Content Marketing Today

Bring Your Business Up to Speed with Timely Tips from SW Florida Experts

Although our Southwest Florida region comprises mostly small businesses, we are blessed with a surprising number of savvy local experts on content marketing and social media. I was delighted to take part in a recent Collier Business Industry Association (CBIA) Sales and Marketing Council session with just such a group:

• Marc Meyer, Principle at Digital Response Marketing Group
• Jim Cossetta, cofounder of 4what.com
• Paul Mussina, President, Business Technology insight

Attendees from the building industry and related companies struggle with two simultaneous challenges:

• They are suffering from our a especially steep downturn in building that limits both people and dollar resources.
• They need to transform from traditional marketing methods to content marketing and social media.

Fortunately, there is a new generation of affordable tools and techniques that can make that transformation inexpensive—and with a bit of outside help—almost painless.

Here are some practical lessons on content marketing and social media that I’d like to share from the St. Patrick’s Day session.

Blase Ciabaton, The DirectMail Man, Teaches a New Way to Do Some Real One-to-One Content Marketing

In order to generate measurable marketing response, you may well continue to rely on direct mail.  Although it may be less effective than in pre-Internet days, direct marketing does work with the right targeted message to the right audience. 

You can optimize your efforts by using a tool suggested by Blase Ciabaton. It’s all about PURLs that let you get personal with your prospects.

As a content marketer, you can target prospects individually with the use of PURLs, which are ‘personalized URLs.'  Thus, a 10,000 person direct marketing campaign would generate 10,000 PURLs which serve as individualized landing pages and can even greet the direct mail recipient by name.

A Sadly Wasted Effort for a Mystery Event That Might Even Have Been Worth Attending

I just received an email promotion that was so wrong-headed that it makes a perfect negative case study.  As always we can learn from what is terrific or, in this case, not so terrific.

Here are 4 Major Email Promo Mistakes that You Should Avoid:

• The header: This is the email header I saw in my inbox: “invitation for March 17”.  It doesn’t tell me what is happening on that date or why I should care. Since I, like all of you, receive way too many emails, I have no earthly reason to open it. 
  Your header must entice the recipient to open your email by showing quickly that your reader will benefit. It plays the critical role of a headline in a news story or an advertisement and is even more important because it’s the only thing your recipients may see in their crowded in box.

Your Target Customers Won’t Read Your Content without Compelling Headlines

Too many websites lack effective headlines. In fact, many have no headlines at all.  This void violates the first commandment of content marketing: “Think Like a Publisher.” 

That commandment covers a lot of ground, but let’s just focus on the all important headline. Unless you have time to go back to school, you can learn plenty from legendary print and online publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and yes, in its own unique way, the New York Post.

The purpose of a headline is simple: To make your visitors want to read the story that follows. Your headline must just explain enough so that readers correctly and eagerly anticipate content that follows. The right headline will then intrigue visitors enough to jump into the story.

It doesn’t matter that your site covers a niche that only some people care about. Your headlines must still entice those targeted visitors into reading your stories.

We can learn a lot from some of the best practitioners such as the Times, the Journal, and the Post. I have selected recent headlines that illustrate key elements for those of us who aren’t trained journalists—but who must nonetheless capture our readers’ attention whenever they visit us online.

When you publish a monthly print or electronic newsletter that targets an important audience segment,  you probably invest heavily in generating the content that will make this newsletter relevant and valuable to its readers.  That is obviously critical.  But you can do much more to make that newsletter and its content work harder for your organization. How? Easy. Think outside the newsletter.

After all, the newsletter has a relatively finite reach, even online.  Think beyond this single content product.  You can dramatically increase the impact of your content marketing by thoughtful repurposing of the information and resources you developed in order to create the newsletter itself.

Here are 7 ways to extend the reach of your content far beyond the circulation of that print publication.  None of these require significant incremental expense. But they will consistently deliver dramatic increases in the reach of your content to prospective customers—and the impact it has on them.

New Crowd Sourced E-Book Is Also a Brilliant Example of Content Marketing

Because all of us are smarter than one of us, you will find lots of value in the new e-book, Key Content Marketing Trends and Predictions  for  2010-- which even includes my own fearless prediction on content marketing. The genius behind this e-book is Ambal Balakrishnan. She has turned crowd sourcing into an art form.

Ambal has recruited 39 experts and given them an opportunity to display their knowledge. She adds her own value by synthesizing the best of those 39 predictions to come up with her own top 10+1.

Aside from its intrinsic merit, this e-book is a perfect example of content marketing at work. It delivers relevant and valuable content for marketers that illustrates how savvy its creator, Ambal, is about content marketing. Thus, it gives her instant credibility among potential clients.

Stand Out from the Marketing Crowd

Thanks to Lou Bortone, video marketing guru for this guest post

In an over-crowded and hyper-competitive marketplace, video marketing can help you break through the clutter and deliver your message in a powerful and memorable way. Thanks to YouTube, and inexpensive, easy-to-use camera options like webcams, Flip Video cameras and iPhones, online video is now well within the grasp of just about anyone.

However, just because creating video is more accessible than ever, that doesn’t mean we all know how or where to use it. As with any marketing tool, you’ve got to start with your goals for video. Your video marketing objectives may include greater visibility, enhanced credibility or expert status, higher search engine rankings, increased brand awareness or all of the above!

By beginning with the end in mind, you can decide on how best to use your video to achieve your objectives. To give you some ideas for diving in, here are ten great ways to use online video:

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

Engage your listeners so effectively that they will ride with you to the top floor and accompany you all the way to your office enthralled by what you have to say.

I was inspired again by Jay Baer's August 12 post about elevator speeches in which he asserted that the typical elevator speech is too long for today's attention span.

As he put it, "Understand that the Elevator Pitch is Dead. You remember the elevator pitch. The notion that you should be able to describe what your company does in the length of time consumed by the average elevator ride. I’m here to tell you, that’s way too long these days. Elevator rides seem interminable."

I am in absolute agreement that brevity is essential. But, brevity is just the beginning. In fact, the ideal elevator speech should be exactly that--a beginning. Don't think of your short statement as a traditional speech designed to get a big round of applause at the end. Instead, it serves as an opening gambit that engages your listener so effectively that it begins a dialogue of indefinite length.  It can become the welcoming door to your compelling content.

Social media marketing is a trend, not a fad. But,  most small to medium-sized businesses have yet to participate fully and enthusiastically.

We have just written about a powerful new research study that paints a picture of how thousands of smart companies are already benefiting from the inclusion of social media.  What’s clear from that research is that when we evaluate social media, we are not talking about the marketing longevity equivalent of the hula hoop or the Lambada.

Social media marketing is here to stay.  Because you want your organization to be here for the long haul as well, you need to move now.  Not next week. Not next month. But now.

Here are the six reasons that dictate your need to begin social media marketing now: