Marketing executives are more challenged than ever to create effective organizations and operations to succeed in an increasingly converged, content and inbound marketing world.

In this latest TopRank Marketing Digital Marketing Spotlight interview, Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet, talks about the strategic responsibility differences of entering a CMO role, advice on creating an effective inbound marketing organization, the importance of content, the convergence of marketing and PR and whether senior executives should focus on their personal brand.

It’s been nearly two years since you moved from being Executive Director, Digital Marketing at Dell to your current role as CMO at Dun & Bradstreet. What are some of the changes you had to make in terms of your responsibilities, marketing organization and the change in industry?

A CMO role differs greatly from a senior marketing role. I cover a much broader scope beyond the digital focus I had at Dell.

As well, as the Dun & Bradstreet CMO, I spend a significant amount of time with my peers driving the broader company strategy beyond the marketing function. However, my modern marketing mindset contributes valuably to the strategy.

I also act in an external capacity, both in the offline and online world. This allows me to remain transparent and accessible to all audiences as the face of the company and its culture.

What are some of the criteria an organization should satisfy to have a CMO level marketing executive, vs. a SVP or VP of Marketing?

The answer depends entirely on the goals of the organization. Does the company merely need a great marketer, or a leader to implement a vision across the entire company with a marketing mindset?

A CMO drives customer experience – the totality of interactions a customer has with the company across all areas.

A CMO drives customer experience – the totality of interactions a customer has with the company across all areas (sales, marketing, service, product, contracting, etc.). Modern CMOs have the skills and authority to integrate all these silos to provide an integrated customer experience while other marketers may not.

While at Dell, you built the digital inbound marketing capability and organization. What advice do you have for other marketing executives challenged now to do the same?

Don’t simply jump into tactics…make sure you have something unique to say.

Don’t simply jump into tactics around analytics, technology, and content operations. Make sure you have something unique to say and that the organization understands what that messaging is. Until you have that, and a culture that supports it, great execution of inbound will not break through the noise.

At Dun & Bradstreet, I focused first on working with the Chief People Officer to drive a clearly defined purpose and values. My team then built a new go to market strategy and associated messaging. Only after this did we start to scale the inbound machine to drive pipeline.

Marketing and communications roles are converging within many organizations as owned, earned, paid and social media intertwine. With PR, AR and Marketing as part of your domain, what does the modern marketing and PR entity look like? Are they converged, independent or something new?

Communications plays a critical role in driving early stage thought leadership for the company as a whole to all the firm’s constituencies. Public relations experts are the storytellers to media, analysts, and influencers, leading to broad marketing and brand awareness, while other disciplines of marketing are concerned mostly with selling to customers.

Both PR and marketing functions leverage the same resources (content, digital, production, creative, etc.) to get things done which ensures integration of efforts and messaging.

According to the annual CMI and MarketingProfs study, fewer marketers are implementing content marketing and yet many organizations are still dealing with content shock (too much content). What role does content play in your demand generation and overall marketing plans?

Content is fundamental. I have a separate organization reporting to me that focuses on content marketing. However, they don’t just create content. They orchestrate the entire content supply chain which consists of coordinating all the people, both internally and externally, who are creating content and ensuring that there is a process from content ideation to creation to promotion.

There may not be a need for more content, but there is a need for higher quality content that delivers new insights.

The study referenced is more reflective of the fact that a handful of marketers are creating too much content that is simply repetitive and uninteresting, repackaging the same messaging in new and faux-clever ways as click bait. There may not be a need for more content, but there is a need for higher quality content that delivers new insights.

How do you balance hiring more marketing staff vs. using outside vendors and agencies? What trends do you see in terms of outsourcing vs. insourcing marketing talent?

External vendors and agencies generally possess a specialized skill or technology that we cannot replicate internally or one that we do not need on a consistent basis. This contrasts from the more general agencies of a long time ago. We evaluate our external provider portfolio constantly and make changes as needed given the rapidity of change.

How important is it for senior marketing executives to pay attention to their own personal brand? Any advice for those ignoring it?

Every marketer must meticulously manage his or her personal brand. I give this advice to undergraduates all the time. If you are not managing your personal brand, especially online, you don’t have a visceral understanding of how marketing works. Also, every hiring manager will look at how you manage your online brand first.

Managing your online profile provides an incredible opportunity to practice everything that makes marketers great.

Managing your online profile provides an incredible opportunity to practice everything that makes marketers great (writing, creative, tech savvy, etc.). In many ways, the CMO represents the company, and must manage his or her profile.

What are some of your top digital marketing priorities for 2016?

We’ll continue to refine our go-to-market messaging and strategy, and part of that work will include an increased and enhanced Web presence.

We will scale marketing more effectively globally, drive pipeline, and build the brand through efficient and effective communications / influencers. We’ve been testing Account Based Marketing successfully and we will look to scale this substantially.

How do you stay current on marketing and technology and what information sources do you find most useful?

I am a voracious consumer of content on the Web and books (mainly psychology and sci- fi). I find blogs and online influencers most useful in learning about the latest thinking in marketing, while books are most useful in understanding dense topics like psychology and the predictions of the future.

Let’s play social media word association. What’s the first word that comes to mind for each of the following social networks or apps?

Facebook – friends
Vine – hard
LinkedIn – B2B content
Twitter – Influencers
Meerkat or Periscope – Wait and see
Google+ – no
Snapchat – youth
YouTube – viral
Instagram – photos
Flickr – photos
Pinterest – beautiful
My Space –consumer

Thanks Rishi!

You can connect with Rishi on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Be sure to watch for the next in our series of digital marketing interviews with senior marketing executives at major B2B and B2C brands.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Digital Marketing Spotlight: Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Digital Marketing Spotlight: Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

One of the most important jobs we have as marketers is to find a way to be the best answer for our customers, when and where they are looking. With so many new platforms to test on a consistent basis, it can be hard to move through the clutter and find ways to connect that will better engage your target audience.

Social media platforms provide new opportunities to resonate with your customers. Each time a new social media platform launches, there are the early adopters that explore how the platform works, test to see if it’s stable and then figure out how it can best be leveraged.

One of the biggest platform launches of 2015 was the live video streaming app, Periscope. As of August 2015, Periscope had a total of 10 million users, with over 40 years’ worth of video viewed every day.

A number of people have already jumped on board, using Periscope for trainings and video casts. But how can marketers use apps like Periscope to better communicate with their audience?

Leveraging Periscope for Marketing

Demonstrations: Show how a particular product can be used. Discovery the different uses, options, upgrades and attachments. Engage your audience by allowing them to interact and ask questions so that you can provide value and gather insights that you may not otherwise have access to.

Interviews: Interview current users your products or services. Ask how have they benefited from its use and how it’s changed their life? This could include people from the research and development group, the owners of the company or the team that developed the product or service.

Live events: Promotional events of the product or service. An example might be a trade show where the featured product or service is being displayed. Additionally, you could include challenges that include customers that use the product, and have them develop new ways to use it or how to use it best.

7 Steps for Incorporating Periscope Into Your Marketing

Step 1: Create an image/announcement that talks about your what you will be presenting on, (1 single Periscope video) and then post it on your social channels so that your audience knows that you have a Periscope account, where to find it, and when you’ll be going “live”.

Step 2: Do an off-camera walk-thru of what you hope to accomplish and cover during the scope.

Step 3: Create an outline of what will be covered or said during your video.

Step 4: Use a stand or have someone with a steady hand hold the camera while broadcasting the scope. (Vertical scopes are the standard, but landscape scopes are now an option when broadcasting)

Step 5: When titling the scope, be sure to incorporate Twitter handles and/or hashtags if deemed appropriate.

Step 6: Let the audience know that they’re free to ask questions during the scope or if there will be time made available at the end of the scope for a Q&A session.

Step 7: After the “live” broadcast has been completed, consider saving it to your device and uploading it to YouTube channel or some other video sharing platform for future and repeated use.

Companies Already Utilizing Periscope

Some companies that have already have jumped into the Periscope “stream” and are incorporating it into their digital marketing mix. Below are examples of companies that have created a consistent Periscope presence:

• Applebee’s
• Dell
• Lays
• Life Time Fitness
• Macy’s
• Mayo Clinic
• Sleep Number
• Urban Outfitters

Preparation and practice won’t create perfection, but it will create progress. The more scopes that you do, the better that you and your company will be in creating and producing videos via Periscope. Try it, and join the next form of social media, live streaming.

If you’ve already tested Periscope for your company, what did you find to be the benefits and challenges?

Disclaimer: Dell is a TopRank Marketing Client

Image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | 7 Steps for Using Periscope to Better Engage Your Target Audience | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 7 Steps for Using Periscope to Better Engage Your Target Audience appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B brands are answering the call to become publishers with a significant increase in content hubs exemplified by pioneers like American Express OPEN and Adobe’s CMO.com and others including:

• Intel IQ
• Think with Google
• Dell’s Power More
• GE’s World in Motion
• SAP’s Digitalist Magazine

While those are all great examples, there’s an important question: Can your business really afford to hire the kind of editorial team to create this quantity of quality content at the cadence of a business publication?

Many practical marketers will say no.

The trend towards brand publishing in combination with self directed buyers guiding their way through the sales process with content creates an interesting conflict between the need for an up level on quality content production with a corresponding increase in content creation resources.

Even if you do have budget to start your own scrappy brand newsroom, industry studies show you’re probably still going to be challenged to create a variety of engaging content on a consistent basis. On top of that you have to find the talent to build out your content team, which is another challenge cited by the CMI/MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report.

This challenge created by forces pushing brands to create substantially more content without the funds and a lack of resources to make it happen begs an important question:

How can companies scale content quality & quantity without scaling resources?

I think there are several answers to that depending on your situation, but one avenue worth pursuing is the notion of adding more participation to B2B content marketing.

What is participation marketing?  It’s not just another name for UGC or crowdsourcing, which are similar ideas, but more of a focused and collaborative effort between brands and their communities to create mutually beneficial content.

Participation Marketing is the democratization of content creation and promotion by co-creating content with subject matter experts, influencers and your community.

When I talk to B2B marketers about content marketing programs, I usually focus on a mix of evergreen, curated, co-created and repurposed content. The notion of participation in content marketing emphasizes a mix of these content types, but focuses most on the notion of content co-creation – the most logical way for people to participate in content development.

Content co-creation is a powerful approach to increasing a business marketers’ ability to create a quantity of quality content. With that ability to scale through collaboration, numerous advantages occur:

• Quality: Taps Expertise
• Quantity: Create more quality
• Engagement: Connects w/ SMEs & Influencers
• Reach: Participation Inspires Action
• Scale: Distributes Content Creation

To stimulate some ideas on how B2B companies are co-creating content, here are some examples:

Intuit QuickBooks Small Business, Big Game: For the second year in a row, Intuit is running a program with it’s QuickBooks product called “Small Business, Big Game” where small businesses can create a profile and attract votes in the hopes of winning a Super Bowl commercial.

The co-creation element comes in to play with ongoing tasks for each entrant, many of which result in the creation of useful content for other small businesses. Attracting votes for their content, small businesses gain themselves exposure and Intuit scales relevant, useful content for its target audience.

Event Content Co-Creation with Influencers: Another great example of B2B content co-creation is the influencer content programs TopRank Marketing creates around events.

By inviting speakers at conferences to contribute practical tips as a preview to their presentations, they are helping to co-create a useful, collective resource for the overall marketing industry, exposure for themselves and for the conference. The core contributions are organized by theme and are repurposed in numerous ways from ebooks to blog posts to infographics to social content.

Increasing content marketing performance while lowering costs is pretty compelling and that’s why, at TopRank Marketing, we’ve been developing our own processes around the practice of co-creation of content.

So how do you implement more participation and content co-creation in your content marketing programs?

Outside of understanding the information discovery and consumption preferences and action motivators of your target audience of business buyers, it’s a modular approach to content that can really help co-created content scale.

I’ll be discussing how to use this potent combination of content co-creation and modular content planning in detail at two upcoming events:

Sept 22nd, BMA Minnesota Content Marketing Workshop – Minneapolis
1:00-4:30pm followed by a BMA Mixer social hour 4:30-6:30pm
Along with Andrea Fishman, Partner in Advisory Practice at PwC and Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer at Content Marketing Institute I’ll be presenting a B2B view of how to leverage more participation in content marketing.

Here’s the official description:

Participation Marketing: How to Co-Create B2B Content with Influencers
One of the most popular trends in B2B marketing is content marketing. But B2B companies are challenged to create a variety of engaging content on a consistent basis. This presentation will provide a framework for B2B marketers to scale quality content creation by partnering with internal and external influencers.
Takeaways:

1. How to identify, qualify and recruit influencers
2. A modular approach to co-created content
3. How to optimize, socialize and repurpose co-created content

If you’re on the East Coast, then I hope you’ll find your way to the MarketingProfs B2B Forum:

Oct 21-23, MarketingProfs B2B Forum – Boston
If You Want B2B Content to be Great, Ask Your Community to Participate
Let’s face it, creating a variety of engaging content on a consistent basis is hard. Brands imitating publishers are frustrated and looking for a new ways to scale quality content that gets results. The good news is that most companies have a tremendously valuable collection of resources right in front of them: customers, employees and community. B2B brands that can connect with these groups on relevant areas of interest can partner to co-create content for mutual benefit. The result? Scalable, quality content with an investment from the very community it’s intended to reach. Everybody wins!

Join TopRank Online Marketing CEO, Lee Odden, on a journey from content mediocrity to content marketing democracy aka “participation marketing”. He’ll share his first-hand experience at developing co-created content programs for B2B companies big and small to attract more relevant audiences, actively engage communities and inspire more prospects to become buyers.

At the end of this session you will be able to:
1. Identify at least 3 co-creation opportunities to start now
2. Learn how to recruit, engage and inspire content co-creators
3. Start leveraging co-created content for SEO and social media marketing

Whether you’re in Minneapolis this week or Boston later in October, I hope to see you at one of these upcoming events.

In the meantime, we’re creating a new guide to Participation Marketing, so post your most pressing questions in the comments and we may answer them (with credit to your question) in the guide.

Top image: Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Why It’s Time for More Participation in B2B Content Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Why It’s Time for More Participation in B2B Content Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Why Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing Work Better Together [Infographic] – A recent survey of business leaders showed that email and social media are the two channels most likely to see an increase in investment from business owners in 2015. Many businesses employ either email marketing, social media marketing or a combination of both, however many aren’t fully integrating the two together. Email marketing company Reachmail has put together a useful infographic that covers the benefits of integrating your social and email strategies together. Social Media Today

Instagram to Democratize Ad Products, Integrate Facebook Targeting Capabilities – Industry participants are excited about Instagram’s new ad formats as these capabilities make ads more targetable. It’s predicted that these changes will make the photo-and-social-sharing platform more appealing to advertisers than Twitter and Snapchat. ClickZ

Twitter Is Now Surfacing Analytics In The Notifications Tab – If you rank among the Twitter elite—that is, your profile is branded with a blue checkmark—you may notice some changes to your notifications tab. The social networking platform is toying with flagging analytics details in the notifications tab for verified users. Fast Company

Facebook Estimated to Capture One-Fifth of US Mobile Ad Spending – Facebook will grow to account for 20.3% of all US mobile ad spending in 2017, up slightly from an estimated 19.4% share this year and 18.5% last year, per eMarketer’s latest estimates. (That would be in line with the 19% of mobile internet time spent with Facebook.) While Facebook’s share of mobile ad revenues is expected to grow slightly, the opposite is true for Google, which is projected to see a sizable decrease in revenue share this year (from 36.9% to 32.9%). MarketingCharts

Snapchat Offers Extra Replays at 3 for $1 – Now Snapchatters can replay as many moments as they wish — if they’re willing to pay. The picturing sharing-app announced Tuesday that U.S. users can now purchase extra “Replays” at three for $0.99. CNN Money

Brands Shifting From YouTube To Native Video On Twitter – Top 500 brands posted nearly as many videos natively as from YouTube in July. Engagement remains higher for native video. Marketing Land

Twitter Sued For Scanning Private Messages – A lawsuit filed this week in San Francisco federal court alleges Twitter is “surreptitiously eavesdropping” on people who send private messages on the social media service in violation of federal and state privacy laws. USA Today

Consumers Can’t Tell The Difference Between Sponsored Content And Editorial – In a new study, consumers identified native advertisements as articles a large percentage of the time. Marketing Land

AdWords Changes The Definition Of Conversions For Reporting & Columns – In mid-October, AdWords will be changing the “Conversions” columns & reporting to only include optimized conversion actions. Search Engine Land

Native Videos the Best Option for Both Facebook and Twitter [Report] – Native videos uploaded to Twitter – are they also performing better than posted YouTube links? The answer, according to a new report from social analytics firm Socialbakers, is yes. Socialbakers analyzed the video links posted by the top 500 largest brand profiles on Twitter, from January to July, and found that natively posted Twitter videos are closing in, and set to overtake YouTube links on the network very soon. Social Media Today

New: Facebook Mentions and Live for Verified Profiles – People love reading articles from and connecting with their favorite journalists and public figures on Facebook. Today, we’re making Facebook Mentions and Live available to public figures with verified profiles to help them engage their followers and interact with their peers. Facebook

Report: Google & Twitter Are Working On Accelerated Mobile Pages For Publishers – The companies are developing an open source version of “instant articles” to solve the problem of slow loading mobile sites, Recode reports. Marketing Land

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Infographic: Reachmail

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Online Marketing News: Instagram Ads Get Instagranular, Facebook Takes A Fifth, Snapchat Pay-To-Replay | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Online Marketing News: Instagram Ads Get Instagranular, Facebook Takes A Fifth, Snapchat Pay-To-Replay appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

One of the biggest problems that many marketing organizations are facing today is creating quality content on a consistent basis. It can be a challenge to make sure every piece of content you produce is effective at helping to attract, engage and convert target customers.

In fact, according to research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, only 38% of B2B marketers state that their content marketing is effective. If you are one of the 62% of marketers that really need to improve content marketing performance, we have just the ticket. Literally!

Our friends at MarketingProfs are hosting a series of workshops focused on helping marketers reach content marketing success. From September 30 through October 2nd, these workshops will be held in Minneapolis.

Get Creative and Win! TopRank Marketing will award one free pass to the workshop of your choice in Minneapolis to whomever leaves the most creative comment on this post about why they should attend.

What Will You Learn at MarketingProfs University?

Workshop Title: Content Rules
Date: September 30, 2015
Instructor: Michael Brenner, Head of Strategy at NewsCred

In this workshop, Instructor Michael Brenner will cover the many ways to make content magic through industry best practices and show you how (and where) to find inspiration as well as how to reach the ideal audience(s) with whom you want to develop a lasting relationship.

Michael will also guide you through many group exercises focusing on critical elements in developing award-winning content, exploring various content formats and platforms, and creating relevant personas and messaging to drive conversions. You’ll walk away with a toolbox full of tactics that you can immediately apply back in the office.

Use the Code: TOPRANKWS for $200 off!

Workshop Title: Everybody Writes
Date: October 1, 2015
Instructor: Kerry O’Shea Gorgone, Instructional Design Manager, Enterprise Training at MarketingProfs and Host of the Marketing Smarts Podcast

This workshop will focus on audience-centric writing and the fundamental shifts in thinking that require marketers to inspire, educate, and help rather than talk up benefits and features. Learners will receive hands-on training in creating different types of content for their ongoing marketing initiatives, so bring some current writing projects with you to the workshop.

The session will demonstrate various ways to collaborate on content creation, and you’ll have the opportunity to give each other feedback on voice, tone, and medium. You’ll not only learn to develop long- and medium-form content, but you’ll examine how these different types of written content align with various stages of the buyer’s journey.

Use the Code: TOPRANKWS for $200 off!

Workshop Title: Finders Keepers
Date: October 2, 2015
Speaker: Letisha Millsap, Marketing Strategy and Demand Generation Consultant

In this workshop, you’ll learn the difference between a lead nurturing and general marketing campaign. You will be able to review specific programs geared towards prospects and customers, the ten steps to create a lead nurturing program, and the different types of tests you can apply to measure your campaigns’ effectiveness.

Letisha will guide you through many group exercises focusing on critical elements in developing a nurturing program—from creating a buyer’s persona, to building specific messages for that persona, to documenting your content library. You’ll walk away with a toolbox full of tactics that you can immediately apply back in the office.

Use the Code: TOPRANKWS for $200 off!

For even more reasons to check out the MarketingProfs University workshops, here are the top three from MarketingProfs marketing manager, Matt Snodgrass (plus a BONUS):

1) People will learn these three topics (writing, content marketing, lead generation) in a way that’s standardized and easily repeatable. We’re calling it the ‘MarketingProfs way.’ The way we do things. These are proven tips, tactics, and techniques.
2) Small, intimate workshop sizes. Lots of instructor interaction, group work, peer collaboration and cooperative learning to better reinforce the material.
3) This is not only a workshop, it’s an entire learning experience. We provide pre-course preparation, in-workshop learning, and post-workshop reinforcement to keep the content fresh and help learners incorporate it into their daily work routines.

4) They get to talk to Ann Handley at the end of them!

Are you ready to get content marketing smart?

Members of the TopRank Marketing team will be in attendance at each of the MarketingProfs University workshops in Minneapolis and we’d love to see you there as well! If you don’t want to chance it, be sure to check out each of the links above for more information.

How can you win a FREE PASS worth $795?  Just leave a creative comment below on why you would like to attend one of the workshops. We will pick and announce a winner on this blog post and on Twitter using the @TopRank handle on Monday September 28.

Remember, creativity wins!

If you’re already registered for a workshop, we’d love to connect with you at the event in person.

Image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Win a Free Pass! Get Content Marketing Smart at MarketingProfs University in Minneapolis | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Win a Free Pass! Get Content Marketing Smart at MarketingProfs University in Minneapolis appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Content Marketing World is the largest content marketing conference in the world. To say that the team from TopRank Marketing was excited to attend, is putting it lightly. Lee Odden, Alexis Hall, Josh Nite and I made the journey to Cleveland to learn from some of the best and brightest content marketing minds in the industry.

In a perfect world we would have been able to attend every session, but we consumed, live blogged and shared all that we were physically able to do. Below are some of what we considered to be the top takeaways and best speaker quotes from Content Marketing World 2015.

Top Content Marketing World Takeaways

Lee Odden – Participation Marketing Must Have’s

TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden delighted a packed room of marketers by providing inspiring and actionable advice on how to successfully approach participation marketing. Lee assured marketers that if they wanted to produce quality and scalable content, without having to scale marketing budgets, this was the place to be.

So, how can we get some relief from all of the hard work it takes to create a truly impactful participation marketing program?

To find out, read: Incorporate Participation Marketing for More Scalable Content Marketing

Michael Brenner – How to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy

NewsCred Head of Strategy Michael Brenner knows the challenges facing content marketers. Consumers no longer accept that content has to be ad supported. They–or, rather, we, since we’re all consumers–no longer tolerate interruptions. Not only that, but the best content we as marketers create still has to compete for attention with pictures of babies and puppies.

For Michael’s solution to these problems, read: Michael Brenner’s Tips, Tools & Templates to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy

Ian Cleary – Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing

RazorSocial Founder Ian Cleary is passionate about using tools to make content marketing better. At RazorSocial, he trains companies to use technology to increase their reach, search ranking, and audience relevance.

Ian took us on a whirlwind tour through 15 common content marketing problems and the tools he uses to solve them.

For our five favorites read: Ian Cleary Discusses Essential Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing

Erin Monday – Achieve Greater Social Visibility

Traditional SEOs have long obsessed over how to hack the Google algorithm to move to the top of SERPs. Now the new kids on the blog, social platforms like Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, each have their own algorithm.

Improving the visibility of your content within social media can be as calculated as your SEO efforts. Erin Monday, marketing manager at Lenovo, shares tips to hack the new social algorithms in her presentation at #CMWorld.

To learn Erin’s 5 steps read: 5 Step Algorithm Hack to Achieve Greater Social Visibility

Complete List of TopRank Marketing’s Coverage From CMWorld

• Ian Cleary Discusses Essential Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing
• 5 Step Algorithm Hack to Achieve Greater Social Visibility From Erin Monday
• Michael Brenner’s Tips, Tools & Templates to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Incorporate Participation Marketing for More Scalable Content Marketing
• Creating a Content Galaxy: How to Save Time & Improve Quality with Repurposing
• John Cleese: Creativity, Imagination & Tortoise Enclosures
• How Blackberry is Activating Employees as Brand Ambassadors with Content Marketing
• 4 Ways Brands Can Use Creativity & Comedy to Create Award-Winning Content Marketing
• 5 Tips to Help You Become a Prolific Content Creator
• Break the Cycle of Content Marketing Addiction: Turn Regular Content Into Extraordinary Success

10 Snackable & Inspirational Speaker Quotes

CMWorld eBook Triple Feature

If you were unable to attend Content Marketing World but want even more tips on everything from content marketing strategy to measurement, check out the content marketing triple feature that TopRank Marketing and Content Marketing Institute co-created with speakers from this year’s event.

If you attended Content Marketing World 2015, what was the most impactful thing that you learned? If you weren’t able to attend this year, we hope to see you next year!

Images via Shutterstock: 175004480, 129337454, 186754508, 258971675, 168984014, 269602226, 113406331, 132238457, 156350636, 105031898, 53739760

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | TopRank Marketing Top Takeaways & Speaker Quotes from Content Marketing World | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post TopRank Marketing Top Takeaways & Speaker Quotes from Content Marketing World appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

“Our content marketing success is not defined by the height of our peaks…it’s defined by the depth of our valleys.” – Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis the author of “Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships” has such an infectious energy that it is impossible not to sit up and listen when he is speaking. Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting front and center for Andrew’s presentation at Content Marketing World. Sadly, none of the Muppets from his previous work made a cameo, but this was by far one of my favorite sessions at the content rich conference.

According to Andrew, companies need to start rethinking the way that they “do” content marketing. This means breaking the cycle of content marketing addiction that plagues many of today’s marketers.

What is Content Marketing Addiction?

As content marketers, we are addicts. We’re addicted to the spikes in views and shares our content gets, and are always chasing the next high (spike). According to Andrew, the cycle of content marketing addiction is made up of four phases:

• Desire: You’ve just published a new piece of content marketing and have experienced a spike.
• Craving: You incessantly refresh your analytics looking for an even bigger spike.
• Rush: The content is performing so well that you capture the data and share it with everyone you know.
  Crash: There has been a dip in performance, time to chase that next content marketing high.

It’s time for an intervention…

What Does Chasing the Content High Look Like?

Andrew provided the example of WestJet, a Canadian regional airline. WestJet’s YouTube channel shows years of effort put into creating videos for their audience and chasing their “next high”. They pumped out videos consistently with varying results.

However, in 2014, they struck gold with their video WestJet Christmas Miracle: real-time giving. In this video, WestJet created a kiosk that asked departing passengers what they wanted from Christmas. Then, their team frantically searched high and low for the requested gifts while passengers were en route and surprised them upon their arrival at their final destination.

What was the impact?

• The video was the #1 trending topic globally after launch.
• 1m twitter impressions in 1 month.
• There were more than 35 million video views in one month.
• The video was featured in 1600 media stories.
• Bookings were up 77% year over year and revenue was up 86%.

After the success of this video, WestJet tried their hand at some other miracle themed videos (chasing the high they received from their first major success) that performed well, but did not have nearly the impact of their initial Christmas miracle campaign.

What can companies like WestJet do to adapt their strategy to deliver longer-term success?

Do You Know Your Content Distribution Model?

Based on the steps of the CMI Content Marketing Framework, there are 7 steps to successful content marketing. However, many marketers get stuck in a content marketing cycle that dismisses process, conversations and measurement completely.

Content amplification is an essential step in the success of any content marketing program, but even with the best intentions, distribution can in execution appear to be more of a spewing of content, versus an actual, measureable distribution strategy.

An Enhanced Model For Better Content Distribution

Trip Advisor is a company that Andrew praised for their ability to focus on getting the most out of a content marketing campaign and recognizing where and when to push the content to the next phase.

Social momentum is defined as growing the quantity of consumption for a piece of content as a product of its strategic distribution over time. Below is a model similar to the one that trip advisor follows that takes queues from the plateaus of content to move onto the next phase:

When you leverage the momentum curve you end up with consistent growth.

Momentum delivers social proof. People assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
As a consumer, you’re more like to consume and share content that others have consumed and shared. This forces us to understand the nuances of our audience and their social habits.

Ask yourself:

• When is my content consumed?
• How is my content consumed?
• Is my content consumed?

4 Secrets to Building Social Momentum

Secret #1 – Leverage Your Half-Life (one channel at a time)
Half-life is the time taken for the audience’s interest in your content to fall to half of its peak value. When it gets to the slow point that is when you want to push it to the next level. 

Secret #2 – Harness the Waterfall Effect
The phenomenon that all mainstream media stories can be traced upstream to smaller, more accessible sources in a predictable pattern. Do your research to determine how to pitch. Start upstream and build relationships with the people who influence your influencers.

Secret #3 – Remove Friction
Really think about what you put in front of consumers and what they have to do to consume your content. When we tweet just a headline and a link they have to go through a lot of hoops to access your content. Stop worrying about your CTR’s. It’s not helping you, or your audience.

Secret #4 – Buy Ads
For every dollar spent on creating content spend $2 on distributing and promoting it. As marketers, we need to find new audiences to share our content with so they can be educated and inspired to purchase. What if we introduced a new audience to every piece of content we create?

Take The First Step & Break the Cycle

Andrew Davis took a complex problem that many marketers face, and broke it down into actionable and relatable steps. It doesn’t matter if you have a small or large team; companies of all sizes need to be taking steps toward truly getting the most out of content marketing programs by breaking the cycle of addiction.

What advice from Andrew was the most surprising and helpful as you sit and assess your own content marketing distribution strategy?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Break the Cycle of Content Marketing Addiction: Turn Regular Content Into Extraordinary Success | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Break the Cycle of Content Marketing Addiction: Turn Regular Content Into Extraordinary Success appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The demand for consistent content creation has forced many marketers to take shortcuts. Shortcuts may enable you to get to an outcome faster, but it is often a worse outcome. Using shortcuts to create more content faster can help you to achieve more volume, but at some point, the quality goes through the floor.

Quantity and quality are not opposites. They can exist simultaneously. In fact audiences today demand that they do. To meet that demand, Jay Acunzo, Vice President of NextView Ventures, identified in his presentation at Content Marketing World 2015, that you must be, or nurture in your organization, the prolific content creator.

Being a prolific content creator doesn’t just mean creating more “stuff”, working faster or tapping into some secrets of the interwebs. Being a prolific content creator is something different. According to Jay there are 5 things which prolific content creators do really well in order to achieve the elusive quality and quantity of content.

From these five things we can learn what makes prolific content creators different and what enables them to create a quantity of quality content. Below are the 5 qualities that make prolific content creators successful.

#1 – They have an extreme bias to act.

The average content creator may feel paralyzed by research and process, and this can stop them from acting. The prolific content creator jumps right in, rather than toeing the water.

Prolific content creators prefer imperfect actions, to perfect process and practice. In other words, they are comfortable creating ugly. They are able to get started and figure it out along the way.

How to Be a Prolific Content Creator: Dive in and create ugly.

#2 – Work their creative muscles often and in new ways.

The best way to improve your creative skills is to practice. Prolific content creators often do side projects, as a way to work out creative muscles.

Side projects allow the mind to wander outside the day-to-day grind. It’s a way for content creators to use muscles not used for day jobs. Side projects may be freelance work, a personal blog or a pro bono project.

How to Be a Prolific Content Creator: Make time for side projects.

#3- They have an intrinsic desire to create.

Prolific content creators find a sense of satisfaction in the creation of content. They are nurtured by positive feedback or rewards, which helps feed their satisfaction in content creation and encourage them to do more.

They are also known to study content for its own sake. This means drawing inspiration from other creators and building their own unique ideas.

These content creators exist in an environment where taking risk and experimentation is nurtured and rewarded. Doing something new and different, is often when the best, most creative things happen. Being able to try new things, nurtures the desire to create.

How to Be a Prolific Content Creator: Find joy in the process.

#4 – They can take one idea and use it to sustain output.

Prolific content creators are great at creating idea pipelines to ensure they have a list of concepts from which to consistently draw.  Idea pipelines can be organized in Evernote, a content management system or even just a spreadsheet. They can include things like series content, underserved topics or a list of brainstormed content.

How to Be a Prolific Content Creator: Turn one good idea into many more.

#5 – They leave industry echo-chambers.

Prolific content creators don’t just read the same marketing blogs as everyone else. If all creators consume are marketing blogs or lists, that is all they will be able to create. Prolific content creators go outside of their industry and are inspired by other things such as art, media or manufacturing. Their creativity is drawn from the ability to connect something outside their niche to their daily work.

How to Be a Prolific Content Creator: Find inspiration in many diverse places.

Jay also pointed out that creativity is not a talent; it’s a way of operating. Prolific content creators do have unique traits which drive their talent, but it’s not necessarily intrinsic. You or others within your organization can learn to operate in a way that’s different, that drives the proliferation of content.

Then it no longer has to be a choice between creating quality or quantity of content.

Header image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | 5 Tips to Help You Become a Prolific Content Creator | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 5 Tips to Help You Become a Prolific Content Creator appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

“For those of you that think comedy won’t work for your brand, ask yourself: will it work for your customers?” – Tim Washer

Most the time, if you ask a group of people “do you like to laugh?” 100% of your audience will respond with a resounding “Yes!”. Seeing that, you’d assume that incorporating comedy into your content marketing would be a no-brainer, but that’s much easier said than done.

There is often the struggle between knowing how far to take humor, and incorporating comedy that speaks to your larger audience. Last week, Tim Washer of Cisco Systems provided a giggle inducing presentation at Content Marketing World aimed at helping marketers smartly inject comedy into their content marketing programs. Here are 4 ways according to Washer:

#1 – Build A Creative Culture

When you’re in the open mode, nothing will stop you so effectively as the fear of making a mistake. – John Cleese

Washer quoted the infamous John Cleese about creating an open and creative environment. When you foster an environment that welcomes ideas and encourages creativity, you’re setting yourself up to come up with a multitude of ideas.

#2 – Reframe Your Mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable we all make them. One way to continue encouraging creativity is to approach these mistakes head-on as a learning experience. Here are four ways to reframe mistakes within your organization:

• Internal recognition for BIG RISKS that failed
• An email from the CMO acknowledging the effort
• Take a team improve class as a corporate training
• Cascade cases of success through failure

#3 –Comedic Formulas & Examples

The basis of comedy and its place in content marketing is based on 5 different comedic formulas for success. These formulas include:

Hard left turn: This concept hits you smack in the face with something you weren’t expecting.

Juxtaposition: One of the best ways to come up with new ideas. Take two unrelated things and match them up side by side (such as chinchillas and marshmallows). By creating a web of ideas around both topics, you’ll be able to find a way to create a connection between the two.

Irony: Create humor by incorporating irony into your content. When used correctly, this is a fantastic way to engage your audience (do not use Alanis Morissette as your guide to how irony works).

Pain: Comedy comes from pain. If you look at the pain that your customers are experiencing and play around in that area, now you’ve made something relevant.

Pattern: Determine topics or types of comedy in your content that are consistently successful.

#4 – How to Tell Stories Well

By now, it is crystal clear that incorporating storytelling into your content marketing is one of the best ways to connect your audience to the content. In order to tell a story well, you need to incorporate the following elements:

1. Be Agile: Work to find anecdotes that well represent the attribute that you’re describing.
2. Create Connections: Specific language that you use will help you engage your audience and form a lasting connection.
3. Make a Case: Instead of making a claim, focus on making a case for your cause.

Tim Washer’s street cred as a comedian and marketer make him an authority on using creativity and comedy to better connect an audience with content. Hopefully the tips above will help you begin incorporating more creativity and comedy into your content marketing programs as well.

Have you found that taking a comedic slant with your marketing has worked well for your audience? If so, how did this impact your strategy?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | 4 Ways Brands Can Use Creativity & Comedy to Create Award-Winning Content Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 4 Ways Brands Can Use Creativity & Comedy to Create Award-Winning Content Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

One of the most important audiences for content–the people who can make or break the success of your organization–is also the toughest audience to impress. They know your company inside and out. They have highly evolved B.S. detectors. They are the ones who decide whether what you say about your brand is true.

This crucial audience is your organization’s own employees. Enthusiastic and engaged employees can boost revenue, increase job creation, even increase the appreciation of your stock. Are your employees passionately bringing your story to life?

Type A Communications President Carla Johnson and BlackBerry’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Mark Wilson took the stage at Content Marketing World last week to discuss how we can bring the skills and strengths we have as marketers to address our internal audience. Mark used examples from BlackBerry’s internal marketing program to illustrate how to turn employees into brand ambassadors.

Why Focus on Employees?

Actively disengaged employees cost companies $400-500 billion every year. Even worse, 41% of employees don’t know what their employer stands for or what makes their company different from others. (Gallup 2013 State of the Workplace)

Disengaged employees cost business, pure and simple. 68% of customers leave because of poor employee attitude, and 70% of customer brand perception is determined by experiences with people.

That’s why companies that have cultures based on their purpose and values out-perform companies who don’t. Companies with good employee engagement enjoy:

• 4X faster revenue growth.
• 7X faster job creation
• 12X faster stock appreciation.

(John Koer and James Jaskett, Corporate Culture and Performance)

As Mark puts it, we need to “Treat culture as a differentiator, not just table stakes.”

How to Build a Program

Once you get your C-suite’s attention by demonstrating how employee engagement affects the bottom line, you can start to build a program:

• Create excitement and inspiration to participate.
• Deliver a consistent message and an authentic story employees can understand
• Develop your employees’ story expertise and the ability to discover stories
• Deliver the right story at the right time and place

Throughout the process of building your program, it’s important to continually engage with crystal clear communication, evaluate your performance and improve.

The Program in Practice: BlackBerry

When Mark joined BlackBerry, the company was losing millions of dollars a quarter. In order to turn the company around, Mark had to start with employees who were full of doubt about BlackBerry’s vision and future. They had to believe in the company, so they could project confidence to BlackBerry’s customers and potentials. Here’s how Mark used the points outlined above:

Creating Excitement

Mark produced a video series with BlackBerry CEO John Chen to outline his vision for the company. Video is an efficient way to reach a global employee base. It’s more human than written communication.

The videos had a high level of engagement with 80+% of employees viewing and commenting. Mark made sure the videos were part of the overall brand story, not just an edict from on high.

Mark’s team also started BlackBerry Ideas, an internal web-site for employee-submitted and evaluated ideas. Employees submitted nearly 5,500 ideas, and were encouraged to upvote the best ideas for leadership to weigh in. The program gave employees a voice, stimulated buy-in, and encouraged everyone to keep it real.

Deliver a Consistent Message

BlackBerry used the LinkedIn Publishing Platform for the CEO to deliver messages external and internal. Employees appreciated the transparency of being addressed on an offsite platform. John’s posts reinforced the values, strategy, and mission statement of the company, and were amplified on every platform Mark could use.

