Let’s face it, while investment banks, asset managers, and other financial service providers are ahead of the curve in some ways, when it comes to content marketing, that’s rarely the case. Not only is the industry dealing with such heady topics as derivatives clearing and credit default swaps, it’s also hemmed in by an overwhelming array of complex and continuously evolving regulations.

As a result of these and other factors, financial service providers often fail to build and execute dynamic content marketing programs. Instead, they frequently rely on tried-and-true, but far less creative, tactics. Cue the deluge of exceedingly dry white papers and webinars, and the direct mail magazines that often just wind up in the trash.

To be clear, the problem isn’t a lack of effort, and it’s certainly not a lack of high-quality content. Instead, it’s the way the industry seemingly operates under the misconception that its heavy regulatory burdens both preclude and exempt it from taking a creative approach to content. Remember, those regulations are predominantly focused on what’s being said, not the style and delivery of the message.

Another problem is a palpable anxiety about the unknown that clearly stifles innovation and discourages a clear point of view. This is, in large part, why so much financial content rides the fence, and why so many companies are only just beginning to dip their toes into social media, a realm fraught with uncertainties: What if no one responds to our tweets? Or worse, what if they do?

Fortunately, some companies are forging ahead and beginning to take a more innovative approach to content.

Credit Suisse

Take Credit Suisse, for example. The bank’s digital magazine, The Financialist, offers insights into breaking news, as well as in-depth reporting on the issues, trends, and ideas it sees driving the markets and the economy. The site provides a combination of original feature stories, informative visuals, and carefully curated third-party content. It works because it’s a legitimate financial news site rather than a bank’s thinly veiled attempt to make its website look like one.

Sun Life Financial

Sun Life Financial’s Brighter Life serves as a place to share ideas about money, health, and family. Its financial content includes a variety of timely articles and videos with tips and tools for personal finance and retirement planning, among other topics. Sun Life has created a true community that’s targeted at families and, by wisely integrating a variety of other topics that families care about, makes the site a destination for a much broader audience. (For more about this content marketing effort, read our interview with SunLife.ca’s editor, Brenda Spiering.)

Putnam Investments

Bob Reynold’s blog, The Retirement Savings Challenge, is impressive because he is unafraid to tackle an array of complex issues. The CEO of Putnam Investments doesn’t simply articulate the challenges facing a graying population of baby boomers, he actually takes on retirement policy as it comes down from Capitol Hill. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Reynolds offers up a definitive, and at times controversial, point of view.

So the answer is yes, the financial services industry can and eventually will measure up in content marketing if it thinks outside of the regulatory box and reinvents the ways it delivers its messages to resonate in the 21st century. Bring on the infographics and viral videos, the social media campaigns and blogs. It may just be a matter of taking a few risks, which in an industry as skittish and scrutinized as financial services, is no small feat.

If you are in the financial industry, join us for the Content Marketing World Financial Summit on September 12 in Cleveland, Ohio.

This article originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Chief Content Officer magazine. Subscribe to receive your free copy.

OpenView Venture Partners is a Content Marketing Institute benefactor.

Cover image via Bigstock

To be truly successful, a company’s content marketing strategy has to extend beyond the walls of the marketing department. In fact, the strategy has to be baked into the organization’s DNA, with everyone from the CEO on down committed to supporting it through content generation or some other fashion. Without that support, it’s virtually impossible to execute an effective content marketing program.

That’s not to say that anyone outside of your team is going to be as engaged in content marketing as you are. Nor is it an attempt to pass the buck. You ultimately bear the responsibility for the program’s success or failure. What it does mean, however, is that you’re going to need the time and expertise of others within your company to create great content that’s going to resonate with your target audience.

How exactly your colleagues will support your content marketing efforts will vary depending on who they are, what areas of expertise they possess, and how receptive they are to idea. Their involvement can take many different forms, including:

• Writing articles or blog posts, i.e., content generation
• Serving as subject matter experts who get interviewed for content creation and/or review content to ensure its accuracy
• Suggesting topics that future content should cover
• Distributing and promoting content
• Following up as needed to any inquiries (e.g., comments) about the content

Whenever you engage your colleagues to help with content generation, the trick is to customize your approach so that you’re capitalizing on their strengths while leveraging their time effectively. Here are some tips for doing that:

• Identify your organization’s thought leaders. Which employees display the innovative ideas, strong opinions, and knowledge and expertise to take a stand on an issue? Those are the people you should primarily focus on recruiting to help you with content generation and promotion.

• Identify your allies. Not everyone is great at (or wants to) write white papers and technical reports, but some people really enjoy activities like blogging or sharing content through social media. Find these people in your organization and encourage them to contribute and/or share content. Help guide their efforts by providing resources and instruction.

• Respect your colleagues’ time. While it’s often not realistic to ask your CEO or other executives to create content for you, you can set up interviews with them and facilitate content creation on their behalf. Whether a freelance writer interviews them or you do, the idea is to pick their brain and then ghostwrite content for them. Since the process is much easier for the executives, they’re much more inclined to participate.

• Bring out their competitive side. A little healthy competition can go a long way toward getting people to participate in your content marketing efforts. For example, if you have a corporate blog, consider sharing metrics on a regular basis so that people can compare how their posts stack up against their peers’. Bragging rights are a surprisingly effective motivator.

No matter what tactics you use, it’s important to leverage your colleagues for content generation. After all, they’re often the ones who are best in touch with your customers and your industry, and have valuable insights and ideas that you need to capture.

photo by: flakeparadigm

The question is, do these services actually help or hinder?

What I mean is, can external writers turn out the kind of technically accurate and nuanced content you’re looking for? I know from experience that independent freelancers can with the proper one-on-one coaching. But at large content marketing companies with thousands of far-flung writers cranking out content, often with little context, interaction, or direction from you, does the same hold true? Likewise, can content marketing services aimed at promoting your content through social media do the job as well as you can without coming across as automated or even robotic? Let’s table that discussion for a minute.

Before making any decisions, let’s take a look at some of the content marketing services out there that you could potentially use to increase the overall impact of your content marketing efforts. There are certainly others (I haven’t touched on the marketing automation services that companies such as Marketo and Eloqua provide, for example). To be clear, this post is not an endorsement of any of the content marketing services below. In fact, I’ve only used a couple of them myself. Suffice it to say, do your due diligence before using any of them.

Zemanta is a scalable solution for earned link building and blogger outreach through content distribution. The tool allows you to connect your content to more than 150,000 bloggers, who create over 250,000 posts every month. As those bloggers write in Zemanta, they are shown high-quality related content that they are able to instantly embed into their posts. Every time they refer to your content, it helps boost your search engine rankings by giving you high-quality inbound links.

Post Release automates the distribution of your content as a sponsored post or article in contextually relevant relevant blogs, forums, and content sites. It delivers sponsored content to targeted audiences, enabling you to have your messages absorbed as content rather than ads.

Skyword is a content management platform that allows you to recruit and manage writers, create and optimize content, institute an editorial review process, promote your content via social media, and measure its effectiveness using a variety of analytics. The company also provides an array of strategic content marketing services.

Kapost is a content marketing platform that offers planning, production, distribution and analysis functionality that drives improvements in a variety of areas. Used properly, it can help streamline your content creation process so that you’re able to create more content in less time.

Outbrain is a content discovery platform that can help content marketers in two ways by 1) offering recommendations to help your audience discover more content on your site that is interesting to them and 2) Growing your audience by distributing your content on other sites, where people are looking for something new to discover.

Zerys is a project management tool that connects you to freelance writers who create content at rock-bottom prices (as little as a few cents per word). Simply enter in a topic on their site, select the type of content you want to create, and specific details around length and style. An array of writers will submit drafts to you and you can then select the one you like best.

Scripted is a platform that connects you to a variety of writers, offering packages for a set number of blog posts and/or white papers that are written on a monthly basis. Scripted also pitches ideas and can help with content promotion through Twitter and Facebook.

I’ve got no doubt that some of these content marketing services can provider real value, but I’m equally certain that they’re not all created equally.

What content marketing tools and services have you used with either good or bad results? What role do you think they should play in a content marketing strategy?

photo by: luca.sartoni

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One of the downsides of living in the information age is that we are literally drowning in a sea of content. In 2008, for example, the average American actively consumed information for nearly 12 hours every day. Whether reading articles, listening to podcasts, watching videos, or absorbing content in any of the countless other ways available to us, we’re all being inundated with vasts amounts of information.

And yet, while we are digesting more content than ever before, we’re also becoming increasingly selective about what content we will and won’t make time for.

Think about it. How many e-mails do you receive every day that go unread? How much direct mail winds up in your trash unopened? The bottom line is that with so much content competing for our attention, we have very little patience for marketing fluff or any other noise that could potentially distract us (busy people that we are) from getting what we need. Quite simply, we prioritize what we consume based on whether or not we think it’s useful.

The simple takeaway is this: in the world of B2B Marketing, good content is useful content. The question then, is how can you ensure that your content is useful? Here are some ideas:

1. Create How-to Content — People need content that explains in a simple, step-by-step format how to do specific tasks. As part of this blog, for example, I’ve created posts detailing step-by-step instructions to creating a content marketing style guide and a case study. Giving people straightforward instruction about how to do something can be incredibly valuable and is a great example of useful content.
2. Go Broad — Publish content that pertains to your industry as a whole, rather than just your company’s product or service offerings. If your content addresses issues that people in your industry care about, it will be useful content. If, on the other hand, your content is all about you, people aren’t ever going to use it.
3. Share Proprietary Research — Any time you can create content that includes proprietary research that people can’t get elsewhere, it has the potential to be incredibly useful. Share your insights and analysis of key issues and people will flock to your content.
4. Link to Other Useful Content — Always link your content to other high-quality related content regardless whether or not it’s yours. One way to make your content useful is not only to create great stuff, but to also direct people to other great stuff that they may not have otherwise found.
5. Curate Great Content — Content curation is a valuable service, and one that can make your website useful to visitors. Any time you can bring together the best sources of information to one place, you’re saving people the time and hassle of having to tracking that information down themselves. There’s huge value in that.
6. Develop Assessment Tools — Create online tools to measure how well someone is doing a particular activity and that provides information to helps them get better at it. Such tools, notably HubSpot’s Marketing Grader, are incredibly useful and, not surprisingly, successful.

Importantly, no matter how you go about making your content is useful, you have to make sure that its usefulness isn’t lost on your audience. People assess content incredibly fast, deciding whether or not to consume a piece of content in the blink of an eye. Make sure that you’re communicating how useful your content is in your headlines so that it grabs your audience’s attention.

photo by: IK’s World Trip

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The old saying “timing is everything” couldn’t be more true when it comes to B2B content. Part of creating great, engaging content is ensuring that you’re in tune with what’s going on in your industry right now. After all, even if you create the best content in the world, if it’s about yesterday’s news, or something no one cares about, what’s the point?

That’s why one of the most important aspects of creating engaging content is listening. You need to have an ear to the outside world, so that you’re always in touch with what your customers and prospects are talking about. You need to know what challenges they’re facing and what’s going on in your industry that could have implications for them. Not only that, you need to know what your competitors and the influencers in your industry are talking about, too. The bottom line is that you need to be in the loop so that you can ensure that the content you’re creating is part of the larger conversation going on out there.

While keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry takes some work, the tips below can help:

• Talk to your customers (or at least to the people in your company who do) and find out what’s top of mind for them.
• Audit your competitors sites and blogs on a regular basis to see what kinds of content they’re creating and about what topics.
• Set up Google alerts or sign up for RSS feeds using a content aggregation platform like Google Reader. These types of tools will allow you to gather huge amounts of “intelligence” in one place that you can quickly sort through to identify trends and hot topics.
• Monitor the discussions going on about your industry over social media such as in LinkedIn Groups and on Twitter.
• Check out the agendas of relevant conferences to see what topics people are discussing.

The payoff of doing these things is that it positions you to create engaging content that your audience is going to care about.

Engaging content has to be compelling, interactive, and impactful!

Think for a moment about how you read blog posts or view videos. If, 30 seconds in, your eyes have glazed over and you’ve begun thinking about something totally unrelated to the content’s subject matter, what’s the likelihood that you’ll remember anything about the blog post you read or the video you watched? Not very good, right?

The truth is that content that is simply read is content that is often forgotten. Content that tells a compelling story, encourages interaction, and maintains its readers’ attention, on the other hand, is impactful content. It is far more likely to be remembered, shared, and discussed, spawning the type of engagement that marketers long for.

To be effective, it’s critical that you create B2B content that is engaging (i.e., uses visuals, sounds, and other devices to activate the senses), narrative, and interactive. Content that gives users an experience (whether it’s by deploying interactive multimedia or by simply offering the ability to leave comments) is content that your buyers won’t soon forget.

It’s important to note that the value of visualization cannot be underestimated, a point that’s validated by the explosion of content like infographics and apps over the past few years. Today, people like to use all of their senses to quickly absorb and process information. As a result, stale, stodgy, or boring content won’t get you very far with your customers, and it might even hurt your chances of acquiring their business. Truly engaging content must be fun and pleasurable to interact with, and it must offer something unique that customers can’t find elsewhere.

To make your content more engaging, consider:

• Going beyond articles and reports, and experiment with videos, podcasts, interactive presentations, games, multimedia, and infographics
• Providing a forum for discussion within the content (i.e., a comments section at the bottom of a blog post) and responding promptly when someone does comment
• Encouraging more meaningful interaction through the use of webinars, feedback polls, surveys, and other interactive content formats
• Utilizing humor, wit, and charm as a way to humanize your company and its employees

So what have you done to make sure that your content is engaging?? Share your ideas and suggestions and let’s start a dialogue about this.

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If you’re not evaluating your content against these marketing performance metrics, how can you ever improve?

Performance improvement expert H. James Harrington once said, “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and, eventually, to improvement.” For anyone trying to take their content marketing efforts to the next level, his words certainly ring true.

For content marketers, marketing performance metrics provide deep insights into how our content is doing. They tell us how many people are consuming our content, what they are doing with it, and whether or not they like it. Metrics alert us to which ideas we should replicate and which we should look to improve. They’re also what give us credibility within our companies by demonstrating that content marketing is both a powerful and worthwhile investment.

Content Marketing Performance Metrics: What to Track

To measure and, ultimately, improve your content marketing efforts, you need to know which metrics to track and analyze, and how to do so. The best place to start is by gathering some data from your company’s website, including your:

1. Unique visitors: The best indication of your site’s overall traffic, unique visitors refers to the number of individuals who visit your website during a given period of time, where each visitor is only counted once. This number will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, your industry and, of course, the amount of content you’re producing.

2. Page views: The cumulative number of individual pages that your visitors click on during a given period of time. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, that may be an indication that your audience is finding your content engaging because individuals are clicking around to multiple pages.

3. Search engine traffic: The amount of traffic being referred to your site through search engines, such as Google or Bing. This number will give you a clear indication of how effective of a job you are doing at optimizing your content for search.

4. Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately “bounce” or leave before clicking on any other pages. A bounce rate of less than 40 percent is considered good. If it is any higher, it may be an indication that visitors to your site don’t like what they find there.

5. Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to your site who take a specific action that your content encourages them to, such as signing up for your newsletter. Conversion rates vary considerably based on industry, but tend to hover around 2 and 3 percent on average. That said, aim for a conversion rate of approximately 5 percent, or even higher if you are creating specific landing pages for specific audiences.

6. Inbound links: The number of external links to your site, an indication that other people have found your content important enough to link to it. Importantly, the more high-quality inbound links you have, the higher your content will rank on search engines.

How to Start Tracking

One of the best ways to track your content marketing performance metrics is by setting up a free account with Google Analytics. A powerful tool, Google Analytics will allow you to monitor your website(s) and analyze a huge amount of data at both the aggregate and individual page level. That way you can find out how specific pieces of content are performing, as well as the overall performance of your content marketing efforts. Signing up is easy and takes just a few minutes. Within a matter of days, Google Analytics will have collected enough data to allow you to start analyzing trends and looking for new insights.

Because Google gives you access to so much information, it can be very helpful to create your own custom dashboard that isolates the metrics that you find most relevant and allows you to compare them over time. Here’s an example of a basic dashboard I’ve created using Microsoft Excel:

To make things even easier, Google Analytics also gives you the option to compile and download reports that will give you a snapshot view of the information you need. Here’s how you can do this:

• Simply click on the custom report tab.
• Select the new report option.
• Specify the metrics you’d like your report to include.

No matter how you do it, if you have the discipline to look at your key metrics for content marketing performance metrics on a weekly basis, you will be much more in tune with how your content is performing. Once you’ve mastered this, then try putting some of the data into chart form to make it easier to identify trends.

The example below displays page views for OpenView’s corporate site, content site, and this blog for a span of six weeks. Displaying the data this way makes it easy to see, for instance, that there were significant spikes in page views during the weeks of September 13 and October 11, and that in both instances, much of the increase was isolated to a single site. Being able to easily see trends and outliers makes it easier to identify what’s working and what isn’t so that you can replicate or adjust as needed.

In addition to the basic marketing performance metrics noted above, there are two other important things to take note of: the number of comments and the number of shares your content gets — both are strong indicators of engagement. Any time that people are taking the time to post a comment about your content or to share it with others, it’s a great sign.

So tell me, what marketing performance metrics do you track to evaluate your content?

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the Content Marketing Institute’s website.

photo: hoshi7

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But creating content that can convert leads is a tall order. Not only does it have to be crafted to accompany your target buyers on their journey down the path to purchase, it also has to contain the right hooks, calls-to-action, and triggers. It’s only when your content is customized to that level that it can truly be effective at converting leads and progressing them through the sales funnel.

Let me explain what I mean. Think of effective B2B content like a line of dominos. If properly spaced, aligned, and organized, all you need to do is get the first domino to the fall and the rest will follow. Similarly, once you get your target buyers to consume their first piece of content, they should automatically be guided to another piece of content, thus encouraging their forward momentum through the sales funnel. Quite simply, you want to do everything you can to ensure the dominos keep falling so that you convert leads into paying customers.

Leveraging hooks, calls to action, and triggers to convert leads

Inserting hooks, calls to action, and triggers in your content shouldn’t be a blatantly obvious tactic. The idea is to naturally nudge prospects along the buying process, rather than drowning them in an endless supply of unnecessary content. Below are definitions of hooks, calls to action, and triggers, and tips for using each.

A HOOK is the component of your content that people see first. It can be as simple as an article headline, an e-mail subject line, or the image that accompanies a blog post.

In other words, it’s what draws buyers in. Buyers often evaluate those hooks — typically in a split second — to decide whether or not the article, e-mail, or post is worth reading. The trick is to capture people’s attention by doing things like writing short, pithy headlines and provocative subject lines, or selecting bold images that are visually engaging. Basically, you want to do whatever you can to encourage your target audience to fully consume and digest your content.

A CALL TO ACTION is a mechanism by which you get someone to consume more of your content and ultimately make a purchase.

For instance, you might include text at the bottom of a curated article that says something like, “If you enjoyed reading this article, consider reading these articles too!” Alternatively, if you produce a series of blog posts about best practices for using marketing automation software, you might include a button or pullout box next to those articles that says, “If you’d like to learn more about the business benefits of marketing automation software, download our free eBook.”

A TRIGGER is the automatic response that is prompted by a specific customer action or engagement with a particular type of content.

This essentially boils down to basic physics. For every action, there needs to be an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if someone downloads your eBook, you should follow up with them. If someone reads one of your articles, they should be able to easily find or be directed to related content. Always plan ahead and know what the next the next step is toward moving your target down the path to purchase.

There are many ways to convert leads into buying customers. Content can be a powerful way of doing so, and using hooks, calls to action, and triggers will go a long way toward helping your content do just that.

What tactics are you using to convert leads?

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For content marketers, metrics provide deep insights into how our content is performing. They tell us how many people are consuming our content, what they are doing with it, and whether or not they like it. Metrics alert us to which ideas we should replicate and which we should look to improve. They’re also what give us credibility within our companies by demonstrating that content marketing is both a powerful and worthwhile investment.

Measuring marketing effectiveness: What to start tracking

To measure and, ultimately, improve your content marketing efforts, you need to know which metrics to track and analyze, and how to do so. The best place to start is by gathering some data from your company’s website, including your:

1. Unique visitors: The best indication of your site’s overall traffic, unique visitors refers to the number of individuals who visit your website during a given period of time, where each visitor is only counted once. This number will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, your industry and, of course, the amount of content you’re producing.

2. Page views: The cumulative number of individual pages that your visitors click on during a given period of time. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, that may be an indication that your audience is finding your content engaging because individuals are clicking around to multiple pages.

3. Search engine traffic: The amount of traffic being referred to your site through search engines, such as Google or Bing. This number will give you a clear indication of how effective of a job you are doing at optimizing your content for search.

4. Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately “bounce” or leave before clicking on any other pages. A bounce rate of less than 40 percent is considered good. If it is any higher, it may be an indication that visitors to your site don’t like what they find there.

5. Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to your site who take a specific action that your content encourages them to, such as signing up for your newsletter. Conversion rates vary considerably based on industry, but tend to hover around 2 and 3 percent on average. That said, aim for a conversion rate of approximately 5 percent, or even higher if you are creating specific landing pages for specific audiences.

6. Inbound links: The number of external links to your site, an indication that other people have found your content important enough to link to it. Importantly, the more high-quality inbound links you have, the higher your content will rank on search engines.

Key metrics: How to start tracking

One of the best ways to track all of this information is by setting up a free account with Google Analytics. A powerful tool, Google Analytics will allow you to monitor your website(s) and analyze a huge amount of data at both the aggregate and individual page level. That way you can find out how specific pieces of content are performing, as well as the overall performance of your content marketing efforts. Signing up is easy and takes just a few minutes. Within a matter of days, Google Analytics will have collected enough data to allow you to start analyzing trends and looking for new insights.

Because Google gives you access to so much information, it can be very helpful to create your own custom dashboard that isolates the metrics that you find most relevant and allows you to compare them over time.

Here’s an example of a basic dashboard I’ve created using Microsoft Excel:

To make things even easier, Google Analytics also gives you the option to compile and download reports that will give you a snapshot view of the information you need. Here’s how you can do this:

• Simply click on the custom report tab.
• Select the new report option.
• Specify the metrics you’d like your report to include.

No matter how you do it, if you have the discipline to look at your key metrics for measuring marketing effectiveness on a weekly basis, you will be much more in tune with how your content is performing. Once you’ve mastered this, then try putting some of the data into chart form to make it easier to identify trends.

The example below displays page views for my company’s corporate site, content site, and blog for a span of six weeks. Displaying the data this way makes it easy to see, for instance, that there were significant spikes in page views during the weeks of September 13 and October 11, and that in both instances, much of the increase was isolated to a single site. Being able to easily see trends and outliers makes it easier to identify what’s working and what isn’t so that you can replicate or adjust as needed.

In addition to the basic metrics noted above, there are two other important things to take note of: the number of comments and the number of shares your content gets — both are strong indicators of engagement. Any time that people are taking the time to post a comment about your content or to share it with others, it’s a great sign.

For more tips on how to manage the key processes involved in content marketing, check out Managing Content Marketing, by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi.

Outbound communication can take many forms, including e-mail campaigns, direct mail, and social media to name just a few. When your goal is to promote content, however, some tactics work better than others. In this post, I’ll look at six of the best outbound communication tactics that you can use to support your content promotion efforts. I’m also including some tips on how to use each tactic successfully.

Tactic 1: Build an Influencer Marketing Program

Influencer marketing is the practice of building relationships with the individuals who influence your target audience. The intent is to get those influencers to share your content with their followers, thus not only extending its reach, but also effectively giving it the endorsement of someone who is respected in your industry.

Imagine, for example, that you’re creating an eBook on content marketing. During the process you reach out to some influential content marketers and ask them to contribute a simple quote to your eBook (if you’re content is good, most will be happy to). With their names now associated with your eBook, those influencers may well be inclined to share it with their followers, thus getting it in front of a larger audience.

Tip: For a more thorough explanation of influencer marketing, see “The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.”

Tactic 2: Create an eNewsletter

An e-Newsletter is one of the best ways you can promote content because it ensures that it is distributed to your target audience on a regular basis. The advantages of newsletters include that they are relatively cheap and easy to execute (through companies like ExactTarget, for example). The disadvantage is that part of using them successfully is committing to a regular distribution cycle. If you don’t have the discipline to send your newsletter consistently, this is probably not the right tactic for you.

Tip: You don’t need a ton of content to have an effective newsletter. Much more important is that your newsletter is targeted to specific audiences. Most people would rather receive a newsletter with one piece of content that really speaks to them rather than a newsletter with ten pieces of content that may or may not find relevant. Focus on what you’re delivering, not how much.

Tactic 3: Tap into Public Relations

Most of us think of think of writing press releases to announce big deals, new products, or other breaking news. Press releases can and often should also be used to promote content. When doing so, however, focus your PR efforts on your most impactful pieces — the ones that contain unique proprietary insights, compelling stats, or thought leadership that will be of interest to your industry. Great content will get media coverage.

Tip: When creating your content, keep your PR hat on. Think about what kinds of hooks you can include to make your next report or white paper something that attracts the media’s attention. Journalists like to promote content that has interesting proprietary research, shares a definitive point of view, or that says something new and noteworthy.

Tactic 4: Look into Syndication and Guest Posting Options

For smaller pieces of recurring content, such as blog posts, syndication is a great option. Sites like Alltop aggregate blogs by topic. If you regularly write about a specific topic these sites will share links to your latest posts, giving you exposure to a much broader audience. Other sites, such as Business 2 Community and Business Insider will automatically republish some or even all of your content in its entirety using an RSS feed. Another option is to create guest posts for sites like Inc.com or Entrepreneur. No matter which approach you take, you’ll get your content in front of a larger audience.

Tip: Always embed links back to your site in your posts so that no matter where it appears you’re giving people access back to your site as well as garnering more inbound links to help juice your SEO.

Tactic 5: Utilize Your Sales Team

Your sales team is in regular contact with your prospects and customers, and as such should be one of your greatest content promoters and distributors. Make sure that your sales team is well advised of what content they should be sharing and make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Tip: Create a content matrix by topic for your sales team. That way, when they are talking to prospects and customers about specific issues, they can easily identify what if any related content is appropriate to send as a follow up.

Tactic 6: Take Advantage of Your Product’s User Interface

If you have a product that lives online, use its UI to promote content. For example, you can share relevant articles, white papers, and reports that your customers would find useful.

Tip: Content that is shared via your product’s UI should be very targeted and shared selectively. Do not overwhelm your customer with content or your risk impeding their experience with too many distractions. When you do have content to share, find a subtle way of doing so.

What it all comes down to is finding ways to get your content in front of as many people as possible. The ideas above will help you do just that. Check out my other posts in this series about how to promote content using content sharing sites and through content subscription.

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One of the most important aspects of content distribution is content subscription. You want to give your audience opportunities to subscribe to your content so that they receive it automatically, without having to go looking for it. Doing so will help ensure that more of your content — whether you’re creating videos or blog posts, white papers or case studies — gets consumed by more people more often. For anyone looking for a good content distribution plan, it’s a no brainer.

Before you can start developing a content subscription strategy, however, you’ve got to answer two questions: 1) What are the best types of content that you can create that people can easily subscribe to? and 2) How do you actually get people to subscribe? This post addresses both of those points.

Content Subscription Options

Here are a few examples of what marketers should consider getting their target audience to subscribe to:

• Newsletters — A newsletter is a catch all that allows you to share just about any type of content on a regular basis. For example, you might choose to share your best blog posts and curated content each week or a new report or eBook. A good newsletter will generally provide teasers of that content, encouraging readers to click through to your site to access it in full.

• E-mails — Whereas newsletters are regularly distributed allowing you to share content frequently, you can use e-mails to opportunistically share bigger pieces of content. The advantage of using e-mails (that people opt in to receive) is that you can customize each one based on the content you’re sharing or the audience you’re sharing it with. You also can create e-mails on an as needed basis rather than committing to a more rigid schedule as you would with a newsletter.

• Videos / Podcasts — Both of these types of content are easy to subscribe to using YouTube and iTunes, respectively. When your audience subscribes to your YouTube channel, for example, they’ll be notified every time you post a new video. If they subscribe to your podcast, new episodes will automatically be downloaded every time they connect their device to iTunes.

• RSS Feeds — Although not a type of content, RSS feeds are one of the most important ways of making it easy for your audience to subscribe to your content. Often referred to as really simple syndication, RSS actually stands for rich site summary. Simply put, RSS is a Web format that allows you to syndicate frequently updated content like what you would find on a news site or blog. People who subscribe to your RSS feed are able to see your content using a news aggregator such as Google Reader without having to go to your site to get it.

Now that you’ve got a few ideas of what your audience can subscribe to, here are a few tips on how to actually get them to subscribe.

Getting them to Sign Up

The thing about content subscription is that you’ve got to give your audience a reason to subscribe in the first place. Here are a couple of ways of doing so:

• Give Your Audience Something In Return — If you have a great piece of content that you think people will really find valuable, consider gating it. That way your audience will only able to access it after they sign up to be on your newsletter or e-mail distribution list. Not everyone likes this approach, so as an alternative, consider making part of the content available online (the first 10 pages of the book, the first view minutes of the video or podcast), asking your audience to subscribe only after they’ve had the chance to interact with it. If someone has already taken the time to read 10 pages or watch five minutes of video, they probably find it useful and will be willing to subscribe to get access to the rest.

• Make it So Easy They Can’t Say No — If signing up for your content is a hassle, no one is ever going to do it. Make sure that the subscription process is easy by asking for as little information as possible (ideally, just an e-mail address). Also get any of your outbound facing colleagues — whether sales reps, recruiters, or customer service professionals — to encourage the contacts they interact with to sign up, or better yet to sign those people up themselves with their permission.

What it really comes down to is creating high-quality content. If your content is good, people will want it delivered to them so that they don’t miss anything. Focus on making the best possible content and the subscribers will follow. Over time, you’ll find that this is a key part of content distribution.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series, where I’ll be talking about how to leverage events for content distribution.

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If you want to make a viral video, here’s what you need to do:

1. Develop and Document a Concept — Coming up with a great idea for a video is often just as hard as creating the video itself. Start by thinking about what one point you want your target audience to take away from watching it. Maybe it’s knowing who you are, understanding your product, or knowing how to solve a specific problem. Understanding who your audience is and what it needs will help ensure that you’re on track. Once you are, create a storyboard for the video that captures the following components:

• Messaging — What key points do you want the video to make and how will those messages be communicated? Try to limit yourself to no more than one or two to ensure your video stays focused.

• Visuals — Will the video be animated, use live shots or stills, or a combination of all three? Are you going for a modern look and feel or something more traditional? The more you can specify how your video should look, the easier it will be to bring your vision to fruition.

• Audio — What kind of music will accompany the video? Will there be a voice a voice over or other sound effects?

The point here is to get as many of your ideas down on paper so that you have a framework for what you’re trying to create. In the process, make sure to also consider your budget. While simple videos can be produced relatively inexpensively, creating advanced animated videos can quickly become very expensive. Before you set your sights too high, make sure you know how much you’re willing to spend.

2. Test Your Concept — It’s always a good idea to get some feedback on your ideas before you start spending money. Find a few members of your target audience and ask them if they like the concept you’ve created. Ask them these questions:

• Does this video sound like one that you’d be interested in watching?
• Do you think it would help you understand topic X better?
• Does the format we’re proposing sound interesting to you?
• What would this video need to include for you to feel compelled to share it with others?

3. Engage the Right Resources — Most of us don’t have the luxury of having an extensive creative team at our disposal. If that’s the case, you’ll want to engage the right freelancer or agency to help you create your video. A few affordable agencies you might want to contact include:

• Creative Circle
• The Maslow Media Group
• The Creative Group
• Levitate Media

Once you’ve got freelance resources you can use, check out these tips on how to work with them.

4. Promote, Promote, Promote — No video is going to go viral on its own. You need to promote it hard. Get it out on social media and see if you can get influencers and tastemakers in your industry to share it on your behalf. Doing so will help you dramatically increase your reach, increasing the number of viewers who could potentially watch your video.

To be sure, making a great video, let alone a viral video, is no small feat. However, if you can pull it off, it can definitely get you a lot of attention. Just ask Korean rapper Psy.

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Fast forward to today, and the music video parody of the Gangnam district of Seoul, a wealthy and trendy area similar to Beverly Hills, has garnered more than 335 million YouTube views. It currently averages more than 9 million hits a day and was recently recognized by Guinness World Records as the most liked video in YouTube history. As if that weren’t enough, five of the 10 most viral videos currently online pertain to “Gangnam Style.”

Any piece of content that successful — even if it is a slice of pop culture rather than a B2B marketing tool — can offer some valuable lessons for content marketers. So let’s break this “masterpiece” down and see what the characteristics of a viral video are.

Quite simply, viral videos need to be:

1. Entertaining — As B2B content marketers, most of us aren’t in the business of making music videos. Be that as it may, however, it’s important to keep in mind that the best way to make your video go viral is to make it entertaining. That means getting really creative and finding novel and, better yet, humorous ways of getting your message across. Don’t get me wrong, talking head videos and other standard fare of B2B marketers certainly have their place. Just don’t ever expect them to ever go viral.

2. Educational — While it would be a stretch to call “Gangnam Style” educational (though I for one didn’t know what Gangnam meant), B2B marketing videos absolutely should be. After watching your video, viewers should not only be entertained, but also better off for having learned something. You want to make sure that your video has some sort of intrinsic value that makes it useful to your target audience.

3. Compelling — To make a viral video, you’ve got to create something that people believe is worth sharing. While the bar is admittedly low in non-business contexts — as evidenced by the proliferation of viral cat videos — as B2B marketers we’re faced with a much more difficult task. We need to be able to elicit a reaction from our audience that is sufficient enough to get them to tell others about it.

4. Short & Sweet — We all have short attention spans, so remember to keep your videos sharply focused and on target. The reality is that most people will lose interest in your video — no matter how great you may think it is — within just two to three minutes.

If you’re going to make a viral video, make sure it has all of these characteristics. And, to get some tips on how to actually go about doing so, check out this post.

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Think once you’ve found and strategically used a keyword that you’re done with your quest to optimize content? Think again. Ranking well in search engines is about more than just that. Sites like Google also factor in how much your content is shared and thus how many backlinks, pingbacks, and trackbacks it gets. Simply put, Google is rating your content based on how popular it is.

Inbound Links Are Your Friend

So, long story short, you want as many inbound links to your content as possible. One way to get them is to promote your content far and wide. That means not just posting your content to your own site, but also to high-traffic sites like SlideShare (for visual content such as presentations and eBooks) and Scribd (for text-based content such as white papers), as well as sharing it via Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and all of your other favorite social media channels. Importantly, you’ll also want to make it easy for others to share your content by embedding social sharing tools into your website. Every time you do any of this, you’ve got an opportunity to get another inbound link back to your content.

Beyond sharing your content, another thing you can do is devote some time to active link building through comments. The process is pretty simple. Start by finding places where people are discussing whatever topic you’ve written about. That might include Q&A sites like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, or your favorite blog or news site. A simple Google search will point you in the right direction and, as long as the site allows you to leave comments, you’re good to go.

Let’s say I were looking for a place build links for this post. I might start with SEOmoz’s blog, which is on topic and gets much more traffic than my own site. Looking through the site’s posts, I would try to find the one that’s most relevant to what I’ve written. Then, I would simply leave a comment about the post with a link back to my content using some basic HTML. When doing so, make sure you take the time to read the post so that you can leave a smart, contextually appropriate comment. After all, you want to put your best foot forward — your name will be attached to the comment! Plus, some comments are moderated, and comments that are off topic or clearly just promoting your own content often don’t get published.

Here’s an example of a potential comment I could write for a post on the SEOmoz blog that would also tie back to my content:

You’ve made a great point about the role of SEO in social media, and one that’s often overlooked. Another tip to bear in mind if you’re trying to optimize content is link building. It takes some time and effort, but it can really pay off.

You can often embed your link using the following HTML: Insert text you want to display. In cases where that does not work (depending on the website, it might not), you can simply insert the URL directly. Regardless, be sure that your using your keyword (in my case “optimize content”) in the comment / link.

While link building is a time-consuming process, it’s one that will pay off over time. For anyone new to SEO, it’s a tactic to optimize content that’s worth experimenting with.

Don’t believe me? Help me share this blog post and let’s see if we can get it to be on the first page of Google results for the keyword “optimize content.”

photo by: pratanti

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Content marketing is about more than just creating great content. It’s also about sharing that content in a variety of ways to increase the chances of it reaching your audience. After all, what’s the point of creating new eBooks, case studies, or blog posts if most of the people they’re intended for never have the chance to consume it.

It should come as no surprise that these days that means doing a lot more than just posting your content to your own website. Even if you’ve got great content that’s prominently displayed on your site and search engine optimized, you still need to make sure it’s on the right content sharing sites.

The reason is simple: Chances are that your site only garners a tiny fraction of the traffic that the best content sharing sites do. As a result, if they’re not a part of your content distribution strategy, you’re missing a huge opportunity to get more people engaging with your content. While the seven sites I’ve listed below are certainly familiar, they’re worth noting since few expansion-stage B2B companies take advantage of them all.

Promoting your content on the seven content sharing sites listed below should be baked into your distribution strategy:

1. SlideShare — A free community site, SlideShare allows users to share visual content such as presentations, eBooks, and videos. It is one of the most popular sites that people go to for business content, receiving an average of more than 60 million visitors and 130 million page views a month. Since being acquired by LinkedIn earlier this year, it has become possible to seamlessly integrate your SlideShare content into your company’s LinkedIn page.

2. Scribd — Described as the world’s largest online library, Scribd is a free community content sharing site. Whereas SlideShare focuses on visual content, Scribd is better suited to text-based documents such as reports, white papers, and case studies. Like SlideShare, it also gets a tremendous volume of traffic every month.

3. YouTube — It used to be that YouTube was the place you went to watch cute videos of people’s cats. While the feline community remains alarmingly well represented, today the site is also the home to a considerable amount of business-related content. With more than 800 million unique visitors a month, it’s the gateway to one of the largest audiences online.

4. LinkedIn — As the business networking site, LinkedIn has evolved into a great site for content sharing with targeted audiences. Members frequently segment themselves into a huge array of LinkedIn Groups based on their industry, interests, and needs, making it easy to find a good home for virtually any content you produce.

5. Google+ — While initially slow to take off, Google+ has gained significant traction since its launch and has evolved into a great vehicle for sharing content. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of doing so is that Google rewards your efforts by immediately indexing your content and giving it a little SEO boost. Access to a steadily growing audience and enhanced SEO are two great reasons to incorporate Google+ in your distribution strategy.

6. Facebook — Although not typically a place to promote heady white papers or the like, experiment with posting lighter content such as blog posts and infographics. Occasionally integrating fun content into a well maintained Facebook page can pay off.

7. Twitter — Although not a place to post actual content, social sharing tools like Twitter are easy to use and ideally suited to content sharing. When doing so, remember to follow the 4-1-1 Rule: For every one self-serving tweet, you should publish four tweets that aren’t about you and your company and one re-tweet.

By posting and sharing your content through these and other content sharing sites, you will be making it available to a much broader audience. In many cases, doing so will also give you the opportunity to create more inbound links to your own site. Utilizing these sites doesn’t require a complex strategy. The most important thing is simply ensuring that you do use them.

In my next post in this series, I’ll look at how to use a variety of other outbound communication tactics — such as influencer marketing, events, and PR — to share content.

photo by: C!…

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VC marketing? Does anyone really do that? Smart venture capitalists sure do.

VC marketing may sound like a contradiction in terms, but trust me it’s not. Sure, as an industry we are a little late to the game, but clever VCs are catching on quick.

Historically, VCs haven’t seen much value in marketing. And why would they? They’re not selling products. They don’t even have customers. True enough, but in a highly competitive and ever-consolidating industry, brand still matters.

Sure, some VCs have built great brands without having ever done a lick of marketing. If you happened to have invested in Facebook or Twitter, for example, you’re going to enjoy some pretty great name recognition no matter what. But let’s face it, not every VC is going to invest in companies that go on to become household names. To stand out from their peers and ensure that entrepreneurs know who they are, most VCs need to build their brand organically. Enter VC marketing.

At OpenView, we’ve built our brand through a combination of content marketing, influencer marketing, social media, and public relations. Our content is at the center of that effort and is intended to provide practical, how-to advice to our portfolio companies and the entrepreneurial community at large across an array of functional areas. We began by creating this blog in 2009 and went on to create our newsletter and content site in 2010. In the years since, we’ve evolved into a true content factory, with a content production schedule that looks like this:

• 1 original article every day
• 1 original video every day
• 5 curated articles every day
• 1 podcast every week
• 1 newsletter every week
• 10-15 blog posts every week
• 2 case studies every quarter
• 2 reports every quarter
• 2 eBooks every quarter

For us, VC marketing means content marketing. We focus on developing practical, utilitarian content about topics like sales, marketing, finance, and recruiting, with the goal of providing useful information that expansion-stage companies need to scale. Through our influencer marketing, social media, and PR efforts, we’re able to promote that content across a wide network.

Successfully marketing a venture capital firm or any company is no small feat. You’ve got to have a lot of things in place to do so: the right people, the right tools, and the right understanding of your audience and the types of content that will resonate with them to name a few. That said, your investment in content marketing, influencer marketing, social media, and PR can pay huge dividends.

In OpenView’s case, a couple examples of those dividends include a 600 percent increase in traffic to our websites, which today garner about 45,000 hits a month. We’ve also grown the base of subscribers to our weekly newsletter to more than 14,000. Pretty impressive stats for a VC. Most importantly of all, today people across the country — entrepreneurs, other VCs, influencers from an array of industries, and more — know who we are. That wasn’t the case just a few years ago before we started our marketing efforts.

Just this week, I had the opportunity to share OpenView’s venture capital marketing story at Content Marketing World with my former colleague, Amanda Maksymiw. If you’re interested in learning more about how we’ve built our brand using content marketing, and the steps we took to do so, I encourage you to check out that presentation on Slideshare by clicking here.

The bottom line is this: If you’re in the industry and not engaged in VC marketing, you may be the (oxy)moron.

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At Content Marketing World, held September 4-6 in Columbus, Ohio, I had the opportunity to drop in on a workshop hosted by C.C. Chapman, the Co-Author of Content Rules. Entitled “Transforming Your Small Business into a Content Powerhouse,” his 45-minute session offered up some fundamental content marketing ideas for companies looking to set up a content marketing program.

Here’s a recap of some of the content marketing ideas he offered that I’ve adapted from his presentation at Content Marketing World:

1. Embrace the fact that you’re a publisher. Although it’s primarily a question of mentality, to be successful in content marketing, you’ve got to think and act like a publisher. Create an editorial calendar and organize your content and strategy around it.

2. Get your house in order. Before you can run a successful content marketing program, you’ve got to have some basics in place. For example, do you have a website where you can post and update content on a regular basis yourself (i.e., without the help of IT) And, do you have the right social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other relevant social media channels? If someone’s looking for you, they better be able to find you in all of those places.

3. Know what your story is. You need to understand what it is that you’re trying to communicate. After all, if you don’t understand it, how can you expect to explain so that anyone else will.

4. No one has enough time and money. Pointing to a lack of time or money as an excuse not to do content marketing just doesn’t work. The issue isn’t how much time or money you have, it’s how you allocate whatever time and money you do have toward content marketing. If you’re doing any marketing at all, some of it needs to be content marketing.

5. Have a strategy before you start doing anything. Great plans are ones that are well thought out. Take the time to develop a strategy around your content marketing efforts to ensure that you’ve got a plan that will help ensure your success. Remember, only fools rush in.

6. Play to your strengths. One of the most important things to remember when starting out in content marketing is to begin by doing whatever you like and do well. Have a knack for photography? Then maybe you should start by getting set up on Pinterest. Really like video? Then maybe you should get started creating content for YouTube.

7. What is unique about you? There’s something unique about every company and every person. Figure out what’s unique about your company and play that angle up. Your employees — one of your company’s most unique assets — is a great place to start.

8. Think visually. Keep in mind that the Web is visual. As much as people love words, they love pictures even more. Plus, in an age where people skim more than they read, catching people’s attention with great pictures is key.

9. Keep an eye on what others are doing. If your competitors, customers, or peers are talking about or doing something, chances are that you should be too. You’ve got to have your finger on the pulse of your industry.

10. Think long term. Content marketing is a long-term play. You can’t start it today and expect to see results tomorrow. Commit for the long haul and over time your hard work and patience will be rewarded.

I’ll be sharing more great content marketing ideas and lessons I learned at Content Marketing World over the coming weeks. Please let me know your thoughts!

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Frequent updates to Google’s search ranking algorithm — notably Panda and Penguin — only complicate matters. Although such updates go a long way toward enhancing the quality of search results by, for example, discounting the high volumes of low-quality content produced by content farms, they also mean that the best ways to optimize content are constantly evolving.

Simply put, you’ve got to stay on your toes. Fortunately for those of us who aren’t in the habit of analyzing search engine algorithms but still want to optimize content, there are some basic tips that are easy to follow.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me make it clear that I’m in no way, shape, or form an SEO expert. If you’re looking for the definitive word on the subject, there are far more comprehensive resources on the subject (such as this guide by SEOmoz). If, however, you’re new to SEO and are looking for some simple techniques to optimize content for search engines, written in plain language, read on!

How to optimize content: The 411 on keywords

At its most basic, SEO is about tinkering with your content to make it attractive to search engines. One way of doing this is by selecting the right keyword — the word or phrase that people would be most likely to enter into a search engine if they were looking for your content — and then using it throughout what you write. When Google indexes your website, it detects the keywords you’ve used and how you’ve used them, and ranks your content (in part) on that basis. That ranking is what determines if your content shows up on the first page of results when you google the keyword or on the fifty-first.

Of course, not all keywords are created equal. You’ve got to take care in choosing the ones that you’ll have the greatest chances of ranking well for. Many are highly competitive, so vetting your options is essential. Plus, what seems like the right keyword to you, may not be what people actually use to search for content. After all, what good is using “early stage companies” if most people are searching for “start-ups.”

Not to worry. You are not alone in your quest to optimize content. You can consult the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to get some insights. Type in a potential keyword and the site tells you how many people are searching for it in a given month and how much competition there is, based on advertising spend for sponsored links. Armed with this data, you can do a reasonable job of picking a keyword.

Take this article as an example. Although I’m writing about “search engine optimization,” the keyword tool quickly reveals that it’s not a good choice.

With more than 600,000 global monthly searches and a competition rating of high, I’ve got no chance of ranking for it. Looking at who is ranking on page one for this keyword — big names (SEOmoz), with sites that drive huge traffic — confirms that assessment.

After experimenting with other options, I discover that “optimize content” is a much better option. It still gets at the same idea as search engine optimization, but has a low competition ranking and garners about 1,900 global searches a month. While there are still some pretty big names on the first page of results for the term, my chances of winding up there too are much greater using “optimize content” than if I selected “search engine optimization” as my keyword.

Now you may be thinking that 1,900 hits a month is nothing compared to 600,000. True enough. However, if you can rank on page 1 for those 1,900 hits and consistently drive a portion of them to your site, you’re going to be much better off than if you rank on page 51 for the 600,000 hits and never get found.

Importantly, it was only after I had “optimize content” as my keyword, that I began writing this article. It’s much easier to create content with a keyword in mind than trying to retrofit it into something you’ve already crafted. All the more so because, as with any keyword, I need to use “optimize content” in context, not just willy-nilly, in order to help my ranking.

For reference, I’ve highlighted my use of my keyword optimize content throughout this article to show you how I used it. Some of the things to keep in mind when incorporating a keyword are to include it in:

• The title of your content
• The first sentence of your first paragraph
• At least one heading within the content
• The page’s URL
• The page’s meta description
• The alternate text field of any images you’ve included

Ultimately, you want to use your keyword enough for it to catch the attention of search engines, while still being sensible. Expert opinions vary, but the general rule of thumb is to aim for a keyword density — the percentage of times the keyword appears in your content compared to the total number of words — of between 1 percent and 3 percent. The keyword density of this article, FYI, is 1.23 percent.

Tip: To learn a lot more about keywords, check out “Better Keywords, Better Customers: A Business Guide to Keyword Generation.”

How to optimize content: other factors

If you’re creating your content in WordPress, consider using the SEO Yoast Tool, which analyzes how SEO-friendly your content is. The tool gives you ratings of green (good to go), yellow (hold up, you can do better), and red (stop, you’re off track!) across a variety of content optimization dimensions. In addition to telling you your keyword density, it checks to see if you’ve included keywords in the places noted above and if you’ve met a host of other guidelines.

The tool also checks out some other important factors that you need to bear in mind as you look to optimize content. Namely, it looks to ensure that your content:

• Is at least 300 words in length
• Contains outbound links
• Has a relatively short URL
• Is easy to read, with concise sentences.

When I ran this article through the tool, I got the following result:

Overall, I’ve done a good job of optimizing this article for search engines. There are a couple of things I could adjust, but the mostly green lights tell me I’m ready to publish.

To be clear, there is a lot more to ranking well on search engines than optimizing your content. Google also looks at how much your content is shared, how many inbound links it has, and much more with its algorithm. That said, if you don’t know Jack about SEO, the tips above will go a long way toward helping as you look to optimize content!

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Image via Bigstock

An eBook is a short, digital book that is intended to be read on a computer screen or handheld device. Typically formatted for a landscape display, eBooks are a great content marketing tool for positioning you or your company as an expert on a specific topic. At OpenView, for example, our eBooks span an array of subject areas, from corporate blogging and quarterly operating reviews to competitive messaging and sales forecasting. The eBook tips below reflect some of the experience I’ve gathered while working on them.

1. Always start with an outline

One of the most important eBook tips — which applies to writing any long piece of content — is to begin by gathering your ideas and organizing them into an outline. Doing this work up front will force you to be disciplined about thinking through the eBook, including its main and supporting messages, structure, and flow. Once you’ve done so, you’ll have a concise and tangible document that you can share with others to get their buy in on the eBook you’re creating before investing too much time in the project. Plus, you’ll have a pretty clear road map for creating it.

When crafting your outline, keep in mind that just like a traditional printed book, your eBook should generally include the following components:

• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Chapters
• Callouts or Sidebars
• Graphs / Charts / Visuals
• Endnote
• Appendix

Remember, the purpose of your eBook isn’t to entertain. It’s to provide useful, actionable information that your audience can apply to a problem or challenge they’re facing. It’s important to keep that fact in mind and to remember that the more detail you put into your outline, the easier it will be to write.

2. Consult a variety of sources

Even though you may be trying to demonstrate your expertise by writing an eBook, that doesn’t mean that you should only be relying on the information in your head to write it. Great eBooks are the ones that reference not just your own ideas, but the thoughts and research of others. It should go without saying that any time you use someone else’s stuff, you need to cite it appropriately.

3. Repurpose content you’ve already written

One of the best eBook tips is to remember to reuse related content if you’ve got it. After all, if you’re considering writing an eBook, chances are that you’ve already written a considerable amount on the subject before. Why not use those old blog posts, articles, and other content as fodder for your new eBook. Remember, one of the most important rules of content marketing is to reuse, repackage, and recycle content, and that’s exactly what you should look to do when creating an eBook.

4. Make it visual

When you’re writing, remember that an eBook — just like most pieces of content — should be visually engaging. That doesn’t just mean including a few charts or graphs, but rather thinking about how you can present the content in a visually compelling way. For example, rather than page after page of block text, try breaking your content up into bulleted lists, tables, sidebars, callouts, and flow charts, etc. Getting the help of a professional graphic designer, will also go a long way to making your eBook look polished and professional.

5. Iteration is key

The best way to write a long piece of content like an eBook is just to buckle down and push yourself to crank out a draft. Sure, that first draft may not be very good, but it’s much easier to edit something — making each iteration stronger than the last — than to try and get it perfect on the first pass.

6. Collaborate with influencers

One way to help add to the credibility of your eBook is to get a third-party to endorse it. Having an influencer (quite simply, someone who is influential on the topic) review the draft and provide a quote, or even contribute content to it, will mean that you can include that person’s name in your eBook, validating its worth. When the eBook is complete, you can also tap them to help you share and distribute it.

Writing an eBook is no small undertaking. However, you’ll be surprised to find out that it really is a realistic goal. If you found these eBook tips useful, or have others of your own, please let me know by sharing a comment! If you’re looking for tips on writing other pieces of content, check out the links below.

• How to create a content marketing style guide

• Writing a press release that stands out

• Creating killer reports

• Creating compelling case studies

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Last summer, The New York Times published a somewhat scathing editorial about the rise of content farms entitled “Google’s War on Nonsense.” The article claims that content farms “cheapen all online information.” Others like it assert that they damage the Internet by manipulating search engines with the goal of getting more eyes on ads. Anyone familiar with content farms knows that these assessments are spot on.

Having devoted a fair number of blog posts to explaining why every company needs a content factory, one point needs to be made very clear: A content farm and a content factory are not the same thing.

Let me explain why.

The 411 on Content Farms

A content farm (also known as a content mill) is a company that employees large numbers of freelancers to create huge amounts of content on the cheap. The result is low-quality, often nonsensical, content that’s rarely useful or informative. Of course, the point of that content isn’t to educate or even to demonstrate good writing. It’s to satisfy search engine algorithms, ensuring that people find it and, more importantly, the ads that come with it.

One of the best examples of a content farm is Demand Media, which owns eHow.com, Livestrong.com, Cracked.com, and AnswerBag.com, among other sites. Collectively, these sites produce thousands of articles and YouTube videos every day. Much of that content, frankly, is junk. But again, that’s besides the point in the eyes of many content farms, so long as people are finding the content.

