All of your content isn’t digital. Why is your content strategy?

I get it. The world is going digital. And mobile. And social. I understand consumers want it that way. Heck, I’m a consumer and I want it that way, too. But, if you’re involved in helping to promote a brand, there’s something more important to consider:

Digital isn’t the only way people experience your brand.

And, unless you're a digital-only brand (if there is such a thing), you’re probably selling yourself short if your content strategy is only focused on digital.

A brand is the sum of all of the experiences people have with you, so each one of these experiences is important and should be as consistent as possible. That means digital experiences, but it also means off-line experiences, too. These could include things like the in-store experience at Nordstrom, the vacation experience at a Disney Park and event-based experiences like Content Marketing World.

Every brand needs to have an overall content strategy to help guide the content that’s being created, regardless of how it’s consumed. (<--- Tweet this)

To be clear, I’m not talking about simply adding in-person tactics and events to your existing digital content strategy. I’m suggesting that you take a step back and re-think your content strategy to make sure it’s broader than any specific tactic.

Lots of examples are out there. Ignore them.

Many folks have advice for how to develop a content strategy, but be careful; these are often just a list of digital tactics. It’s nice that these exist for comparison’s sake, but it’s a bit like filling up your gas tank before you have a driver’s license…things are a little out of order.

Your content strategy also needs to be specific to your brand. Whether you work for a Fortune 100 company or you’re a one-person shop, your content strategy needs to be yours, not someone else’s. Just like singing cats and talking babies, the fact that you can find content strategy templates on the Web doesn’t mean they actually exist.

Remember it’s a guide, not a novel.

An overall content strategy should serve as a guide for the people creating content for your brand, whether it’s your marketing department, a customer service person, an ad agency or your receptionist. But this doesn’t mean you need to run out and create a three-inch-thick rulebook for everyone to follow. People don’t like to follow rules, they like to have guidelines.

You do need to have standards for content, especially in larger organizations or for those relying on external vendors for content creation. But remember the people you’re talking to in your strategy are the ambassadors of your brand. Guide them, don’t preach at them.

So, what’s in it for you?

There are many benefits to creating (or reevaluating) an overall content strategy. Here are just a few of them:

• It can serve as a barometer to help measure the consistency of your content across touch points (rather than relying on opinions, personal preferences)
• You gain efficiencies from having everyone on the same page
• Your brand looks smarter in the marketplace, giving people confidence in you because they know what to expect
• Referrals will increase as a result of this confidence
• Most importantly, your audience will be more loyal to you when they enjoy and appreciate a consistent experience

If you don’t have a content strategy now, commit to creating one. If you do, take a fresh look at it: does it reflect your brand regardless of how people want to interact with you?

Creating an overall content strategy for your brand will give those who choose your brand the consistent experience they expect and deserve.

And they will reward you with their loyalty.

5 ways to start a headline that don't include numbers (please!)

Okay, I get it. We’ve tested it and using numbers in headlines works. But at some point (and, please, let it be soon) we will overuse this tactic and it will become ineffective. Right?

I say that time is now.

As a writer, I realize I’m naturally more sensitive to prescriptive ‘rules’ for writing headlines. I’m a firm believer that writers of headlines should have the freedom to use whatever tactics they can to be successful (that is, to draw in the intended audience). And there’s no denying that using numbers is certainly one way to do that. But it’s getting old.

I also know I’m not the target audience, so it doesn’t really matter what I think. But here’s the thing: writers, because of our proximity, will be the first people to recognize when this whole ‘headlines with numbers’ thing has gone overboard. So, let me be the first to say — man overboard!

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at your own Twitter feed. If it’s like mine, at least every other tweet is of the numbered variety. Seriously, go look.

The whole thing reminds me of a recent Saturday Night Live skit about hashtags. Have you seen it? Two guys are talking, awkwardly working hashtags — quite literally — into their conversation. They even have this ridiculous hand gesture to emphasize how bad the whole hashtag thing has truly gotten. It’s funny, mainly because it’s true.

I’m not sure if it will be this Saturday, but it feels like a skit about headlines containing numbers can’t be too far behind. I can see it, two guys are talking:

“Hey Jim, want to know five ways to think smarter, not harder?”

‘Sure, Bob. Why don’t you give me those five ways to think smarter not harder!”

“You’re feeling smarter already, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got to tell you, there are three ways I can describe how I feel right now.”

“Is one of those three ways smarter?”

(Together): “…and not harder!”

As they laugh, I quietly shed a tear. Or maybe my eyes are just watering because I threw up in my mouth a little bit. Either way, it’s not good.

Look, I know everyone is telling you to use numbers in your headlines. They all say it’s safe and effective. But that’s what we used to say about cigarettes. And Saccharin. And Asbestos. In time, everything runs its course (or becomes illegal).