Develop Story Expertise

For expert content creation, Mark went to the experts: He hired a brand journalism team that could tell the brand’s story, making BlackBerry’s intranet, BlackBerry Square, as compelling as the company’s external sites. The team focused on creating stories with hooks that encouraged a response to build community.

Deliver the Right Story at the Right Place and Time

Mark’s internal marketing efforts helped employees to know the brand story and be fully equipped to share it with the world. To empower employees to tell their own story, BlackBerry instituted the BlackBerry Ambassadors program. Employees can volunteer their own time to offer demos for new devices at retail stores. The program has been an astounding success, with employees willingly taking time outside of work to deliver an authentic brand experience.

Mark’s work at BlackBerry shows what incredible results you can achieve when you treat you employees as your most important, toughest audience. Your internal marketing efforts can build a healthy company culture that informs your external marketing as well, with your employees sharing the brand’s story with your audience, in their own words.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | How Blackberry is Activating Employees as Brand Ambassadors with Content Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post How Blackberry is Activating Employees as Brand Ambassadors with Content Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The incisor growth rate of an average beaver is 32 feet per year.

The hatchet fish is the only creature with eyes on its wrists.

And now for something completely different…

John Cleese–actor, comedian, and 1/5th of Monty Python–started his presentation with the preceding two useful facts. Having armed the audience with knowledge, he proceeded to disarm us with his wit and wisdom.

“If you listen to what I’m going to say,” he began in earnest, “I guarantee by the end of this you will be more creative than you are now.” It was a bold statement, but entirely believable (far more so than the hatchet fish claim) from the man who gave the world the Ministry for Silly Walks and the Dead Parrot Sketch.

Mr. Cleese credits Guy Claxton’s book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind for the basis of his theory of creativity. The idea is that we have a quick-thinking, logical part of our brains which is good for solving logistical or mathematical problems. But we also have a slow-thinking, contemplative mind that can work out complex problems, and produce creative work.

Create a Safe Space for Contemplation

It’s important to give your contemplative “tortoise mind” the space and time it needs to work. He calls his creative space his “tortoise enclosure,” where he can free himself from interruptions and distractions to let his creative unconscious roam free. Whether it’s a broom closet or a park bench, find a space separate from where you normally work.

Generate Ideas in Creative Mode

Once you’re in your tortoise enclosure, let your mind roam free. The first thoughts you will have, of course, will be all the mental housekeeping you have been putting off. Just make a reminder of these random to-dos so you can address them later. As Mr. Cleese put it, “if I have a thought pop into my head, like ‘call Bob,’ I’ll write it on a note for later, and then it’s out of my head.”

Once the dust settles, you can generate ideas. The trick is to create without evaluating–that part comes later. While you’re in your tortoise enclosure, let your thoughts go wherever they want to take you, without thinking of what is practical or sensible.

Evaluate in Logic Mode

When you’re ready to leave the tortoise enclosure and go back to the work at hand, that’s the time to use your logical, quick-thinking “hare brain” to evaluate your ideas. See what looks promising, what needs to be refined, and what you can chuck out the window.

Mr. Cleese goes through several sessions of generating ideas and refining them, alternating between contemplation and evaluation until only the best ideas are left standing.

Forge New Mental Pathways

The tortoise enclosure makes you more creative by helping you think outside of your established mental grooves. Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb said, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” In other words, the more you follow the same mental path, the harder it is to strike off into the underbrush. Using your tortoise mind allows your brain to roam free without the hare brain snapping it back to your established thought processes.

So the next time you feel stuck with a complex problem that demands a creative solution, Mr. Cleese recommends taking a trip to your tortoise enclosure. When it comes to creativity, slow and steady really does win the race.

Header image via thejohncleese.com

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | John Cleese: Creativity, Imagination & Tortoise Enclosures #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post John Cleese: Creativity, Imagination & Tortoise Enclosures #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Google Algorithm Updates – 2003 to 2015 [Infographic] – Having trouble staying up with Google’s algorithm updates? Not sure if you’re dealing with Pandas or Penguins – or even Hummingbirds, for that matter? No idea what I’m talking about? Have a look at this infographic to see what’s happened and where we’ve been. OnCrawl

New Study: Data Reveals 67% of Consumers are Influenced by Online Reviews – A new study revealed that online reviews impact 67.7% of respondents’ purchasing decisions. More than half of the respondents (54.7%) admitted that online reviews are fairly, very, or absolutely an important part of their decision-making process. Moz

Instagram Ad Rollout Will Make It the Top Media Buy: New Research – Instagram just began offering paid advertising opportunities through select developer partners. In the coming months the platform is expected to create a Facebook-like self-serve option for any budget. Social Media Examiner

Updated Facebook Conversion Lift Tells Advertisers Which Campaigns Work Best for Their Goal – This week, Facebook added new capabilities to Conversion Lift that help marketers understand exactly which of their Facebook ads are driving their ad objective best. The updated Conversion Lift measurement tool helps advertisers make more informed marketing choices, so they can continue to grow their business. Facebook

New Image Options Coming to Twitter – Stickers, GIFs, Overlays – One of the more interesting elements to note from the recent MTV VMA Awards – aside from it being the most tweeted about, non-sports event in history – was the use of new Twitter image options by some celebrities at the event. Social Media Today

Facebook Testing New, Immersive Mobile Ad Format – Back in June, at the Cannes Lions Festival in France, Facebook didn’t have any new products to show. But they did have a preview, a mock-up of what they envisioned Facebook ads might soon look like. Social Media Today

Report: Twitter is Growing as a Real-Time News Platform – Social media has become the way people get news nowadays. The digital and mobile revolutions have lead people away from print content consumption to getting most of their news through their social networks. Twitter has specifically been instrumental in spreading and shaping news about events and social unrest both near and far. SocialTimes

Snapchat, Like Facebook, Now Boasts 4 Billion Video Views Every Day – If 4 billion daily views has become something of a milestone for leading online video platforms like YouTube and Facebook, Snapchat has just crossed this threshold with confounding velocity. Entrepreneur

Mobile to Surpass Print in US Media Ad Spend This Year – Almost one-third (31.6%) of US media ad spending will be allocated to digital media this year, with mobile capturing the majority share of that spending, estimates eMarketer in a recent forecast. In fact, for the first time, the share of media ad spending allocated to mobile (16.6%) will exceed the share allocated to print (15.8%). MarketingCharts

59 Percent Of Retailers Have Already Started Their Holiday Promotions [Survey] – In addition to starting earlier, retailers are also planning to offer more holiday promotions than last year. Marketing Land

Only 17% of Brands Have The Ability To Fully Analyse The Customer Journey – A new Econsultancy report in partnership with Adobe found that companies are still struggling to embrace multichannel marketing.  Econsultancy

Google AdWords Rolls Out Structured Snippets – Last week Google released a new ad extension for AdWords – structured snippets. This is similar to an ad extension Google released in March, dynamic structured snippets, which automatically pulled into your ads based on your website categories. Search Engine Watch

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Infographic: OnCrawl

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Online Marketing News: A More Goal-Friendly Facebook, AdWords Gets Structured, Instagram Adds More Ads | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Online Marketing News: A More Goal-Friendly Facebook, AdWords Gets Structured, Instagram Adds More Ads appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Given this struggle, it is no surprise, that the room is packed front to back for 101 Ways to Repurpose Content, a session from Amy Higgins, Senior Manager of Social Media for Zendesk.

Amy opens by assuring the room that with proper planning you can have it all, quantity and quality of content. She shares three primary ways to gain efficiency to ramp up volume and create better content.

#1 – Build Out Content: Start Big, Divide and Conquer

The best way to repurpose content is to start with a big content asset and then spin off smaller assets. Amy describes the big asset/smaller assets as a content galaxy.  A content galaxy moves, evolves and interlinks, instead of forming a static hub and spoke.

The content galaxy includes:

• Sun: This is the large asset which the rest of the content will revolve around (like an Essential Guide or e-book)
• Planets: Mid-size, meaty assets which link back to the sun (like smaller Ebooks or Slideshares)
• Moons: These are the supporting items which revolve around the sun or planets (like Slideshare and infographics)
• Stars: The most numerous, small supporting items. These can be re-purposed nuggets of the moon, planets or stars (like Blogs, social posts and graphics)

Develop the Sun first and then spin off the supporting pieces to ensure all elements have a consistent voice and look and feel. The supporting pieces will link to each other, but all paths will lead back to the sun piece.

In the example Amy provides, one galaxy was broken down to over 500 pieces, filling the content funnel for over 18 months. The volume and lifecycle of the content will vary based on the size of the Sun piece.

#2 – Customize the Details for the Audience

Customization of content for a specific audience makes the content more likely to resonate and the viewer more likely to engage. Amy elaborates on two ways you can repurpose content for a specific audience.

Stage in the Buying Journey:  Nurture paths can start with moons (light, top of funnel content) and then drive into the funnel with progressively deeper pieces, leading to the Sun asset, which is typically a bottom of funnel asset.

Industry: Determine top industries to target and create specific nuggets of content for each industry. If you have an infographic or e-book, just re-write one piece of it or call out so that it is customized with details for that vertical. It will make that industry feel more connected to the piece, but you won’t have to create a new asset for each vertical.

#3 – Revive and Redirect “Old” Content

Content is considered “old” when it is:

• Out of date – stats from 3 years ago, not quite syncing with your current brand voice, etc.
• Same same – the same thing you’ve written about 100 times
• Hard to find – buried deep on a third tier page or not linked to at all

Although it’s tempting to clean house when it comes to “old” content, according to Amy the best practice is to redirect rather than delete.

Old content can still have valuable equity within the search engines and was a big time investment. It saves time and equity to update the content rather than trash it.

How to Redirect and Refresh Old Content

• Turn it into something new – You can re-use that “5 Ways to …” outdated, boring white paper and turn it into an e-book. Adding graphics and jazzing up the bullet points will breathe new life into the content and you don’t have to recreate the wheel.
• Update the CTA – Refreshing your call to action is one of the easiest ways to revive an asset and make it more successful. Try AB testing new messaging for your CTA to determine if one out performs the other. Test a new offer to see if you get more bites.
• Review your linking strategy – Taking another look at how you are directing people to and from your content assets is a great way to refresh content and improve engagement rates. Look into your analytics and monitor bounce rates and navigation paths to determine if users are responding to links.

Creating content which is easily modular and refreshing old content pieces is a fantastic way to maximize your efforts and solve the problem of quality versus quantity of content.

Header Image via @SugarBrooke

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Creating a Content Galaxy: How to Save Time and Improve Quality with Repurposing from Amy Higgins #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Creating a Content Galaxy: How to Save Time and Improve Quality with Repurposing from Amy Higgins #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

“The best should win, but creating the best is a challenge.” – Lee Odden

Yesterday at Content Marketing World, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden delighted a packed room of marketers by providing inspiring and actionable advice on how to successfully approach participation marketing. Lee assured marketers that if they wanted to produce quality and scalable content, without having to scale marketing budgets, this was the place to be.

So, how can we get some relief from all of the hard work it takes to create a truly impactful participation marketing program?

Among the many things covered in his session were:

• A methodical approach for deconstructing and repurposing marketing to make it more useful.
• How to integrate influencers, social and SEO into your content plan.
• Ways to make your content more useful for contributors and your audience.

The Content Marketing Race

“Content isn’t great until people can actually find it.”

There is a growing swell of popularity for creating content. And a lot of that comes from brands saying; “We don’t have to rely on a publication creating content so we can get to our customers. Instead, we can get to them directly by becoming publishers ourselves.”

4 Types of Content for Marketing

• Evergreen: Always relevant for your audience, content that stands the test of time.
• Co-Created: Created with others such as internal experts, influencers or your online community at large.
• Curated: Finding, collecting and sharing content with your audience that focuses around a specific topic.
• Repurposed: Taking a piece of existing content and using it in another way.

Participation Marketing: How to Scale Quality & Quantity Content

Co-creation offers many advantages for marketers looking to produce great content consistently. These advantages include:

• Quality: You are able to tap subject matter expertise. Specificity is what rises to the top.
• Quantity: Create even more quality content consistently.
• Engagement: Create a connection with subject matter experts and influencers. Create an experience. Use it as a means of networking so that it creates an engagement opportunity.
• Reach: Participation inspires action. If we all create it together we have a mutual interest in making it succeed.
• Scale: Distribution of your co-created content.

Find Your Brand Story

“All marketing that is effective is rooted in some sort of story.”

The lens for your brand story should be empathetic to customer needs. Once you identify what it is that you or your product stands for, you need to become the best answer wherever your customers are looking.

Answer these questions about your content to help tell your story:

1. What is it?
2. What problem does it solve for customers?
3. What do they do next?

5 Best Practices for Incorporating Influencers into Your Marketing

Connection is what fuels everything. As you collect specific information from your community, you can begin creating templates for different customer segments and stages in the buying cycle. Here are five ways to successfully incorporate influencers into your content marketing:

#1 – Identify, Qualify & Recruit Influencers

One of the biggest favors you can do for yourself is to use tools to help identify the influencers that you’d like to work with. Keep in mind that no tool is perfect, but they can help you qualify the best influencers for your brand. Examples of influencer marketing tools include:

• Traackr
• Followerwonk
• Buzzsumo
• Keyhole
• GroupHigh
• Appinions
• Tribealytics

#2 – Engage & Recruit Influencers to Participate

If you’ve had no previous interaction with influencers, it’s essential that you show relevant signals of friendliness.

This could mean following them on social networks, retweeting or sharing their content, live blogging their conference sessions or commenting on their posts. This helps create exposure for the influencers and create a connection of your support.

#3 – Collect & Co-Create Content

A good practice is to include a healthy mix of brandividuals and niche influencers in your co-created content. When reaching out, personalize your message based on topics they are known for and what you’ve discovered motivates your influencers. Always set clear expectations and deadlines, but be patient as these influencers likely receive multiple requests a week to collaborate.

#4 – Inspire Content Promotion

Never rely on the fact that just because someone co-created with you, they will share your Content. You have to make it easy, fun and inspiring for influencers to share by providing a preview of their contribution or including some pre-written tweets for them to share.

To collaborate with busy influencers, it may require some sort of compensation or trade. Don’t be afraid to do a little research to see what they like (or just ask them).

#5 –Monitor KPIs & Measure ROI

Measuring the success of your co-created content is one of the most important, and often overlooked elements of your campaign. TopRank Marketing recommends an attract, engage and convert model to cover all of your bases.

Participation Marketing in Action

Now that you have the essential steps for participation marketing, it’s time to see this concept in action. We’d like to invite you to co-create some killer content with the team at TopRank Marketing. All you need to do is click the link below and submit your biggest question about participation marketing.

As an added bonus for collaborating, you will receive access to the TopRank Marketing Content Co-Creation Checklist to help with your own participation marketing initiative.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Incorporate Participation Marketing for More Scalable Content Marketing – Lee Odden #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Incorporate Participation Marketing for More Scalable Content Marketing – Lee Odden #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

“The world has changed. Most content stinks. Attract people through stories they love.” –Michael Brenner

NewsCred Head of Strategy Michael Brenner knows the challenges facing content marketers. Consumers no longer accept that content has to be ad supported. They–or, rather, we, since we’re all consumers–no longer tolerate interruptions. Not only that, but the best content we as marketers create still has to compete for attention with pictures of babies and puppies.

Michael’s solution? Create content your customers will love. Talk to them, understand their questions, and leverage the intelligence your organization already has. Michael estimates that “50% of the content you need is already present in your organization.” Auditing your existing content, and tapping your knowledgeable co-workers, can get your content hub off to a roaring start.

Michael’s Seven Key Factors to Creating Content Customers Love

1. Have a documented content strategy and mission statement. Documentation is key to gain alignment throughout the company and get executive buy-in. For the mission statement, start with this template: “Become a destination for [target audience] interested in [topics] to help them [customer value].”
2. Have someone accountable for content. Make sure your team has a leader who can take the responsibility for the whole organization’s efforts.
3. Consistently publish quality content. It’s not quality or quantity, it’s quality and Keep it customer-focused, keep it useful, and publish daily.
4. Map content to the customer journey. Most of the questions your customers have are in the early stages of the journey. Most content is directed at the late stages. That means we’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.
5. Paid distribution. Customers can’t love your content if they never see it. Publish on your own hub–like Joe Pulizzi says, don’t build your house on rented land–but use paid distribution to amplify.
6. Focus on content subscribers. Number of subscribers is a relatively new metric, but it’s a useful one. People who opt in to your content are incredibly valuable.
7. Track content marketing ROI. Helpful content drives conversions and sales. Focus on the measurables that prove the value of your content to the people who sign off on budgets.

Three Brands Doing Content Marketing Right

Michael singled out these brands for how comprehensive their content is, how frequently they publish, and how closely their content is mapped to the customer journey.

• AmEx OpenForum – Amex created a massive content hub for small business owners. For sheer breadth and depth, they’re unmatched.
• BufferApp Blog – In retrospect, it makes sense that a company who exists to help people find cool stuff to share would create cool content on their own. Buffer uses its massive data pool to create content people want to share.
• Van Winkle’s – An aggressively non-promotional blog about sleep from mattress company Casper. They have a wealth of interesting content, and their opt-in form is a creative masterpiece.

You can see all the slides from Michael’s presentation on his SlideShare Page. Get the presentation, get inspired, and start spreading your own #ContentLove.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Michael Brenner’s Tips, Tools, and Templates to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Michael Brenner’s Tips, Tools, and Templates to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

I would consider myself an excellent Googler. As a consumer and a digital marketer, I have believed that you can find almost anything with a few quick keystrokes into the search engine.

However, recently I found myself querying “healthy smoothie recipes”. Millions of results, but the first page of results were mostly mass produced round ups, not what I was looking for. I opened Instagram on my phone and searched again “healthy smoothie recipes”.  Bingo. Hundreds of beautiful foodie images appeared. I become a follower, consumer of content and a prospect of at least 5 new brands.

User behavior, like mine, is evolving. Whether social media provides better results or is just more convenient because you’re already on the app, more people are using social media to research and discover than ever before. According to Twitter, there are 19 billion searches on Twitter every month.

Traditional SEOs have long obsessed over how to hack the Google algorithm to move to the top of SERPs. Now the new kids on the block, social platforms like Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, each have their own algorithm.

Improving the visibility of your content within social media can be as calculated as your SEO efforts. Erin Monday, marketing manager at Lenovo, shares tips to hack the new social algorithms in her presentation at #CMWorld.

5 Steps to Hack the New Algorithms and Achieve Greater Content Reach

Step 1: Get discovered more often 

There are three main touch points for users to consume content via most social platforms. Let’s break down the hack for each touch point.

Passive: The Native Social Wall Feed

How to Hack It: You can’t really. A user’s feed is made up of content created by or interacted with by someone in their network.  To gain more visibility for your content, connect with more people.

Reactive:  An internal search query

How to Hack It: Post a lot of quality content and include keywords for topics where you want to show up.   Frequent posting will widen the umbrella of opportunity to show up for more internal search queries. Optimize social content for keywords the same way you would for search. Mention topics where a lot of conversation already exists and queries are more likely to happen, check trending topics or hashtag usage to monitor topical usage. Tweets with pictures and videos are more likely to show up in search results.

The SERP: Tweets are now showing up within search results in certain markets

How to Hack It: Very similar to how you would hack the internal search query. Post frequently and optimize content for commonly used search and social phrases.

Step 2: Use tools in order to automate

From an algorithm perspective, more content increases the likelihood of showing up within search results and in feeds. Of course quality matters, good stories are more likely to resonate across mediums. However, leveraging tools in order to automate the creation and posting of content will make it easier to post more content and show up more frequently.

Step 3: Leverage employees to syndicate

Erin mentions the opportunity to syndicate social media content across employee channels in order to achieve great reach. LinkedIn, for example, allows you to opt-in employees to a feed so that when the post goes live it posts across an employee group or team.

Syndicating across employee channels is a great way to achieve reach across a really targeted, relevant audience.

Step 4: Take advantage of the opportunity for amplification

Organic amplification increases the reach of a post, increasing the exposure of your content and brand to new users. Using hashtags is a great way to appear more within search results, as well as really amplify content. Erin provides the example of creating a hashtag driven contest within Twitter. Ask your audience to do something cool, tag it with a branded hashtag, and then choose a winner.

Step 5: Get out of the Way

Sometimes the best things a brand can do it get out of the way in order to let customers determine what content is important and shows up. Reddit is a great examples of this. The first page of Reddit is determined only by the up and down votes of users.

For a brand, this means allow customers to drive content conversation and to co-create content which is posted and tagged.

Social media is impossible to ignore not only as a platform to consume content via a news feed, but as a competitive search engine. This is a great opportunity for brands and individuals to reach new users, early in the funnel via social content. Take advantage of this opportunity in order to achieve greater reach via social media.

Header image via @MaryLeeS

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | 5 Step Algorithm Hack to Achieve Greater Social Visibility from Erin Monday #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 5 Step Algorithm Hack to Achieve Greater Social Visibility from Erin Monday #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

RazorSocial Founder Ian Cleary is passionate about using tools to make content marketing better. At RazorSocial, he trains companies to use technology to increase their reach, search ranking, and audience relevance.

Ian took us on a whirlwind tour through 15 common content marketing problems and the tools he uses to solve them. Here are my picks for the top five:

Problem #1: Blog Posts Don’t Get Ongoing Organic Traffic

After the initial post-launch spike, you may find your traffic results dwindling. In most cases, organic traffic dies off completely.

Solution: Create Content Designed for Continued Visibility

Use a tool like InboundWriter to see what topics will be more successful in the long term, and what keywords to use that will keep your content visible to search traffic.

Problem #2: Low Conversion Rates on Opt-Ins

It’s great to have someone read a single article on your site. But it’s even better to persuade the reader to opt in for future nurturing efforts.

Solution: Make the Content the Opt-In

You can use your article itself to capture subscriptions. On the Razorsocial blog, Ian offers a download of each article as a PDF the reader can consume online. Clicking the “download” option pops up a form from Optinmonster, capturing an email address in exchange for the PDF.

Problem #3: Not Enough Links to Your Content

The number of relevant, highly-regarded sites that link to your content can have a big impact on your search ranking. Earning those links may seem beyond your control, but it’s possible to get quality backlinks (in an ethical and meaningful way).

Solution: Promote Content to Relevant Sites

To get more backlinks for his content, Ian searches for older, outdated articles about the same topic. Then he uses AHrefs to see what sites link to these outdated articles, and emails them directly suggesting his new article. The direct outreach nets plenty of quality backlinks with minimal effort and at no expense.

Problem #4: Need to Track Content Success Across Multiple Domains

It’s important to keep track of your users’ activity on your sites to see what content is hitting and what’s not getting the job done. Historically, you’d do that with multiple blocks of code from various sources–a Facebook pixel, an Optimizely link–that each require an ask from your tech crew.

Solution: Use Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a free tool that works with your Google Analytics account. A single code block on the site lets you plug in all those various trackers without having to bother IT. Ian does A/B testing on variants of a site with Tag Manager, putting the code block on each site to get a comprehensive view of user interaction.

Problem #5: Need to Monitor and Track Brand Conversations

It’s important to know who is talking about your brand (and your competitors), what they’re saying, and when you can engage. Good social listening gives you a deeper understanding of what your customers need and the opportunity to act on the knowledge.

Solution: Social Listening Tools Keep You in the Know

Ian recommends Brand24 for Social Media Monitoring. He suggests monitoring Twitter and Facebook at a minimum, but adding other platforms if they’re relevant to your audience. He suggests taking a strategic approach to engaging–focus on conversations with influencers and brand ambassadors, people who can make or break your reputation, even though they may not have the largest social network.

Content marketing is a creative business, but strategy and technology can give your efforts an extra edge. The right tools can help you create what your audience needs, help you increase your reach, and help you track your results for continual improvement.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Ian Cleary Discusses Essential Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Ian Cleary Discusses Essential Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

It’s fitting that the kickoff for Content Marketing World is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This year’s speakers and workshop leaders are rock stars of the industry. Each one has a solid back catalog of hits; together, they’re a content marketing supergroup.

So for those about to rock, we salute you. Team TopRank (Alexis, Ashley, and Josh) will be bringing you highlights, insights, and takeaways throughout the event. Keep an eye on the blog if you can’t make it to the big show, and if you’re here, please seek us out.

Here are just a few of the presentations we’re excited to attend over the next few days:

15 Essential Tools to Optimize Your Content Marketing

Content marketing is creative work, but even the most creative content can be more effective with the right technology to back it up.

RazorSocial Founder Ian Cleary combines a tech-head’s knowledge of marketing tools with a genuine passion for quality content. He promises tools and tips aplenty for his session, as well as action items to take home and put to work.

Ian’s presentation looks highly technical, supremely practical, and imminently actionable. He promises to deliver:

• Tools we can use to improve our content marketing results
• Technical tips we can implement to improve performance
• More efficient and effective social media activity

From Content to Conversion: Persona-Driven Lead Nurturing

Developing personas is a vital part of understanding your audience, so that you can create content that speaks to their specific needs. What role do personas play after your campaign has begun?

Marketing Interactions, Inc. CEO Ardath Albee is a persona pioneer; she has years of experience and has experienced incredible success using personas across the marketing funnel. Her presentation focuses on creating context, increasing relevance, and forming a deeper connection with potential buyers through personas.

Ardath’s presentation will cover:

• How to create a continuum for lead nurturing with the insights from your personas
• How personas help you to understand and address the context of your buyers
• How to speed up the sales cycle and accelerate conversions with outside-the-inbox nurturing

Helping Your B2B Sales Team Thrive in the Age of Content Marketing

In today’s world of the empowered prospects, content marketing is at the frontlines of prospects and customers. This shift in power, has changed the role of the sales team. While their role has evolved, there is an opportunity for teams to continue to amplify the impact of content marketing on sales team success.

Jeff Herrmann, Partner and Chief Revenue Officer at Fathom, is a champion of B2B sales and marketing alignment. He focuses on leveraging content, data and technology in order to help companies and individuals accelerate growth.

His presentation will deliver:

• Methods to close the loop between your content marketing program and sales success
• Tips to help sales colleagues leverage valuable data and insights from their marketing efforts
• Help sales team build trust by taking an “audience first” approach

Social SEO: Hacking the New Algorithms

Measuring the impact of social within your content marketing strategy can be tricky. Although traditional digital marketing KPIs and algorithms are at play, the setting and methodology is unique.

Marketing manager at Lenovo, Erin Monday, plans to deliver a session that will reflect on and apply “traditional” SEO algorithms to social in order to maximize content marketing success.

Key takeaways include:

• Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. all have algorithms, just like the search engines
• Learn to play the algorithms organically
• Find tips and tricks for use social algorithms to your advantage with organic content   

Advanced SEO Practices That Will Blow Your Mind

SEO is an essential piece of any effective digital marketing strategy. When used correctly, it can help attract your best customers to your content. However, if you already have the SEO basics down, this session will take a deep dive into some powerful tactics that will give your search traffic the boost it needs.

Rand Fishkin, otherwise known as the Wizard of Moz promises attendees an SEO journey that takes a look at some of the lesser-known and use-case-specific tactics.

In his session, the Wizard will teach you advanced ways to:

• Leverage competitive and market analyses to improve page performance
• Find tricks for combining and separating URLs to draw in more search traffic
• Take advantage of search results with answer boxes

Practical Tips, Tools & Templates to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy

In today’s world, everyone has the ability to become a content publisher. That means that the battle for customers has become increasingly fierce. Unfortunately, all of that great content often falls flat if marketers cannot measure its success.

Content marketing mastermind and all around great guy Michael Brenner of NewsCred will help break down a seemingly complex idea into some actionable ways to build your own content marketing strategy.

In this session you will learn how to:

• Conduct a content audit
• Build a customer journey map
• Quickly generate content ideas
• Find a way to answer your customers top questions

TopRank Marketing Will Be Rocking Content Marketing World 2015

There are so many great speakers and topics at Content Marketing World that it was hard to choose just a few to feature.

TopRank Marketing and Content Marketing Institute also combined forces to bring you a content marketing triple feature in the form of three eBooks filled with advice from Content Marketing World speakers that cover everything from content strategy to measurement.

View each of them on SlideShare by clicking the links below:

The Big Picture of Content Marketing Strategy

Making Content Marketing the Star of Your Marketing

Measuring Your Content Marketing Box Office Success

Keep your eye here on Online Marketing Blog for coverage of the presentations as well as Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest and Twitter @TopRank.

Image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Cleveland Rocks! TopRank Marketing Kicks off Content Marketing World – #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Cleveland Rocks! TopRank Marketing Kicks off Content Marketing World – #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

It’s a feeling that all content marketers have experienced, and it’s not a pleasant one. You research your audience, you create content that speaks directly to their needs, and you say “Fly and be free!” as you release it into the world.

And then it falls flat on its metaphorical face. If this has happened to you, you’re not alone: Over half of marketers say they struggle with making their content effective.

There are chains that keep content marketing from soaring. They’re bad habits that you might not even know you’ve developed. Let’s shine a light on these chains and break them—with light? Special chain-breaking lights? Maybe lasers. Lasers break chains, right?

We’ll address the perils of mixed metaphors in another post. For now, let’s focus on breaking six bad content marketing habits to help your content soar.

Bad Habit 1: Trying to Be Trendy

Hey kids, you know what’s totally dope and superfly right now? Writing in that extra-salty, shade-throwing voice that appeals to youngsters like you—er, us. We’re hip. We’re with it. We’ve got the 411.

The previous paragraph was painful, right? Instead of writing in my own voice, I was trying to be something I’m not. Even if you’re marketing to Millennials, teens, and tweens, keep it real. No one wants to buy from the “cool dad” trying to keep up with the latest slang.

A New Habit: Be Consistent and Authentic

Establish a baseline for your brand—what it is, what it’s about, who your audience is. Then keep your writing natural and timeless.

Bad Habit 2: Posting Huge Blocks of Text

Some of the best ideas in the world may be buried in the sixth extra-long paragraph of a blog post without any organizational cues. But we’ll never know. Reading online is fundamentally different from reading printed matter. If your audience can’t easily scan your content, they’ll bounce.

A Better Habit: Web-Optimized Writing

To make sure your content gets a chance to shine, stick with short paragraphs. Use headers before each major point, so readers can scan quickly and see if they want to read further. Use bulleted or numbered lists to quickly make multiple points. And add visuals to really make it pop.

Bad Habit 3: Chasing Clicks

10 reasons you should ditch content that doesn’t provide value: Number 5 will have you in tears! Every marketer has heard the siren song of clickbait viral content. “Come with meeee,” it sings, “I will bring you soooo many cliiiiicks…”

While clickbait can get you a quick surge of popularity, the Internet hivemind quickly forgets and moves on to the next distraction. Remember that OK Go video with the Rube Goldberg machine? Maybe. Remember what car company sponsored it? Probably not.

A Better Habit: Content that Delivers

Make sure your content fulfills the promise in the headline. Content that delivers real value will stick around long after the latest fad is gone. Building a reputation as a trusted resource will pay far more dividends than trending on Twitter.

Bad Habit 4: Posting the Same Content across Networks

Automation software is a boon for busy marketers. But as you automate, make sure you keep a personal feel to your posts. If you post the exact same content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram—same words, same links, same visual—your most engaged fans just got the same message four times.

A Better Habit: Tailor Content to the Platform

It’s important to vary your approach for each outlet, using the text and visuals that best suit the audience for each one. That way you can stay relevant and avoid looking like a robot.

Bad Habit 5: Being Overly Promotional

Sure, every piece of content we create is promotional in some sense. We’re not just publishing out of the goodness of our hearts; at the end of the process, we want the reader to take action. But social media is a conversation; if you only talk about yourself, you may end up only talking to yourself.

A Better Habit: Be Useful

The beating heart of content marketing is helping the reader with high-quality, useful information. Establish your brand as a trusted resource and your audience will grow. People are more likely to engage with and share content that helps them solve a problem.

Bad Habit 6: Writing without Personality

Bland writing is the scourge of B2B content marketing, but the B2C marketers aren’t completely innocent, either. It starts with the best of intentions—you want to be informative, you don’t want to offend anyone—but ends with content so dry a robot could have written it.

A Better Habit: Make Your Writing for People, by People

Keep in mind that “professional” doesn’t have to mean “boring.” Bring an authentic human voice to your writing. Write for the specific people who will be reading it, not to some faceless corporate conglomerate. Sure, if you give your brand some personality, it might turn some people off. But with them gone, you can focus on the people far more likely to be your customer.

Success is Habit-Forming

They say—and why would they lie?—that it takes 28 days to break a bad habit and start a new one. So start today making your content more authentic, valuable, and easier to read. By the end of the month, these laser-powered chain-breaking habits will be your new norm.

What other bad habits do content marketers need to break? Let me know what I missed in the comments.

Image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Break These 6 Bad Content Marketing Habits to Set Your Content Free | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Break These 6 Bad Content Marketing Habits to Set Your Content Free appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Email marketing presents a whole host of opportunities (and challenges) for companies that want to engage prospects and customers on an ongoing basis. You may have found that creating quality email content on a consistent basis can seem like a lot of work. Which leads you to question if it’s really worth the effort.

In 2014 eMarketer found that email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. With research like that backing up the usefulness of email marketing, it’s a tactic you can’t afford to ignore.

If you’re tired of seeing your unsubscribe and spam rates increase at a steady pace, incorporate these 7 steps to connect with your email audience on a more engaging level.

#1 – Personalize the Message

Imagine if you received a letter in the mail and the opening read “Dear Customer” or some other sort of generic greeting. Chances are you would quickly toss that mail into the recycling bin.

Emails can be personalized in a few ways. The simplest include adding the recipient’s name to the subject line or greeting. Another option (which often requires the use of marketing automation) is to personalize the message based on different trigger points.

For example, if someone signs up for a demo of your service or made a purchase, you can then set appropriate trigger points for them to receive a welcome or thank you email with additional next steps or information.

#2 – Let Readers Know Right Away What the Message is About

Consumers today are busy. One way to help them cut through the clutter and is to clearly let them know what your email is about right away. The subject line offers a great opportunity for them to understand at-a-glance what you’re offering. If you send different types of emails (newsletters, offers, etc.) on a consistent basis, you can call those out right away.

#3 – Create Exclusivity

Who doesn’t want to feel like they are appreciated and part of something special? Now there is a difference between asking your readers to “Act Now!” and saying “We Have Something Just For You”. The latter helps reiterate to your customers that they’re important to your business. While the former creates urgency, and sometimes anxiety for readers.

Here are 4 ways that you can help create exclusivity for customers with your email marketing:

1. Offering deals or incentives that are only available to a select group
2. Sharing updates or new content to this group prior to releasing to the general public
3. Bonuses for referring other people
4. Sneak peeks into new products, or even ask them to provide feedback

#4 – Send Updates from the Founder/CEO/President

From time to time, it’s good to include special announcements and thought leadership content from leadership within your organization. These types of messages are typically meant to engage and inspire readers.

This approach can be especially impactful if there is a well-known person within your organization that is associated with the brand.

#5 – Include Compelling Imagery

Hubspot found that 88% of subscribers prefer to receive HTML emails from companies versus the 12% that prefer plain text. Additionally, 65% prefer emails that contain mostly images while 35% prefer mostly text.

When delivered properly, well-designed emails can be very impactful. However, all email clients render HTML and CSS differently. SendGrid provides some helpful do’s and don’ts for marketers designing email campaigns for multiple email clients.

#6 – Make it Easy for Your Audience to Take the Next Step

Any calls to action within your email campaigns should be very clear, compelling and visually appealing. There should be no question in the customer’s mind what step they should take next.

Email calls to action should:

• Be succinct
• Tell your audience what to do
• Stand out from the rest of your content

Another best practice to follow is that your email message should typically only include one call to action so as not to confuse the reader.

#7 – Above All, Offer Valuable Content

All of the tips above will help you create a more impactful email marketing campaign, but this step is the most important.

It doesn’t matter how great your email looks, or how clear your call to action is if your content is not high-quality it will not provide value to your customers. Don’t send email campaigns just for the sake of meeting a monthly quota, make sure that you are always offering something valuable that readers can’t get somewhere else.

Where do you think the biggest email marketing opportunities lie within your organization?

Header image via Shutterstock

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | The TopRank Marketing 7 Point Email Marketing Engagement Cheat Sheet | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post The TopRank Marketing 7 Point Email Marketing Engagement Cheat Sheet appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Should I use a script? It’s one of the most common questions The Showrunner hosts Jerod Morris and Jonny Nastor get from aspiring first-time Showrunners.

In this week’s episode, they analyze when it’s right to use a script … and when it’s not.

But they start with a fun question that was posed in their Showrunner Course forum … based on a dream someone had: if your house was being flooded, and you could only save what you could carry, what items would you grab?

Jerod and Jonny share what happened in the dream and what their answers are. And they’d love to know yours. Tweet them to: @ShowrunnerFM, @JerodMorris, @JonNastor.

Then they hop into script talk and discuss the following:

• Which formats work with scripts, and which ones do not
• The long-term drawbacks to using scripts
• Why it’s perfectly fine to use scripts when you’re first starting out (Jerod and Jonny did!) … but why your goal should be weaning yourself off needing scripts before too long
• What they mean when they say “use scripts as a tool, not a crutch”
• How Jerod and Jonny still make use of scripts to this day
• Why writing is an important preparation tool before you record, even if you’re not scripting exactly what you’re going to say

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post To Script or Not to Script (That Is the Question) appeared first on Copyblogger.

It’s no secret that Brian Clark is not a fan of Facebook when it comes to so-called “social media marketing.” He’s even less of a fan of those who think of it as a “website substitute.”

That said, Facebook groups are popular for their apparent ease of use. But is it a good idea to build a valuable business community on someone else’s property?

Today on Unemployable with Brian Clark, Brian will tackle that issue based on a listener question.

Plus, Brian answers another question about the credible use of affiliate offers as both a revenue source and valuable market research, and discusses an online/offline hybrid marketing strategy for real estate agents.

Listen to Unemployable with Brian Clark …

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post The Tyranny of Facebook appeared first on Copyblogger.

This is the third part of The Mainframe’s series on membership sites.

Hosts Tony Clark and Chris Garrett define the key parts and decisions involved in getting started with building a membership site that works.

In this episode:

• How memberships are built, starting with the minimum components you need in place in order to get started
• Which membership options could have a far bigger impact than you might think
• What you should automate in order to make your life easier while managing a membership program

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post The Minimum Viable Membership-Based Business appeared first on Copyblogger.

Demian Farnworth and Jerod Morris join The Missing Link for some real-time fun and expertise about content syndication on LinkedIn.

Sean Jackson and Mica Gadhia welcome two of their favorite people from Rainmaker Digital (formerly Copyblogger Media), Demian Farnworth and Jerod Morris. These excellent writers and content marketers share the ins and outs of content syndication and some real-time tricks of the trade to getting it done right on LinkedIn.

Learn from their experiences and definitely check out Gregory Ciotti’s 30-day experience going from 0 – 255,262 article views on LinkedIn; it’s amazing information you can read, understand, and learn from right now.

