Over my career, I have lead three editorial teams, and there are a few challenges that seem to occur no matter what city I’m in, what kind of publication I am working for or who is on my team. Here, we take a look at some of the most common hurdles to team blogging and a few suggestions for overcoming them.

Hurdle No. 1: People want to write, but they have no clue where to start

This is understandable; a blank page can be downright intimidating. Even professional writers experience this difficulty. Plus, many people worry about sounding “smart,”—you know, writing like they could be on par with company execs or thought leaders in the industry—which often deflates efforts before they’re underway.

When this happens, encourage colleagues to write about what they know; everyone has a specialty, whether it is design, PPC or social media. Sit down with them before they start writing, and offer to help them strategize how they can tie the topic into the overall goals of the blog. For example, an employee may have a lot of PPC experience. We don’t often blog about PPC, but we can certainly craft a blog comparing the ROI of PPC to that of Facebook ads, which is completely relevant to our audience.

When you write about something you know, you automatically sound smarter. And the truth is, we are all looking for real, accessible content anyway, not content that sounds “smart.” Other tips include creating an “Idea Bank” of preapproved topics anyone can pull from or plugging in topics you want covered on specific days to your editorial calendar and allowing writers to claim those slots.

Hurdle No. 2: People turn in blogs and never want to see them again

It’s a common feeling: OK, I have written 500 words, now I want this off my plate. Having the blog manager edit each post does save time and reduce runaround, but it produces a lost opportunity for educating contributors and coaching them to be better writers over time. On the other hand, improving abilities one-on-one may mean better quality content over time but increased turnaround time. However, it can be utterly frustrating or even overwhelming for many when they put effort into something difficult for them (i.e. blogging) and someone comes back with edits insisting they work on it some more. When you, as an editor, spend literally no time going over edits or changes you’ve made your team’s blogs, they have no chance to grow as writers.

Insist on 10 minutes, whether it is before the work day begins or the handful of minutes usually spent getting a cup of coffee after lunch, everyone can find 10 minutes to spare. Even if it is after the blog has been published, try to find a few minutes to sit down with each writer to discuss some areas for improvement. Do not come off a judgmental or demanding; instead, try to be helpful and informative. Usually, bloggers simply need a little help tweaking the point of view or outline of the post.

Make it clear that 10 minutes set aside for early blog post edits may save everyone time later on, as writers become more comfortable with writing and need less edits on future posts.

Hurdle No. 3: Guest bloggers can be great; but they can also be terrible time thieves

Receiving guest blog posts gives you the chance to display different perspectives and voices on your blog, as well as establish the opportunity to work with industry thought leaders. But this is only beneficial if their posts are well written and relevant to your message. When you receive blatantly self-promotional or poorly communicated articles, it can act like quick sand swallowing your work hours.

Don’t waste your time trying to edit unworkable. Never lower your content standards for outside writers. If you do choose to accept guest blogs, create a landing page on your website that explains your standards and guidelines and clearly states that not all posts are accepted. This will simplify your process and save you time explaining why posts were or were not published.  

The good of team blogging can certainly outweigh the bad with enough preparation and buy-in. What have been some of your top challenges for guest blogging? Let us know in the comment section below. 

photo credit: wwarby via photopin

The editorial calendar just confirmed it; it’s already my turn to write another blog post. Here at Kuno, many of us enjoy writing, but with a new website and new service launching, plus lots of client work that takes priority, my usual blogging team has shrunk. When that happens, or you don’t have a sufficient number of bloggers to start with, it is difficult to produce enough content to reach your marketing goals. This got me thinking: How can companies encourage everyone to participate in blogging?

It isn’t easy. Not everyone enjoys writing as much as I do. And, let’s face it; everyone is Busy with a capital B. So here, we discuss how to establish an all-inclusive blog team at your company.

Steps for Blogging Success

First, put the word out that all are welcome to participate, including your marketing and sales teams, of course, but extend the invitation to your customer service reps, senior management and even those out in the field. These different perspectives are what will make your content shine. Make sure those who communicate most with your buyers are highly encouraged to blog since they know what customers want and need.

To keep everyone on the same page regarding content standards, create a company-wide style guide. Make sure each blogger is aware of your buyer personas, preferred topics and editorial process. It is also helpful to provide successful posts as examples to emulate.

Then, your marketing or content team can serve as editors to smooth over grammar and punctuation issues and ensure each post coincides with the company’s voice and tone.

It is important to be open minded when it comes to forms of content; don’t insist on 500 words from everyone, but, instead, let employees contribute videos, infographs, presentations or other creative blogging methods.

Encouraging Your Employees

If blogging has not always been a part of your colleagues’ job descriptions, it may be difficult to convince them to start blogging (read: adding more work to their plate). That is why it is imperative you spell out the benefits of blogging on an individual basis. Explain that blogging can further careers in several ways:

• Getting work published creates visibility for the author and the company
• Being seen as a published thought leader gets you noticed in and outside of the company
• An online portfolio is being developed automatically (and for free)
• Published articles may lead to speaking engagements, being quoted in news stories and other relevant career opportunities

Once employees start blogging, it can be difficult to keep them blogging, though. Instead of just giving them a pat on the back for a job well-done, show them, and the entire team, how well they did using numbers. For example, give a quick presentation with the three blog posts that received the most page views, comments, inbound links or lead conversions. This way, everyone can see how their blogging efforts are directly related to the company’s marketing goals.

Or take it a step further and reward employees in some way, even if it is a quick shout out at an all-company meeting or in your internal newsletter.

If you want to make things interesting, consider setting up a small blogging competition for your team. Imagine you have a product launch coming up and really want to drum up some conversation regarding the topic. Why not hold a contest to see who can write a blog post about said topic that gets more than 50 views? Put a gift card or small bonus up for grabs and chances are employees will be anxious to participate.

Pondering the Paperwork

There are certainly pros and cons to incorporating an editorial calendar into your blogging strategy, but for your company blog, I’d highly recommend it. Not only will an editorial calendar help keep your topics balanced and fill any gaps, it also keeps your employees accountable for the content they have committed to. Be sure to include deadlines and allow enough time for revisions.

The above-mentioned con of editorial calendars is usually that they don’t leave room for change. To combat this, be sure to remain flexible; just because something is on the calendar doesn’t mean it needs to be set in stone.

While these are steps for getting started with a blog team, many challenges often arise. Check back next time when I discuss common challenges of editorial teams and how to overcome them. 

photo credit: jsgraphicdesign

The Almighty Thank You Note

I recently leased my second Subaru Impreza. I, of course, enjoy the all-wheel drive (especially in this winter wonderland Cleveland likes to call Spring) and the convenient pricing, but I also adore the company as a whole. Along with its witty advertising (check out the “Dog Tested. Dog Approved.” campaign, which is awesome), its communication with current customers like me makes all the difference.

Check out the email I received not too long ago. Sure, Subaru is tooting its own horn (pun intended!), but the real message is “Thank you for buying a Subaru,” and I appreciate that.

Notice the “Learn more” call to action button and the social sharing icons across the bottom. How easy it would be to pass this along to friends or family members who are in the market for new cars. Saying thank you can definitely increase your chance of creating brand ambassadors. Why not give it a try?

The “We’re Sorry” Apology Letter

Another great email communication for current customers? The apology note. Seriously, this simple act of contrition can go a long way with your customers.

For example, I received the email below from Chase Bank after I was unable to see my account balance for a couple hours one night. Sure, it was a little annoying, but not a huge deal. But after seeing the email in my inbox, I felt even better about Chase than before the little glitch.

Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s OK. Chase was able to say “We are sorry. You expect more from us. We will do better.” And that is all anybody ever really wants.

The Courteous Reminder Message

Reminder emails are a great way to stay in touch with your customers and provide them with a free service, as well.

My dog is on liver medication, which I order from an online site. Recently I received the email below reminding me that it is time to reorder. Now, let’s call it what it is: The company wants me to buy from it again. That’s marketing/sales. However, this free reminder is a service to me, so I don’t mind.

When you offer your customers something of value, they are more like to respond positively to your marketing efforts. Reminders for a relevant item are perfect examples.

The Bottom Line

The important thing about these email communications is that I don’t feel like I am being marketed to. No one is forcing me to buy something and sales reps aren’t pressuring me to upgrade. The companies I have already chose to buy from and work with are saying thank you, we’re sorry and please come again. They are communicating like people, and humanizing your brand is a definite must.

What types of email communications have you sent or received beyond the attempt to convert leads to customers? Let us know in the comments below. 

photo credit: Julie Edgley

LinkedIn is striving to become the new hotspot for exchanging, absorbing and promoting content in the B2B realm. As marketing messages become increasingly more targeted, reaching preferred, segmented audiences is becoming more of a challenge. LinkedIn is attempting to help ease that hurdle.

5 Reasons Content Marketers and Brands Should Not Ignore LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn Today: A site that tailors top news stories for each user makes a content marketer’s job a bit easier by putting relevant information in front of readers. LinkedIn today curates headlines and other items people are talking about from more than 200 million professionals and puts them in front of people in relevant industries. Imagine, your brand publishes content, which is shared by not only your employees, but by LinkedIn itself. The ripple effect of sharing your content on LinkedIn can be endless.
2. LinkedIn Influencers: A hand-picked group of thought leaders, LinkedIn Influencers allows professionals to get updates from industry celebrities right on their LinkedIn homepage. So what does this mean for content marketers? Imagine you work for a medical manufacturing company, and you post your new ebook on LinkedIn. Delos Cosgrove, CEO and president at Cleveland Clinic, reads it and likes what he sees, so he shares it. His followers (more than 85,000 of them) are likely to see that piece of content, and, thanks to LinkedIn’s algorithm, many are likely to be members of the target audience for your medical manufacturing company. 
3. LinkedIn Groups: You should already be familiar with LinkedIn Groups, but it may be time to look at them from a different perspective. There are several groups for just about every topic, especially in the B2B world, so don’t be afraid to dig in and get involved. Groups are great places to post your brand’s content, but be advised: Groups are not meant to be promotional. If you post content, ensure it is relevant, useful and educational. This type of content will get the most shares across social media channels, increasing your chances for new sales prospects.
4. LinkedIn’s integration of SlideShare: SlideShare makes sharing presentations, documents and even videos simple, a real win for content marketers. With its integration with LinkedIn, brands can now easily share content with people in the same or relevant industries across the world—which makes LinkedIn a real destination for B2B content.
5. LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content: While there isn’t a lot of information available yet, we know that LinkedIn will be launching Sponsored Content, not unlike Facebook’s Sponsored Stories. The new ads will allow brands to promote their content, including eBooks, infographs and other branded content to specific segments of their followers.

With these strides toward a better platform for distributing, obtaining and advertising content, it seems as though LinkedIn is preparing to become a premier center for content that will help professionals do their jobs better. 

“You see with the momentum we’re generating now with Influencers, LinkedIn Groups, SlideShare, people are increasingly turning to LinkedIn to publish professionally relevant content,” said Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO, on a March call with investors. “We think that’s going to create a very strong platform and very valuable content for large enterprises…who want to target [and] engage with professionals.”

How will you take advantage of LinkedIn’s new focus on content? Share in the comment section below.

photo credit: tropical.pete

So what does this even mean? Well Malcolm Knowles, a practitioner and theorist of adult education gave rise to six principles that drive learning within the adult human brain. In doing so, he gave us six ways we can improve our content to better reach consumers.

Here, we explore Knowles’ six principles and several tips for making them work for you and your content marketing:

Adults are internally motivated and self-directed: Many adults work hard and before that attended school for several years; it is natural to resist learning if they feel others are imposing information on them. How to make it work for you:

• Develop rapport with consumers. Be approachable. Don’t use jargon and gobbledygook no one can understand.
• Show interest in buyers’ thoughts and questions. As The Sales Lion often recommends, answer your prospects’ questions in your content. One question usually equals one great blog post.
• Lead buyers toward inquiry before hitting them with too many facts. Don’t just push spec sheets for your products and expect a good response. You must offer helpful information up front.
• Acknowledge the preferred learning styles of consumers by offering your content in several formats, including blogs, videos, podcasts and infographs.

Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences: Adults want to use their existing foundation of knowledge and valuable life experiences and apply it to what they are learning. How to make it work for you:

• Find out about your buyers. Understand their interests and past experiences. Discover their needs and interests, the tone they best communicate with and where they are most approachable. You can do this by developing buyer personas.
• Assist them to draw on those experiences when problem solving by using storytelling in your marketing emails, ebooks and blogs.

Adults are goal oriented: Adults become ready to learn when they have a reason, such as a goal to obtain or a problem to solve. This is where your educational content will come in handy. How to make it work for you:

• Provide real case studies as a basis from which buyers can learn about your methods, tactics and results.
• Ask questions that motivate inquiry and further research of your products or services.
• Tell your buyers why the information you are sharing is important to them.

Adults are relevancy oriented: Adult learners want to know the relevance of what they are learning and how it pertains to what they want to achieve. How to make it work for you:

• Use clear examples to show buyers the reason for investing time in your content and your company.
• Make sure your top-of-the-funnel content is absolutely relevant to your buyers. While it is considered educational and not product-centric, content should still be relevant to the problems your buyers have and the solutions you offer.

Adults are practical: Buyers recognize first-hand how what they are learning applies to their situations and problems. How to make it work for you:

• Clearly explain your reasoning for content, tactics and business practices. Don’t waste your buyers’ time.
• Promote active participation by allowing potential buyers to try things rather than observe. At the bottom of the funnel, offer free demos or free trials before asking consumers to make a purchase. This is especially important for big-ticket items.
• Point out the most useful information whenever possible using bold font, bullets and beautiful design.

Adult learners like to be respected: Don’t take this for granted; be sure you are respecting human-to-human interaction. How to make it work for you:

• Take an interest in your buyers. Show that you appreciate their time and provide what they are looking for without enlisting trickery.
• Regard each buyer as an equal who is also equal in life experience
• Encourage feedback at every opportunity.

If you begin your content strategy with the principles of adult learning in mind, you can reach potential buyers on a human level and, using your well-thought-out content, help them go from visitor to lead to customer. What do you think?

photo credit: Fergal Mac Eoinin

Don’t get me wrong, I want all of my content to be keen and clever. But Personalized Content actually refers to the copy on a website (or ad or email) that changes based on terms searched by visitors or their past behavior. Basically, the website tries to understand what each viewer is looking for and then provides that information immediately.

To get a better grasp on the term, take the idea of Amazon’s recommendation algorithm and apply it to the entire site and you’ve got Personalized Content.

While Personalized Content is not available quite yet from HubSpot (Smart CTAs, Forms and Images are already available), we assume it is on its way. In the future, you will most likely be able to change paragraphs, headlines and landing pages, in addition to images, forms and offers.

Why Bother with Personalized Content?

Over the past few years, marketers have realized that relevancy is one of the most important elements to their success. That is why we spend numerous hours and copious amounts of energy depicting buyer personas. So now that these personas are determined, why would we send them all to the same place to receive the same content? Ideally, you wouldn’t, and soon you won’t have to.

We already know leads who are nurtured with relevant information produce a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. Why not start the process off with a bang—or better yet, Personalized Content from the visitors’ very first interactions with your site? You know what this means: Personalized Content helps you get the right content to the right person at the right time from the beginning.

Let’s Talk Strategy

While Personalized Content will be doubling or probably even tripling a content writer’s workload, it is good for the visitors. Keep in mind that Personalized Content should help you compose a personal and easy-to-navigate experience for your audience, not a complicated one. When it comes to strategy, ask yourself how changing up the content will improve customers visits on your website without confusing or overloading them.

To get started, consider integrating Smart CTAs to remove any offers leads have already downloaded from their view. To learn more, read this blog.

Let’s talk about the content that directs a potential lead to that offer. To begin, try one of these three options for segmenting your Personalized Content:

• Search Term: Let’s say you offer services to several positions within your target businesses. Using Personalized Content, you could send each visitor to the most relevant information based on the phrase he or she entered into Google rather than a generic homepage.
• Buyer Persona: As we mentioned, you may have several buyer personas, and they may be diverse in nature. Sending them all to the same page of generic content may turn them off to the site completely. Personalized Content can help develop a customized experience for each persona. Perhaps you can tailor your content and images to reflect separate industries—one webpage for manufacturing, one webpage for healthcare and one webpage for technology. Each persona will feel that you understand them and what they need, helping them move forward in your sales funnel.
• Lifecycle Stage: As leads move through your sales funnel, their concerns and needs change. They may have come to your website with problems to solve, and each time they return they may be closer to making the final decision to purchase. By taking into account the number of visits to your site a lead makes, you can offer information that gradually becomes more product-centric (or salesy) the closer the lead gets to the bottom of the funnel. This way you don’t scare off someone who is just browsing, and you won’t miss the chance to sell to someone who is ready to make a purchase.

It’s true, Personalized Content may increase the workloads of content marketers across the industry. But it will be worth it so long as you research, understand and use the insights your visitors and leads have left behind on your site, including their preferences, concerns and past behavior. Use Personalized Content to connect with your potential buyers on a more personal and in-depth level, and your extra efforts can yield extra customers!

While there are best practices for every industry, and each company has its own processes, in the world of online marketing, a path from visitor to customer is becoming clearer. Let’s take a look at what we at Kuno Creative consider the most efficient and successful way to gain customers in four inbound marketing steps:

Content Marketing

Perhaps the most popular buzzword of the past few years, but for good reason, Content Marketing has successfully placed consumers at the forefront of marketing. We now realize consumers don’t care about our products but would rather receive educational, helpful information about solving their problems. Buyers are using the Internet to research their problems, find efficient solutions and compare products before even thinking about purchasing.

And by implementing Content Marketing appropriately, you not only win over buyers, but you gain the respect of Google, too, and, thus, more exposure in search results. With fresh, relevant and helpful content, you can attract visitors to your website and collect leads by asking for their information in exchange for robust pieces of content (think ebooks, white papers, webinars).

There are a lot of elements under the Content Marketing umbrella: strategy; assessing current content and mapping it for buyer personas (and, of course, filling in the gaps); and developing a monthly editorial calendar. Next comes the actual content creation, which requires interviews with thought leaders in each subject area (writing, design and SEO optimization). These steps produce blogs, ebooks, case studies, videos, podcasts, infographics and more. When you have enough content to bring to the conversation, social media marketing and sharing is a must.

Demand Generation

Casting a wide advertising net via billboards or direct mail sent to several zip codes simply doesn’t work as well now as it used to. As buyers become more sophisticated and better at blocking out advertising, we must continually find more relevant and more targeted ways to reach them. The helpful, relevant content you have created must instead be distributed to your ideal buyers at the right place and the right time—no easy task. These “places” are likely to be blogs, content curation sites and social channels.

The next step: campaigns. Dispersed via email, social media or PPC, these campaigns invite buyers to download your educational content (in exchange for their email address). This opts buyers into receiving further relevant, informational content that will swiftly and comfortably move them down the sales funnel. You will need to commit to constant monitoring and adaptation as you learn more about your buyers through testing and analysis.

Again, there are a lot of steps to ensure demand generation is successful: campaign strategy; content creation (including writing, design and SEO optimization); developing emails, landing pages, calls to action; and A/B testing; launching and monitoring campaigns; reporting; and constant improvement.

Lead Nurturing

By this point, you have developed content and even had buyers download it, but this does not mean they are all ready to purchase your product. It is time to start nurturing them from the top of your sales funnel to the bottom. Lead Nurturing helps you sort leads into segmented groups based on the content they consume, which will help you see who is ready to buy when.

Lead Nurturing is simply a collection of targeted emails sent automatically to targeted lists over time. Each email contains an opportunity to download more content. When buyers do so, their behavior is tracked and a lead score is assigned. These follow-up emails help reduce the amount of leads lost to competitors or lack of information. Lead scores help qualify leads, which can then be delivered to your sales team when appropriate.

Lead Nurturing includes building relationships with potential customers via targeted campaigns, personalized content, strategic emails, landing pages, calls to action, analysis and testing, and constant improvement.

Marketing Automation

With so many elements, you will need a system to organize and automate just about everything you have done up to this point. Marketing Automation helps you to manage leads intelligently, helping you to automate and optimize the steps necessary to acquire customers online. But first, your marketing and sales teams must agree on a number of factors, including the sales process, buyer-cycle stages and when leads should be handed off from marketing to sales.

If you invest time and effort into your Marketing Automation, you can significantly increase your conversion rates, qualified leads and success of your marketing and sales teams while decreasing churn and lost leads.

But, of course, this isn’t easy. It requires you build convincing emails, landing pages and calls to action; invest in a functional CRM; launch and manage demand generation and lead nurturing campaigns; implement lead scores; create workflows that automatically adjust lead scores or lifecycles change when appropriate; and set alerts when lead status thresholds are met.

The process is not easy, but it is worth it.

Buyers are now expecting a constant flow of valuable and relevant information, as well as follow-up from your brand (without being overwhelmed). And remember, this is an ongoing process. To learn more about the process, check out Kuno’s new site! Do you have additions to the process? Share in the comments below. 

Author and speaker Simon Sinek explains why we all need to start caring using his idea of The Golden Circle. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” he says. “If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe. Microsoft sells the ‘what’ and sometimes the ‘how,’ but Apple sells the ‘why.’” (If you have not watched Sinek’s TED Talk, I highly recommend you do it now.)

Time for a Quick Biology Lesson

During his presentation, Sinek talks a bit about the brain and how marketing messages can affect it. The Neocortex is responsible for rational, analytical thoughts (the “what” and “how”) and language. The Limbic sections foster feelings, trust and loyalty. They are also responsible for human behavior and decision making but do not understand language. This is where “gut decisions” are made (often using the “why”). This is why something can look good on paper but just not “feel” right.

Apple is well aware of this notion and often taps into the Limbic section of our brains with innovative messaging. This is why people will wait in line all night for the next iPhone even if the Samsung Galaxy S III has more features. The iPhone “feels” right to many of us.

Who Did it Right?

This year, I would say Chrysler got it right with a simple tribute to farmers. “Make your living off the land and you can truly make something of yourself, your family — and a nation. No other truck understands this simple truth better than Ram.” The dialog didn’t discuss the speed, torque, weight, power or strength of the Ram truck, but rather used the famous speech given by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey during the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention, titled “So God Made a Farmer.”

Even those of us who don’t till our land or drive a truck can see that Chrysler understands its audience. We can see why Chrysler manufactures trucks, and for many farmers and hard workers, those reasons are parallel to the motives for waking early, working all day and understanding happiness doesn’t come easy. Now, a Ram truck just “feels” right.

Setting the stage for so many marketing musts—telling a story, tugging at the heartstrings and understanding the ‘why’—was Google’s 2010 Super Bowl commercial, Parisian Love. In less than a minute, we see a young man fall in love, move across the globe and start a family without ever leaving the Google screen. Google knows we use the search engine to answer the big and small questions in our lives. The commercial showed us that solving our problems is why it exists. Google just “feels” right.

Applying the Why to Your Marketing

Now comes the hard part: using this lesson in your own marketing efforts. I get it; it’s a big concept without a lot of direction. But it boils down to understanding why you do what you do and communicating that to the world.

Let’s say you are a manufacturer. Your campaigns and lead nurturing emails have become mundane, and the messages are uninspiring at best. Take a step back and ask, “Why do we do what we do?” And then ask yourself, “Why do our customers do what they do?” Figure out why that doctor became a doctor—to save lives? Why did that dentist become a dentist—to help people develop confidence and a beautiful smile? Why is that racecar driver a racecar driver—for the speed? The glory? The money? (Money may be the driving factor for many, so don’t be afraid to exploit that if necessary.)

So if you had the attention of more than 100 million viewers, what would you want your message to be? Do you communicate with the decision-making part of your buyers’ brains? It can be more difficult than it sounds. And, most importantly, does purchasing your product or service just “feel” right? If not, it may be time to get back to the “why.”

This is my attempt to get marketing back to a place of inspiration and brilliance. What do you think?

photo credit: .sarahwynne.

A few of us at the Kuno office recently had a conversation about the worth of a press release distributed over a commercial newswire. As inbound marketers, we had been using press releases as just one of the many ways to build visibility for client websites (as well as our own) and build legitimate backlinks. But did the tactic actually work anymore? Is it still worth the time (several hours) and cost (a few hundred to a few thousand dollars)? And what is the actual ROI?

The weird thing is that we left the room without a solid answer. I was intrigued; are we doing ourselves an injustice by not sending out press releases to announce our new content and services, or are we simply wasting our work hours and money?

Value of the Press Release

For many years, businesses, public relations departments and SEO gurus were sending out press releases for three main reasons:

• Announce information, such as launching a product, meeting a milestone or kicking off a tour, to their audience, as well as the media —the original objective of press releases
• Create good press and brand exposure by placing a spotlight on news or deeds
• Build backlinks by including embedded links to the business’ website in the press release to boost SEO

Let me be clear, the third purpose was our main goal as inbound marketers in recent years. While the first two reasons certainly still have the potential to garner results in a public relations setting, the third goal has come under scrutiny with Google algorithm updates such as Panda and Penguin. As Google welcomes quality content with open arms and high SERP rankings and gives poor quality content the boot, where does that leave press releases?

Is there SEO value?

Google says links from press releases won’t help your SEO efforts, but SEOConsult performed its own little experiment to find out if that was true—turns out, it’s not: “An unremarkable press release that adds nothing to the story is still having direct SEO benefit to the target simply down to the distribution and scraping that has occurred.”

OK cool, press releases with embedded links can indeed help your SEO efforts—temporarily. Hey, embedded hyperlinks are one of the building blocks of SEO. But wait, did you catch that really awful word in that quote? “Unremarkable.” (Ick!) Why would your business ever want to create, develop, write, generate or establish anything unremarkable? It is just bad business.

Content is the Real Value

While building links using press releases has some value, the real worth lies in writing content and sharing information your audience will find useful. This can be in any format, including blogs, online articles or even press releases. So start by writing for your audience then work to make your content findable using pre-determined keywords. Remember, don’t overdo it; you are writing for humans here.

Your goal for a press release should go back to the original purpose: announcing useful information to your audience and, yes, the media, too. This means your information should be helpful, timely and relevant, as always. To obtain maximum results from your press release, you should aim to have it picked up (beyond press release sites) by media outlets or respected industry news sites—these are great backlinks and will help spread your information even further and to the right audience.

To accomplish this goal with any type of content, here are a few top tips:

• Write about what interests your potential buyers
• Use language your audience uses and searches with
• Use specific keywords (including your company name if applicable) in the headline while keeping the title concise and intriguing
• Use important keyword phrases in your first paragraph and add a relevant hyperlink when possible; (do not let your first sentence ramble)
• Use long-tail keywords relevant to your service and industry (use a free tool like Google Adwords Search Keyword Tool); do not embed the same phrase more than once
• Develop a loyal readership and offer simple ways for readers to share via social media

Well, is it worth it?

If you ask me, “Are press releases worth my time and money?” My answer is still, “Yes—with the proper content and effort, of course.” Maybe Mike Cherenson, EVP of Success Communications Group, says it better: “Authentic and relevant link building, aimed at driving engagement, informing publics and building mutually beneficial relationships should be a part of every public relations and SEO effort.” He goes on to say, “Public relations professionals are skilled storytellers and content generators and should be a part of every SEO effort. The future of SEO is not in the technology, it’s in the ability to tell stories that readers and Google will find interesting.”

A good press release is good content. And when online buyers and media alike get a hold of information they find useful or entertaining, you will get more backlinks than you ever asked for.

What are your thoughts on the press release debate? Sound off in the comment section below! 

photo credit: funkandjazz

Sometimes, educating an inbound marketing client can be difficult, especially if you fall into the same old rut of making a PowerPoint with word-heavy slides, mumbling through it and expecting people to remember what you said. As attention spans shrink, and cell phones allow for easier access to email (and Angry Birds), the challenge has become finding an entertaining way to earn and maintain the attention of those in the room.

And what’s more entertaining than telling a story? Everyone loves a good story! At Kuno, we have been talking at length about using storytelling to capture leads on your website and keep potential buyers intrigued while you nurture them through the sales funnel. Why not use that same technique to educate clients, potential buyers or even C-suite members? (You can even borrow a few tips from fiction writing.)

A Real-Life Example

A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a presentation on blogging basics to one of our clients. The group was eager to get started and contribute to its brand’s quality content strategy but had little prior knowledge as to how it’s done. Instead of boring the group and risking lost interest in the project, I wanted to make it fun, intriguing and encouraging. I decided to take the group on a journey—“12 Steps to Writing a Successful Blog.”

This is my first endeavor with Prezi, so please be kind!

Truthfully, the idea of a “journey” stemmed from one of the templates on Prezi, a virtual whiteboard platform that allows your topics to become interesting conversations rather than slideshow presentations that often morph into naptime. The template, which consisted of a starting point, footsteps through several other parts of the journey, and an ending point, immediately framed my presentation as one of the most popular types of storytelling structures: The Quest.

In a story using the quest structure, the hero often travels to find treasure and must overcome evil and other obstacles. The story ends when he or she reaches the treasure. In the real world, this is often how clients feel at the beginning of a project they are not sure how they will complete, but know it will, in the end, better the team and the brand. Also, in a quest story, the journey is long, much like the ongoing challenge of blogging—it certainly cannot be a one-and-done effort.

In the quest I presented, “12 Steps to Writing a Successful Blog,” I tried to understand how the group felt at the beginning of the blogging project—fretful. However, I provided the information necessary to overcome the challenge. The journey became highly encouraging, and not to mention interesting, for the client, stemming an hour-long discussion on the topic.

A Few Words on Prezi

If you have not yet given Prezi a try, I highly urge you to. The platform allows you to elevate your presentations from boring monologues into two-way conversations, which enables your audience to see, understand and, most importantly, remember your ideas.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so imagine if your ideas became a story with a flow, narrative and compelling visual details. Your images and words intertwine to deliver your lesson. Prezi gives you the opportunity to “construct a story arc, where visual context leads the viewer on a path of discovery.”

This is not meant to be a sales pitch for the platform, and there are a few downsides to Prezi still (you can’t use bold or italic copy—ugh!). So if you have another presentation solution, we would love to hear about it in the comments below. And please share with us your presentation success stories!

photo credit: Kalexanderson

Creating buyer personas can be a real challenge. There are expensive, time-consuming routes you can take, including focus groups, and in no way am I discounting those. But sometimes just talking it out can be all you need. And who better to talk to than people who recently bought your product? They know what people are looking for, what challenges they face and what finally made them take the plunge.

Once you have interviewed several recent customers, and then interviewed some more, you are ready to get started. Here’s how.

4 Questions for Understanding Your Customers and Your Product

Who is your ideal buyer? Yes, the first step is that easy. Talk about who your buyer is like you would describe a friend and take notes. This does not mean write down demographics and move on. It means understanding what your buyer cares about, what a day in his life is like, how he likes to communicate, what his hobbies are and what drives him to make decisions. Sit down with your team and talk about the details that affect your consumers’ lives.

At Kuno Creative, we have a client called Kendal at Oberlin, a retirement community located in Oberlin, Ohio, for independent adults. After interviewing several current residents, here’s how I would define a likely candidate: John and his wife, Theresa, are retired but are not slowing down. They enjoy traveling, social engagements and physical activities that help them remain fit, and they don’t want to stop learning—ever. Their fear is feeling old, lonely and useless.  John and Theresa are not ignorant of technology—their grandkids got them an iPad for Christmas last year—but they prefer to communicate via phone or in person. Finally, John and Theresa do not want to deal with owning a home anymore: landscaping, paying utilities, cooking and cleaning are just not priorities these days. However, they do not want to give up their independence or living in Ohio where their family also resides.

There are a lot of factors in that one conversation, a lot of which help you understand what drives your buyers’ decision-making process. Your next step should include boiling down your buyers’ problem.

What is their need? John and Theresa want to sell their home and find a retirement community that is filled with life, instead of a nursing home for “old people.” They are not sure this option even exists.

When you get to the root of your persona’s problem, you can really target your marketing in an effective way. Do not skip this step.

How do we solve that problem? This is the step where you figure out why consumers should care about your product or service and what would intrigue them to check you out.

For example, our client provides a vibrant living community located in a college town for active older adults who are seeking independent living and also planning for future health care needs. Now Kendal at Oberlin needs to convince John and Theresa they are a perfect fit.

What is your unique value proposition? In this case, we are a retirement and long-term care community that encourages independence, lifelong learning and a social life without the hassle of owning a home.

What makes your business stand out? What makes your product or service different from your competitors? How does it solve your potential customers’ problems? Once you figure this out, you know how to start marketing.

Write out your persona using complete details. Give the persona a name (like John or Theresa) and include a picture to really help your team picture this persona as a real person.

Remember, each persona is different and will have a different buying cycle. In our current example, John and Theresa do not want to leave Ohio because that is where their family is located. Their buying experience will be different from Jacki’s, a single retired college professor who wants to move to a retirement community but does not want to give up that college-town vibe, so she is willing to move farther to obtain those goals.

Creating Content Using Your Persona

Now that you have your persona nailed down, you can start creating content that will attract your ideal buyer to your website, educate them and, ultimately, get them to buy. To accomplish these three goals, it is important to map your personas to your sales funnel. In our case, our first bit of content might look like this:

1. We want to show there is an option for buyers like John and Theresa—we focus our top-of-the-funnel content (i.e., blogs and short videos or downloads) on lifelong learning and opportunities for older adults to remain active.
2. The next step is to convince John and Theresa to look into this specific community—we provide middle-of-the-funnel downloads that talk about finances and audits and testimonials from current residents.
3. Finally, we want to make the sale. We offer marketing-qualified leads a free one-sheeter titled “5 Reasons to Tour our Community” to download. A free tour of the energetic community is bound to close the deal.

While the process may take some time to complete, the targeted marketing opportunities you will unearth are well worth it to your team and your company’s bottom line.

What are your tips for developing buyer personas? What did we miss? Sound off in the comments below!

photo credit: marchasselbalch

In order to effectively carry out a content marketing strategy, including blogs, guides, downloads, videos and other pieces of content, you need to know exactly what you are talking about. That means, no matter the industry, you need to become an expert. With the exception of rare cardiac surgeries or NASA secrets, you need to be able to write about anything. That can be intimidating, especially if the topic is so far from your realm of comfort that you can easily mistake mechatronics for metachromatic.

To learn how you, as a content marketer, can become not only familiar with but develop an expertise for any topic in order to write lots of educational copy, read on.

• Research, research, research: Sorry, there is no easy way around this one. You will need to dig up as much information regarding the topic as possible. Ask your clients for any pamphlets, case studies and articles they have. Read them. Do your own Google search, then take it a step further: read every relevant entry you find.
• Talk to the people who know the business:  If it is at all possible, request interviews with experts at the company. Ask them everything you want to know and don’t be afraid to say something wrong. They know you are learning, and it is better to make a mistake now rather than when you are presenting or writing for a wider audience. And don’t forget to ask, “What did I miss?” They know the topic better than you do, so take advantage of the time they have given you.
• Teach someone else: There is no better way to learn something than to teach it to someone else. So manage all the digging then make a presentation to your CEO or boss regarding the topic. The truth is she needs to sound just as informed and competent as you, so handle the heavy lifting (i.e., research) then fill your boss in on the information pertinent to the account. As you inform your audience, you will start to grasp the information in a new way, leading to a more sophisticated understanding of the topic.
• Continue learning: Set up Google Alerts or RSS feeds so that you will continue to learn about the topic as new advances occur. Pay attention to blogs, online courses, social networks and upcoming events. By keeping up to date on the topic, you will become more comfortable and, therefore, more able to communicate the benefits and problem-solving abilities of the products or services. As long as you are writing about the topic, don’t stop learning about it.

When you acquire a new client, and you know nothing about what they are selling, don’t let it intimidate you. Always be honest with them. Let them know you are starting from scratch and will need time to research the topic. Help them understand that you will need their cooperation to get a firm grasp on the details. By working together, you can become an expert on just about any topic and write compelling content to help your clients and your business generate more leads.

What is your best trick for learning about tricky topics? Let us know in the comments below! 

photo credit: Pete Prodoehl

It isn’t much of a debate anymore—quality trumps, and will continue to trump, quantity when it comes to content. The answer to the quality versus quantity debacle is clear now: Create as much quality content as possible. In other words, it is all about finding a balance between content marketing quality and quantity.

While quantity is an easy entity to assess, quality, on the other hand, is not. How do you know what is good quality content and what others will consider poor quality content not even worth reading? The answer is abstract, and the intangible components of good content are not necessarily the most describable ideas in the world. But I’d like to give it a try to help you bridge the gap between the now-infamous quality and quantity requirements of content. Below you will find my list of ways to create good, quality content for marketing.