To learn more about how a content farm works, check out this great infographic from onlinemba.com:

As I noted earlier, content farms aren’t exactly new, so the good news is that the folks at Google have caught on. In response, they have changed the search enginge’s algorithm to help ensure that it turns up high-quality sites, effectively rendering content farms irrelevant. Still, it’s an ongoing battle. I don’t think that we can discount content farms just yet.

A Reminder About the Role of Content Factories

Content factories have little in common with content farms. To understand what a content factory is all about, however, you’ve got to understand what content marketing is. Like traditional marketing, the ultimate goal of content marketing is to promote and grow a business. In contrast to traditional marketing, however, it does so by providing highly relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage your prospects and customers to take action. Importantly, that’s done in a non-sales context. As a result, rather than focus your content on your own products and services, you focus on educating your audience. By becoming a valuable resource for your over time, you are ultimately encouraging your audience to become loyal customers.

A content factory is simply the in-house publishing company (and the necessary people, tools, and processes) that creates the content your company needs to educate customers and prospects and help them down the path to purchase. To find out more about content factories, check out these posts:

• Content Marketing Assessment: Are You Ready to Build a Content Factory?
• What should your content factory produce?
• Content Factory 101: Getting Started
• Content Factory Basics: 5 Rules for B2B Content Supremacy

So remember, a content farm and a content factory are not the same thing. If you’ve had experiences with either, good or bad, please share your experiences in the comments section below.

photo by: Crinity

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Maybe you think of teams of cold-callers and prospectors. Or maybe you think of trade shows and advertising. The reality is that no matter what comes to mind when you think about how to build sales, you’d better also be thinking about content.

Content has an important role to play throughout the life cycle of a sale, and that role begins with lead generation. When you create a great piece of content that your sales targets want, you can exchange it for simple but crucial information like a name or e-mail address. Every time that exchange is made, you gain a new lead.

I recently spoke with Rex Hammock, the founder and CEO of a customer media marketing services company called Hammock Inc., about how to build sales using content. I’ve adapted this post from our conversation.

Are there specific types of content that lend themselves especially well to lead generation?

It’s hard to say that there’s any one type of content that’s right for that would work across every industry and market. That said, when you think about how to build sales, the best opportunities are, of course, online. Whether it’s an eBook or a webinar, a podcast or any number of other things, the sky’s the limit.

How can companies make sure that their content gets to their targets?

There’s an incredible array of tools for both the creation and distribution of content. What it all comes down to is understanding your targets, what their objectives and needs are, and what the best touch points for interacting with them are.

Start off by trying to find something that will help them do their job. If you’re selling cameras to help your customers be better photographers, for example, that’s what you should be focusing your content on. Determining what their objectives are and how you can help meet those objectives, will dictate what tools you use. In some cases, the tool will be direct mail, in others social media. The key is aligning the tool with the target.

Assuming you’ve got a great piece of content, what’s the right way to use it to convert sales targets into actual leads?

If you’ve got great content that addresses a need that your customers and prospects have, then you have to market and promote it, just like a competitor would. As a content marketer, you’re essentially in the publishing / media business and as such you’re going to have to look and see how the competition is promoting its e-books, webinars, etc.

What it comes down to, though, when you think about how to build sales, is to constantly look for ways to get the people that already like the kind of content you create, to share it with others. And, of course, it has to be easy to do, which is where social media can really play an important role. We have an incredible array of tools at our disposal today. Crafting the right mix of them really depends specifically on both the audience and the objective you’re after.

Ultimately, when you think about how to build sales, you need to understand how to use content most effectively to serve your company’s bottom line.

If you liked this article, you may also enjoy 4 Reasons Why Your Company Needs a Content Factory, What is Thought Leadership?, or The Negative Effects of Facebook on Communication.

photo by: USACE Europe District

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I’ve written about the idea of a content factory before (see my previous posts on why every company needs a content factory, assessing if you’re ready to build one, and what it should produce), and wanted to share some of my discussion with Shel with you here. The Q&A that follows is adapted and paraphrased from that conversation.

How do you convince a reluctant company to build its own content factory?

The biggest challenge is creating a connection in executives’ minds between content marketing and the bottom-line results they’re held accountable for producing. Far too often, marketers present their case from a tactical perspective rather than explaining how having a content factory can help them to grow market share, bring new customers in through the top of the marketing funnel, and address the kinds of challenges that are keeping customers awake at night.

The problem is that there’s a willful lack of business literacy on the part of many content marketers. We’re very, very good as crafts people but many of us don’t really have the fundamental business knowledge necessary to make that business case. The more we can help our leaders understand that content marketing can contribute to their bottom-line goals, the easier it’s going to be to build a content factory and get engagement.

What’s your advice for expansion-stage companies that have to make a significant investment to build a content factory?

There are a variety of different approaches you can take. One is to not make a significant investment at first. Do a pilot project where you can show some demonstrable wins that maybe aren’t monumental, but that highlight the path you could be taking to achieve great results. Even if you just start off with a couple thought leadership blogs, for example, where your investment is simply the thought leaders’ time, you can start to show what that’s doing for traffic to your site and engagement with your community.

Try launching a pilot program that focuses on one specific thing (blogging, for example) using some either free or low-cost tools. If you can then demonstrate the benefit that it brings to the organization, you can use that as the launching pad for expanding the program. It’s easy to get started that way. You just have to demonstrate that your content marketing efforts can produce the kinds of results you’re talking about, rather than just talking about the craft or the tactic itself.

What’s the best way to get started?

By identifying what your business goals are. I’m frequently dismayed by the number of people that work in communications who don’t know what the five business goals they’re trying to achieve this year are. Or what this year’s business plan is. As a result, they’re not able to align their communications.

Let’s face it, you can’t align communications, whether they’re social, digital, or traditional, with goals if you don’t know what those goals are. It starts with identifying and understanding the goals that the leaders of your organization are being held accountable to. Then you need to figure out how building a content factory can support those goals. That means identifying the broad approach that you’re going to take building a content factory, setting measurable objectives, and determining which tools are most appropriate.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be continuing to look at what it takes for B2B companies to build their own content factory. If your company has built one or is trying to, share feedback on your experience by posting a comment below.

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Without a doubt, the vast majority of this year’s athletes have embraced social media. Whether personally or with the help of an agent, many of them will diligently provide real-time updates to their fans throughout the games. And it’s not just the athletes — the International Olympic Committee has also climbed on board the social media bandwagon. In addition to creating official Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages that will broadcast live feeds throughout the Olympics, the IOC has set up an Olympic Athletes’ Hub, a site that allows visitors to more easily follow their favorite competitors on Facebook and Twitter.

Not to be outdone, the sponsors have also gotten in on the game and are capitalizing on the convergence of sports and social media to the fullest. Having spent millions of dollars in sponsorships, P&G, British Airways, Cadbury, Visa, and others are keen to fully activate their investment utilizing the power of social media. Here again, the competition is just as fierce as among the athletes. In fact, Sociagility, a London-based agency that analyzes brands’ social media activities, is tracking the social media performance of the Olympic sponsors through its London 2012 Social Scoreboard.

These are just a few basic examples of how social media has infiltrated the 2012 Olympics. The net result is that fans around the world will have greater access to and be more engaged with the games than ever before. For the first time, all of the 32 sports and 300 individual events that are part of the Olympics will gain the exposure that they deserve (I’m looking at you archery, badminton, and handball) and have their moment in the spotlight. And, for the first time, fans will be able to interact by sharing their own reactions, likes, favorites, tweets, and more.

Of course, the underlying point here is that the proliferation of social media has been nothing short of explosive over the past few years. That becomes particularly clear when you compare these Olympics with the Beijing games held just four years ago. While the fact that those games weren’t particularly social is partly a reflection of Chinese policy, it’s also a reminder of how much social media has grown. Compare the following stats from then versus now and you’ll see what I mean:

In case you’re wondering about the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, most commentators discount the Winter Games, which are less popular, and therefore didn’t have the same potential or impact.

No matter what you think about Facebook (I certainly have my fair share of reservations about it) and other social media sites, they are forever going to change the way we experience the Olympics. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reporting back on how it goes down.

What are your thoughts about the first social Olympics?

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For B2B content marketers, the same rules apply, in theory. In practice, however, we have much clearer guidelines to follow that help ensure that our content is effective and truly stands out. To be successful, follow these five rules for what B2B content should be:

1. Customized for your audience at every stage of its journey

The best B2B content speaks to your target audience’s needs at that specific point in time. It reflects a deep understanding of where your prospects and customers are on their way down the path to purchase and includes the appropriate messaging to shepherd them through every step in that journey. For example, you need content that:

• Raises awareness of who you are and the fact that you understand the specific problems your customers face

• Promotes discovery of potential solutions to that problem

• Fosters comparisons and allows your company to differentiate itself from your competitors

Inbound marketing software provider HubSpot provides a great example of this rule in practice with its free inbound marketing assessment. The tool evaluates your current marketing program, alerts you to potential areas for improvement, and points you to resources to help you improve. HubSpot’s site also contains supporting content to help with each step of this process along the way.

2. Able to convert your audience along the way

In addition to accompanying your audience on its journey, your content needs to include the right hooks, triggers, and calls-to-action to elicit the desired responses. If your content is truly customized for your target audience’s journey, those hooks and triggers will speak to your audience’s needs, and thus will likely be highly effective.

Dropbox, a company that provides a free, cloud-based content sharing service, provides a great case in point. Its landing page prominently features an animated video that outlines a series of real-life problems that its customers face. The short video explains how using Dropbox can solve those problems and ends with a simple call-to-action, asking users to download the company’s free software. After watching the video, consumers will likely realize just how much they need Dropbox and will be all the more inclined to download the software.

3. Timely and relevant

The old saying “timing is everything” certainly applies to B2B content. Part of creating great content is ensuring that you’re in tune with what’s going on in your industry right now. After all, even if you create the best content in the world, if it’s about yesterday’s news, who is likely to care anymore?

I’m proud to tip my hat to my colleagues at OpenView Venture Partners, who do a great job of generating content every week for the firm’s blog. By regularly writing about the array of challenges and issues they see OpenView’s portfolio companies and other entrepreneurs facing at any given time, we have become a source of content that is both timely and relevant to their current needs.

4. Highly engaging

Content that you simply read will often be forgotten. Content that tells a story and that you can interact with, on the other hand, is more likely to be remembered. Make sure that your B2B content is engaging (i.e., uses visuals, sounds, and other devices to activate the senses), narrative, and interactive. Content that gives users an experience (whether it’s through the use of interactive multimedia or it simply offers the ability to leave comments) is content that you won’t soon forget.

Eloqua, a marketing automation pioneer, exemplifies this principle. The company’s website is filled with videos, infographics, interactive data visualizations, and other highly engaging content. As a result, exploring Eloqua’s content becomes an enjoyable experience, rather than a tedious chore.

5. Easy to find

What good is content that your audience can’t find? Great B2B content needs to be optimized to make it easy to find on Google and other search engines. It also needs to be strategically placed on your website so that your site visitors don’t have to search around to find what they want.

Smashing Magazine, a website for web designers and developers, understands content searchability and organization in spades. Not only is the site’s navigation clean, simple, and intuitive, it allows you to quickly find the content you’re looking for by type and topic, as well as through the site’s search engine. Thanks to great SEO, type a relevant keyword into Google, and you’ll likely find a corresponding hit for the site on the first page.

While your content may never get recognized with a National Book Award, by following the rules outlined above you can at least ensure that it will be an effective marketing tool.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

In honor of the Fourth of July, what could be more patriotic — at least for a content marketing blog — than a post about speech writing tips? After all, just think about the role some speeches have played in defining our nation’s history. Whether we’re talking about Patrick Henry’s famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech in 1775, the “I have a dream” speech Martin Luther King delivered 188 years later, or countless others in between, great speeches have helped shape our national identity by influencing us, changing our thinking, and inspiring us to action.

Of course, creating a compelling speech is no small feat. Speeches are among the most difficult types of content to create — an art form that most content marketers never master. While I don’t profess to have perfected the craft, I have worked on a fair number of speeches throughout my career. Based on that experience and what I’ve observed listening to speakers, here are five speech writing tips you should always put into practice:

Tip 1: Connect with your audience

More than anything else, the secret to writing a great speech is making sure that you know your audience and find the best way to connect with them. Although delivery plays a critical role here, it’s the content being delivered that truly matters. Make sure that you tell a story with your speech, that you weave in a combination of humor and anecdotes where appropriate, and that you personalize your message as much as possible. If you take the time to relate to your audience, they’ll reward you with their attention and open ears.

Related content: How to Create a Compelling Case Study in Five Acts

Tip 2: Repeat, repeat, and repeat again

People have limited attention spans — often as short as a few minutes — which is an important point to bear in mind when writing a speech. In addition to keeping the length of your speech in check (remember, less really is more), make sure that you’re giving your audience plenty of cues about what they’re hearing. That means providing coming attractions by telling them what they’re going to talk about at the beginning of a speech as well as an executive summary of what you just told them at the end of the speech. It may seem redundant to you the speechwriter, but for an audience full of wandering minds, the repetition goes a long way to ensuring that key concepts register and sink in.

Related content: 6 Tips for Creating Killer Reports

Tip 3: Write like you talk

Most of us were taught in school that just because you speak one way doesn’t mean that you should write that way too. Well, there’s an exception to every rule, and in this case that exception is speech writing. Speeches shouldn’t contain the long sentences, complicated syntax, or sesquipedalian (case in point) words that lace much of our other writing. Instead, make sure that your speeches are written so that they are easy to deliver and follow.

Related content: Business Blogs that Generate Traffic

Tip 4: Keep it simple

As a rule of thumb, make sure that you’re communicating no more than three main messages in any given speech. Just as you want to keep the language you use relatively simple, the content also needs to be sharply focused so that your key points don’t get lost in a sea of less important details. Cram in too much and your audience won’t retain any of it.

Related content: Simple Tips for Writing a Press Release

Tip 5: Always read it out loud

Have a first draft of your speech written? The best way to improve it is to find a private place where you can read it out loud to yourself. Reading speeches out loud forces you to activate your ears and your mouth. Do so and you’ll be much more likely to catch the sentences that ramble on and the words and phrases that are difficult to pronounce. It’s also a great way to judge the cadence of the speech so that you can make changes until you’ve got it right.

Related content: 6 Steps to Creating Your Content Marketing Style Guide

Do you agree? Disagree? What are your best speech writing tips?

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In 1963, Ray Kroc appeared on national television to proudly serve up McDonald’s one billionth hamburger. By the time he died 21 years later, just 10 months short of the sale of the 50 millionth burger, he and his company had forever changed the way we eat by bringing fast food to American families.

Recently, another behemoth company forecasted a similar milestone, albeit with significantly less fanfare. In April, Facebook indicated in its Form S-1 that it expects to have more than a billion users by year-end. In the same filing, the social media giant also reported that its 901 million existing users post more than 300 million pictures and a staggering 3.2 billion comments every day.

Numbers like these boggle the mind and are just one indication of the fundamental shift that social media has brought about in terms of how people interact and share information. Just as the Big Mac and other fast foods forever changed how and what we eat — and sadly not for the better — Facebook and other social media channels are redefining how and what we communicate with potentially equally negative consequences.

Down the Path of the Golden Arches: A Closer Look at the Negative Effects of Facebook

Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has become a popular distraction for some and a bonafide time waster for many, with Americans spending more time on Facebook than any other US website. In fact, according to a Nielsen study, the average American spent more than 14 minutes a day on Facebook in March. That may not sound like much, but over the course of a month it adds up to more than seven hours. Similar to how fast food became habit forming (as addictive as heroine some reports note), social media sites like Facebook appear to have grown into something that we crave just as much if not more.

No matter whether you’re addicted, in a 12-step recovery program, or among the few who have managed to abstain altogether, we are all impacted by the behaviors that companies like McDonald’s and Facebook encourage in our society. In Mickey D’s case, that has meant coming to value convenience, low cost, and potentially taste, over nutrition, with enormous consequences for the health of our country. For Facebook and other social media channels, by contrast, it has meant fundamentally shifting, perhaps even bastardizing, how we communicate.

There’s no lack of examples of how communication has changed as a result of social media. We’ve seen sentences communicating complete thoughts devolve into esoteric sound bites laced with a dizzying array of fragments and acronyms. We’ve watched emoticons replace words as a tool for expressing feelings. Perhaps most importantly, we are witnessing how social media is helping to foster a society that values frequent communication more than meaningful communication. That phenomenon is what has helped Justin Bieber, with his more than 21 million Twitter followers, garner a higher Klout score than the President.

We are now also communicating different types of information that are often are far more personal in nature. We freely like or dislike anything and everything, provide an array of details and images from our private lives, and overshare a variety of information that was once unthinkable for public consumption. Most recently, our friends at Facebook have even given us the ability to share our organ donor information. Just as we’ll gobble up any new item on the menu at McDonald’s, with little regard to what we’re actually eating, we’ll seemingly share any information that Facebook gives us a new and novel way to communicate no matter how personal.

Want Fries with That?

The net impact of these changes remains to be seen. For communicators and content marketers, however, they have at a minimum heralded a paradigm shift in strategy. For example, today our communications need to be shorter and more frequent, since people increasingly value quick hits that allow them to glean important information and then quickly move on. Similarly, our communications need to be far more visual to capture our shrinking attention spans, a reality that is playing itself out in the form of infographics, viral videos, and picture-oriented social media sites such as Instagram. Our content also needs to be more personal to appeal to a new generation that has come to expect access to more intimate information.

These aren’t necessarily bad things and in fact some of them are actually quite good. But then again, I’m sure back in 1963 no one really thought about the implications that a hamburger chain would have on the health of a nation. As social media continues to alter our communication, the long-term implications, particularly for those young enough to never have known anything different, could be significant. Maybe as with fast food, the solution lies in moderation.

So, the next time you’re at McDonald’s, consider passing on the fries. And, the next time you’re on Facebook, think about paying a bit more attention to what you’re communicating and how. After all, the negative effects of Facebook may be far greater than you realize.

photo by: Parenting Patch

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