Join them to learn best practices for content syndication and how you’ll want to up your game right now.

Listen in to understand:

• Why consistency is so important
• What you can learn from Gregory Ciotti (incredible)
• The advantages of short articles
• Why you want to say a big Yes to re-syndication
• More expert writing tips
• One little-known trick for writing catchy headlines

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post So, Jesus and Wolverine Login to LinkedIn appeared first on Copyblogger.

Let’s do a little thought experiment for a minute.

Imagine a life without The Awl, The Huffington Post, the New York Times, Drudge Report, The Onion, The Toast, The Verge, or Vox.

Without Brain Pickings, Slate, FiveThirtyEight, Pitchfork, The Paris Review, Mental Floss, Vice, xoJane, ProPublica, Quartz, Marc and Angel, or Grantland.

You get the idea; I want you to imagine a life without your favorite online publications. A digital content ghost town. Got it?

Now my question for you is this: would your life be better or worse without these publications?

And be honest …

It’s a question you have to answer since a future without these publications is quite possible. Let me explain.

What’s going to kill your favorite publication?

Some are calling it a mere “reckoning,” while others like Nilay Patel at The Verge think, “It is going to be a bloodbath of independent media.”

The issue at hand? The rapid adoption of ad blocking software.

This parochial issue became a national — even international — one when Apple announced this summer that for their iOS 9 update “app developers will be able to create ad blocking software for Safari’s mobile browser.”

And, at the time I wrote this article, the number one downloaded app was for ad blocking.

But could ad blocking software really sink the publishing ship? Let’s look at some numbers.

According to an often-quoted Adobe and PageFair study, ad blocking software is estimated to cost publishers $22 billion in revenue during 2015.

But the startling stats don’t end there:

• 198-million active ad blocking users around the world
• Ad blocking grew by 41 percent in the last 12 months
• In the U.S., that number grew to 48 percent (45-million active users) in the 12 months leading up to June 2015
• In the UK, that number grew to 82 percent (12-million active users) in the 12 months leading up to June 2015

In other words, it’s only going to get worse.

I guess if I was a publisher and my revenue model was dependent upon ads, those numbers might keep me up at night and keep me near a bottle of Wild Turkey and Tums by day.

Particularly since the mobile market trend is on a ferocious upward swing. On MondayNote, Frédéric Filloux wrote:

The second trend is the rise of mobile surfing that accounts for half of pageviews in mature markets. And, in emerging countries, users leapfrog desktops and access the web en masse through mobile.

And I think it’s safe to say this growing group of mobile users will use ad blockers.

The problem with online ads

But why such a backlash against ads? Ads really aren’t that bad, are they? And isn’t there an implicit contract between publishers and readers that says you can view free content if you tolerate these ads?

That seems to be the case. On the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo writes, “Some publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content, we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads.”

But it’s not really that simple because ads disrupt the user experience.

Here’s something you must understand about the current nature of online ads: They are obtrusive, drain your device’s battery when transferring data, and significantly slow down page loads.

Let me show you what I see when using an ad blocking tool called Ghostery.

This is from programmer and writer Marco Arment:

As you can see, there is just one piece of ad software sitting on the site.

This is from The Awl:

There are 29 different types of ad software working behind the scenes on The Awl.

Finally, let’s look at the New York Times:

Forty-three different ones here — and the page continued to load after I snapped that shot.

This shouldn’t surprise us, Jean-Louis Gassée says on MondayNote:

You can’t blame the browser, it’s the way the system has evolved in the Web advertising race to the bottom. Back when physical newspapers were still vital, advertising space was limited and thus prices were well-behaved and constant. No such thing on the Web, where the ‘ad inventory’ tends to infinity. As a result, prices fall, sites need more ads to stay afloat, and they must consent to exploitative practices.

Here’s the funny thing: the current online ad model is based upon interruption. In fact, we’ve come full circle.

Instead of commercials interrupting our favorite television shows and telemarketers calling us during dinner time, videos expand and automatically start playing without warning and products we viewed just minutes ago are stalking us everywhere.

It’s like the advertising industry needs another lesson in permission marketing. Haven’t we learned anything? Clearly not.

If advertising is going to co-exist with readers and publishers, then at least, as John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote, “Advertising should have minimal effect on page load times and device battery life. Advertising should be respectful of the user’s time, attention, and battery life. The industry has gluttonously gone the other way.”

Now, some publishers have fought back by refusing to allow people who are using ad blockers to see their content. It’s been reported that The Washington Post has been directing users to either disable ad blockers or sign up for a subscription newsletter to access their content.

Others like The Atlantic and NFL display a banner that says some variation of: “We noticed that you’ve got ad blockers enabled. Please be aware that our site is best experienced with ad blockers turned off.”

As if turning on ad blocking software was a mistake. No. It was intentional.

We don’t need better ads — we need a better model

What’s interesting in this discussion is how people are suggesting that this will be good for publishers and advertisers because they’ll have to come up with better ads — ads that don’t interrupt our experiences and bloat our machines.

The sad thing about this is the small, limited thinking behind it.

Here’s Jeff Jarvis taking pro-ad-blocking journalist Charles Arthur to task on Twitter:

You see it when Nilay Patel says, “But taking money and attention away from the web means that the pace of web innovation will slow to a crawl.”

Or, as he says in another article, “That’s a recipe for stagnation, and stagnation is what we have. It’s leading powerful players like Apple and Facebook to create ersatz copies of the web inside their walled gardens, when what we really need is a more powerful, more robust web.”

But we don’t need better ads. We need a better revenue model. And we don’t have to wait long for these models to appear. They already exist.

Let’s explore five possibilities.

1. Subscriptions

Probably the most common revenue model after selling ads is selling subscriptions. Readers pay you a fee to consume your content.

Ben Thompson does it with Stratechery and Matter did it through a Kickstarter campaign/subscription model (before they were bought out by Medium).

But this model has its own problems.

According to this Reuters report, Casey Johnson reported in The Awl, “despite the rise of paywalls over the last few years, only eleven percent of respondents in the US and six percent in the UK say that they have paid for online news in any capacity.”

For instance, you see the influence this type of behavior has had on our favorite bloggers. The ones who are hanging up their cleats because selling ads or the subscription model are not paying the bills.

Figuring out how to monetize a popular blog seems to be the perennial challenge, doesn’t it? How do you make a living from a popular blog?

Dooce, Gigaom, and the food blogger The Amateur Gourmet had to close their doors or focus on more lucrative ventures.

2. Native ads

Native advertising is paid content that matches a publication’s editorial standards while meeting the audience’s expectations.

Furthermore, a native ad can’t be blocked. That’s because it’s viewed as content. It shows up in the publishers stream, typically labeled “sponsored content.”

But a native ad doesn’t eat up your battery life or slow down page load speed.

It’s a normal-sized file. And, if done well, it blends in with the rest of the publication’s content. With native ads, advertisers are back to having to entice readers to consume their content.

In fact, the demand for native advertising has grown so much, a lot of publishers have actually opened up in-house agencies to create these ads and fulfill the demand.

But native advertising also tends to require more resources to create, so it may be out of reach for smaller publications.

To learn more about native advertising opportunities, work your way through this list of resources:

• Copyblogger’s 2014 State of Native Advertising Report
• 5 Ways to Rankle an Old-School Journalist
• 12 Examples of Native Ads (And Why They Work)
• The 14 Keys to Writing Advertorials That Sell
• Is Native Advertising Even Profitable for Brands?
• Is Native Advertising Ethical? (It Depends On Who You Ask)
• Don’t Waste Your Time with Native Advertising

3. Affiliate sales

Next in line is affiliate marketing, one of the most reliable ways to earn an income online.

Maria Popova keeps the beloved Brain Pickings afloat through affiliate marketing. If done right, affiliate marketing is a tough model to beat.

The problem is, there’s a lot of bad (and unethical) advice out there on how to approach it, so here are three resources to help you get started:

• 5 Tips for Affiliate Marketing Beginners
• Affiliate Programs: Why You Should Build a “Second Audience” for Your Business
• Building Your Evergreen Sales Machine

4. Membership sites

Next is the membership site as revenue model. It’s really more than just a private club; it’s an experience.

And the experience that any smart marketer must create is powered by content, first and foremost, because that’s what people are looking for. But what they really crave is something much deeper and meaningful.

That’s exactly why membership truly has its privileges — for both you and your prospects, customers, and clients.

Here are three podcast episodes that will help you understand membership sites and what you need to build one:

• Why You Need a Membership Site
• The Key Types of Membership Sites for Building Your Digital Business
• Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site

5. Build a business around it

Finally, build a business around your publication. That’s what we’ve done here at Rainmaker Digital with the Copyblogger blog.

The content you read here on the blog comes from salaries paid through the sales of our own products — not ads.

And the types of products and services you can create are endless. You could:

• Build software your audience needs.
• Turn your content into books.
• Create training courses to help your audience meet their goals.
• Become a consultant.

The writer still runs the show

Ad blocking isn’t going to end great writing.

Sure, some publications will fail to adapt and sadly die.

But as journalist Charles Arthur noted, “Good journalism, and worthwhile sites, will survive. Or good journalists will.”

In other words, the writer still runs the show. But if you run a publication and want it to thrive, you are going to have to find a way to monetize it without ads.

Explore the different monetization ideas in this article, and then join the discussion on LinkedIn …

About the author

Demian Farnworth

Demian Farnworth is Chief Content Writer for Rainmaker Digital. Subscribe to his podcast Rough Draft. 

The post Why the Ad Blocking Panic Shouldn’t Scare Smart Publishers appeared first on Copyblogger.

Speaker, coach, and author Matthew Kimberley of How to Get a Grip talks with Youpreneur.FM host Chris Ducker about selling, marketing, and the critical importance of speaking your audience’s language.

Why do so many small business owners struggle with sales? Chris invited his good friend and fellow Brit Matthew Kimberley to share his thoughts on the subject in today’s podcast.

Matthew is a masterful salesman, a renowned author of the self-help book How to Get a Grip, and the head of the Book Yourself Solid coaches training program.

On this show, Matthew shares his candid and often hilarious anecdotes on how to be more confident when making a sales pitch (and why it matters), two ways to build your sales muscle, and whether sales people are born or made.

There’s a lot of deep and beneficial insights from Matthew and Chris in this episode of The Youpreneur.FM Podcast, so sit back, grab your favorite beverage, and listen in!

Essential Learning Points From This Episode:

• Why we must understand our audience
• When do people need to be told what to do?
• Where do 90 percent of business problems stem from?
• Why repetition is so important to being great at sales
• What is Kimberley’s kid’s kidney concept, and how does it help sales?
• Much, much more!

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post Why (and How) Selling Ourselves Makes a Difference, with Matthew Kimberley appeared first on Copyblogger.

Creating a remarkable experience for an audience starts with authenticity, which should never be confused with transparency.

In this week’s episode of The Lede, Jerod Morris and Demian Farnworth (Hey! They’re back together again!) tackle the topic of authenticity to give you a better understanding of how to create an authentic connection with your audience, no matter what type of content you’re creating.

Jerod has discussed authenticity a lot in relation to podcasts. He wanted to hear Demian’s thoughts on how developing an authentic connection may differ depending on the medium.

Among the topics discussed:

• Why authenticity is one of the essential elements of a remarkable audience experience
• How authenticity differs (or does it?) between audio and written content
• What Erika Napoletano taught Demian about being authentic
• Why Erika’s version of authenticity and your version are surely different

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post Revisiting Authenticity: What It Is, What It’s Not, and Why It Matters appeared first on Copyblogger.

Today’s guest on Hack the Entrepreneur is the Founder, Publisher, and CEO of Momtrends.com. She left her role as an executive at Ralph Lauren to launch the Momtrends blog in 2007.

Momtrends has grown massively since then and is now a boutique media brand, which provides moms with the latest news on all things trendy and cool. It has an ever-growing mom community with more than 150,000 visitors to the site and its social media channels each month.

On top of this (and with the help of her team), she has created a successful events business that connects top-tier brands with influential bloggers, and she has hosted nearly 100 events so far.

Now, let’s hack …

Nicole Feliciano.

In this 35-minute episode of Hack the Entrepreneur, host Jon Nastor and Nicole Feliciano discuss:

• The pros of being a connector of people
• Packaging things in a way that’s unique to your brand
• Knowing what you’re not good at and letting better people handle it
• Failing quickly, picking yourself up, and working harder the next time

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post The Extraordinary Value of Sharing and Being a Connector appeared first on Copyblogger.

Back in 2004, the heat was on for me and my little marketing and design studio.

In those days, I was a single mom with a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old, and I desperately needed my business to produce.

And by that, I mean produce profit. I needed money, honey — to support my family, run my household, and build my business.

I knew it was time to ramp up my efforts. My business was successful, but it was time to take it to another level.

Around that time, I started hearing about mastermind groups.

And now, when I look back, I recognize that joining a mastermind group profoundly changed my business for the better, especially because of one specific exercise these groups do.

That’s what I’m going to share today. Because earlier this month, we began doing something similar inside one of our communities at Rainmaker Digital.

Mastermind groups around every corner

You know that thing that happens when you’re interested in something and all of the sudden you start seeing mentions of it everywhere?

It’s called frequency illusion, and that’s what happened to me with mastermind groups. Everywhere I looked, I saw mentions of them.

But every mastermind group I found met in person, either early in the morning or later in the evening. And those were both times of the day when I had to be on Mom Duty. Attending a meeting outside the home wasn’t an option.

And yet, I was convinced that a mastermind group was what I needed. I knew I would benefit from the experience and viewpoints of other business owners, and it would help me position my business where it needed to be.

So, I continued to search and finally found a “virtual” mastermind group that met by phone. I applied, was accepted, and prepared myself for our first meeting.

Group therapy for my business?

I was a little nervous going into the first meeting. Was it going to be like a confessional? More like group therapy? Would I feel comfortable talking to these strangers about my business?

Every scenario I imagined had some level of discomfort baked in.

At the start of the meeting, the group leader explained that we would take turns sitting in the “hot seat” talking about our businesses.

We’d start by reporting successes — what had gone well in the past month. Then we’d move to sharing our biggest challenges — what we needed help with. The group would listen and contribute ideas to help the person in the hot seat.

Here’s where I was wrong

This is embarrassing to admit, but here’s what I thought:

“When it’s someone else’s turn, I’ll listen politely, provide the best feedback I can, and count the minutes until it’s my turn. And when it’s my turn, I’ll get a lot out of sharing my successes and challenges, and hearing the feedback from the group. The real value will come from taking my turn in the hot seat.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I learned a lesson that day and relearned it every single time we met as a group.

All the different businesses that exist in the world share many common problems.

When I look back on my mastermind meetings, I got as much or more from listening to other business owners talk about their triumphs and tragedies as I did when I shared my own.

Here’s what happened:

• The mindset tips shared with the chiropractor? I was able to use them to improve my own mindset.
• The negotiation techniques offered to the professional organizer? I used those the next time I needed to negotiate something.
• The website advice that went out to the voice coach? It made me look at my own site in a new light.

The funny thing about calling your time in the spotlight a “hot seat” is that the name is only partly accurate.

Instead of feeling like you’re under interrogation, you feel like you’re being warmly embraced by a community of professionals who support and encourage your efforts.

Maybe they should be called “warm seats.”

New: Authority Business Coaching calls

Last month, we began offering Authority Business Coaching calls inside our private site for advanced content marketing training.

We’ve brought a taste of this “warm seat” style of education to Authority, and the results so far have been pretty amazing.

The main challenge our first guest brought to the session was a need to improve cash flow in his business.

Here’s what we heard from our webinar attendees:

Money is so hard! And talking about it is even harder. This conversation is great.

And this:

I absolutely relate to this conversation. This is a great session.

And from the person sitting in the hot seat? Here’s what he said after it was over:

The session reinforced my ideas about what needs to happen, but it also gave me a sense of direction and more clarity. I feel a bit overwhelmed at times, and the coaching call left me with a sense of ‘I can do this.’

As a member, I think it is a highly appealing format for a show. It helps build a sense of community, while at the same time having a chance to be informative and valuable. All of us are in different stages of growth and success, but the problems we face are very similar.

Exactly. The problems we face are very similar.

And you’ll find that you can learn a tremendous amount by listening and sharing with people who own businesses that are quite different from yours.

About the author

Pamela Wilson

Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital. Follow her on Twitter, see her Copyblogger images on Instagram, and find more from her at BigBrandSystem.com.

The post Why a Hot Seat Is Shockingly Good for Business appeared first on Copyblogger.

Author and Fast Company Editor Joe Berkowitz stopped by The Writer Files this week. His latest, a humor book titled You Blew It!: An Awkward Look at the Many Ways in Which You’ve Already Ruined Your Life, lands this October. He took a break from his busy schedule to rap with host Kelton Reid about how he survives the harried life of a big city journalist.

In addition to his work for Fast Company, Joe’s writing has been featured in The Awl, Salon, The Village Voice, Vulture, RollingStone.com, GQ.com, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and many others.

For a writer who works on breakneck deadlines, and almost never gets a break from the writing life, he has some pretty solid advice for keeping the cursor moving.

Join Kelton and Joe for this two-part interview.

In Part One of the file, host Kelton Reid and Joe Berkowitz discuss:

• How a bad breakup can boost your productivity
• When to throw out the rule “All Killer, No Filler”
• How to build your writing endurance
• Don Draper’s advice for beating writer’s block
• How making lists can help your head
• The magical power of 4:00 a.m. dementia

About the author

Rainmaker.FM

Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.

The post How Joe Berkowitz (Journalist and Fast Company Editor) Writes: Part One appeared first on Copyblogger.

If you want to move faster and get more things done on your work, here are 3 tips that might help you:

1. Consider Get a Virtual Assistant

Learning to delegate stuff is one of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur or business man. A virtual assistant can handle most of your trivial and daily tasks, such as answering to emails, scheduling meetings, and even more shopisticated stuff such as doing keyword research and tracking. If you are not sure where to get one, simply post the job description on Elance.com and I am sure you’ll get dozens of qualified applications.

2. Do Online Meetings When Possible

When you are signing or negotiating a big contract, meeting face to face with the other party might be a good idea. For most other situations, however, doing an online meeting will be just as efficient as meeting face to face, but it will save everyone involved a lot of time and money. Online meeting services are pretty sophisticated these days, meaning that you should be able to setup your online meeting in a matter of minutes. If you want a recommendation, check out ClickMeeting.com, as their price is reasonable and you’ll get the complete set of features.

3. Use Your Commute Efficiently

Most people spend quite a lot of time on their cars or on public transportation. We are talking about hundreds of hours every year. What if instead of just listening to music or sleeping you used that time to do something useful? One of the best tricks I learned over the years is to listen to audio books. By doing that on my commutes I tripled the amount of books I read every year. Audible.com is by far the best place to get your audio books.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

Where traditional marketing and planning starts with a message for the target audience, social media begins about what the consumer and your audience is saying about your brand. This stands in contrast to prescribing and directing a message with the intention to persuade people and drive conversion. Taken together, listening, collaboration and measuring creates the overall basis for the highest required conversions for a blog.

Below are three concepts that you should include in your social business program. Have a look:

1. Listening and responding intelligently

It’s one of the measurable connection between you and your marketplace, a direct link to your customer. Listening is a core skill of any communication process. right? listening to what the user is actually saying and measuring both the subject and the source, will enable you to join the sensible conversations.

Many bloggers believe that process of listening should be built around paying attention to the conversation and then responding on the basis of strategy and measurement. Listening is important to understand what to do and why you should do that on web. Integrating a listening program in your social media can do wonders because it will provide the intelligence you need to put blog conversations to work.