• Be exceptional: There is an overwhelming amount of content on the Internet. Every two days, the world creates as much information as it did up until 2003. It is absolutely imperative you make your content stand out. This doesn’t mean pile on the word count, it means choose the best words possible for the message you are trying to convey—and try to make those words into remarkable sentences and exceptional content.
• Ask questions: Get into the minds of your readers. Penetrate their thoughts and get them to invest in your content. One of the best ways to do this is to ask them a question in your headline or introduction.
• Tell a story: Whether you are writing B2B or B2C content, telling a story works to captivate your readers. But you can’t just tell any old story; try telling a parable, a story that teaches some truth, principle or lesson. In other words, solve your potential customers’ problem by telling a story.
• Use all of the senses: Create a world for your visitors by using your imagination. Let them know how your story world looks, but also let them discover how it feels, tastes, sounds and smells. The more entranced they become in your world, the more likely they are to return.
• Use emotion: A good movie or book should make you laugh, cry or both. Your content should do the same. Humor is a great attribute to work into your content if you are able—who doesn’t enjoy laughing?
• Make readers feel comfortable: When you find a situation or setting your readers already feel comfortable in, use it. Relate to their past experiences or a place they enjoy visiting in order to carefully usher them into your desired situation.
• Break news: Give your readers something to talk about. Make it new and interesting. If you can break real news as it happens like Jim Hanrahan (@highfours), go for it! If not, breaking your company’s news in an interesting way can be just as beneficial. Don’t just launch a new product, though; launch the answer to your future customers’ biggest problems.
• Be persuasive: The purpose behind content marketing is to ultimately lead your visitors to your product or service. So be persuasive. This skill needs to be utilized in content, including calls to action and landing pages where your visitors will become leads. Convince your readers that your content, product, service and company has value in their lives.
• Prove your point: If possible, use data to back up your claims. Many software options allow you to dive into analytics so deep you may not come out for days. But that is OK. Write about what you find or find the information for what you are writing. Earn your visitors’ trust by showing them proof of what you say.
• Never be boring: Don’t be a content machine simply churning out piece after piece. Put some feeling into it. Do your research and go the extra step to make sure each blog, ebook, video and tweet is close to perfection.
• Go with your gut: This took me a while to learn, but the best content (and attainments in life in general) are the ones you followed your gut in order to achieve. Two of the blog posts I truly wrote from my gut are two of my most popular: Is Clever Better? Witty versus Search-Engine-Optimized Headlines and Adidas Creates Goosebump-Worthy Content Marketing.

It’s true that you could write a glorious piece of content using every one of these guidelines, but if you ignore the cornerstones of content that converts—knowing your audience and solving its pain points—your content will fail. What is your best advice for writing quality content? Let us know in the comments below. 

photo credit: Coanri/Rita

But the truth is, from content marketers to consultants and vice presidents to CEOs, everyone should be selling services on some level to keep the agency profitable, even if it is simply selling the company image. So if public speaking isn’t your thing, don’t sweat it.  Whether you are meeting with a handful of clients or presenting to an entire organization, just breathe deep and follow these tips. And sure, you can imagine everyone in their underwear if you’d like, but, personally, I find it distracting.

1. Discipline Your Bad Habits: Chances are you commit at least one of the public speaking sins such as “um,” ending every sentence with “so” or fidgeting. Get rid of the habit starting now. Ask a friend to raise attention every time you start umming in conversation, or envision a period (or a punctuation mark of some kind) at the end of every sentence you say, so there is no way the word “so” could possibly slip out after it. Use a tape recorder to find out how many times you slip. If fidgeting is your offense, test yourself: Stand in front a room of friends or colleagues (or a video camera) for 30 seconds without fidgeting. Start over every time you move. Once you have accomplished that, up the time to two minutes and so on until you reach a length you could comfortably present to clients during.
2. Prep for Success: Show up at least a few minutes early to make sure all of the equipment you will need is available and functioning. Be sure to dress and look like an inbound marketing professional. If it is at all possible, bring printouts for everyone in attendance that include bullet points and any pertinent information.
3. Make Your Audience Believe You: You must believe in what you are saying if you want potential clients to buy into it. Speak with confidence and conviction. Talk slowly and enunciate clearly without reading from your notes (although you can glance at them every now and then). Try to establish a rapport with the other professional in the room. You should look confident, relaxed and approachable, even if you are nervous; hold your head high and make eye contact. Don’t mumble. And if you make a mistake, simply correct yourself and move on—do not apologize more than once.
4. Keep Eye Contact Without Being Awkward: Keep your clients and colleagues engaged by using eye contact. Just don’t let it linger for more than three seconds; move on to someone else. Try to connect with each person in the room, if possible.
5. Be Sure to Listen: Try to get a feel for your audience’s understanding of your point. If they are not getting it or totally disagree, you may need to change your strategy.
6. Be Entertaining Without Being a Clown: This can be difficult for many people. You certainly do not want to bore your audience, but you don’t want to cross the line to unprofessional, especially in front of clients. Test the waters, and, if appropriate, inject a little humor or tell an interesting story. You can also use images, videos or questions to safely keep your listeners intrigued.
7. Know When to Stop Talking: This may be the toughest task of all. When there is silence, humans tend to feel the need to ramble on. Don’t! End with a solid, well-thought-out point. Then leave the silence for others to digest what you’ve suggested. And whatever you do, don’t belittle yourself by saying, “It’s probably a dumb idea anyway.”

After practicing these tips and putting them into effect, you should feel at ease with your public speaking skills, allowing you the ability to step forward to represent your company to sell, sell, sell.

What are your best public speaking tips? Please share them in the comment section below!

photo credit: ScoRDS

A whopping 94 percent of teachers say their students equate “research” with using Google and other search engines, according to the Pew Research Center.

What a great blog topic, I thought. It shows how the consumers of the future will research before they purchase. But that is where the creative juices stopped flowing. The information the study provided, while significant, was self-explanatory. No blog needed.

The statistic, while it did not warrant an entire blog post, was still interesting enough to share. The challenge then became, “How do we share it?” The answer is a new but logical idea—content snacking.

What is Content Snacking?

We are all familiar with the concept of snacking. (In fact, I am enjoying delicious caramel rice snacks as I type!) But how does this translate to content marketing? Nibbling, a few small bites, a necessary bit of chocolate—however you want to put it, snacking means small and easily digestible.

Blogs require at least a handful of minutes to consume, as do videos, how-to guides, Top 10 lists, and, especially, webinars. Reaching your audience members who are busy with work, family, children, friends and attempts at relaxing, can be utterly problematic. Plus, there is that pesky matter of shrinking attention spans. This is where content snacks will provide you the most benefits.

Think small nuggets of information: a text message instead of an email, a one-image chart instead of an infographic, or a bulleted list instead of an ebook. A great example of content snacking is an image with a meaningful quote or piece of information—perhaps an evocative statistic.

Imagine scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed and coming across a post that looked like this:

People living in Cleveland will most likely stop to read the stat, and they may even consider how they could help those who are homeless in their own city. (This is a true stat, by the way.) This post could then link through to a local charity’s donation page. This snack-sized bit of content could really pull in some extra donations that go a long way in providing for those in need.

It works for products and services, too. And successful brands are already using this tecnique on Facebook and other social sharing sites. Check out this content snack about the Square Wallet Starbucks put out last week.

Notice that there were 200+ shares, more than 10,000 likes and 181 comments. Talk about a successful content snack!

If you choose to post your content snacks on Facebook, make sure you follow these guidelines to ensure your messaging isn’t being cut off.

Content Snacking Best Practices

There are five characteristics of healthy snacking: adequacy, balance, control, moderation and variety (or at least that is what Nutrition Checkup tells us!). They can also be applied to content snacking.

• Adequacy: All of your content, no matter its size, should meet your audience’s needs. A snack should satisfy your potential customers enough to bring them back for a full meal of information.
• Balance: Content should be equally educational and entertaining, if possible. All your content should also be balanced between top-of-the-funnel educational content and promotional information regarding your products.
• Control: Do not allow your content to get carried away. Don’t put out snacks of content too often or without an appropriate tie to what you are selling.
• Moderation: Don’t snack too often; you don’t want your audience to get tired of your content. Set limits and stick to them. It’s all about portion size, after all.
• Variety: Nobody wants to eat bananas every day. Mix it up! It’s OK to give your audience a laugh every now and then.

When you apply the same aspects of a healthy diet to your content strategy, you can maintain a healthy content physique.

Have you tried content snacking yet? What are your tips? Share with us in the comment section below! 

photo credit: Magic Ketchup

Granted, the nuts and bolts of the race are similar enough: two main-party candidates fighting it out over the course of (what feels like) the last year and, of course, there’s still the politics behind the politics. But this year’s election offered many marketing teaching moments, whether you are running for office, running a small business or just trying to decide.

