Beware headline generators, formulas and shiny red apples

You see more of them everyday. Ads, blog posts and social media posts talking about the latest headline generator or headline writing formula.

Please.

There are no shortcuts here people. If you want great design, you hire a great designer. If you want great photography, hire a great photographer. Great video? You get the idea.

Heck, if you want a great haircut, you don’t look for a magic formula — you go see a professional at a great barber or salon.

Guess what? If you want a great headline, you need to hire a great writer.

I know, I know. People out there will tell you they have statistics that can prove their generator/formula/magic potion will help you write the best headlines and earn attention all across the kingdom.

When I hear that, it reminds me of scary things, like witches who offer up apples to innocent young girls — “Just take a bite,” she says, “and the prince will fall in love you.”

Sound familiar?

We all know how the story of Snow White goes. Her insecurity is manipulated and she’s fooled into thinking she needs magic to have the best headlines, er, I mean to have the prince fall in love with her. Of course, the prince was already in love with Snow White, as he would prove later, saving her life with true loves fist kiss…but I digress.

There’s no doubt that the arguments being made for magic headline generators are compelling. The apple is, indeed, shiny and looks delicious. But don’t fall for those who would tell you they have your problem solved. If it sounds too good to be true, you know it probably is.

When you start to dream about having the fairest headlines in the land, don’t ask a magic mirror — hire a really good copywriter.

He or she is the real prince of the story and they would love to help you.

Content Marketing: it’s not your grandma’s marketing (unless, of course, your grandma is Betty White)

She’s 93 years old, stars in a show called Hot in Cleveland and has more than one million followers on Twitter (is your grandma even on Twitter?).

She’s Betty White and she’s everything that’s right with marketing today.

In fact she’s proof, I’d argue, that what we know as Content Marketing today will simply be Marketing tomorrow.

Let me tell you why.

See, like typical grandmas, marketing used to be all about the safe and sound. Put your (product related) message where the largest audience is and wait for the world to knock down your door.

Oh, sure, the kids all liked the sugar cookies at grandma’s house, too…because that’s all they had to choose from. But that strategy won’t work anymore, for grandma or brand marketers. There are simply too many other doors that all look the same.

And sugar cookies? Please.

Today’s marketing — Content Marketing — gives people what they want and pulls them toward a helpful brand, rather than pushing a message at them that’s sponsored by a brand. (Yuck.)

News flash brands: people have found ways to avoid these messages; they're even willing to pay not to see them — can’t you see they don’t want them?

The best example may be Betty herself. Is she in a rocking chair at some nursing home playing it safe? No way! She’s rocking hilarious TV commercials for brands like Snickers, hosting her own practical joke show Off Their Rockers and starring on Saturday Night Live.

Let the difference here be a lesson to you, brands. Do you want to sit around pushing advertising messages and waiting for your time to come (looking at you Radio Shack)? Or do you want to get out there and market yourselves with the gusto of one Betty Marion White?

I would recommend the latter.

And it’s official: the word ‘content’ is just too generic

So you’re watching a cooking show and the chef tells you, ‘Now, take some ingredients — you know, good ingredients — mix them together, bake at 350 degrees for an hour.  Viola!'

Or you go to a car dealership and tell the first person you meet, ‘I want to buy a car, a really good car… today.' You’d probably get lots of attention, but it’s doubtful you’re going to get what you need.

Let's face it, like the words 'ingredients' and 'car,' the word content has simply become too generic to be out there on its own.

Content can mean so many things, including: the words on a (digital or printed) page, a photograph, video, movie, story, poem, bumper sticker, billboard, text message, tweet, email, even some commandments carved out of a stone tablet.

It’s all content.

So talking about content alone — especially in the marketing world — just isn’t helpful anymore. But don’t despair, it’s not the end of the marketing world.

All you need to do is provide some context. Are you talking about marketing your brand with content? That’s Content Marketing. Are you talking about defining how your content will be used? That’s Content Strategy. Where and how your content is stored? Content Management. See how it works?

Here’s a handy-dandy chart designed to help:

Doing this?                                                                     Call it this!

Using content to market your brand	Content Marketing
Defining how your content is to be used	Content Strategy
Deciding where & how your content is stored	Content Management
Choosing how content will promote your brand	Content Marketing Strategy
Using others’ content to promote your brand	Content Curation
Allowing others to use your content	Content Syndication
Delivering your content to others	Content Distribution
Determining how your content will be delivered	Content Distribution Strategy

See? It’s easy. So the next time you’re using the word content, please give some thought to including context so your audience will know exactly what you mean.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my cooking class. Ciao!

Content Marketing: a not-so-new way of thinking

Ask 100 people in the marketing world today about Content Marketing and you’ll get 101 different answers. It’s one of the most popular and, at the same time, ill-defined terms around. Why?

I believe Content Marketing is more of a philosophy than a specific tactic or strategy and I’ll tell you why — it’s because of how we got here. What created Content Marketing was a confluence of three different but related technological advances:

1.     The advent of technology that allows consumers to avoid marketing messages like never before, such as DVR technology, satellite radio and streaming video

2.     Other technology that allows a brand to become a publisher of its own messages without the need for traditional media; this includes web technology and Social Media

3.     And, finally, technology that connects consumers more than ever, including smartphones, blogging and the increasing importance of consumer reviews

The first change probably seems obvious, but we can’t underestimate how this has changed the ways brands are spending their marketing dollars. While the TV commercial isn’t dead yet, except for things that have to be seen live (like concerts and sporting events) it may be on life support. Individual consumers are now in charge of their own TV programming schedules and can — and do — skip commercials at will.

The second point may be less obvious, simply because it’s been a more gradual change. Companies have operated websites for more than a decade and Social Media, while newer, has been around a while, too. But companies are now turning to these new(er) media as a way of directly and efficiently communicating with their target audiences without the need of an intermediary like television or newspapers.

The third change is less about technology and more about what people are doing with it. Today’s mobile-enabled consumers are ever-connected; with each other, with the brands they prefer and with the world at large. With blogging, anyone who wants to can at least try to be an expert about something...essentially for free. And nearly all of us have the world’s information right in the palm of our hands. Brands have to deal with these new dynamics everyday.

Enter Content Marketing.

As brands look for ways to deal with all of these changes, they have an opportunity to think differently about how they send messages to consumers. Quickly leaving are the days when a brand pushed its messages at consumers. They must now talk with them. This is the essence of Content Marketing. It doesn’t have to be digital (although most communication today is) and it doesn’t have to be high production value like traditional TV spots (although video will continue to be prominent).

In fact, Content Marketing as a philosophy has been around for hundreds of years. The idea of giving consumers the information they want in exchange for loyalty existed in the 18^th century when Benjamin Franklin promoted his print shop — not by offering discounts on printing or even talking about printing at all, but by giving people the information they wanted, like astrology and weather predictions…in Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Content Marketing isn’t a specific tactic like blogging or email. And it isn’t some esoteric strategy only the experts can understand. It’s the idea that people will listen to you and may — may — do business with you if you help them.

Now, isn’t that something worth doing…and doing well?

Three things to remember when creating content

Let’s call them the content triumvirate. Not just because it sounds good (which it does) but also because — if you include all three of these things — I believe you will almost always be creating great content.

If you make sure your content is relevant, connects emotionally with a targeted audience and is within your brand’s authority, you’re well on your way to content greatness.

Let’s take a quick look at what each of these mean:

Make it relevant

Seems obvious. But the important part here is relevant to whom? When creating a message of any kind, whether it’s a TV spot or a postcard, you must make sure it’s relevant to your target audience…otherwise, why should they care? But here’s the thing: this means you must have a target audience in the first place.

Ensure that it connects emotionally

Truly good content must make an emotional connection with your aforementioned audience. Anything else is just content, not Content Marketing.

Stay within your brand’s authority

This is the least intuitive of the three but, perhaps, the most important. Your audience will listen to you if your message is relevant and connects with them emotionally. But the message also has to be on a topic in which you have some authority. For example, if you make shoes (like Converse) anything shoe related will make sense coming from you. But what if you send a message about how to fix a leaky sink (Converse Liquid Drain Opener)? Not so much.

As you may have noticed in the graphic version of this concept, the spot where all three things converge is quite small…and that’s by design. Make no mistake, this is not an easy task.

But, if you’re able to do these three things simultaneously — creating relevant content that connects with a targeted audience emotionally while staying within the space of your brand’s authority — you’ll be creating great content indeed.

Good luck!

Both sides of the Facebook argument

Early in 2015, Facebook is changing its algorithm yet again and there are two sides to the argument for why they’re doing it this time.

On one side of the argument are the advertisers/brands, who say its extortion. They have been reaching people through Facebook at no cost all along, the brands say, so why will it now cost them to do so?

On the other side of the argument is Facebook itself. They say they have surveyed their customers and are hearing loud and clear: “Too many ads.” So, in order to give its customers a better experience, they are doing something about it.

Of course, things may not be this simple. But one thing is certain: Facebook is clearly the most powerful Social Media channel on the planet:

• With more than 1.1 billion active monthly users, Facebook is simply dominant

• And it's not just its users; research shows that nearly one in four visits to a brand’s website (22%) comes directly from Facebook

• That same research shows that is more than four times the referrals of its nearest SoMe competitor, Pinterest, and it’s on the rise — it was just 10% in 2013

So a change in the Facebook algorithm is critically important. Is being able to charge for these messages simply too tempting to pass up? Or, perhaps from the Facebook perspective, is it not in the best interest of Facebook shareholders not to make this change.

What will be interesting to see is the number of brands willing to shell out the dollars required, as of the January 2015 change, to continue to reach people using Facebook.

Some smaller brands simply won't be able to afford it and others may go elsewhere, either out of principle or because they believe the other ’free’ social channels can deliver enough traffic to make it worthwhile.

Either way, there are several things that could happen in January:

• Pinterest could stand to gain from this and may grow substantially

• Other SoMe channels may follow Facebook and start monetizing their networks, as well (some, like LinkedIn, already do)

• Another social network could benefit even more than Pinterest, but that’s a long shot; even though it lags Facebook, Pinterest still refers five times the web traffic of any of the other SoMe channels

• Facebook could offer to buy Pinterest, seemingly closing the door on its other SoMe competitors

• Of course, someone else could offer to buy Pinterest, as well

• And who knows what new network could pop up

One thing's for sure: early 2015 will be an interesting time in social media.

How content is like a used car

Okay, follow me here.

Great content is like a great used car, everyone recognizes it when they see it. Greatness inspires ooohs and ahhhs and stirs conversation, whether it’s a restored 1969 Chevy Camaro (photo credit: imagejuicy.com) or a hilarious, well-executed video.

But things have changed.

In the old days, if you had a great used car you were ready to sell, all you had to do was put a sign in the window and wait. Chances are, most people where you lived knew about your car because, well, it was awesome. The word would quickly get around and someone — maybe several someones — would come and make an offer.

Content is much the same. Not so long ago, great content would be easy to find and, if it truly was awesome, people knew about it and would share it without being asked.

Today, there’s so much content (and so many used cars) that even the best can’t be found without some promotion.

Let me put that another way. If you had a used car today, do you think you could sell it simply by putting a sign in the window? Perhaps eventually. But if you really wanted to sell it now, you’d probably promote it on a website somewhere to get the word out, right?

It’s the same with your content. We know it’s awesome. But other people don’t know it’s awesome if they haven’t seen it.

I read recently where one firm recommends spending 60% of your budget on creating great content, but reserving 40% for promoting that content to the right audience at the right time where they prefer to get their information. That sounds about right to me.

So, go out there and create great, compelling, targeted content that solves a problem in the lives of your target audience. Then, don’t forget to promote it so they have the chance to see how awesome you are!