For example using social share buttons for your blog posts enable content sharing. This encourages engagement on your blog. Reviews, comments, recommendations are the first things to display to a customer in a marketplace. These are important because it precisely informs the consumer how to make smarter choice before buying a product or consuming a piece of information.

Creating a baseline: There are generally no metrics to answer questions like “How much conversion one should expect?” or “How many negative posts are bad?” Therefore, it’s always recommended to establish your own baseline, and build your social strategy out of that.

Finding your influencers: Diving deep into the conversations to find out who all are participating in a conversation is important to find out what is actually being said. For example, in PR you connect with media persons, journalists, analysts and so on because these are the people sitting on the entry points to launch you to a bigger and wider audience. The most challenging aspect is that literally anyone can be an influencer.

2. Encouraging collaboration everywhere

collaborative activities always grabs the top spot in an engagement process. Moving your customers and readers is simple a “must do” in your marketing plan. A basic structure that you should follow to drive engagement to your blog is:

1. Defining objectives
2. Listening
3. Organizing
4. Engaging and
5. Measuring

Being an active part of any conversation is all about telling that you are part of a larger community, and telling that you appreciate it. This level of engagement will itself bring in higher levels of loyal engagement. People in a community truly values a sense of belonging and promoting that can give you all the fruits of social media in one plate.

No matter through what social network you are connected with people, all matters is they really want to know what is happening around a brand. On Facebook, people are sharing more personal stuff than ever before, which clearly states that people are in a need of personalised and shareable content.

3. Measuring social media

The final thing you should do is measuring your efforts over social media for your business. It’s important because it is the key to understand how effective your marketing strategy is and can be. Social media today can be and should be measured without fail.

Calculating your reach as a blogger, the number of comments on a post or how many times people shared your content can be easily obtained. Making measurement an important part of your social business plan is “must do”

When measuring your blog’s analytics’s you’ll encounter data in an unstructured way. Social media analytics tools provides the much needed thrust to sort out this unstructured data.

Linking social analytics with business analytics

It’s always recommended and very important to connect your social analytics with business analytics. Blog posts, comments, video posts tend to share what happened when a brand was being measured in terms of social media engagement. These things will help you create a better social media strategy. Also, they can be used as guide to respond to a negative comment. Also, a social media platform can be used as a feedback system which can collect comments to keep your blog on track.

It’s simple. You do it one way, the people will respond in one way. You do it in a different way, the people will respond it in a different way.

Over to you

Do you agree that the feedback loop helps a brand in setting up a strong measurement and testing application to build a business? Feel free to give suggestions in the comments section below.

Akshay Chugh is the co-founder of Posterguy.in, a lifestyle brand powered by artists across India.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

This may be overwhelming, especially if you are a one man show, but like it or not this is the only way you are going to sustain a position in the market and with time you will obtain a great amount of traffic on your blog.

In this post today, I am going to discuss a few ideas that are important for new bloggers to consider as important. Number 1 is important, but it is not the only thing bloggers should focus on. All of these ideas should be marked in your to-do list as “High Priority.”

1. Relationship Building
Building relationships is as important as writing a quality piece on your blog and this is because without it you might not be able to promote your content and get the word out from others.

When I started a blog three years back, the first thing I did was build relationships within in the industry and that helps me with following things:

-It helps me get my content out to a wider audience when people I was connected with shared my content with others in their circle.
-I mostly build relationships with influencers within my industry; they give me honest feedback about the content quality I put up on my blog. This helps me get better at content quality.
-They introduce me to others within the community and, slowly and gradually, I was able to make a circle of peers and friends who help me get extra traffic and opportunities to build links, which helps me organically.

If you need to see consistent traffic coming in on your blog and want your content to pull readers naturally, the idea is to build strong relationships with other fellow bloggers within your industry; comment on their blog, participate in social chats, forums, promote their content and you will see the magic start to happen almost automatically.

2. Writing Quality Content on a Consistent Basis

Writing quality content is important and I am so glad that many bloggers are actually doing this, but this is something you need to know as a professional blogger; you need to write quality content on a consistent basis. There is no short cut to it!

If you are going to write quality content once a month and the rest of your posts are average, readers might leave you as there are more choices available than you can imagine. Checkout Biz Sugar or Inbound.org, you will have an idea of how many blogs update amazing content on a regular basis.

In order to stay ahead of the crowd, you need to write quality content that should be posted on a consistent basis.

3. Organization is the key

Blogging is lot of work and, if you are not going to be organized, you probably will end up frustrated and your blog will be affected negatively. The idea is to organize and schedule everything a month prior at least. Here is a post that tells you how you can organize and manage blog content and calendars.

Once you are done, you can schedule your post through social media sharing and subscribers email accordingly. This will help you get more done in less time without getting frustrated.

4. Distribution is very important

This is an extension of point one. As discussed above, you need a wider audience on your blog and for this you need to build relationships with others within your niche. There are other options that you can use to attract an audience to your blog, which includes outreaching to like-minded people, sharing your post on social media platforms, using paid social media to attract target audience, submitting your content to content communities and more.

Once you do that efficiently, chances are you will see a consistent increase in traffic and organic rankings for your blog.

Important: It’s always important to look into your niche and see what social networks are working well for you and act accordingly. For instance, for women’s products Instagram and Pinterest might work well, whereas for digital marketing the powerful social media platforms will be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

5. The Technical SEO

This is the one point that most people do not discuss, but for any website (commercial or blog) is very important. If you have your page correctly setup, chances are you will be more likely to rank better in search engines for your long tail key phrases.
Long tail key phrases are important, especially for blogs, for two reasons:

-It’s easier to rank for long tail key phrases and, due to less competition, you usually stay on the first page for a longer period of time and get to enjoy consistent traffic on the blog.
-Other bloggers, when finding quality sources, usually search for long tail key phrases which allow you to get a link naturally to your website.

If you are using blogging platforms like WordPress, there will be lot of plugins that can help you make your life easier from the SEO stand point. We are using plugins like Yoast SEO, Yoast Google analytics and sociable on our company blog and these have cut down lot of our manual work.

There are lots of other things that you should know and consider as important as a beginner level blogger, but the above discussed ideas are the few most important items that you should have in your list. Are you seeing tracking with your blogging? Share your blogging secrets with us in the comment section.

Moosa Hemani is a search marketing consultant. He shares his thoughts and experiences on his blog setalks.com. Follow him on twitter (@mmhemani) to get in touch with him.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

Making sales is the ultimate goal of any business, but if you’re not tracking where your leads and sales come from you’re missing a big opportunity. If you can find out from that new customer exactly what led them to you, you can proactively tailor your marketing strategy to do more of what’s been proven to work.

By focusing more on data analysis and measuring your marketing efforts, you’ll be able allocate your marketing budget based on true performance – spending more on what works and less on what doesn’t – in order to improve the quantity and quality of your sales leads.

Where do leads come from?

Inbound leads will mostly come to you via telephone or website visits, but there are many sources that drive customers to make that original contact.

To start evaluating the source of leads it’s common to code them, which allows you to track your marketing and PR activity more effectively. Inbound leads are a direct result of your promotional efforts and without tracking your inbound leads, you won’t be able to tell which source has performed best.

Monitoring your inbound leads is simple. In this article we look at five sources you can track and how to do it.

1. The online search journey

Customers begin the decision-making journey long before they ever arrive with you, and you can effectively track this path to purchase by monitoring the keywords and phrases customers are using.

Depending on where they are in the search journey, the terms customers use will differ. Customers mostly begin searching with a wide net using broad search terms, and gradually become more specific as they refine what they’re looking for.

By evaluating the search journey paths from your marketing reports you can understand which keywords are most relevant to your business and how you can be using them more effectively.

2. Page tracking

Page tracking allows you to monitor which lead sources have directly resulted in an action being performed on your website, such as entering contact details or making an enquiry.

By placing code on a landing page that only reveals itself once the user has completed a business-valuable action (submitting contact details; making payment, and so on), you can then determine your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

Google Analytics Acquisition Reports is a great tool for tracking the keywords and channels that are most valuable to your business, allowing you to focus your marketing efforts on the sources that are driving ROI.

3. Click tracking

One step up from page tracking is click tracking, or event tracking. This allows you to measure actions on your site that don’t lead to specific pages, such as watching an embedded video.

Click tracking, like page tracking, allows you to measure the journey users take before performing your chosen actions, showing where they came from and which search terms they used. This can be done using Google Analytics Tracking Codes, by installing codes on the pages you want to monitor.

By identifying which search terms drove positive actions on your site, you can refine your content strategy to convert more customers.

4. E-Commerce CPA

If you’re an e-commerce business, you can embed an e-commerce tracking code to monitor how customers are interacting with your products online. This way, you can see exactly what it’s costing you to make each sale and which traffic and keyword sources led the sale in the first place. Using Google Analytics, you can determine what your revenue is per traffic source and which keywords are the most valuable to your business.

Tracking CPA in this way allows you to refine your marketing strategy to bring cost down and adjust your prices to increase your profit margin.

5. Call tracking

All this online tracking is well and good, I hear you say, but what about the leads that don’t come through your website? Although you’re likely to see far fewer leads offline than online, the sales leads you get via phone are often the most valuable for your business.

Once upon a time, the only real method for tracking telephone leads was to ask customers when they called in where they heard about the business. Nowadays, the technology we have to track offline leads is much more sophisticated.

Businesses such as Mediahawk have created powerful call tracking software that every self-respecting marketer makes use of, allowing businesses not only to track offline traffic sources but to provide valuable data on each call.

Conclusion

By tracking your sales leads effectively from source to sale you get a comprehensive picture of how your marketing spend is driving performance, allowing you to refine your marketing strategy in line with your results. In short, effectively measuring your sales leads will allow you to drive increased ROI, cut unnecessary spend on underperforming channels and ultimately, make more sales. And that’s the ultimate goal of any business, right?

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

After spending a lot of time combing through many articles on content marketing—where new info is released daily—we decided to officially launch our own newsletter, Content Weekly. Take a minute to subscribe now and let us know what you think!

Here’s a few key tidbits we’ve picked up from mashing up several articles in our heads:

1. Document Your Strategy – Seems pretty basic, right? It’s hard to know what’s working well if you’re constantly shooting from the hip. Make sure your efforts support your business goals, which can vary based on your industry, otherwise it’s all just a waste of time.

2. Measure and Track ROI – Of course this is not always cut and dry. Content marketing is not meant to have an immediate impact on sales, it’s more about building trust with customers. Metrics such as web traffic, social interactions, and other metrics are common forms of measurement, but are they really impacting your business over time? Although content marketing is a long term strategy, over time you should be able to see an uptick in qualified leads and sales. Your tactics ultimately need to make an impact, or it’s time to tweak your strategy.

3. Use Infographics – This just makes sense. Humans tend to digest information better in graphical form, even information that seems kinda dry on the surface. Need some inspiration? Check out this collection of the best infographics from Hubspot.

4. Distribution of Your Content – it can take some trial and error to determine what works best for you. LinkedIn is typically the most popular (and successful) option for B2B, while Facebook or Pinterest are best for B2C. And many ad paid search and sponsored posts to the mix as well. More the likely its gonna take a mix of free and paid methods to get your message out there.

5. Produce Quality Content that Aligns with Your Goals – the popularity of content marketing breeds the mediocrity of content. Focus your efforts more on quality than sticking to a strict rule of “must create one piece of content per day” rule.

6. Get Contributors With Multiple Perspectives – ok, so I get it that you’re not comfortable with everyone writing your next rad article. But chances are they either have ideas on what would generate interest, or they can give you a good draft to work with. So talk to product development, the sales team, your IT department and so on. Even if you need to sit down and conduct an informal interview, a different perspective can be very refreshing.

Nobody ever said content marketing is easy…but your customers like reading stories, or learning more about topics that help them become more educated on an important subject. It’s well worth the time and extra effort in the long run.

With all that in mind, we came up with a brilliant idea for blog promotion (coming soon on that, just be patient)! But first things first….we started a handy little newsletter to help ourselves and our own networks. So, checkout the free Content Weekly newsletter, a roundup of the best tips and tools for content marketing and the art of blog writing. New resources surface daily, so don’t miss the best ones by subscribing to Content Weekly.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

A recent United flight apparently left one honeymooning couple with a commemorative gift for no fee — in the form of a bag of puke.

Janet Masters and her husband were flying to Hawaii when they discovered that a used barf bag was nestled beneath a blanket in their seat-back pocket. Clearly, some passenger thought it would be a good idea to hide his or her bodily fluid without telling a flight attendant. As one does.

When Masters alerted the flight attendant and attempted to hand over the unwanted contraband, the bag broke open, and its contents spilled out on the couple Read more...

Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has a biographical documentary coming out soon, and it actually looks pretty good.

But Ronaldo's chief rival — soccer demigod Lionel Messi — is not impressed. At least, if you believe the hilarious spoof cut together at the top of this post

The fake reaction video is so perfect because many soccer fans see no compromise when it comes to Messi and Ronaldo. You're for one and against the other; simply acknowledging both as splendid talents who make being a fan of the beautiful game that much more joyful seems all but impossible for many Read more...

The cast of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, the final installment in the series, is pretty comfortable with each other.

Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson joined MTV's Josh Horowitz for an outdoorsy game of "Truth or Dare" and a round of questions from online fans. It's pretty wholesome and cute until J.Law talks about puking up an ICEE. She also proves that she's a champ at stuffing marshmallows into her mouth

We're just glad to know that the person voted "America's Sexiest Woman" last year is not above a "that's what she said" joke.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that "sensible steps" to protect communities from gun violence are a "top priority" for President Obama, after a shooting at a community college in southwestern Oregon.

Gun control, Earnest said, has "not at all been lowered on the priority scale" for the White House, but he added that the president is "quite realistic that we'll need to see a fundamental change in terms of the way the American people communicate this priority to Congress before we'll see a different outcome in the legislative process."

When two MLB announcers noticed a group of girls taking a million selfies in the stadium of an Arizona Diamondbacks game, they couldn't help but laugh at the situation.

Despite paying money for tickets to a baseball game, these ladies didn't seem concerned at all about what was happening on the field. Instead, they chose to focus on documenting every moment of their time at the stadium.

Your browser does not support iframes.

The announcers, though bemused at the bevy of cell phones, were clearly a bit exasperated with such a millennial display, judging from some of their comments: Read more...

Toshi Davidson, one of Taylor Swift's backup dancers for her 1989 tour, posted a photo with his 13-month-old nephew, Ayden, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer

He shared a link to a GoFundMe page for Ayden's treatment, and because Taylor Swift sees all, the pop star sprung into fairy godmother mode.

My youngest Nephew Ayden "Lil Toshi" only 13 months old has been diagnosed with Cancer... Keep him in your prayers please... They are still running test to find out the stage and how far it has spread...GoFundMe link in Bio...if you want to donate ... all I ask is for you to pray for him...Value the life you have and live it... Spread Love #helpbabyAydenbeatcancer #lilToshi #fuckcancer #family #love #nephew #life #live #cancer

A photo posted by TOSHI Twinn CrudeBoi (@toshi_ateamlv) on Sep 29, 2015 at 10:13pm PDT Read more...

Listen up teen girls — actually listen up all girls, of any age.

Michelle Obama dropped some major life advice Tuesday at Glamour's "The Power of an Educated Girl" event in Harlem, New York City. She told girls to "compete with the boy," nay "beat the boys."

"There is no boy, at this age, cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting an education," Obama added. “If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the President of the United States."

Then she dropped the mic (kind of). All hail, FLOTUS

This article is part of SWOT Team, a series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.

It's a fact: Online personalization is still pretty imperfect. Despite all the data that companies have at their disposal, the biggest players in the space are still struggling to find the right algorithm to reach their customers in meaningful ways. The result is a growing disconnect between consumers and the companies they love

The ability to offer a personalized experience online is quickly becoming a requirement for companies to stay relevant, which means they have an important challenge to overcome: making sense of customer data. While data is readily available, it's often siloed within different marketing technologies or across different marketing teams within an organization. This creates a disjointed image of the customer and makes it impossible to draw accurate conclusions. The result is an equally disjointed customer experience. Read more...

Young Americans' incomes are depressed, their retirement nest eggs are microscopic, and their rate of employment is weak. The trend lines aren't promising, either, which likely explains why there's no shortage of pessimism out there. In a Bloomberg poll of Americans age 18 to 35 — the millennial generation — 47% said they do not expect their cohort to live better than their parents. For one thing, it's hard to imagine outdoing your parents if you're still sleeping under their roof. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 15% of people age 25 to 34 were living with their parents last year, up from 10% 30 years earlier. Read more...

Clearly, this couple's love is pure dynamite. Unfortunately, the TSA is not cool with such explosive puns.

While traveling through the Denver International Airport on Sept. 22, TSA had to confiscate a bride and groom's stash of wedding favors from their checked bags, which looked like tiny barrels of TNT, complete with little, red, wax fuses.

#TSATravelTips - Be mindful of what you’re traveling with and what it might appear as on an X-ray monitor. These novelty bottles of bath salts topped with wax-covered lids and fuses were discovered in a checked bag at the Denver International Airport (DEN) and resulted in a 20-minute evacuation while bomb specialists cleared the items. What looked like possible explosives were just wedding souvenirs. The bride and groom’s names both start with "T"; thus "TNT.”

A photo posted by TSA (@tsa) on Sep 30, 2015 at 5:19pm PDT Read more...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is not too pleased with the U.N., a point he made abundantly clear during a speech to the General Assembly on Thursday.

Netanyahu, affectionately known to his fellow Israelis as Bibi, addressed diplomats on the controversial nuclear de-escalation deal recently signed by Iran and six world powers — the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany.

He slammed the "utter silence, deafening silence" when it came to defending Israel from Iranian threats. And then he began the stare down. Read more...

This guy just isn't having the best luck

Over the course of a Yankees game, he manages to not only flub up two foul ball catches, but also misses an underhand pity-throw from the ball boy

Your browser does not support iframes.

Did his excitement get in the way of his nimble fingers? Is he on the most embarrassing first date ever? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?

Regardless, we're glad this dude was eventually able to take a foul ball home — after all those attempts, he definitely earned it

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. Read more...

You may already have heard that this is Banned Books Week, a venerable event established 33 years ago by the American Library Association (ALA). Like me, you may have walked into your local bookstore and seen a display of "banned books," a display designed to stoke indignation and righteous First Amendment fury

My goodness, I said to myself as I walked up to the display, they banned Where's Waldo? What's the world coming to?

Upon closer inspection, and a little bit of Googling, it turns out many of these banned books were merely "challenged" — which means one or two ignorant and/or censorious parents filed a complaint with their local school or library about some innocent tome Read more...

Oct. 1 is World Ballet Day — a day to celebrate some of the most skilled and graceful dancers on the planet.

On Thursday five of the world’s leading ballet companies are livestreaming behind-the-scenes in the studios, on tour and during performances. The streaming provides viewers an inside look at professional ballet companies around the world Read more...

Move over, Pluto. It's Charon's time to shine

New photos — taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft when it made its close flyby of Pluto on July 14 — reveal the dwarf planet's largest moon Charon as it has never been seen before

Scientists expected to find a long-dead world pocked with craters, but what they found was wildly different.

The moon appears to have been shaped by a "surprisingly complex and violent history," NASA said in a press release

Charon's surface plays host to mountains, a red north pole and a host of other geological features including a canyon more than 1,000 miles wide that stretches across the moon's Pluto-facing side, and perhaps along the far-side of the world, NASA said Read more...

