Content Marketing Today

A Compelling  and Affordable Video Did the Trick

Normally in Hollywood, when you're trying to get someone to join the cast of a picture, it involves actors and their agents, directors, studios, sending scripts back and forth, and lots of other rigmarole.

When you're trying to attract a big star like Amy Adams, at best, this process is inefficient. At worst, it is completely ineffective.

The producer of the new Muppets movie, Jason Segel, decided to use content marketing to appeal to Amy Adams, who had lately been appearing in pretty serious dramas such as, The Fighter. Although he probably had no idea that his approach involved content marketing, his perfectly targeted video illustrates all the best of what content marketing can be—and can accomplish.

Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet will dramatically accelerate the move to e-books

The shift from print business-to-business books to digital versions, whether Kindle, Nook or iBook has been nothing short of astonishing.

Symptomatic of the change is the increasing amount of floor space that Barnes & Noble is devoting to its Nook e-readers. In our Naples store, the Nook retail area takes up almost a quarter of the ground floor book related space, excluding the café and the music section.

Apple's iPad, as the pioneer in the tablet space, has captured the vast majority of the tablet market so far. But, its price point at $500 and up makes it a bit expensive for what may be a secondary computing device for most people.

Nonetheless, more and more business book readers are using the iPad not just as an e-reader, but as a comprehensive content consumption and creation device. Although, a tablet like the iPad is limited in terms of its virtual keyboard, for example, many of us business users have found extraordinary productivity applications in addition to standard e-mail and calendaring.

Sure They’re on the Web, But They’re Also Out and About on the Streets of Naples, Florida

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up behind this small van on a Naples street.

I started to get hungry just looking at the back of the van. This is mobile marketing that quite literally whets my appetite.

It’s all about Newsjacking:  The Science of Latching onto a Hot News Story in Near Real-Time, and Making It All about You.

David Meerman Scott is once again the thought leader in helping us get more news coverage than we ever thought possible, whether we are Solopreneur or billion-dollar multinational.

His new book, perfectly titled, Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage, teaches us how to make as much news as the biggest newsmakers in our individual arenas.

David opens his book with the example of Rick Perry's surprise announcement of his run for the presidency simultaneous with the Iowa straw polls. He became the top news story and eclipsed coverage of any of the other candidates who had worked so hard to do well in Iowa. It was a perfect Newsjacking that took full advantage of our 24 hour a day news cycle and the never-ending demand for hot news stories.  Iowa was suddenly boring. Rick Perry was suddenly hot.

David teaches all of us how to become successful Newsjackers whatever our organization’s size or situation.

A number of current realities make Newsjacking possible and powerful:

Your Sales Team Must Be Content Marketers, Too!

Mike Wisner was my first boss in publishing back in the days of John Denver and disco. He was a unique, colorful, and brilliant character. I learned so much from Mike that some of the lessons he taught me still inform my approach to sales and marketing. In fact, in many ways he was a pioneer content marketer within the sales arena before anyone had imagined such a concept.

Learning a Vital Selling Secret from Mike Wisner before I Ever Got to the Office

Mike delivered a shocking and memorable sales lesson in my first 5 minutes on the job--it was all about why it was essential to get very, very close to your customers and how to make that happen.

He picked me up on an icy January morning at O'Hare Airport on my first day on my first ad sales job for Gorman Publishing. As soon as I had sat down in the passenger seat of his car, he told me, “To be successful, you have to get in bed with your customers.”

Solopreneur Firm Understands How to Engage, Educate, and Entertain

There are dozens of electrical firms in Southwest Florida. Many of them have lots of employees. But, one of those firms stands out on Facebook: Martin McMurtrie's Grace Electric with 601 Facebook friends.

Making Vivid Visual Points to Engage Facebook Fans

This photograph from his Facebook page shows the kind of scary electrical fixes customers often attempt , sometimes with disastrous results. It typifies the kind of engaging content he provides regularly and that has enabled him to accumulate those hundreds of Facebook friends.

By contrast, the only local competitors I could find on Facebook provided very little useful information and managed to accumulate fewer than 10 Facebook friends.

For example, one well-known national franchise with numerous Florida locations manages a Facebook page for its Southwest Florida franchisee. But, it has only 9 fans. And, the only content on its Wall is spam from a provider of Acai berry services. 

Grace Electric: Lots of Real Content from a Real Person

Martin proves that you don't need an MBA from Harvard to create an effective presence on Facebook. What comes through on the Grace Electric Facebook page is Martin's natural friendliness and sense of humor, as well as his obvious knowledge of his profession.

What Am I Marketing Chopped Liver?

If you are one of the millions of iTunes fans, you appreciate the brilliant work they do in aggregating music creatively.  But, they squander the opportunity to connect with me by focusing on what their database knows about the music I buy and that lives within my iTunes account.

Normally, I now just delete without reading, but this week’s eNewsletter was so off target I had to write about it.

iTunes Does It Right. But Their Marketing Does Me Wrong.

Not only does iTunes enable you to do infinite organizing of your music, the iTunes store takes it many steps further. The store includes pre-constructed sets of music from different eras, different artists or different styles in the iTunes store. With iTunes itself, I particularly love the ‘Genius Bar’ which enables you to create new playlists from your stored music or to discover new tunes that you’re likely to love based on a song that you have chosen from your own iTunes collection.

George Bowers Grocery Makes a  Fun 1 to 1 Connection That's Impossible for the Big Chain to Match

The right niche and the right approach enable a two-person company to outshine a retailing giant on Facebook. That's true of George Bowers Grocery in Staunton Virginia where owners Katie McCaskey and Brian Weidman have created a delightful grocery store that focuses on high-quality foods and other specialty products.

The couple knew they could not compete head-to-head with the local Kroger supermarket in their community. Instead they have captured the spirit of the original 19th-century owner as a provider of "staple goods & fancy groceries."

They offer wonderful local meats, cheeses, wines, and craft beers as well as a variety of specialty items. They target the diverse mix of neighborhood residents, local food enthusiasts, and culinary tourists each with their own distinctive interests and needs. The atmosphere of the store itself is an eclectic blend of the old-fashioned and the modern.

And, they have a lot of fun with their marketing, in person and online.

Learn What Not to Do from One Very Boring News Release

Press releases still pack a punch for marketers.

With content rich releases, smart marketers engage not only the press, but thousands of customers as well. But, ineffective press releases benefit neither a company nor its customers.

As with so many things, it's probably easier to explain what's important in a press release than it is to execute effectively. Fortunately, it's much more common sense than it is rocket science.

Effective press releases incorporate core content marketing concepts:

• Understand your customers' information needs
• Create content that responds precisely to those information needs
• Explain how you can solve their problems whether personal or professional
• Make that content immediately engaging with a strong, benefit-laden
  • headline
  • subhead
  • first paragraph
• Be certain that the lead-off content is all about the customer and not all about your company.
• When it's time to talk about your company, make sure your unique benefits shine through.

Much of this may seem obvious. But it's surprising how many marketing professionals seem to get it wrong. This makes for an awful lot of ineffective press releases that sit around mostly unread, cluttering the Internet.

Lessons to Learn from a Snooze-Inducing Press Release

The good news is that we can learn from both great press releases--those that are not quite so great. In the latter category, see if you can figure out what you might take away from the following, real-life news release headline:

BDD Corporation Plans to Utilize Twitter Research 

Unfortunately, this headline gives us almost no reason to continue reading further. And, it doesn't get much better as the press release proceeds.

Our Aussie Mates Deliver 3 Minutes Worth of Slow-Mo Creative Genius

You can talk all you want about Budweiser Super Bowl ads—and I love those Clydesdales as much as anybody.  But, I hope you'll agree that this colorfully compelling commercial from Australia might be the best ever.

The entire commercial is shot in slow motion, which offers wonderful shots of Carlton Draught beer interspersed with  goofy goings-on in an Aussie pub.

Throughout the commercial, a tenor sings a play-by-play narration of the ad itself,  to the music of the opera classic, Nessun  Dorma, from Puccini's Turandot. The tune is famous enough so that even non-opera fans might hum along.

Beautiful music. Beautiful beer. It doesn't get any better.