Lesson #1—All Media is Now “Social” Media

Age demographics seem to be one of the largest dividing lines for targeted marketing this year. Perhaps younger voters aren’t tuning in to watch the election results on the evening news this year (Twitter’s much more convenient), but they are watching some TV—namely the comedic satire news programs such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Making a guest appearance on TDS in mid-October, President Barack Obama sought to get viewers’ attention by meeting them on their terms. But it wasn’t just the President appearing on a nightly news program that stirred so much attention and engaged so many conversations—it was the use of social media during the interview. With hashtags on Twitter, watchers and (potential) voters were able to engage with each other in an easy, portable way. In fact, 39 percent of US adults have engaged in political activity on Facebook or Twitter. And it doesn’t end there. The specific YouTube clip we shared above had nearly 40,000 views in just two weeks; elements of the election will live on through social media forever.

With that sort of potential, make sure your business is where the people are: online! Make a point to be engaged on Twitter and sharing videos on YouTube. Meet your potential customers on their terms and they will welcome you with open arms.

Lesson #2—The Internet Makes Voting Cool

Social media platforms are known for connecting users who are geographically separated by providing a broader community online based on shared interests and ideas. Ultimately, these platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, let you tell others what you think is cool and what isn’t. This time around (and also seen in 2008) voting is cool. Everyone, from teens to parents and even grandparents are putting their two cents in regarding who they think should be the next leader of the free world. This sort of conversation helps those who may not initially get involved to see what others are talking about and not only develop their opinions, but share them, as well. It is being reported that four out of 10 people will use social media to help them make a decision come election day. Ultimately, the Internet is helping potential voters, young and old, become actual voters.

The Internet can do the same for your product or service, too. This is where your superfans and advocates come into play—let them tell their friends just how cool your product or service is. And make sure you are providing them with enough quality content to share.

Lesson #3—Audiences Need to Relate to the Message

Ohio and Virginia have been bombarded by campaign commercials because these states have the biggest impact on the election’s outcome. The campaign managers are smart to have spent their time and money in these two states, but knowing where to share your message is only one part of the battle. The other half? Knowing what to say. One thing that candidates have finally gotten around to understanding (some of the time) is that you need to speak to your audience in a way that it will actually 1.) listen to, and 2.) understand. It does no good to spew out hateful mudslinging or spout off crazy statistics if your potential voters will change the station or get confused. One cadidate’s radio commercial is in the words of a middle-class mom who is worried about paying for college. Talk about hitting home. Those are the types of messages that work.

So no matter where you are sharing your messages, whether it be on your website, blog, guest blog or tweet, make sure your audience (and potential customers) will 1.) want to hear it and 2.) understand it.

Social Media is Worth It

This year will be the greatest amount of conversation surrounding voting there has ever been, thanks to inbound marketing and, especially, social media. The number of active Facebook users of voting is right around 150 million—if the average number of Facebook friends is 130, there is a gigantic potential for people’s opinion to be swayed. While the numbers may not be quite as astronomical for you and your business, the opportunity to build your brand and sway potential customers is certainly there.

What inbound marketing lessons have you learned from the 2012 election? Share with us in the comments below. 

photo credit: LexMonkey

According to B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends-North America published yesterday by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 64 percent of B2B content marketers say they are challenged with producing enough content. This is the biggest challenge, above producing the kind of content that engages (52 percent), producing a variety of content (45 percent) and a lack of budget (39 percent).

Last year, creating engaging content was the top challenge; however, marketers have gained confidence in their content skills. While creating engaging content is, indeed, still challenging, the number of marketers who said it was their most difficult challenge decreased by a whopping 23 percentage points. The content being produced is more enticing, there just isn’t enough of it.

What is Enough Anyway?

Let’s take a step back: What is “enough” content anyway? One blog a week? A day? Three blogs a day? And we can’t stop with just blogs; what about case studies, webinars, ebooks, cheat sheets and every other tactic? How much do you truly need to produce to be “enough”?

More than half of the marketers interviewed checked creating enough content as a challenge, but how many actually had a real goal in mind? Did they have an actual target they were missing, or was it just a feeling of disappointment?

Here is an equation for large companies discussed on Forbes.com:

• You need 4 personas—these are your target audiences.
• You also must identify their needs.  Maybe their top 3 needs, let’s say.
• Then, you’ve got to have content for all the channels that matter.  Wherever the customer, you need to be there.  Let’s say, conservatively, that’s 5 channels.
• Then, you have to be out there with fresh content. Let’s say at least monthly.  That’s 12 times a year.  Again, conservative.

That’s 4 x 3 x 5 x 12 = 720 pieces of original or versioned content.

While a smaller company that doesn’t sell to four or more different personas can adjust accordingly, no matter how you look at it—that is a lot of content.

Ultimately, you should strive for content that appeases your audience and creates lead conversions on your website. Once you have leads choosing to hand over their contact information, you can nurture them with—you guessed it—even more content!

Making Time for Content Marketing

Because higher ups in the C-Suite are learning more about content marketing and thus allowing for more budget allocation, hiring the people to actually create this content is less of a problem. However, there are still challenges:

• There is only so much content each person can create
• Content creators are creative people; they can’t just bust out blogs and ebooks because they are told to. Writer’s block means that just because a content marketer is in the office for eight hours, doesn’t mean they can always create eight hours’ worth of content.
• Attempting to hurry along the process sacrifices quality. Only high-quality, educational content is useful, shareable and, ultimately, profitable.

Here are a few tips to finding the time and necessary components to create ‘enough’ content.

• First and foremost, make sure your budget is allocated properly and enough skilled writers are hired to meet your needs.
• Help your writers with topics, research and scheduling. The more time they need to spend on administration tasks and searching the web, the less time they are writing. This also offers a lot more opportunity for distractions.
• Offer outlines and provide examples. This is often a lifesaver for the overworked writer. When they know exactly what you are looking for, it is much easier to write content in record timing.
• Let your writers out of the office. Most ideas and inspiration come while writers are out seeing the world, not while they are starring at a blank Word Doc.
• Offer a sanctuary at the office—a comfy place where writers can take their laptops and write freely. Provide a lot of caffeine. 
• Encourage everyone in the office to pitch in. The same voice from the same person may get stale. When everyone helps write blogs or contributes to more advanced content, new ideas and perspectives are developed. Plus more people writing means more content output.

It boils down to creating and understanding a content strategy and hiring not only enough people to create that content, but the right mix of people to create the content, as well. But using these tips can help your content creators produce maximum output. 

Follow @BrianneCarlon Follow @Kuno
photo credit: Victor L Antunez

If I didn’t do a good enough job explaining it, watch the commercial here. 

Every now and then, something grabs your attention, pulls you in and gives you goosebumps. You might smile. You might cheer. You may even shed a tear. But once it is a part of you, you don’t forget it. I am not even a Bulls fan (Let’s go Cavs!), but this commercial made me smile. It made me happy for Rose, and, more importantly, it made me an advocate. This content was downright amazing. Plus, who doesn’t love a comeback?

I checked it out, and thanks to the handy hashtag #thereturn, I found out Rose’s return is an entire web series. (For those of you who already knew about this, admittedly, I’m a little late to the game, but forgive me, please.) Adidas really nailed content marketing, and in video format no less. Let’s take a look at why this content really works:

• It Gets Personal: In the first episode, Rose is explaining his story, and even admits to praying and crying while getting an MRI, just hoping that his ACL isn’t torn. Taking a celebrity and showing that he is a real person gets just about as translucent as you can get—something millennials appreciate. Rose takes us through the entire process of surgery and rehab in his own voice. He tells us how tough it is, but how important it is.
• It Gives Us Something to Believe In: In episode two, we see Rose at a low point watching his team in the playoffs. But then we see him rise up and begin to get healthy. We see him train, sweat, and start all over. He has hope, and so do we. When you give people something to stand behind, they will usually rise up with you.
• It Gives Us Something to Relate To: Here we see how hard Rose has to work to make his dreams come true. We learn that everyone, even rock stars and NBA all stars, have hurdles to overcome. Now we know if he can do it, why can’t we? Hard work pays off. It’s inspiring.
• It Introduces the Product: Only in episode four do we even know what product Rose is actually selling. But it isn’t rubbed in our faces. The episode acts as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ take of his commercial for Adidas. After three previous episodes, we already know and like Rose, so when he tells us about shoes for Adidas, guess who’s going to buy them? (The shoes I was shopping for online have a bit more of a heel, but I might need a new pair of workout shoes…)
• It Shows Us What’s Truly Important: To Rose, there are few things that are truly important: his family and winning a championship for his fans. In episode five, we learn that it is what drives him to be better. It also kind of makes us want to buy the shoes that will help us do better…see how that works?
• It Invites Us to Be a Part of Something: From that knowing look in his eye as Rose turns and looks into the camera during the last second of the official commercial, to the hashtag where we know we can find more, Adidas invites fans to become a part of The Recovery—a winning move.

When you implement these ideas into your content marketing, whether it be print, blogs,  downloads, videos, podcasts, tweets or any other channel, you are bound to come up a winner. After this content, we are all in for D Rose. Lebron who?

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Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of being around some successful and admired inbound marketers, and I would have wasted a wonderful opportunity had I not taken a few notes. I have always had the innate desire to learn as much as I could from the people around me—soak in information like a sponge—and it has really paid off. I have not only seen, but also learned and tried to apply, the traits or characteristics of those who have been successful in the inbound marketing world. So here, I share them with you so you, too, can succeed with inbound marketing.

Successful Inbound Marketers are Strategic in Everything They Do

From content and campaigns to conversations and contracts, a successful marketing professional is strategic from beginning to end. Succeeding does not just mean taking on as many clients as you can or making every sale possible, regardless of the outcome. Everything must be considered, pondered and qualified—and only when it has been weighed and considered the best option, is it carried out.

Successful Inbound Marketers Pay Attention to the Details

Take lead nurturing for example: Campaigns each have at least a handful of emails, landing pages, confirmation pages and follow-up emails, not to mention the actual content those elements are promoting. But these details are not overlooked or thrown together. From the very first to the very last point of contact with a potential customer, details are scrutinized and constantly improved. And this sort of dedication is applied across the board with successful inbound marketing, which is what makes lead nurturing work, too.

Successful Inbound Marketers are Not Afraid to Try New Things

If your boss came to you and asked you to complete a task, even though you had never done it before, you would most likely accept the challenge with a smile on your face—then figure out how to do it as quickly as possible. Why should inbound marketing be any different? The first time we were asked to create and manage a lead nurturing campaign, we had no real strategic experience and no real process for carrying it out, but we accepted the challenge and figured it out. And now, since we have learned from our mistakes, we are managing several successful campaigns for several of our clients. Success is all about accepting the challenge and making it work. It is how you learn and grow.

Successful Inbound Marketers Know the Importance of Quality over Quantity

So you blog four times a day? Great. Is it good content? Is it useful? Educational? Shareable? If it is, that is amazing, and we applaud you. But if it just content for the sake of content, you may want to rethink your strategy. Your audience will only return to your website, blog or content if they find it appealing and informative. You would be better off—and your audience more appreciative—blogging once a day with top-notch information than filling the blogosphere with mindless chatter five times a day. This also goes for your downloads, email blasts, campaigns, social media posts and any other channel you choose to use.

Successful Inbound Marketers Know How to Fail Fast

We learned this saying from one of our clients, and it may be the most important trait of all. The ability and the know-how of failing fast is what will save you from complete demise. When you fail slowly, there is no chance at steering the ship away from the iceberg. But when you fail fast, you can clear devastation by a mile. So get out there and try new things: Be brave. Be experimental. Be revolutionary. But do it fast. Have a Plan B. Look at your mistakes and figure out how to not only fix them, but turn them into successes and master the process.

As I continue to learn, I will continue to share my findings. Feel free to share your top traits of inbound marketers below! 

photo credit: Rita Willaert

Enterprise Lead Nurturing Guide

Are you a medium- or large-sized business marketer? Discover the 4 critical steps to lead nurtuing campaigns with this helpful guide.

While it works for Kuno Creative (Hey, you are reading this blog, right?), here are a few other big companies who are using this process to their advantage.

• One impressive mecca of informative content is Home Made Simple. This site shares ideas, how-to’s and inspiration for areas such as food and recipes, home organization, crafts, home décor, holiday and party, garden and cleaning. And, oh yeah, it is a registered trademark of the mega company Procter & Gamble—but you would never know it by looking at the website. However, nearly all of the content could easily nudge readers toward one of the products from one of the company’s nearly 50 brands. Take the cleaning portal, for example. “Clean Your Electronics” gives readers truly informative, useful information. It isn’t until you get to the bottom of the post that you see a “Quick Tip” about Swiffer Dusters. Yes, this is a product-centric tip, but it absolutely fits in with the content being provided and, frankly, it is a good tip.
• The Adrenalist is filled with blood-pumping, adrenaline-rushing videos—you know, the kind of stunts that make you sweat a little, or a lot depending on your level of fear. Instead of creating videos or content about how awesome deodorant is (because how boring would that be), the folks at Degree Men thought it would be a much better idea to show you all the make-you-scream-like-a-girl adventures you could be enjoying without those embarrassing pit stains. And let’s face it, even if a guy isn’t jumping out of planes or off cliffs, he likes to think he could if he wanted, so he should be wearing Degree Men just in case his buddy dares him to go wingsuiting or something.
• And one for the ladies: Chase Blueprint brings you “Get What U Want,” a collection of tips for saving on your wedding, moving into a new house and having a baby. Each of these articles shows women (or interested men) how to save money by substituting less expensive flowers at the wedding reception, being smart about buying new appliances, or registering for baby gear—things that have nothing to do with your bank. They do, however, have to do with financials, which easily leads consumers to Chase’s Blueprint plan for paying off the expenses that come with these huge steps in life. See the connection?
• And if you have not heard about Coca-Cola’s Content 2020 marketing mission, check it out immediately. Seriously, it is definitely worth your time.

So how do you incorporate this sort of plan into your content marketing? There are a few easy steps: First, determine what makes your product or service stand out. How does it help your customers or solve their problems? What makes your product or service different from your competitors’? Make a list, then write a blog post about each entry on the list. Each of those posts should be purely educational but cleverly lead readers back to your product or service, just as Procter & Gamble, Degree Men and Chase have. Let these examples be your guide.

Have you developed awesome educational content? We would love to see it! Share in the comments below. 

photo credit: Walter Benson

Enterprise Lead Nurturing Guide

Are you a medium- or large-sized business marketer? Discover the 4 critical steps to lead nurtuing campaigns with this helpful guide.

About 90 percent of purchase decisions by B2B buyers begin with exposure to content marketing material, according to DemandGen. Ninety percent. That is an astounding number. So if nine out of 10 purchase decisions begin with exposure to content, and your content just isn’t hitting the mark, are you missing nine out of 10 sales opportunities? It seems likely.

Content Marketing holds so much potential when it comes to lead generation and lead nurturing—but it must be accomplished in the most accurate and strategic manner possible. Because so many more brands are catching up with and pursuing content marketing (check out How the Inc. 500 Fastest-Growing Companies are Using Content Marketing), gone are the days when a business could just throw together a few paragraphs and call it a blog. Content, in order to be beneficial and yield results, must be thought through thoroughly, produced efficiently and marketed correctly.

Let’s take a look at a few of the advantages content marketing can afford your business and what you need in order to not only accomplish them, but to succeed in your lead generation and lead nurturing efforts.  

• Help you shine through the haze of information overload: As mentioned, just about everyone in their right mind is attempting content marketing and social media. That makes for a lot of information online. But that doesn’t mean that it is all good content. And your potential clients can tell the difference between words slapped together and actual quality, educational and trustworthy information. How to do it: Don’t skimp. Don’t be lazy. Don’t expect it to just happen. Instead, invest the time and energy it takes to hire those (either in-house or outsourced) who know how to make the process work. Find people with real writing chops and strategic experience. Pay them well enough that they will invest the time to create quality content. This quality will also help you distribute superior content on your social media channels, as well.
• Educate your audience: The biggest goal of content marketing is to simply educate your potential buyers concerning how their problems can be solved, which will eventually lead them down the path to your product or service. How to do it: At first, you want to be purely educational and not pushy. The buyer must first realize that they have a problem and that it can be solved. Your first and second touch should be purely enlightening, only hinting at your specific solution. Take a look at the download, “Traveling with Oxygen Made Easy.” This guide helps those suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) live their lives more independently. Consumers don’t realize that they are being lead toward a specific oxygen therapy solution, but they are thankful that they have this information, building trust and desire for the product.
• Get your audience to trust you: This concept has been preached about since the dawn of content marketing. Your audience needs to feel that they could trust your service or product, but also your company and what it stands for. They need to know that they can trust you with their hard-earned money. How to do it: Share value and information that goes well beyond your products or services. We call this educational, top-of-the-funnel content. If you don’t know about the concept, learn about it now.
• Build growing relationships with your audience: This idea goes hand-in-hand with trust. When you work with other businesses, they want to be a part of the process. They want to know that you are in this together, that this partnership will benefit both parties. No one wants to feel that you are in it just to make a quick buck; they want to feel the love! How to do it: Talk to your potential clients. Involve them in the process. Ask them for their opinions and any questions they may have. When they share their thoughts then see that you have responded to them by creating content to solve their problems, they will appreciate it.
•  Move leads through the sales funnel: A current concentration has been on buyer persona, and for good reason. When you take time to study that characteristics and thoughts of people at each stage of the buying cycle, you can create content that addresses each one specifically. How to do it: Before you dive into content marketing, study your sales cycle and develop buyer personas. Then, as you develop content for nurturing, be strategic in who they are written for and why. When this is accomplished, leads are more likely to take the next step down in the sales cycle.
• Find new visitors, leads, customers: Content is fueling search engines these days, and it really is making a difference in who finds you and your content. Content marketing can truly fill your funnel with many more visitors who then become leads, and hopefully, customers, too. How to do it: Utilize your keywords. Choose them wisely then implement them in your content. Remember to include common phrases your potential customers are searching for in Google. And most of all, create quality, educational content that your loyal supporters will want to share!

As you can see, there are numerous benefits and advantages of content marketing, spanning that gamut from helping your company shine and building trust to guiding leads through the sales funnel and generating new followers. But these things only come when your content is done properly. Follow these tips, and you may find yourself making nine out of 10 sales.

What are your best tips for making content marketing work? 

photo credit: thesaltr

The Business Case for Content Marketing

Is content marketing the foundation of successful Internet marketing? Backed with real data we’ll explore why content marketing is indeed the most critical component of marketing online.