Oklahoma's attorney general on Thursday asked a court to delay all scheduled executions while the state reviews how it received the wrong drug as it prepared to lethally inject an inmate.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt said Oklahoma needed time to sort out why its Department of Corrections received a shipment of potassium acetate rather than potassium chloride for Richard Glossip's execution that was to occur Wednesday

“The state owes it to the people of Oklahoma to ensure that, on their behalf, it can properly and lawfully administer the sentence of death imposed by juries for the most heinous crimes," he said in a statement on his website. Read more...

There was that time last season when designer Rick Owens reportedly slapped a model across the face backstage after the latter held up a sign "Please Kill Angela Merkel" while walking the runway. Then there were the penis holes

But none compared to Owens' spring/summer 2016 show in Paris Thursday, when models wore other models down the catwalk

Apparently the show's theme was "women supporting women," with each of the models presenting the brand's latest looks with other models strapped onto them. Some were knapsacks, others backpacks. Others seemed like complete fleshy sheaths, with models' heads placed between women's crotches Read more...

According to The New York Times, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to make a top-secret appearance on Saturday Night Live's 41st season premiere

The episode will be hosted by Miley Cyrus, who will also be the night's musical guest. Barring any last minute scheduling conflicts, Clinton will reportedly appear alongside current SNL cast member Kate McKinnon, who took over as Saturday Night Live's resident Hillary impersonator last season. (She replaced Vanessa Bayer, who in turn replaced Amy Poehler.)

Grief may be a universal experience, but each person grapples with loss in their own unique way.

As a psychologist specializing in women's reproductive health, Dr. Jessica Zucker knows this adage well. But it suddenly became deeply physically and emotionally personal when, at four months pregnant, she miscarried in 2012

The word miscarriage — which we often use vaguely to avoid heartbreaking details — can barely describe what Zucker endured: Her daughter slid out of her womb at home and she began hemorrhaging

"Sugar, We're Going Down" may have been your favorite pop/punk song of the early aughts (duh), but could you ever understand any of the words?

Us either

Luckily, we now have this big band-style cover from Postmodern Jukebox, which, aside from being a swingin' earworm, lets us know that Patrick Stump was singing about a "notch" in his bedpost, not "nuts."

Pregnancy announcements come in many forms, but the old "bun in the oven" routine is a classic that always delivers a great reaction

According to the YouTube description, the expecting mom in the clip has sadly already had four miscarriages and one stillborn child, so she and her significant other were not expecting to have a child

"We had given up on the idea of having babies of our own, especially at our age," she wrote on YouTube.

But as she reveals in the video to the speechless father-to-be, the woman is already 19 weeks pregnant. Amazed, the man asks the woman to come hug her, but she wasn't done yet. Read more...

A hotel in Switzerland is capitalizing on our collective space craze

The Grand Kameha Zürich hotel is offering guests the opportunity to stay in a space suite — a space station-inspired accommodation with an elaborate astronaut motif — for $2,000 a night

German artist Michael Najjar designed the suite for the Grand Kameha.

Najjar hopes to be the first contemporary artist in space — he has gone through cosmonaut training in Russia, spending the past three years preparing to become one of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Pioneer Astronauts. Read more...

This might surprise you, but New York City's most Shazamed song of the summer wasn't by the Weeknd or Omi.

According to a brand new interactive map from the music company, "No Me Llamas" by Gocho El Lapiz De PLatino was the most Shazamed song by city folks this summer. That track was followed by "Borro Cassette" by Maluma and "Harder Than Them" by Maino

Rappers Drake, J. Cole and Tory Lanez also landed on the list

A screenshot of Shazam's map for New York City.

All along the East Coast, some songs made multiple appearances, like the sleeper cult hit "Cha Cha" by D.R.A.M., "White Iverson" by Post Malone and "Back Up" by Dej Loaf, featuring Big Sean Read more...

A private company aiming for the moon now has a contract for a rocket ride to the lunar surface

The spaceflight company Moon Express penned an approximately $30 million deal with Rocket Lab for five potential moon shots slated to begin in 2017. The new deal might make them the first company to land a probe successfully on the moon.

Moon Express now has two flights on the books with Rocket Lab for 2017. Both of those launches will aim to land the company's MX-1 lander on the lunar surface. The other three launches covered by the contract don't have specified dates yet. Read more...

After months of haggling over the details, a bipartisan coalition of senators finally unveiled landmark legislation that's aimed at refurbishing parts of the U.S. criminal justice system

The senators repeatedly said at a Thursday press conference that none of them got everything they wanted, and many criminal justice reform activists are sure to keep pressing for more comprehensive changes. But, should the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act become law, it will undoubtedly begin to shift the federal criminal justice system away from policies such as mandatory minimum sentences

Destiny is habit-forming, and The Taken King makes it moreso. I won't cheapen the word "addiction" by applying it here, but the most heavily invested players can definitely speak to the withdrawal-like symptoms of anger and mild depression that spring up when they fail at one of the game's time-limited, high-reward challenges.

I know this because I'm one of those fans. 700 hours invested. Three characters (plus a fourth on a separate console). All since Destiny launched in Sept. 2014. If you don't know anything at all about the game, this is a good place to start.

Starbucks is upping their game with these 20 new flavors of fall-filled coffee. Read more...

UPDATED: 6:35 p.m. ET

3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:
The attorney general said 13 were dead, though the sheriff's department wouldn't confirm a precise number of victims.
The lone shooter, a 20-year-old male, was killed in a shootout with police.
Umpqua Community College is attended by nearly 3,000 students.

Authorities are responding to reports of a mass shooting Thursday afternoon at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, roughly 70 miles south of Eugene

The 20-year-old lone male gunman who carried out the attack was killed after exchanging gunfire with police according to Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, who briefed the press on Thursday afternoon. While he said there were confirmed fatalities and injuries, he would not elaborate on numbers. Read more...

Street Fighter's iconic, burly, barely clothed Russian wrestler is once again returning to battle.

Zangief is the latest character announced for Street Fighter V, and the retooled version of the fighting game has given him some new moves. While some of the iconic grappler's moves look familiar, it seems his battle style has been reformatted for the game's new V-Skill and V-Trigger system.

Zangief's V-Skill, which is activated by hitting the two medium attack buttons, allows him to ignore an attack and press against the other player. If players hold the buttons, Iron Muscle will make Zangief walk forward; if he's close enough when they release them, he'll do an attack. Read more...

Want to buy the new Chromecast or the upcoming Apple TV? You won't be able to get them from Amazon.

As first reported by Bloomberg, Amazon is planning on dropping streaming devices that don't work with its Prime Video streaming service as of Oct. 29.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon sent an email to its marketplace sellers letting them know that no new listings for Apple TV or Chromecast products would be allowed and that existing listings would be removed as of Oct. 29.

In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson told Mashable, "Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It's important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Roku, XBOX, PlayStation and Fire TV are excellent choices." Read more...

First, he’ll reveal the techniques he uses to create video sales letters that attract armies of new customers…

And, second, he’ll host a workshop on how to make your benefits sparkle!

This is the first and ONLY time Clayton has spoken ANYWHERE in three long years! He’s been too busy creating winning campaigns for his clients. So I’d suggest you jump on over to AWAI and check this out for yourself.

Here’s the link: http://www.awaionline.com/b12/makepeace

We’re looking forward to seeing YOU in October!

Wendy “The Redhead” Makepeace

But, don’t worry…we’re still here!

Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions. You can do so by posting right here on the blog…or…email me at our support email box at support@makepeacetotalpackage.com. I try to check it every day to see if there are any customer service questions that need to be answered.

And, don’t forget, all of Clayton’s articles are still available at the top of this page under the masthead. Just click the “Archive” link.

Plus, you’ll find some very valuable information in the “Copywriters Tools” section. In this section you’ll find our extensive Direct Response Glossary, Interviews with some of the top copywriters in the field and recommendations from Clayton on what you should be reading.

I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Yours for Every Success,

Wendy Makepeace
General Manager
The Total Package

Dear Business Builder,

Seems like only yesterday I was writing the very first post on this blog. Actually, it was the end of June in 2005; five years and seven months ago.

Since then, we’ve …

• Attracted nearly 40,000 regular readers …
• Published 1,110 issues …
• Hosted well over 100 marketers and copywriters at our “Power Marketing Summit” at $5,000 per seat …
• Held dozens of webinars and teleseminars and created dozens of products to help you succeed …
• Received more than 1,500 pages of “Thank-You” letters and testimonials for our efforts …
• And learned one heck of a lot about the nuts and bolts of online publishing(!).

And the one thing this experience has made me absolutely sure of is that I always want to have an e-letter and a website that keep you and me in touch with each other.

But now, I find myself at a very different place in life than when I launched this blog in 2005. And far greater changes lie ahead.

For one, I’m turning 59 this year – nearly six years closer to the time when, as my friend Gary Bencivenga so eloquently phrased it, I will “lay down my pen.”

No, I am NOT planning to retire anytime soon – in fact, I still get bored over long weekends. But the fact that my 60s are just over one year away calls for some significant changes.

For instance: I’ve often told you that one of the greatest benefits this copywriter’s lifestyle affords me is that I get to decide how much money I want to make. If I want or need more, I simply accept additional clients and work additional hours.

So, with my 60s rushing at me like a run-away freight train, I’ve chosen to spend the next several years fattening the kitty for my eventual retirement. I’ve already added one additional client and plan to accept one; maybe two more in the weeks ahead. And of course, that means I’ll have significantly less time to spend on The Total Package.

Another big development for The Redhead and me: Our kids are grown up! Our younger daughter goes away to college this year. Our son, who is about one year younger will follow her soon.

That means we no longer need to brave the frigid North Carolina mountain winters. But before we can remove to warmer climes (most likely, to Prescott, Arizona), there are the little matters of selling our 25-acre estate here in the Smokies and doing some serious down-sizing.

With me putting the pedal to the metal at work, supervising all that remodeling and other projects is falling into The Redhead’s lap – a fact that means she will also have significantly less time to spend on running this e-letter.

… So we’re simplifying
this blog in several ways:

First, as you know, we have now closed our online store. If we introduce new products in the future, they will be offered via e-mail and in our regular issues. That alone vastly simplifies our operation.

Second, you are now viewing the new, simplified version of this blog. It still contains all the things you’ve come to value most here – including all of my back-issues, free copywriting and marketing tools, the opportunity for you to comment on articles, etc.

Third, we will no longer publish articles by other authors. So, to keep up with any of our contributing editors, you’ll need to subscribe to their free ezines and/or visit their websites by clicking the appropriate links below:

• Gary Bencivenga
• Michael Masterson
• Drayton Bird
• Daniel Levis
• Troy White
• John Forde
• Carline Anglade-Cole

Fourth, instead of publishing my articles on a regular schedule (every Monday, come hell or high water,) I will publish articles when I have a new idea or technique that’s just too good to keep to myself – kind of like Gary Bencivenga and others do now.

The best way to be notified when a new article is available will be to use an RSS feed to send each article directly to your computer’s home page. The link is below:

http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/feed/

Fifth, we’re keeping the e-mail address for customer care active; you can still send questions or comments to support@makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Finally, sincere “Thank-Yous”
are in order …

I don’t mind admitting that I’m extremely, unabashedly proud of everything we’ve accomplished in The Total Package since we published our first issue way back in June of 2005.

As I’ve often said, our greatest rewards are the thousands of notes from readers who’ve thanked us for helping them.

So now, it’s my turn to give thanks – first, for the wonderful people who have helped us publish this e-letter nearly every day for all these years … who helped develop our products … and who single-handedly untangled the inevitable customer service SNAFUs that all marketers are heir to – particularly to Jill, Martha and Pete, who will soon be leaving us.

And secondly, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Daniel Levis, Troy White and all of our contributing editors for the wealth of direct response wisdom they have provided in these pages. Without you guys, this rag could never even have begun to enjoy the success that it has.

Finally, thank YOU, dear reader, for your friendship and loyalty over the years. I can’t begin to count how many times your blog posts and e-mails have touched our hearts and made us grateful for the opportunity to help you in some small way.

You also have my word that we will continue to be here for you, publishing special issues when time permits and most importantly, when we have something we’re sure can make a big difference for you.

Until then, I am … sincerely, with all my heart …

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace

Pursuing a copywriting career is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme. It can, however, be the single best idea you ever had.

So whatever you do, do NOT be discouraged. If you need encouragement, just look at how far you’ve come; all the stuff you know now that you didn’t know a week, month or year ago.

Resolve to do whatever it takes in the short term to reap the long-term rewards. Stick with it. Redouble your efforts. Refuse to accept anything but success.

Take my word for it:

The first time a client wires six figures into your bank account to pay you for two weeks’ work, you’ll be glad you hung in there.

In that moment, all the hours you worked to perfect your craft … all the rejection you faced in finding your first few clients … and all the sacrifices you made to build your copywriting business … will all be worth it.

Yes, it’s going to take some effort on your part.

If you think this is easy … if you sleepwalk through your work … if you fail to invest the mental and physical energy required to get the details right … if you resent honest, well-meant criticism … and if you’re going to cut and run the first time the going gets tough, there’s not much I or anyone else can do to help you.

But if, as my high school football coach loved to say, you’re eager to pour 110 percent of your genius, your creativity and your energy into this …

If you’re willing to take the time and expend the energy to do it right … and obsess about the minute details that must be right to bring in every last sale …

If you’re willing to expend every ounce of mental and physical energy at your command … take your best shot … accept the consequences … take a hard, honest look at what you did right and what you did wrong … and learn your lessons …

… And if, when all else fails, you can muster the will to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and do it better next time …

… There’s no stopping you. Whether you’ve made it yet or not, you’re a winner in my book. And someday soon, you’ll find yourself relishing the winner’s rewards.

… Now, it’s time to go to work.

But what if nobody wants to hire you? Or worse: You create the best campaign you know how to create – and it flops?

Look. Let me tell you something that all the gurus out there probably won’t.

It’s not until you begin applying this stuff in the real world that you REALLY begin to learn!

Unless and until you persevere through the rejection that’s required prior to bagging your first real clients … and until you suffer the humiliation of getting your butt kicked – repeatedly and publicly – by real prospects when there’s real money on the line … you’re still just a student.

Students have to pay to learn. Once you begin doing, others PAY YOU to learn.

Sure – you’re going to have to bang the phones for hours every day until you get a client – and those first few clients may not be worth a bucket of warm spit.

You’re going to have to create five, ten, twenty or even more promotions before you get your first huge winner.

Courage – true courage – means being scared to death and then doing what needs to be done anyway.

You can do this. I know you can.

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

P.S. What’s standing between you and the success you crave?

What are you afraid of?

What’s keeping you from sending your writing samples to a client who could make your career and then calling him or her to close the deal?

What’s keeping you from partnering with a copywriter/marketer who could take your company to the moon?

The best definition of the word “courage” I’ve ever heard is … “Being afraid and doing the right thing anyway.”

So here’s your assignment for today: Identify the one thing that stands between you and the success you dream about – the one thing that terrifies you the most.

And then – DO IT.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Dear Business-Builder,

Without it, there would be no second marriages … no cheering crowds behind Hillary, Obama or John on the six o’clock news … and of course, no Las Vegas.

The fact is, no matter how cynical, negative or worldly-wise each of us wants the world to think we are, all of us want to believe. Desperately.

And the simple fact is, hundreds of billions of dollars are earned each year by marketers who do little else but:

1. Identify a deep-seated desire that is resident in a particular market niche,
2. Create a promo that suspends their prospects’ disbelief and
3. Step back and allow the prospect’s desire to believe to do the rest.

Take Vegas, for instance. We all know it’s the world’s greatest fleecing machine. We know that there are no games of chance there – that the odds are heavily weighted in favor of the casinos.

And yet even those of us who never expect to beat the house happily fork over thousands for travel, lodging and food – and then blissfully lose thousands more at the tables, knowing from experience that we’re being played for suckers.

Now I ask you: Is this anything a sentient, self-respecting, intelligent creature would do?

No. And that’s the whole point.

We are NOT sentient, self-respecting intelligent creatures. We only tell ourselves that we are. The truth is, we are driven by emotion. We only use our thinking brain to rationalize those emotional decisions after they’re made.

Think that’s an overstatement?

Don’t tell me, tell one of my former crackerjack copywriters. A while back, she found a medical study you should consider …

Seems some people who suffer minimal brain damage retain their cognitive ability – their ability to reason – but lose their ability to feel any emotion. And when a major medical institution studied these poor souls, they found something fascinating …

When deprived of their ability to feel emotion, these still-intelligent, rational, thinking people were incapable of making ANY decision. They couldn’t even decide which shirt to wear … what to order in a restaurant … or how to manage their money!

I’m thrilled we found that study. Because it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt something I’ve been talking and writing about for years:

If we made our spending decisions on the basis of logic, nobody would buy a new car – suffering the massive depreciation that slams you when you drive it off the lot. Heck: We wouldn’t buy any kind of car – new OR used – for that matter. We’d all be riding the Metro. Or the bus. Or a bicycle.

The same is true about designer clothing … makeup … expensive watches … high-calorie food with low nutritional value.

And who in his right mind would spend more than a few hundred bucks a month on a place to live – especially in these days of plunging home values?

Frankly, I’d be hard-pressed to think of much that we spend money on that makes any logical sense at all. We buy them simply because we want to believe.

We want to believe – so desperately – that these things will make us feel more confident … more successful … more secure … more fulfilled … happier … that we spend our entire lives mindlessly pursuing them.

Just get up early tomorrow morning and turn on CNBC – or just about any cable channel that runs infomercials at night – and you’ll see what I mean.

Put on your thinking cap, now …

If I told you there was a non-prescription pill – made entirely of vitamins and minerals – that will grow hair on a cue ball. Would you believe me?

Preposterous – right? After all: If vitamins and minerals reversed male pattern baldness, only anorexics and bulimics would lose their hair.

How about “the size of a certain part of a man’s body?” Would you believe that a few vitamins and minerals will magically transform a water spout into a fire hose?

Wouldn’t obese guys be the most “blessed” of all?

What? You don’t believe this stuff? You know what? Nobody does!

But you know what else? There’s an infomercial on TV that’s generating millions and millions in sales for an all-natural hair-regrowth product and another that’s making some scam artist rich selling vitamins that make your thingy bigger.

Why would anyone with an IQ larger than his shoe size buy such an obviously stupid product?

Because we desperately want to believe. We want to believe so much that a few simple testimonials and/or a floozy batting her false eyelashes at us causes us to suspend all disbelief and crack open our wallets.

You don’t have to prove your case beyond the shadow of a doubt. But you do have to give your prospect an excuse he can give his spouse for spending the money. A reason why – although he’s surely a sentient, intelligent person, it was logical to suspend his disbelief – just this once.

Hope this helps – I’m going to spend some time brushing up on my basic Blackjack strategy now …

[sniplet clayton_sig]

Dear Business-Builder,

I’ve been Googling myself again …

Just to see what kind of scuttlebutt we’re getting on the web these days. That always cheers me up.

And, I found 199,999 positive listings about The Total Package – and one crappy one …

Now don’t get me wrong – the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of websites that mention us say only good things.

But in one of them – just one – I found a site owner who’s bitching about the fact that we offer products <gasp> FOR SALE!

Now, this person said nothing about the more than 1,000 articles that we offer in our archives – thousands upon thousands of pages packed with business-building, career-building, response-building insights and advice – all for free.

… Or that we bring you the best response-boosting and money-making ideas, advice and insights from legendary pros like Drayton Bird, Gary Bencivenga, Bob Bly, Yanik Silver, Michael Masterson and many others – all for free.

… Or that we bring you tons of extra ways to intensify and broaden your understanding of direct marketing with fantastic articles about what’s working now by working pros like Daniel Levis, Troy White, Carline Anglade-Cole, Wendy Montes de Oca, and others – all for free.

