was then and it is now.

I enjoyed my time at PTC, was met with challenges, overcame many, made solid relationships (and some are even friendships), made progress that I am proud of, learned a lot, taught a lot, grew, and even helped others grow (at least I think I did).

‘So why leave that?’ you say.  Because something else came along.

I’m taking on a content strategist role over at Staples.  I’m excited to join a newly-formed team, and get in on the ground floor of something that I hope (and sincerely believe) will be big.  Staples has no doubt been creating content over the past years.  What’s exciting is now the focus with which they are applying.  Content marketing, as a marketing discipline, is hot on people’s minds lately (even though it’s been around since The Furrow).  The bar is getting raised and people are paying more attention.  The space is still somewhat murky.  It’s nebulous.  Not all of the answers are there. I know a ton about it, but I don’t know everything.  I want to.  I want to have all the answers, but I can’t.  I feel like I’m a bit…

… on a ledge.

Come to think of it – I’ve been here before.  And as nerve-wracking as it is, it’s also pretty cool.

A colleague and friend of mine (HSE!) shared with me a story that I’ll paraphrase here.  A woman who is close to my friend said that whenever she takes on a new position in her career, she aims to take on roles where she knows about 70% of what’s needed.  The missing 30% is what keeps her on her toes, a bit uncomfortable, but most importantly – thirsty to learn more, and reach toward 100%.

Specific percentages aside, the sentiment is spot-on…  If you’re not learning, then you’re gathering dust.  So, just as I did four years ago, I’ll do again: I’ll soak up everything I can get my intellectual hands on.

My focus here on my blog will still probably be social and digital media, with more content posts thrown in.  It’s not as if I’ve never talked about it – I’ve written about content before.  I likely won’t be writing about or tweeting about my former employer or the CAD space or PLM or that kind of stuff.  It’s interesting to me, but not as interesting as where my sights are set now.

- – -

Being part of something new, part of a team that has huge ambition, at a well-known and established company, that whole-heartedly embraces digital marketing, and being able to help map out and craft that vision… that’s what I’m signing up for.  And for that – April 1 couldn’t get here fast enough.

image: BXP135620 , by tableatny  (CC by 2.0)

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New Job, New Career, Same Desire is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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I’ve seen chatter in the past and even recently about recommendations to go ‘all in’ on a social network with one’s digital presence.  As in, a brand having its sole (or main) presence on, say, Facebook.  Or in lieu of a blog, continuously writing on Google+ (like Robert Scoble did).

I think this is a terrible idea.  And here’s why.

When you have an apartment, you rent it.  You pay money each month and you have an agreement with a landlord.  They make capital improvements so you don’t have to.  However, they can raise the rent, change whether or not you get to park a car, and even give you the boot if they want to demolish and put up a storefront that sells top hats.

When you have a house, you own it (well, you have a mortgage).  You can paint the walls.  You can change the flooring.  You can knock down a wall.  It’s yours.  Aside from zoning laws, what you do is up to you.

If you put all your brand’s social presence onto rented land like Facebook or Google+, and they ripped the carpet out from under you, what’s your recourse?  None.  If you blog or run your own domain, you own the control.  You call the shots.  You dictate the look and feel.

Having a presence on other sites is a great idea.  Go where your customers are.  But don’t make those places the only place.  Use them as feeder networks.  Go. Listen. Engage. But drive them from rented land to owned land.  Your land (cue Woody Guthrie).

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If you’ve followed tech news over the past few days, you’ve read that Google Reader is planned for shut-down on July 1, 2013.  For me, this is a bummer, because I get a lot of my news through Google reader.  I will have to find an alternative (and there are many – the Google Reader alternative lists have already started).

If you are reading this through Google Reader, I have a small request for you.  In fact, I’m even providing options.

1. If you’d still like to subscribe to my blog via RSS, you can do so by migrating to a new feed reader (hit up one of those links above for a few ideas).  Then, you can either export out all of your Google Reader feeds into an OPML file (directions here), or you can add feeds one at a time.  To add mine, be sure to use

http://www.subjectivelyspeaking.net/RSS-feed

2. Another way is to subscribe via email.  If you’re reading this via RSS (oh the irony), head on over to the actual page and look on the right for “Get this blog via email”.  Enter your email address and respond to the confirmation, and you’re off to the races.  I won’t sell, rent, fold, spindle, or mutilate your email address.  I don’t like spam, and I’m not about to become a hypocrite.  As each new post goes live, you’ll get an email with the post contained, as well as a link to it.

So that’s it.  Pretty easy stuff to do, and it’s all a one-time deal.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for reading.  I appreciate your time.

image source: email_subscribe by derrickkwa (CC BY 2.0)

Get my blog via email, or another RSS reader is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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I got into a Facebook text exchange with a friend of mine about hashtags and Instagram.  The back ‘n forth was good, and it prompted a few questions.  We never really quite concluded the exchange, so I thought I’d share the thought process here.  Click below to see a few screen caps from the conversation, and click on the red orange circle below (in the SoudCloud clip)  to launch the six-minute audio blog thought I recorded on this topic.

To set the stage: my friend is on Facebook and – since this exchange a few weeks ago – now Twitter, but not on Instagram.

Specifically my friend said: Lemme ask you this, do you think the fake hash tags dilute or undermine the real function of them?

[if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, pop on out to read this via a browser, or navigate to https://soundcloud.com/abelniak/do-hashtags-dilute-instagram ]

I thought about it.  I responded generally with, “You make a great case. I can see why it would and wouldn’t.”  I tried to reason this by analogy:

Is regular language tainted or diluted with (for example) vulgarity? Or do you think every day business language is marred by the occasion slang?  There are some people in business who would say most certainly yes, while others we both know would say no.  I guess it’s just a giant shade of gray.

I know this isn’t a direct parallel (after all, it is an analogy), but I think it makes the case: introducing something that is seemingly foreign in one setting, and then stepping back and seeing if that dilutes or otherwise deflects the true meaning or value of the intended conversation.

My friend’s response was

I think we were nearing the end of a good conversation.  I closed with

To me, it’s just the lingua franca of the web – like (sadly) LOL, or LMAO.  Or the o.O and other ASCII characters.  It’s just “the web”.

We arrived at seeing each other’s viewpoints, and understanding them a bit more, but not necessarily liking it. I, for one, think it’s still funny to use a # symbol (octothorpe!) and then string a bunch of words together to make a hashtag (here’s a great example of a ridiculous Instagram hashtag from Ann Handley – 4^th item down!).  But I can see why others don’t

What about you, reader/listener? Do you think the ridiculously-long hashtags dilute online/digital conversations?  Let me know in the comments.

p.s. as a way to get indoctrinated into Instagram and hashtags:

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Do Hashtags Dilute the Conversation Power on Instagram? is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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If you’re a content creator, you’ve likely been here.  You’ve been humming along smoothly, and then a momentary drought of ideas hits you.  What to write about?  What to talk about?  Who will find this useful?  I’ve been here before, too.  There are myriad ways to go about this, but I’ll list one way that helps me: review your approach from a journalistic standpoint.

This isn’t a checklist per se (though you could probably use it as a starter culture for one).  It’s just a list a questions and things to run through mentally to help break the log jam.

WHO

Who is your audience (note: you might have several)?  Do you have constituencies that you want to reach via your main audience (think about that one for a sec)?  Who have you produced content for lately, and who could use some attention?  Who produces the most revenue?  Who shares your content when you produce it?  Who thanks you and tells you they derive the most value from it?  Who are your internal producers? Subject-matter experts? ‘Stars’?  Does legal or your CMO need to sign off?  Who can you lean on externally to assist?  Can you consider some user-generated content?  Or crowd-source some?

WHAT

What’s your goal? What are the objectives that make up that goal (entertain, persuade, convince, list, suggest, guide, coach, advise, steer, …) ?  What kind of content resonates with your audiences? (this is incredibly key – data via the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs published each year is a good starting point, if you’ve never surveyed your own audience) What content hasn’t worked well in the past?  What content are you capable of producing in-house, vs. externally?  What other secondary and tertiary forms of content can your main piece take on?

WHERE

Presumably, much of your content will live on your site.  Where else?  SlideShare? YouTube? Vimeo? Twitter? Facebook?  LinkedIn? Instagram?  OK, aside from the big ones…  what about niche discussion boards?  Customer community portals?  Partner and re-seller sites?

We talked about where your content will go.  Where will you get it from?  Hopefully, you’re engaging in some sort of listening (Radian 6, Social Mention, mention, Google Alerts) for words and topics and trends in your industry or space.  And if you’re into the whole solution selling, you’re not just listening for mentions of your products, but you’re also looking for things like your competitors, the non-branded keyword terms in your space, or the solutions that your products enable, or the words that might come out of someone’s mouth (like, “I wish that ___”)

WHEN

Short-form content like insightful tweets likely don’t need lots of lead time to prepare (though if you do some bulk scheduling, and a company- or industry-related crisis happens, quickly go back and ensure that nothing you scheduled  way back when could be taken out of context and appear insensitive). But things like videos and ebooks need time to prepare, script, record or write, and review.  You can also consider sharing some behind the scenes photographs of your video, as you record it.  You can also consider blogging about the making of whatever form of content you have.  This will help fill the gaps of time between the major releases.

Knowing when to publish and share is smart as well.  If you’re a travel site, then content about Rio might work well starting a year or so in advance of the Olympics.  If you’re an exercise site, sharing content right after the December holidays, and pushing through into January is a good idea.   These might seem obvious, but strive to look beyond that.  Maybe a campaign about books (audio or paper), starting after the Superbowl, might work (capitalizing on many people’s sudden glut of free time).

Time of day is critical as well.  You can read any number of studies about the best time to post.  And after you read them, you can delete them.  (well, if you have absolutely no data from which to start, it’s a decent proxy).  The only real way is to test your own data.  Christopher Penn describes it well here.

WHY

Why you are producing content is a great question.  The debate on this is hot. From a business perspective, you’re likely doing it to increase awareness, get people in a funnel, convert them, and generate revenue.  And that’s OK.  The way you go about doing that is where the subtleties are.  Like C.C. and Ann say in Content Rules, “Share or Solve, Don’t Shill”.  As in, if you can create value, solve an issue, be remarkable, have utility, and be shareworthy – the content will take care of itself.  If you’re creating content to check a box – well, then I’m surprised you even read this far.  The content game isn’t for you.

Aside from that – really answer why you are doing this.  Do you want to create content such that your company’s name becomes synonymous with the phrase “solving the copydata problem”?  Then you need to understand what copydata is, why it’s a problem for your customers, why you can fix it, why they should care, and so on.  If what you produce is generally solving a need, then it won’t appear as “shill”-y.

HOW

How can you create good content?  Start with the five items above.  Then, start reading.  A lot.  Make note of pithy expressions for tweets.  Look for recurring themes for an ebook. Ask your tech support team for the most commonly asked questions and (wait for it…) write an FAQ ebook.  Shoot a video of some developers talking about how they solved a particular coding issue.  Get in the field and shoot video of some of the houses you’re selling – better yet, drive the neighborhood, show the schools, and the produce at the closest supermarket.  Create a recurring series of “Ways I can convince my boss to ___”.  This is content for one audience, but with multiple constituencies.  Plus, a series has them coming back for more.  Or, simply ask your audience what they want to see, read, listen to, and watch.

All of this is not guaranteed to get you out of your rut.  It should, though, get you to start thinking differently.  And that might be all you need to break through with a few new ideas.

What about you?  How do you get through the logjam?

 image: Log Jam at Skowhegan on the Kennebec (by jimflix!) (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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How to Get Out of a Content Creation Log Jam is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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CBS is trying something new – new for TV, anyway.  On January 14, 2013, CBS is airing Hawaii Five-O – with a twist.

According to CBS:

“[Hawaii Five-O] will become the first primetime drama to allow viewers to choose the ending of an episode in real time. In the episode, the Hawaii Five-0 team investigates the death of an O’ahu State University professor. His boss, his teaching assistant and a student who he busted for cheating are all viable suspects. After each suspect’s motives are revealed, viewers will be able to choose the culprit, any of whom could have committed the crime.”

I think this is a pretty awesome idea!  Many people now are watching TV with a companion device (known to many as the “second screen”).  So why not take advantage of that?  If people are viewing these devices, then they are likely missing some of the content on the TV screen.  Broadcasters are smart to put some content there and retain the share of eyeball.

I also think this is great because it lets the watchers/users actually participate in the experience, in real time.  The votes choose the ending of the show.  Aside from talent shows on TV with interactive voting, this is really a great way to get the voice and sentiment of the viewer factored into the program.

This will likely be good for ratings (watching the hashtag trends will be a decent indicator), but also good for the viewers.  They get a say in what they see on TV.  This reminds me of some of my favorite books as a kid – the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I hope to see more TV broadcasters do things like this.  The medium of TV needs to evolve and be a bit more innovative, and they need to factor in the voice of the customer.

Do you watch Hawaii Five-O?  Will you be voting?  Or, do you think this is a lame idea?

image: Joanne’s childhood book collection FTW (via Jeff Van Campen) – CC BY-NC 2.0

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A Murder Mystery via Social Media – The Viewers Pick the Killer is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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I recently listened to Kevin Cain interview Marcus Sheridan for a podcast over at OpenView ventures.  Kevin is the Director of Content Strategy at Open View Venture Partners, and Marcus Sheridan is the former (and current?) head honcho at River Pools and Spas. Marcus now heads up The Sales Lion, a consulting firm specializing in inbound marketing.  If you haven’t noticed, that’s a significant departure from pools and spas.

In the podcast, Kevin asks Marcus a few questions about his take on content marketing, and then concludes the podcast by asking Marcus for some of his predictions on content marketing for 2013.

My post here is an audio note about my reactions and additional thoughts on the podcast.  So, go listen to that first (about 20 minutes long ; Marcus tells a really compelling story – here’s just a 16-min clip of what Marcus Sheridan is like, and a glimpse into his life.

Listen to his story in the podcast and on the YouTube video to hear why, and more importantly, how, he changed directions.

OK.  Onto my thoughts and additions (about 9 minutes long)… Click the image below to launch the player. You can skim the text below to get a preview if you like.

• Marcus states he’s tired of hearing that ideas and approaches are not applicable to B2B (or something else).  I offer up another way to look at it.

• Marcus then talks about the ‘over-analyzation’ of content marketing, and by doing so, it turns it into a huge challenge.  I offer a reason why I think that’s the case, and a cautionary tale of what happens if you spend too much time analyzing (Hi, David!)

• What wins?  Is it ‘perfect’?  Marcus doesn’t think so.  Instead, it’s what’s good enough for publishing.  I offer a take on what that threshold or stage-gate might be. And as a bonus, I’ve shared an under-used marketing tool that I’ve written about in the past: empathy.

• Kevin closes the podcast by asking Marcus for some content marketing predictions for 2013.

• Marcus first opined that more and more people would get into content marketing, but with that comes the good and the bad.  I agree, and make a case for the (increasing) rise of a new role/skill: curation.

• More and more people will (thankfully) be using analytics to inform their marketing, according to Sheridan’s crystal ball.  And I personally couldn’t be happier.  But what do you do with all of that data?

• Marcus concludes his predictions with a lesson (or hopeful change?) on semantics – specifically around the word blogging.  I offer up my two cents on that as well.

My thanks to Kevin Cain (@kevinrcain) for the Marcus Sheridan (@TheSalesLion) interview. It’s nice to get a fresh perspective.  I look forward to seeing each of these guys at Content Marketing World 2013 (CMW 2013 details here).

What about you?  Did you listen to the podcast? What are your thoughts on content marketing?

image source: OpenView Ventures blog (http://labs.openviewpartners.com/content-marketing-insights-marcus-sheridan/)

Content Marketing in 2013 – Another Opinion is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

        

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