Here are a few top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content ideas you (probably) haven’t thought of yet:

• Expert Interviews: It is so easy to let your copywriter take control (since they are indeed talented) and get stuck writing blogs from his corner rut. But receiving no outside input is how ideas become scarce. Let your copywriter refresh by interviewing a handful of experts. These “experts” can range from internal company executives to outside specialists, such as doctors. From each interview, your writer will be able to gain about three to four new ideas with expert quotes to include in each one.
• Two-Sided Arguments: Conflict is one of the easiest ways to stir up interest. I am not talking an all-out brawl, but maybe two intelligent, well-informed employees see a topic from two different perspectives. Why not let them duke it out in writing? Get people to comment about their thoughts and ideas on the topic, too. Your site visitors will see that your company really thinks through each and every service it provides. Just be sure to include some sort of closure about whatever conclusion is reached.
• User-Generated Testimonials: Any time your company can get customers to talk positively about its product or service is a win, so why not put it in a video or at least in writing? Next time you are at an event or seminar, take your Flip Cam. When you find someone who says, “I really love what you guys did with that…” stop them, get out your camera, and ask if you can start filming. Many times, they will be happy to oblige. Another option is to run a campaign. Say your company sells a product that is intended to make people’s lives easier. Ask them to send in a video of how they use the product and how it has affected their life. Offer a prize for the best video to ensure usable, sharable content.
• Interactive Material: Give your readers a way to connect with your materials. When they can put their own spin on a piece of content, it becomes their own and an immediate connection is established. This is where you can really let your creativity shine. Cook up maps that can be personalized, timelines that customers can add their own bullets to, or games they can play and learn something from at the same time. This sort of content may take a little more time to develop, but the relationship garnered will be well worth it.
• Humor-filled Prose: Business to business communication can admittedly get a little dry. But we have to remember that it is still a real-live person with emotions on the decision-making side of content. Appeal to their human side with a little humor. If you can make someone laugh, you are much more likely to build a relationship with them. When you build a relationship, it is that much easier to sell your service to them. So go on, crack a joke or tell a funny story; your customers will figure out that they are working with real people and find it much easier to buy from you.

These ideas require a bit more planning and development, but the payoff is keeping loyal visitors and creating new regular visitors. Keep your mind open and your ideas flowing. Content written for businesses does not have to be dry; instead, it can be intriguing, informative, heated, collaborative or even funny. What out-of-the-box content have you come up with? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo: mutsmuts

Have you ever thought about what is going through their minds at that given moment? Is this relevant to me? Can I find the time to read it? Do I want to read it? Is this content worth it? Oh, Williams-Sonoma is having a sale? Yes, we must compete with thousands of distractions that our potential customers are bombarded with each day, but chances are if we can get visitors to answer yes to the first four questions here, distractions won’t be a major problem. Sorry Williams-Sonoma.

Making the Effort

As content marketers, we put a lot of time, energy, research and resources into our content, no matter the level of the funnel. But the truth is, almost all of the effort lies on the other side of a conversion form. If we cannot convince this visitor to convert, they will never see or experience our masterpieces. We must put the same level of effort—if not more—into encouraging them to give up their information for ours.

So how do we do that?

First, a strong call to action is imperative. Whether they find that call to action on your website, your blog or your pay-per-click ad, they need to feel compelled to click on it. The copy should be direct, different, demanding, clever, urgent and easy. (To learn more, click here.)

If you were successful with your call to action, your visitor will be one step closer to becoming a lead—but they are not there yet. They are currently staring at your landing page, deciding which step to take next. You know the basics of a good landing page: clean and simple design, a relevant and appealing graphic, a bit of copy with a few more details about the offer, an easy-to-fill-out form and no distractions to lead visitors away from the page. All of those elements lend a helping hand toward your visitor becoming your lead, but they are not a guarantee.

The true decision to convert—to hand over their well-protected personal information—lies in both the relevancy your content lends to their needs and the intrigue your content holds. Do I want to read more? This is the one and only question they are considering at this moment.

How do you get them to say yes?

You will need knock-em-dead headline, of course. (For more on writing successful headlines for top-of-the-funnel content, click here.)

But more than that, you will need a promise of relevant, quality content behind that form.  Your visitor needs to feel that your content will not be a waste of his or her time, that they will enjoy consuming it and, most of all, that they will have a need met or a problem solved. Trading personal information for less-than-stellar content can be a huge let down and lead to trust issues with the brand moving forward. Don’t let this happen to you.

Using the call to action copy, the landing page text and graphics, the headline and every other element you have at your disposal, tell visitors what they want to know—give them a preview of what’s to come. Spell out what solution you may have (without giving away the actual solution—that’s what the form is for!), and let them know there is meat on the bones of this download. Share bullet points for the topics or chapters covered inside. If you give the illusion that there is little to no valuable content inside, visitors will navigate away.

The Bottom Line

From now on, when you are creating your content marketing strategy, be sure that you are placing yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. What would make you want to convert? Is your content relevant? Is it problem-solving? And most importantly—is it worth it?

photo credit: MoHotta18

There seems to be a disconnect between how similar or dissimilar B2B and B2C content marketing really are. Some think there are just minor nuances, some think there are so many differences that the two should not even be compared, and a few even think that there are absolutely no differences. (Check out Page 10 here.) I would venture to say that the 3 percent who say there are no differences are wrong, but who is right when it comes to the other two schools of thought? Are the two markets so completely different that I am committing a crime writing about them in the same blog? Or are they more similar than we think?

A Look at Some Differences

The most obvious difference is what is going through a consumer’s mind when they are consuming B2B or B2C content. Are they buying for themselves or are they buying for their company? It is a huge difference, and it matters. But we need to break that down further. Why does that matter? Don’t they want the best for both themselves and their company? True, they probably do. So isn’t the goal of the content the same? Good question.

When someone is considering a purchase for themselves or their family, it usually comes down to some sort of emotional decision. Volkswagen really took advantage of this notion: A boy loves his toys, and he loves his toys—including bikes and cars—to be fast. But what about when it isn’t just him anymore? What about when he is now responsible for another tiny life? His son’s? He wants his car to be safe. It is an emotional decision.

The Deciding Factor for B2B

So what is the deciding factor for business professionals looking to make a purchase?

Usually, it is along these lines: “I want to look good to my boss.” Employees want to make a purchase that will help the company make money or save money. Not quite as emotional. It is more about success.

Creating the B2B Content

Success. What a great word to keep in mind when you are writing B2B content for marketing. Like B2C content, you first must discover who your audiences/consumers are. While the B2C sales cycle is usually short and simple and pursued aggressively by the seller, B2B is different. Yes, you want to convert leads to customers. But it is relationship-driven. It is targeted. And it can be long. Those who are buying on behalf of their companies need to learn about your service or product and take information with proof of success (there’s that word again) back to their bosses. They need to know the purchase is worth the investment (read: they want to know there will probably be a positive ROI).

So how do you talk to a B2B audience? They are sophisticated, so it is important not to offend them with dumb-downed talk. However, everyone, and I mean everyone, in the office should be able to understand your content. For example, if your audience is dentists, the language you use should be sophisticated, but not so high-brow that the hygienists or the dentist’s wife who does the product ordering can’t understand it. Whatever you do, DO YOUR RESEARCH. Your potential customers need to know that you understand what you are talking about. This is one way that trust for your brand is built. Additionally, make it abundantly clear that their problems can be solved.

The Bottom Line

If you want to generate leads, you must first generate quality content geared toward the B2B audience. The content should educate your audience and not only propose, but show how your product or service can help their business succeed.

photo credit: kevinthoule

Enterprise Lead Nurturing Guide

Are you a medium- or large-sized business marketer? Discover the 4 critical steps to lead nurtuing campaigns with this helpful guide.

Make Your Customers the Heroes

Thanks C.C.! What a great concept for those of us who are constantly asking, “What should we write about?” Find customers who have a great story to tell, then put them front and center. People like hearing about products and services from other people; what works, what doesn’t work. What they recommend or recommend you stay away from. So seeing a real person (a real customer) talk about your product or service speaks multitudes. So get out there, get friendly with your customers and make them feel like a million bucks by helping them tell their stories.

The Importance of Your Blogs’ Voice

Sometimes we rely on other people to write our content. It is OK. We have all been there; we have all done it. In fact, here at Kuno, we offer content writing services. But what we strive to do for our clients is to create or work within a voice for each brand. Why? Because it is important to your audience. In their personal lives, business execs and decision makers read something that they actually enjoy, like ESPN or Marie Claire online. Why not emulate that? Find a voice that works for your brand and stick to it.

Don’t Forget to Listen!

Nike is known for listening to their customers, audiences and people who are just talking about them. When C.C. wrote a blog about NikeFuel, Nike found it, asked if it could retweet the article, and then promoted it. Awesome! (Nike, if you are listening, feel free to retweet me!) Make sure you are listening to what people are saying about your company and your product. Building that relationship is crucial. And once consumers like you and trust you, they will be loyal.

It’s OK to Live the Life that Makes You Happy

This lesson is more of a personal note, but a good one for sure. C.C. works for himself from his home. He left the big corporate world and couldn’t be happier. “No one told me I couldn’t do it. If you work really hard and love what you do, amazing things will happen. It is not easy, but it is the best thing in the world.” He will tell you more about it in his new book, Amazing Things Will Happen, due out before Christmas.

Thanks for taking time to speak at Inbound 2012, C.C.. We learned a great deal. And I am looking forward to the book!