So, please, I implore you, keep looking for creative ways to engage your audience. Keep trying new things. But can we agree to move on from the whole numbers thing?

I thank you. Your Twitter followers will thank you. And, most importantly, your readers will thank you.

Lazy Susan gets a bad rap

What did ‘Lazy’ Susan ever do to you?

You know what a Lazy Susan is, right? She’s that spinning platform in your cupboard that holds all of your stuff, presenting it to you gracefully as she spins around at your every whim. All she does is help you. Yet you call her lazy.

I think you’re the lazy one, sir.

While Susan stands ready at any moment to deliver what you need — cinnamon, oregano, even the rarely-used bay leaf (truth be known, she may be the only one at your place who knows where that is) — all you can do is criticize?

Let’s take a look at her life for a minute. Since you were fortunate enough to happen upon her at that random garage sale, Susan has never missed a spin. She doesn’t fall off her track; she doesn’t take a sick day. She makes you look like something you’re not — an organized chef.

Yet you’re ungrateful. What gives?

My guess is that you treat Lazy Susan a lot like you treat your existing content. You know, the stories lying around inside your company just waiting to be told. There may be thousands of these stories, many of them potentially helpful to your customers. Yet they sit there, in the proverbial cupboard, much like Susan, waiting for their turn.

It could be the story about how a call center rep helped someone solve a problem that wasn’t related to the topic of the call. It may be the eight other ways your product or service can be used that the product guys have been talking to you about for months. It could be the above-and-beyond stories your customer service department is always sharing in meetings that never see the light of day.

It could be a thousand other things. The point is there are probably many unharvested stories in your company that could be helping your customers. Heck, they could be helping you find new customers, too. And it’s your job to go find these stories.

Sure, content marketing is the hot, new thing. But that doesn’t mean you always have to create brand new content. Even though some of the stories lying around your place may seem old to you, they can still be valuable and deserve to be told.

After reading this, you need to do two things: first, go home and apologize to Susan. Stop calling her lazy and thank her for keeping you organized. And second: go looking for those untold stories and start telling them.

You’ll be glad you did.

Sorry, Facebook, Twitter has become my morning paper

I don’t need to spend any time explaining why the morning paper itself is no longer my go-to source for news, right? Too hard to access. Doesn’t fit in my pocket. Just too late.

But now, despite Facebook’s Paper app efforts, I’m realizing I get all the news I need — in a nicely-customized to-my-interests-fashion, 140 characters at a time on Twitter.

It’s actually a perfect scenario when you think about it (and I wish I had thought about it before the Twitter people did). It’s a place where all the people I choose to listen to are talking about what’s important to them. In brief. With details if I want them and not if I don’t.

What’s not to love?

Well before the Paper app existed, I used to call Facebook my ‘paper’ because it was where all my friends were hanging out. But then I also had to watch other spaces for the news of the day. Not any more.

Twitter has quickly become the place news happens first. Updates are there more quickly. It’s a trusted source for me. An example? Okay. Just yesterday, some friends posted on Facebook (I do still go there for the local skinny) that the Malaysian plane had been found.

“Great!” I thought. So off to Twitter I went for the latest. Only thing is, nothing was there. Was I mad? Disappointed? Of course not, because I knew it must be a hoax (and, thanks to Twitter, I knew it before most of my FB friends).

For many of you in the social media and content marketing worlds, this news is no big surprise. You’re already there. But here’s the thing — we sometimes forget that we do this everyday, so we’re not the typical person. Much of the world still sees Twitter as a teenage thing or that thing celebrities use to announce their latest album.

This includes most of your customers.

Yes, Twitter is becoming the most trusted news source in the world. Now, how are you going to leverage that knowledge for your business or brand?

I know it’s got me thinking.

A content strategy shouldn’t include tactics

Sorry, let me amend that — any strategy shouldn’t include tactics

A strategy is a plan designed to achieve a goal.

And selecting a strategy is very important for groups of people because, well, we’re people. We need to understand where we’re headed and what we should do to get there. Otherwise, it’s a mess.

For those who like a more formal definition, allow me to roll out the standards here:

• Webster’s dictionary defines strategy as: A careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time

• Oxford dictionaries’ definition is very similar: A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.

Here’s what it’s not — a strategy is not a list of tactics.

For sure, tactics are the way a strategy gets done. But the strategy itself needs to be a longer-term view; it needs to define how the goal will be achieved. Short-term things like tactics need to be developed, but they have no place inside the strategy itself.

Why? As things outside the group’s control — market conditions, the competitive environment, regulations — change, the tactics designed to achieve the goal will need to change, too. But the overall strategy should remain the same.

Here comes the analogy!

I once read that a commercial flight is actually off course 80% of the time. So a plane from Chicago to Los Angeles is almost constantly adjusting its direction to get back on course. But it always has the same goal: get to LA.

