Content Strategy Category

Why this gardening infographic works for content strategy

By on May 1st, 2012
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At least half of our clients process an amazing amount of interesting data in the course of doing what they see as their main job: Making change.

We’re often able to convince them to turn bits of their learning into by-products that can do triple duty as marketing and a way to keep people informed about what they’re up to.

This poster does a great job of breaking down a task that might be daunting to address as a whole into chewable parts. Usability and productivity experts will agree that breaking down tasks into their most easily actionable components gives them a much better shot of getting done.

The illustration style and written language are warm and inviting, further disarming apprehension about a new task.

The site that put it together uses these shareable and shareworthy pieces of content as marketing. If you can get your head around the idea, the keys are:

  • Solve a problem for people so that searchers find it and people that create resources want to share it with their audiences
  • Do a professional job of it (solid facts, smart copy and beautiful aesthetics) so people want to look at it and share it
  • Reach out to people and places that might want to share it with you
  • Include a link to the actual image that brings traffic back to your site
  • Have a page on your site ready to receive them
  • Cite your sources

Gardening Infographic

Source: http://FrugalDad.com

Any other ideas around the nuts and bolts of an infographic driven content strategy?

Any thoughts on the poster specifically?

Let us know!




Are daily deals sites right for you?

By on April 23rd, 2012
1 Comment »

Seth Godin (the world’s most prolific/down to earth marketing guru) has a line:

“Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market”.

Which to me means that doing more with people who already appreciate you is better for you business long term. Makes sense. Most of us are familiar with the basic cost savings in selling, teaching, moving forward and maintaining projects with people we have an existing relationship with.

He also says:

“Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers”.

This makes me consider the ancillary benefits in a relationship with someone who values your offering. Beyond making it easier for you to serve them, they can be the ultimate source of better qualified leads. The people they send your way:

  • will be coming via someone they trust, and should be therefore easier to start a relationship with
  • will be coming for the right reasons, increasing the chances they’re a good fit for you

The article I’ll link you to in a second makes perhaps the most critical case for considering whether so-called daily deals site like Groupon are right for you. It, and the 100+ comments offer a solid education in thinking holistically about sales.

I found the article while searching for a quote I love about paying for things worth paying for:

When you buy something cheap and bad, the best you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it

Personally, I’ve leaned towards the sentiment shared by the author when he says:

The customers you attract only with a discount will disregard what you love about your own business, and won’t treat you with respect; both sides usually regret the transaction.

But the very first comment makes the point that, carefully considered, one could craft a deal that:

  • brings in the right prospective customers/partners
  • introduces them to new items
  • sells things you can still make a margin on

I still have a lingering distaste in my gut for the practice, but either way, you can certainly get insight to better inform your decision from the following post.

Groupon’s Success Disaster | Redfin Corporate Blog.




Why your newsletter sucks: Two

By on March 10th, 2012
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Headline News

In my recent post about fixing your email headline to get me to actually read it, I promised to show you how to test your headlines against your current ones that may be getting stale. And I’ll do that shortly.
But first, that post garnered some interesting responses.

Two people thought the example headline I gave sounded spammy and they’d unsubscribe if they got an email with that headline.

At least one commenter actually DID unsubscribe.

Is the notion of personalizing your headlines ill considered?

Curious to know, I did some cursory research to see whether anyone had stats on this. Results were quite divergent.

One provider said that personalization improved open rates on a sample of 202 million emails. Another said both open and click rates suffered.

Seems the practice is hotly contested.

Coming from some marketers (especially, um, spammers) personalizing a headline likely would seem spammy.

But I suspect that whether or not it does hinges on the relationship you have with your list.

For the record, I wasn’t suggesting that every email you send out should be personalized. But rather that if you don’t want your email to blend into the background noise in my inbox, for heaven’s sake grab me with your headlines.

One MailChimp post suggests that the best subject line is one that mirrors your audience’s expectations. That different subject lines apply to newsletters than special offers.

So how do you know what kinds of headlines will resonate with your list? Start split testing.

If you’re not familiar with the term, split- or A/B- testing refers to sending different versions of your email to different segments of your list and measuring the results.

Generally to start you’ll want to keep the variables to a minimum. For example, send the same email to two segments each with a different headline and see which one gets the best response.

Since many of our clients use MailChimp (as we do), here’s a link to an overview of the split testing features on Mailchimp . Be sure to watch the video as well.

MailChimp split test movie

After you’ve checked it out, come back here and let us know what you intend to test.




Keep Calm and Meme On

By on March 2nd, 2012
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You can love them or hate them but one thing is for sure, memes travel at the speed of light invading our Facebook walls and Twitter timelines until the point of exhaustion. What is it about them that makes people keep posting them and sharing them?

The definition of Meme according to Webster dictionary is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”

Taking on Jodi’s blog post this week about how movies can help us articulate thoughts, I think Internet memes have a similar function. They are an ultra condensed statement about our opinions with a touch of irony and satire. But their real strength also comes with repetition; we have seen so many of them that they have become a common language in online culture.

Here are my top 4 examples of memes that have recently brought us together (or torn us apart?)

1. “What society thinks I do” …
According to buzzfeed before these meme flooded our Facebook walls with examples of every career imaginable, it appeared on the Wellesley College yearbook in 1909 and it showed how the world viewed women scholars.

My favorite example: Stormtrooper!

2. Sh*t People Say

Starting with the video Shit Girls Say (15 million views on YouTube), posted only two months ago, we’ve heard what almost everyone has to say!
My favourite so far: Sh*t nobody says:

3. Y U No Guy

He’s the all time #1 most popular character in memegenerator.net with 776,097 different combinations of the formula: “(subject noun), [WH]Y [YO]U NO (verb)?”.
Apparently the original face comes from a Japanese sci-fi manga / anime series called Gantz.

4. Keep Calm and Carry On

This was originally a poster produced by the British government in 1939 to raise the morale of the British people during Second World War. It was not very well known until the year 2000 when it was reissued and used as a decorative theme for products.
Check out Keep Calm O- Matic, a website where you can make your own customizable poster and then share it and have people vote for them. Although for guaranteed results once you’re done with your meme just post it on pinterest.

;

So tell us, what’s your favorite meme and what does it say about you?




Smart Car Leads Conversation about The Future of Cities

By on March 2nd, 2012
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A Smart Car isn’t just a car–it’s an idea. Sure, sure. Heard it all before.

Every car company will tell you that their car isn’t just a car. Landrover is the possibility of the open road; BMW is design and performance embodied.

Of course no one’s convinced that a Landrover & BMW aren’t really just cars–cars that do cool stuff, cars that make you feel powerful/authentic/hip/successful but cars nonetheless.

 

Smart’s Smart Urban Stage project is a world apart. This campaign demonstrates that Smart is indeed a smart car company that is thinking outside the box with four doors.

The Smart Urban Stage project asks experts from around the world to reflect on cities and what they call the “Urban Status Quo.” They create a forum where intellectuals from various disciplines can ask luminaries in their fields to respond to questions about the future of urban life.

One example is  trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort’s question about Nationalism. She asks “How Can We Come Together?” and invites food stylists and artists to respond. The responses are fascinating but also provide a platform for global artists and intellectuals to profile their work to new audiences.  I also happen to know that Smart remunerates all of the participants for their contributions. Smart.

Here are my reflections of why the Smart Urban Stage project goes further on helping Smart be more than a car:

  • The campaign is about creating dialogue: Rather than Smart telling you what it thinks about the future of cities it opens the question up to a diverse range of intellectuals, artists and thinkers who do the heavy lifting.
  • It positions Smart as a leader. This is an issue that Smart Cars are linked to because smaller cars open up whole new ways of thinking about the urban landscape and about design’s role in constructing a better future. But, it’s not a direct link. And, Smart’s role, while not hidden, is appropriately balanced in relation to other content
  • It’s actually interesting. So often initiatives like this sound interesting in boardrooms but can’t really compete with all the other cool shit on the web. Fact is, this one can.

Do you think this is just another clever car campaign in disguise? Or is this more interesting? Would you participate if they asked you (BTW, I know someone who has been invited to participate and she’s taking these questions very seriously)




Exploding Growth of Mobile Email: What it means for you.

By on February 10th, 2012
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Does anyone read email on their desktop anymore? According to the report by Return Path, there was an 81% growth in folks viewing email on their mobile device during a 6-month period last year. The Litmus report released in September 2011 was even higher at 150% growth. Whatever the number, viewing email on mobile is rocketing.

UPDATE: February 11, 2012 ComScore released its annual US Digital Future in Focus report this week, offering a year-end wrap of  trends its tracked throughout the past year.  According to the report, web-based email use among 12-17 year olds dropped 31% in the past year, while use among those 18 to 24 saw an even bigger drop of 34%. Some of that can no doubt be attributed to Facebook and other email alternatives, but a big factor is the growth of email use on mobile devices; both of those age groups saw double-digit growth in that respect, with mobile email use jumping 32% among 18 to 24 year olds.

 

What does this mean? Well, for marketers and content producers, if you aren’t thinking about how your content is being viewed on a small screen then you’re missing the boat. Don’t worry, it’s a pretty big boat. It’s going to be holding a lot of people in 2012 and beyond. Justine Jordan, Marketing Director from Litmus writes,

“Email remains the strongest online activity around the globe. In fact, email users are expected to reach 3.8 billion by 2014. That is nearly half of the world’s current population, and a significant climb from 2.9 billion reported users in 2010. Now that most are equipped with smartphones and ipads, is anyone still logging on to view their messages on a monitor?”

The popular email marketing service, Campaign Monitor, released their 2011 report which saw an increase in mobile email usage on iPhone, iPad and Android from “4% of the market to almost 20% in just two years.” Using the chart from Campaign Monitor and extending the time frame and general trend,  it could be around Spring 2013 when viewing email on mobile devices out numbers desktop and webmail clients.

Author's prediction based on Campaign Monitor Chart

Jarrod, a commenter on the article “The prolific rise of mobile email” nails it with this point:

“I’m hoping to implement a mobile design later this month, or early July which is based on no data at all – only industry statistics. If even a fraction of the above is true for our customer base, that can mean thousands of people are viewing our email in their mobile when it is not optimised for it.”

For marketing and content producers who are developing their email newsletters in-house or hiring an agency for the management, design or delivery it means:

  1. Having a general understanding of how the user experience on each device is different and how it may influence the content.
  2. Being aware of where your enewsletter links click to? If they go to a non-optimized website that is not mobile friendly, what’s the point. The user will not only move on but might even unsubscribe.
  3. Not marketing or producing in a bubble. Talk to the designer and developer and learn about what works and what doesn’t in terms of email newsletter best practices.

For the web designer and/or developer it means:

  1. Learning about responsive design, media queries, best practices and how it impacts the user experience.
  2. Knowing about device ergonomics and realizing some areas of the screen are easier to get to than others. This can really influence design and where you put action buttons or links.
  3. Educate. This often gets overlooked by developers, but if you can educate your clients and the people around you in designing for mobile then half your job is done.

If you want to get in deeper there are a ton of resources but you can start with “From Monitor to Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters with CCS” and “Finger Snafu – 10 frequent misfires when designing emails for touch“.

What are you doing to optimize your email newsletter for mobile?




Why your newsletter sucks: How to grab me by the eyeballs

By on February 7th, 2012
5 Comments »
Hi everybody, headline goes here please

Hi everybody, headline goes here please (Photo credit: reinvented)

Marketing’s hard work.

To make it pay off, you need to make it worth paying attention to.

Take your email newsletter, for instance.

If I get another email called “XYZ Newsletter: February 2012″ I think I’ll scream.

Or, likely just hit unsubscribe.

Point is, if you want me to read your emails, you’ve gotta grab me by the eyeballs.

Compare the headline below to the one above:

Rick, is this what you’re looking for?

See what I did there?

Using my favorite word (my name, natch), I got my attention.

Then, I asked a question that shows I care about what matters to me. And one that’s just begging for an answer, which I’m sure I’ll learn if I open the email.

Of course, this is just an example. The right headline to use will depend on the subject, what your audience cares about, and what you want them to do.

And it should come in your own voice.

An “e-newsletter” doesn’t have to be all stiff and formal and official. It can just be a conversation between people. You’re trying to build a relationship here.

And please remember that your marketing isn’t set in stone. It’s a laboratory. