Content Marketing Includes Social Media

Patricia Redsicker’s review of the book Content Rules includes a great observation:

I had not yet made the connection between social media and content marketing – I was still treating them as two separate entities.

OneForty

To assist other marketers with the task of incorporating social media into their content marketing plans, I’ve created a collection of social media tools for content marketing at OneForty. (If you are unaware, OneForty functions as the “app store” for Twitter.)

Two Tools You May Not Know About

My content marketing “toolkit” list covers the basics, but also features two cool tools:

Storify:

Content marketing relies on telling a consistent and evolving story about your brand. Using Storify you can collect bits and pieces of the social web into a cohesive narrative. Learn more about Storify here.

Keepstream:

Keepstream is a platform for building collections of web content. This is particularly helpful for the content marketer who curates ongoing social media conversations and news updates for their audience. Save everything from individual tweets to web pages into topics. You can embed these curated collections into any website, too. Learn more about Keepstream here.

What Did I Miss?

What social media tools would you add that are helpful for content marketing campaigns?

Let me know, and I’ll add them to this toolkit or feature them in an upcoming issue of Chief Content Officer. You can also review other recommended content marketing tools here.

Content marketing is a tactic any small business owner can use to promote their business.

Why invest time with content marketing?

Three reasons:

• Web searches: local, social, and mobile searches are increasingly used to find goods and services
• Content that delivers value is a great opportunity to demonstrate competency and showcase how you differ from competitors
• Custom content builds your brand

Example: Real Estate Agent

A real estate agent’s job is more than selling a house—they have to sell the entire package surrounding the house, too: neighborhood, schools, job prospects, investment possibilities, etc. There are fair housing rules to ensure licensed Realtors do not discriminate or comment negatively on, say, a particular neighborhood or street. Within this context a Realtor must sell the buyer on the positive aspects of any particular house or street.

A Realtor could create the following custom content for marketing purposes (assuming s/he stayed within the boundaries of their license):

• Monthly email newsletter highlighting positive trends, area news, or niche-specific expertise (e.g. historic home restoration and sales)
• Video clips that educate prospects on “things to look for when evaluating a home”
• Audio series that discusses area history
• Postcard series that offers bite-sized landscaping, remodeling, or other tips
• QR codes: one Realtor I work with creates QR codes which direct to custom webpages for each of his luxury homes. These codes are distributed on all his web and print content.

Notice that these suggestions are all different media: written, visual, aural, and hard-copy print.

Preferred Content Attributes

Excellent content marketing shares these specific qualities, regardless of output medium:

• Delivers value to your audience—educational aspects are particularly desirable
• Showcases your expertise in a broader, real world context
• Demonstrates how your expertise is relevant to your prospects…but without being “all about me”.

Here’s my quick, recommended content philosophy. If you’re a small business owner sign up for email tips about using content marketing to your advantage.

Uh, oh: Everyone is a Publisher

The paradox: marketing your business online is cheap and effective. But, it is time consuming. The effort involved is a commitment many overworked, independent business owners cannot afford. I can relate! There are too many other things to do to keep the lights on—particularly if your business is so “micro” that you’re the entire marketing department!

Marketing Content Produced by a Typical Small Business

Content marketing is “simply” using content to educate your target audience about your products, services, events, or industry. The content itself can be in any format (text, images, audio, video). Ideally, when the content is strategically deployed online it encourages participation with your target audience/customers.

That’s a lot different than the marketing world where simply announcing a price cut would bring folks inside!

Let’s look at the marketing content required for a small business to wiggle into hearts and minds online (the cheapest and most targeted path to your customers):

• Website content
• Email marketing
• Business blog content/article marketing
• Facebook updates
• Twitter tweets
• Online ads
• …and so on!

Easy? No! Time consuming? Yes!

Did I forget to mention that each of these disparate bits of content must be coordinated toward an overarching marketing message, too?

It’s no wonder that many business owners throw up their hands. Yes, marketing is vital—but add these to a long list of other vital tasks!

It’s Exhausting

Not surprisingly, most independent business owners are so busy they either neglect these marketing needs altogether or hand things off and hope for the best.

Can’t Afford to Hire Someone?

Custom content can be expensive. If your budget (or dogged DIY-independence!) means that you’re the entire marketing team, here are some tips:

Choose wisely.

Invest in the avenues that yield the best results. My husband and I tried producing a variety of content to market our micro-grocery. We experimented and selected a core set of channels, such as Facebook. Then, we automated the process with a regular content production schedule.

Create an editorial calendar.

Planning a calendar ensures that you produce web content frequently enough that it reaches your target customers.

For example, we send a weekly blog post that doubles as an email newsletter for George Bowers Grocery. It is produced on Tuesday for distribution Wednesday. The format and delivery schedule remains consistent although the content itself changes.

Don’t give up.

Content marketing takes time. You’ll need to amass a certain quantity of relevant content, and publish regularly to effectively communicate with your prospective customers. Small business owners should map out a year-long plan and track results as they go.

A solid content marketing plan can effectively expand a local business’s reach and brand awareness.

Voice Consistency in Content Marketing

How does your content “sound” to prospects?

Voice is particularly important because content marketing strategy lassos multiple kinds of media towards a collective goal. Individual bits of content need to sound like they originate from the same source (your brand).

Sprout Content highlights some reasons why voice consistency is important, including “biggies” such as:

• Do people like you?
• Do people trust you?
• Will people buy from you?

So, how do you start?

How to Keep Your Voice Consistent

Audit first. You’ve already produced content. Is there a theme? Or does it sound scattershot? Sometimes, how you say something is more important that what you say. Selectively decide what content stays, what content needs to be rewritten, and what content simply needs to be eliminated.

Action Step: Make a spreadsheet of existing content on your website, blog, and other media. A first pass through each piece asking “Does this sound like us?” works wonders. Unsure? Eliminate it.

Be human. “Corporate-ese” sucks. Your voice should sound like a real person. To find the right pitch and tone, consider your audience first. How do they talk to each other? What are their shared aspirations, goals, and experience? Lingo? Content produced by a skateboard company sounds different than that produced for a retirement home.

Action Step: Create a style guide for all contributors to follow. Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, recommends a table that establishes overall tone. For example, writing tone should sound “more like” this and “less like” this.

Be loyal. Hiring the same team of writers can go a long way to keeping a site fresh, yet consistent. Each writer has their own voice. Yet, working in concert a team of writers can establish a brand’s overall voice.

Action Step: Find contributors you trust. Then, ask them to recommend others in order to build your team. Hire an editor to ensure all content conforms to your established style guide. Remember, these roles do not have to be permanent hires; many writers prefer contract arrangements. Consistency is key.

Smart brands intentionally communicate to their customers using all senses. Start by clarifying your brand’s voice. You never know: if some developer geeks get their way, internet “smell-o-vision” might be next!

P.S. Special shout out to Sprout Content this week. They liked my “GIVE” definition of content marketing and sent me a gift card to Starbucks. Thanks!

Companies understand they must think and act like publishers…but they make a big mistake prioritizing the robots.

“Robots”, you say?

Yes: the search bots that crawl websites. These robots inform the search engines. In turn, these sites make search result recommendations for a global audience — making or breaking your website. Google recently caused an upheaval because they adjusted their algorithm (again — this version called “Farmer/Panda”).

Spinning robots allowed (by flikr, flickr)

Fantastic! One reason for this change is to punish the junk publishers who “spin” — hiring writers to take an article about apples and replace “apple” with “pear” (to fit whatever their topic or keywords may be)…This results in the seo-driven garbage that frustrates search engines and humans alike.

Your Web Content

Thankfully, there are just two (2) key concepts to remember when it comes to increasing the search effectiveness of your web content:

1) Write something original and gosh-darn-it, make it compelling. SEO-knowledge is helpful. So is a familiarity with basic web writing practices. Avoid cheap content.

2) Publish regularly. Search engines like regular updates. So do people! Realize that every online customer touch point and sale derives from quality content first.

Simply: write quality content for an audience of people and publish that content regularly.

In other words:

Don’t Write for the Robots

Content marketing requires technology tools to produce, manage, and organize content that your audience finds useful. In this new, semi-regular feature, I’ll be featuring tech tools to help you get the job done faster and better.

Hyper Alerts – Notification for Facebook Page Activity

Hyper Alerts will notify you whenever someone comments on one of your Facebook pages. It works similarly to Google Alerts – just enter the pages you’re monitoring and the preferred notification schedule.

Advantages include:

• Schedule notifications to suit you (compared to FB’s auto-send)
• Adds context: shows comments to specific updates
• Track pages you don’t manage!
• Hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly reports
• You can use an email address different than what you use with FB – great for community managers

Anyone who manages three or more Facebook business pages knows how disruptive it can be if you’re trying to respond to Facebook conversations and activity. (I recommend responding to everyone at least once; however, this is particularly time-consuming. I learned that managing multiple Facebook pages for AOL!)

What tools would you recommend to monitor Facebook? What about tools for other content marketing activities?

Please let me know your choice recommendations. I’ll be sharing these and other content marketing tech tools as Technology Editor for the print magazine, Chief Content Officer. Watch your mailbox!

So you’re aware that your content cannot die and therefore why you need to prepare your content to evolve.

But, whoa! What about all that content you’ve already generated? Online? Offline? How do you “upcycle” it to a more meaningful purpose?

Glad you asked. That’s just the process undertaken by Big “O” Tree and Lawn Service (client).

Inventory and Mapping
Big “O” had a website, but, it was difficult for the search engines to index because much of the information was graphically based. So, an inventory was taken to:

• determine what content already existed
• what information was missing
• how the site was navigated and where content was linked

Enter, “Upcycling”
Big “O” had a backlog of “evergreen” (pardon the pun) information in the form of email and hard-copy newsletters. So, care was taken to add this material to the site so the information could be used again. This gave “old” content “new” purpose  – similarly to “upcycling” in the recycling world.

Examples:

History of Big “O”‘s Unusual Name – This was written years ago for a newsletter; yet, it’s a common question for new customers. Solution? Add it to the site in digital format.

What is Root Collar? – This brief video was sent as part of an email newsletter. It, too, is “evergreen” information so it was inserted into the site’s “News & Tips” blog.

Year-Round Guidelines for Virginia Tree & Lawn Care – this page functions as a cornerstone to tie together links to other, older content that is still relevant.

Look Again at Old Content

Reviving “old” content is a sound strategy if it provides ongoing value. Evaluate it based on helpfulness to the end user. As an added bonus, older content may be helpful to you, too: collecting and categorizing old information occasionally requires less production time than creating anew – talk about a wise use of energy!

My first job after college was at a weirdly sterile advertising agency. I didn’t realize at the time how usual it was that I had my own office – with a window, no less! I promptly moved in and pasted up a bunch of band posters, photos, and a collection of odds and ends. It said:

I am creative, and I am ready to work!

Secretly, I also hoped it said:

Come talk to me! We might have something in common!

I quickly discovered why the agency was so sterile. Non-work conversations were not encouraged here. “Don’t bring your playthings to work,” was the stern, typed memo (!) from the boss telling me to remove the “nonsense”. (Memo – yes, despite agency use of email!)

How things have changed! Now companies of all kinds – not just so-called “creative” work environments – encourage employees bring “more of who they are” to the workplace.

This is particularly exciting to see in corporate use of social media… especially when the model is built around the employees themselves.

That’s one reason why I enjoyed interviewing employees at Incept, a blood banking contact center in Ohio. I discovered their company’s social media policy is built on showcasing their employees individuality.

While you’re there read “How to Make Content Social: Learn How Incept’s Employees Use Social Media to Engage Customers”, the case study I wrote about Incept. I applaud how Nate Riggs of Social Business Strategies lead the way and encouraged Incept to embrace social media use on an individual level.

Thank goodness times change.

I think bringing “who you are” to work is a lot healthier and certainly more fun. It builds solid work relationships in-house and with outside vendors and employees. Embracing the diversity of interests in your business can also demonstrably  build the bottom line, too.

Is the cashier with the microphone headset responsible for your Big Mac purchase?

Well, he may take your order and therefore “make the sale”, but, we all know sales are the result of ongoing, strategic marketing initiatives. The famous “Golden Arches” are equally famous for producing multiple customer touch-points throughout diverse media streams. This repetitive, multi-channel approach to marketing ensures your “Mac Attack” purchase when you pull into the drive-thru.

When it comes to selling the real work starts with the development and execution of a strategic marketing plan. There is no exception when you’re selling online. To do this most effectively you’ll need a content marketing strategy. “Content marketing” is an online discipline that oversees the development of highly targeted, specialized content that serves as a starting point for lead development, customer acquisition, and customer retention.

Let’s briefly look at each.

Lead Generation
There’s no debate that today’s customers search online first for solutions and, as a result, discover products and services. Solving problems via search is fast, easy, and affords some measure of privacy. This is “touch point #1”.

Marketers who create “discoverable” content that educates leads are at the forefront of developing lifetime customers. Examples of lead generating content includes everything from niche-specific case studies, whitepapers, and seo-optimized blog posts, to multimedia video, audio, webcasts, or social media discussions. The key similarity between these diverse content formats is that each piece serves to educate a lead and present a solution.

Marketing costs are significantly less costly than launching and maintaining traditional marketing campaigns on television, radio, or in print. This minimizes business costs and increases overall sales margins.

Customer Acquisition
Touch point #2 is broadly understood as the moment a customer makes a purchase – shifting him or her from “prospect” to “customer”. However, it’s important to understand this moment as a culmination of many “mini” touch points the customer experiences at any point leading up to, or after the sale, including: order processing, billing, fulfillment or support.

To maximize the probability of customer satisfaction careful thought and planning must exist. Here, too, content developed with strategic marketing objectives in mind has the opportunity to shine. Specialized content produced at all of these touch-points can anticipate and answer questions, extend a customer’s understanding of the product or service’s benefits, and validate a customer’s purchasing decision.

Again, where online content can adequately replace or supplement workforce overhead, costs are reduced.

Customer Retention
Similarly, online content marketing is employed on an ongoing basis to retain customers and strengthen their loyalty to brand. Using the same tactical measures, successful content marketing continues to offer additional value. This value takes various forms. It could provide ongoing customer education, provide a sense of community, or even, occasionally, shape identity.

The costs to maintain this ongoing content development and deployment pale in comparison to traditional marketing campaigns while, in the case of social media, are highly targeted and measurable.

Results
Companies must now evaluate business margins and profits against marketing initiatives online and offline. Unlike traditional marketing — where campaigns are short-lived — content marketing is an ongoing, measurable process. Carefully constructed content starts the lead generation phase and continues to build customer loyalty indefinitely.

Katie McCaskey provides content marketing consulting and related services. She is based outside Washington, D.C. More info at www.katiemccaskey.com

Friend or foe? No, the question is: friend or business page when it comes to Facebook.

In the rush to “get on Facebook” many have made a common mistake. The mistake is setting a personal profile but using it for a business. Are you “friends” with a business? Tsk, tsk. That small business set it up wrong. No worries, though: it’s an easy fix. Here’s the “how” and “why”:

Disadvantages for a Business using a Personal Profile

• It’s against Facebook policy
• You have “it’s complicated” as your relationship status
• You get annoying invitations for Farmville or other games
• You look unprofessional!

Advantages of a Business Page on Facebook

• You look professional
• You can use more diverse apps
• You can block time-sinks, such as game requests
• You can reference other businesses on your wall
• Other businesses can showcase you on their business page
• You’ll have more fans (“likes”) because you won’t be asking for access to customers’ private info that Facebook “friends” can share, such as religious or political leaning

How Can I Fix My Profile?

• Create a personal profile, if you don’t already have one. Simply go to Facebook.com and sign up.
• Create a Facebook business page. Go to any existing business you “like” and scroll to the bottom left. Click “create page”. Here’s local Staunton Parks & Rec‘s page, for example. When you create the page you’ll automatically be the business page admin.
• Tell your friends. Send a note to to your Facebook friends telling them you’ll be deleting your friend profile in favor of a business profile. Ask that they “like” your business profile by sending a direct link.
• Delete your old profile. Navigate to “delete profile”. You’ll still be able to use your legitimate personal profile. That’s the profile that is your business page’s new administrator.
• When you reach 25 fans (“likes”)… you can set a permanent address. Go to www.facebook.com/username – but be warned! You can only set this ONCE.

Here are tools and strategies to maximize your business page once you have it set up properly.

Reminder: you can follow this blog and other updates on Facebook. Virginia-based artisans can sign up for the Facebook marketing class I’m teaching this Spring, too!