The strategy here is to use air travel (because it’s fast, efficient, etc.). The tactics of choosing an airline, a departure time, whether or not to check your luggage, are not part of the strategy because they may need to change.

Still with me? Great!

How the heck does this relate to content marketing?

As content marketing continues to grow, it’s natural that some folks will offer up their own recommended content strategies to help brands take advantage of it.

But a closer look at some of these content strategy documents reveals a disappointment — some are nothing more than a list of recommended tactics. Examples of these tactics include: choose your keywords, select your audience, define personas. This tactical work definitely needs to be done, but it shouldn't be part of creating a content strategy.

It’s like telling someone to always be at the airport at noon for that flight from ORD to LAX. But what if you need to get there sooner? You may need to fly to LA at eight o’clock in the morning to meet your goal. Tactics need to be able to change.

Today, some content marketing tactics, like choosing an audience or identifying key words, are becoming almost universal — everyone needs them, right? It may seem like that at first, but there are risks to this thinking.

As tempting as it is to adopt an existing list of silver-bullet tactics that will work perfectly for every brand — don’t do it. The perfect strategy for you doesn’t exist until you create it.

While creating a content strategy is a key first step for anyone who wants to enjoy the benefits of content marketing, any strategy should take a long-term view and the tactics designed to reach it should be developed separately and specifically with your brand in mind.

Now to the important stuff. It's cold here. Anyone want to go to LA?

Why words are so important in the so-called age of video

Video killed the radio star. That was the 1980s mantra of the MTV generation, courtesy of the band the Buggles. Today, video everywhere you look. People consume more and more video and, as if you needed more evidence, YouTube is now the second largest search engine inthe world.

Not so fast. I would argue that words are still more important.

A recent call for banning the word ‘bossy’ from our vernacular by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg reminds us that word choices can be critical not only in business, but in civilization as a whole. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, it’s interesting that words are still the currency we use to describe them.

In communication, words are the gold standard.

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that you should stop making those videos (and Slideshare presentations and podcasts), just remember that the words you choose as you’re defining them are critical. Yes, Vine videos are fun and attention getting, but the attention your brand can get from a six-second video can be as fleeting as the video itself.

Words are where the investment needs to be made.

So before you create that epic video, that mind-blowing Slideshare presentation or that in-depth podcast, consider investing time in the words that will describe them. I’m not talking about the words that are actually used in these tactics (e.g. the script), but the words used in the strategy that defines and inspires them.

The strategies you develop as you pursue these tactics need to lay out your thinking for who, what, when, where why and how this will happen. As Joe Pulizzi and others have said, we are all becoming media companies. The big difference here is that we aren’t reporting the news. We are the news.

And who cares about us? No one.

That’s why things like storytelling and content strategy are so important. In order to make ourselves relevant to those whom we want to engage, we have to create a story.

And, to do that, we have to use words.

The difference between marketing and advertising is…lemonade

 

Okay, that’s not exactly true. What I mean here is that the difference between advertising and marketing is easy to explain using a lemonade analogy. Follow me on this one. 

Many folks, especially those outside of marketing, get confused by advertising. It's the shiny object, the one we see entirely too many times each day, so it becomes the face of marketing. It’s what everyone thinks of as marketing.

But it’s not marketing.

Marketing is the thought behind the ads. It's the strategy and the planning that inspires the ad. And it’s the measurement after the ad has run to see how effective the ad has been, whether it should run again, where, how often, etc.

Marketing is also the planning around what happens after someone responds to the ad. It’s the sales force that answers questions and finds the right solution; the website that accepts your order and the distribution center that sends you what you need. But, back to the analogy…

When making lemonade these days, there’s typically a dry mix and water (no real lemons were harmed during this analogy). Put the mix and water together and you have a refreshing drink. But, because this is a marketing analogy, it’s not that simple; let’s deconstruct that a bit.

Advertising is the water in our analogy; very vibrant and visible, providing dynamic motion and sound. It’s the most noticeable ingredient in our little drink. But, without the flavor (the marketing, which you’ve probably deduced, is the powdery lemonade mix here), water is tasteless and not very exciting.

Sure, it moves around and splashes. But, without any flavor, people will soon move on and forget all about our drink (that is, our brand). It’s the concentrated flavors in the powder — the marketing — that gives our brand, I mean, drink, both its attractiveness and staying power.

The research and strategy behind the message is all packed tightly into the mix, waiting to burst out and influence people’s behavior. But, admittedly, the mix itself isn’t much without the water, either. It’s rather dry and no one can see all of the flavor packed in there. It’s hard to experience, to say the least.

Clearly, marketing and advertising need each other. Neither works well without the other and it’s good to understand what each brings to the party. It’s also good for both sides to have a healthy respect for each other and what they can become when they work together.

So, the next time someone you know is confused about the difference between advertising and marketing, make them some lemonade.