… Or that we’ve also gone to the trouble to create a comprehensive direct response glossary and other online tools you can use anytime – all for free.

… Or that we spend a not-so-small fortune to pay the wonderful employees – administrators, web designers and subscriber services people to bring all of this to you – all for free.

… Or that our readers have sent us nearly 2,000 unsolicited letters thanking us for all of this and saying how much money we’ve added to their income – all for free.

… Or that neither Wendy nor I or anyone else in my family has ever taken a single solitary penny in return for all this – or that every dime earned through the sale of our products is re-invested to help more marketers grow their businesses – all for free.

No, this bitter, angry old gasbag has her panties in a knot because we also offer a handful of products for sale.

Now I’m not sure; but I can only assume that this holier-than-thou blogger gives away her work product for free – and then panhandles on street corners for change needed to stuff Big Macs into her gaping pie hole.

Otherwise, she is worse than just a harmless idiot. She’s also a brazen hypocrite.

But such is the Web. A place where millions of deadbeats have come to believe that they are entitled to benefit from the fruit of others’ labors for free. And most amusing, a place where charlatans posing as marketers can deride good people who overdeliver and undercharge for great products online.

Now, I’d like to be able say this is the very first time
anyone has said anything this stupid to us or about us.

Unfortunately, it is not.

The fact that we spend a bunch of time, skull sweat and money to create in-depth educational products for our readers – and then have the effrontery to ask a fair price for them – has offended other readers over the years.

Heck: I even included a passage for these folks in our “Welcome Aboard” letter – and I quote:

“… Every once-in-a-while, some yahoo is insulted that we have the unmitigated gall to ask for money in return for a service rendered or a product delivered.

“They’re shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – that we would dare to advertise and market a product in an e-letter on advertising and marketing(!).

“My advice to these guys? “If you think it’s wrong to ask for money in return for bringing tremendous value to people … if you think advertising is evil … there is a very good chance that you could be … IN THE WRONG BUSINESS!

“’Nevertheless,’” I continue, ‘you can still enjoy The Total Package without getting your panties in a knot: Just resolve not to think of our ads as ads!

“’Pretend they’re like a swipe file: Real-world samples of some pretty darned effective sales copy by a top writer that you get for FREE – in addition to your free subscription!’”

“There.” I said, having written the passage above, “That should allow any spoiled-rotten, world-owes-me-a-living bum, mooch or deadbeat … any schizophrenic, conflicted, muddle-minded airhead who holds himself out as a marketer but who inwardly despises marketing … any commie bastard who believes it’s our duty to sweat, strain and spend our money to help them.

“Now even those morons can enjoy The Total Package – just by pretending our promos are just free additions to their swipe files.”

Evidently, it hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped.

So is there a point in all this? A lesson to be learned?

Sure. Three, in fact.

First, if you’re going to do anything with your life, you need to know right up front that you will have critics.

Scratch that. First, you’ll have doubters. Friends, family, even spouses who can’t dream as big as you can. Hopefully, they’ll love you enough to support you anyway.

But then, as you actually begin to succeed, a jealous and insecure few will attempt to reduce you through criticism. Because the bigger you get, the smaller they feel. And of course, the more successful you are, the more critics you’re likely to get.

A while back, a presidential candidate was heard to say, “You know you’re over the target when you begin taking flak.” When losers criticize you, consider it a badge of honor.

Second, examine your core beliefs. You’d be surprised at how many people who inwardly hate marketing have chosen to become marketers simply because they believe it’s a good way to make money.

The best marketers are those who rejoice every time a well-done promotion hits their mailbox or inbox … who study it carefully for the thoughts behind the thoughts and for the nuances that make the difference between merely great copy and truly excellent copy.

As the great Bob King is famous for saying, marketing should be the art and science of bringing value to consumers’ lives at a price that is insignificant relative to that value.

If the products you promote do that, you are doing mankind a favor. Any core belief that prevents you from feeling good about improving your prospects’ lot in life should be unceremoniously discarded.

Of course, if you don’t honestly believe the products you’re promoting provide tremendous value, you’ll be a much happier and much more fulfilled person if you’ll find another product that does.

And if you’re promoting great products and still despise what you do, please – for Buddha’s sake – find another career! No amount of money in the world is worth loathing yourself for earning it.

Third, everything in life – including a free subscription to The Total Package – is a transaction. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Or as Robert Heinlein was wont to say, “TANSTAAFL.” Or, as the Apostle Paul famously wrote, “"You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing," and "The laborer is worthy of his wages."

Never, never, NEVER hesitate to require compensation that’s commensurate with the value you’re bringing to your clients.

[sniplet clayton_sig]

Back in the old days – when 99% of my business was creating direct mail promotions – it was a well-known fact that there are two crucial “hot points” for marketing every year: January and September.

Why? Well, because these two months signal watershed events in our prospects’ lives.

In January, we’ve just endured the holidays. We ate too much, drank too much, gained too much weight and did too little work.

In September, we’d just survived the summer. We ate too much, drank too much, gained too much weight and did too little work.

So on these two dates, we feel guilty, fatter, poorer – and more than a little panicked that our lives deviated from the mean – than at any other time of the year.

And so, beginning bright and early on January 2 and September 2 as our heads begin to clear, we observe our semi-annual penitence: A time for agonizing reappraisals of our priorities. A time for resolutions. A time to reapply our proboscises to the proverbial grindstone.

You know what? Nothing has changed. Because human nature never changes.

Ever hear of The Hangover Prayer? Most of us have used it. First you kneel (usually in front of a porcelain alter), close your eyes, and tug on The Almighty’s robe: “Dear God,” you intone, “please, please, please don’t let me die. I promise I’ll never, EVER drink again.”

“Oh – and this time, I mean it!”

I’ve often thought that, because of the sheer volume of praying that occurs on those two days – they should be declared official religious holidays. I mean; why not? Almost nobody shows up for work anyway!

At any rate, since January marks the beginning of a period of renewed commitments and intensity, millions of our prospects will be looking for products and services to help them actually deliver on their resolutions this time around.

So expect more ads for Weight Watchers and NutriSystem on TV … more health and wealth promotions in your mail box … and more promos for self-help products of all stripes in your inbox.

Also, you may want to mark your calendar: The next big opportunity to sell the heck out of your self-help products comes in just 235 days.

But that’s not what I’m really writing about, here. I’m thinking about the resolutions I’ve already made this year …

• To shed a ton of weight and get back in shape.
• To launch a new consumer product online every six weeks – eight in the next year.
• Most importantly, to spend more time with the two greatest kids on the planet. And to do my darndest to make sure that The Redhead is the happiest married lady in the galaxy.

But that’s just the “what.”

Now, it’s time for the tough part: “HOW?”

See, this is where most resolutions fall apart. We all know what we should do and beyond that, what we need to do to turn our dreams into reality. It’s crafting an action plan – and then sticking to it – that flummoxes us.

Now, I’m not going to try to tell you I’m the most disciplined guy you’ll ever meet. If I did, The Redhead and all our employees and friends would probably jump on this blog and make me into a laughingstock.

Truth is, I’m probably the least disciplined guy I know. I love to procrastinate. Giving myself the day off is one of the great joys of my life. So if any of my resolutions have a prayer of lasting more than a nanosecond, I know I’ll need three things:

1. A clear vision of what I want my life to be like on September 2, 2011 …
2. A detailed daily or even hourly action plan that ensures that I do everything required to get there, and …
3. People to keep me accountable along the way.

Of course, reams have been written by self-help gurus about #1 and #2 above.

Item #1 is simply positive thinking … keeping your vision before you … and making it as tangible as possible in your mind.

And we’ve all heard – ad nauseam – that the tactical part, item #2 above is crucial because the Devil really is in the details.

But you know what? Giving ourselves excuses for our failure to carry though – justifying our lack of discipline – is the killer.

So we all need a nag.

Someone who knows us as well as we know ourselves … who can see through our excuses … and who doesn’t mind (better yet, delights in) providing the swift kick in the keester we need to get back on track.

And we also need help from people who aren’t quite as close – strangers, even.

I’ve heard that Weight Watchers is far more effective at helping folks lose weight than any other diet plan out there. And for me, that has proved true.

Why? Because every Thursday at 5:30, I knew I’d hear a total stranger say, “OK – so jump up on the scale and let’s see how you did.”

And every week, the number that stranger would give me blew away every rationalization, every excuse, every little indulgence I thought I’d gotten away with right out of the water.

In that one moment, rationalization I’d indulged in was exposed for what it was: Mental monkey-spanking; pure and simple.

So priority #1 is to find people who’ll nail me when I screw up.

Next, someone who’s job it is to notice when I do things right.

Like Martha-the-customer-care babe, for instance. I once told her, “Your new job is to notice when I lose weight and to say so.”

Next day, I had an e-mail: “You look so skinny,” Martha said, “It looks like a whole family of Gypsies just moved out of the seat of your pants.”

I beamed.

That’s my plan – what’s yours?

What are your goals for the next 235 days? Where do you want to be on September 2, 2011?

What do you need to do to get there?

Who’s going to help keep you honest as you work towards your goal?

Share your ideas with us – and maybe pick up some helpful ideas in the blog below …

[sniplet clayton_sig]

Dear Business Builder,

The New Year is officially here, and Clayton is getting back in the proverbial saddle after a much-needed break.

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about you!

In fact, he told me to give you a special gift to get your New Year off to a revenue-rocketing start. It’s a recording of one of our most popular webinars – a "masters" class Clayton taught with Bob Bly on creating …

Red-Hot Headlines that
Double Your Response

In this power-packed webinar, you get EVERYTHING you need to craft headlines that grab your prospects by the eyeballs and compel them to read every word of your promotion.

Clayton and Bob reveal:

• 4 essential sales every headline MUST make …
• How to instantly engage any prospect – no matter how distracted …
• 21 questions to ask BEFORE you write your next headline …
• John Caples’ 35 headline idea starters …
• David Ogilvy’s headline acid test …
• 15-point headline checklist …
• And much, Much MORE!

Below is a link to a Flash file that
is roughly 86 MB. It’s a streaming file, meaning it has to load some
of the movie before it will play. Please expect some delay before the
movie and audio will start.

Click Here for Red-Hot Headlines that Double Your Response – If you experience difficulties viewing the Flash file, you may also listen in on the MP3 as you follow along with the PDF slide show from Clayton’s PowerPoint presentation.

PDF LINK (3.37 MB) – Feel free to print and then follow along while listening to the audio MP3 file of the webinar linked below.

AUDIO LINK (18.93 MB) – To download the audio, right-click on the audio link above…selecting “Save Target As…” and save the MP3 file to your desktop.

Get the gift that will keep on giving 25%, 35%, even 45% lifts in response and ROI throughout 2011 and beyond!

Happy New Year!

Wendy “The Redhead” Makepeace

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Dear Business Builder,

It’s the actual audio of an interview I did a while back for my EasyWriters Marketing Club with legendary copywriter/entrepreneur JOSEPH SUGARMAN!

While the club is no longer around, this interview is timeless and remains one of my all-time favorites. So I’ve decided to pass it along to you.

Joe’s direct response exploits are the stuff of legend. And he’s a great case study for copywriters looking to hit the big time with a business of their own AND for business owners and marketers eager to generate a flood of new customers, sales and profits.

So pour yourself a cup of something hot (mine has a little brandy in it) … put your feet up and click play below to give it a listen.

(If a player doesn’t appear below and all you’ve got is that angry, little, red X, click the yellow bar at the top of your browser and select "Run ActiveX Control.")

Or you can right-click here to download it.

It’ll make you money – I promise!

Happy Holidays!

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

P.S. Watch your inbox next monday for one more holiday gift from me. It’s a doozy!

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Dear Business Builder,

Rather than attempt to focus on one topic, let’s try a little stream of consciousness stuff today – stuff I’ve been thinking about that I’m hoping will help you get some bigger winners …

Type Questions: Recently, I’ve seen a lot of debate online – and a lot of confusion – about which typefaces promote maximum readability.

Common wisdom says that in print, serif typefaces like Times Roman (the face used by most newspapers that has little ruffles and flourishes on the characters) are the most readable. The characters are heavy enough to be easily readable even when they’re relatively small – as in the 9 point type commonly used in newspapers.

In direct mail, type selection is usually driven by the format you’re using. In print ads, magalogs, special reports, bookalogs and tabloids, most marketers use Times Roman (or a close cousin thereof) for body copy.

In sales letters – promotions designed to look as though you just tapped them out on your trusty Smith-Corona typewriter – most mailers go with a typewriter font like American Typewriter.

And because many of our prospects are older, we insist that the type be 12 points or larger in size. (Wouldn’t do to require that grandma go find her spectacles before reading our promotion!)

On the web, most folks use sans-serif fonts like Verdana, Arial or Helvetica. Because our computer monitors pixelate everything, they can mangle the little flourishes on serif letters, causing eyestrain and fatigue.

And while Amazon and eBay and most other massive sites use little, tiny 10pt and even 7.5pt type on their pages, I try to stick with 12 point Arial or 11.5 pt. Verdana for long copy.

Now, here’s where it can get a little sticky:

Just because a typeface has serifs (in print) or no serifs (on the web) does NOT mean it is readable.

In print, many serif faces can get so fancy with all their little curves and flourishes – and line weight can get so light in places – they’re virtually unreadable. Bell or Bodoni MT, for example.

Ditto for sans-serif faces on the web: Some of them are so light, they almost melt into the page. Corbel, for example.

And trust me on this: Given the choice between the same old “boring” Times and Verdana typefaces and something artsy-fartsy and virtually unreadable, most designers will go the creative route, rendering your copy indecipherable.

My philosophy: Marketing is fraught with risk. There’s a risk your theme will fail to resonate with prospects … that your headline will perform a not-so-graceful face-plant … that your opening copy will leave prospects cold … that nobody wants the benefits your product offers at the price you’re asking … or that your spokesman reminds your prospects of the bully who stole their lunch money in third grade.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to add to this list of risks by experimenting with the typefaces you use. Stick to what is proven to work.

Size Matters: Still on the typeface issue, but this is important stuff.

A bunch of folks seem to think that all reverse type is evil; and they are dead wrong.

I know – we’ve all been taught that anytime the type is lighter than the background, it renders your words unreadable. David Ogilvy even made that point – quite eloquently, in fact – in Ogilvy on Advertising.

Problem is, it’s not always true.

Sure – if you set 12-point Times Roman in white on a black background, you might as well be setting your copy in hieroglyphics. Nobody will get past the first line.

But is the prohibition against reverse type true for headlines or deck copy set in big, fat sans-serif letters?

Before you answer, consider this …

• Stop signs are white lettering on a red background. Are they unreadable?
• McDonalds, Wendy’s and many other huge franchises spend hundreds of millions on market research and their signs are unanimously yellow or white type on red or dark blue backgrounds. Unreadable?
• The Hollywood sign is made up of white letters set against the dark background of the hillside. Unreadable?
• While Rodale tends to follow the “no reverse type” rule, Boardroom has made hundreds of millions using “Nazi colors” – yellow and white headlines on red and black covers. Unreadable?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may have a disease called reverselexia – kind of like dyslexia, only it won’t have you on your knees praying to your dog.

The point is, when it comes to reverse type, size matters. The large lettering on a stop sign … on a McDonalds sign … and the 45-foot-high letters on the Hollywood sign … make the characters eminently readable – while the brilliant color contrast makes it impossible to look away.

The Bottom Line: Avoid reverse type in body copy at all costs. But for large headlines, white, yellow, or hot pink type on a black, red, blue or lime green background can actually give your promotion greater attention-getting power and impact.

Shortcut City: Several companies are now marketing programs – a popular one is called “Glyphius” – that purport to score the power of your sales copy for you before you actually test it in the real world.

The programmers claim to have loaded the program with words that have been most often used in successful promotions – and if your promotion contains those same words, you get a high score.

Sounds interesting – and I admit Glyphius is fun to play with. But how useful is it really?

Well, we’re running some tests now, and I’ll let you know what we discover in an upcoming issue.

What concerns me though, is that some gullible noobs have suggested that Glyphius is actually a substitute for real-world testing.

According to one of these Glyphius pimps, he could have saved me the $200,000 I spent split-testing several headlines simply by running them through Glyphius.

Sorry – that’s worse than merely ignorant – it’s dangerous.

Because, as important as your word choices are, they pale in significance when compared to the importance of the message your copy conveys.

If Glyphius and these other programs could rate how well your theme connects with your audience … the persuasiveness of your selling propositions … and how compelling your offer is … it would be worth its weight in gold.

But it can’t. Because those things change from market to market, from product to product and from minute to minute. It takes immersion in your market … great instincts and lightning reflexes to get it right most of the time.

It takes a human.

More than that: It takes a talented, creative human who knows more about his prospect than the prospect knows about himself.

All a canned copywriting program can do is tell you if you’re using words that have already been used in promotions that your prospects have seen a gazillion times. If you are, Glyphius thinks that’s a good thing.

But if you present the world’s most compelling theme, propositions and benefits without employing overused words like “GUARANTEED!” in every headline … that, according to Glyphius, is a bad thing.

My advice for now: The software that really will get you the response you’re looking for runs only on the world’s most powerful computer: The one sloshing around inside that one-quart container perched at the top of your spine.

It consists of lessons you and others have learned about how to persuade and motivate human beings in the real world – and it’s the only kind of “copywriting software” I’d be willing to pay for.

The Day the Hype Died: “Hyperbole” is one of those words that everyone uses but almost nobody understands.

Most folks think “hype” refers to sales copy that makes exaggerated claims. Or copy that has a lot of high-energy words in it.

Not so.

The dictionary says hyperbole is “an obvious and intentional exaggeration,” or “an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as ‘to wait an eternity.’”

In other words, true hype is nothing more than a literary device that can come in pretty darned handy when you need to drive a point home.

… Like when I said in a health package, “A surgeon will cut a hole right through you just to get at your wallet.”

See? Hype. “An extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.”

But when someone tells you your copy is “hypey,” they mean something completely different – don’t they?

In most cases, they mean your copy has too much energy. It’s too exciting. To emotionally exercised.

Over the years, I usually let those kinds of comments roll off me like water off a duck. So long as the level of emotion in my copy felt appropriate for the subject at hand, I figured emotional energy was a good thing.

But the direct marketing world has metamorphosed in recent years. Since about 2001, if I had to set a date to it.

The saturation of our markets with bombastic high-energy copy – combined with advent of mainstream Internet advertising – calls for a very different approach to setting the tone of our copy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m NOT saying high-energy copy doesn’t work anymore. It can and it does.

But so does low-energy, warm, personal copy that leverages a relationship with prospects and customers to slip through their anti-advertising defenses …

… and then appeals to the intellect with logical, persuasive sales arguments …

… and then counts on the intellect to trigger the emotions that will produce the sale.

Right now, for example, we’re using high-energy copy to sell a supplement product online.

And, we’re using much lower-key copy to sell an investment service.

Both campaigns are doing gangbuster business.

What’s more, each campaign mixes it up.

After purchasing the supplement above, you get a mix of high-energy and warm, personal communications from my client.

And from time to time – when the investment news from overseas is particularly exciting, we blast a high-energy message for our international investing service.

My rules of thumb:

1. Make sure the emotional tone of your copy is appropriate for the subject at hand
2. When planning a series of promotional e-mails to existing customers, realize that, when everything’s emphasized, nothing is emphasized. Create a rich emotional texture in your campaigns – alternate between warm, personal bonding communications and higher energy copy when appropriate.

Hope this helps …

[sniplet clayton_sig]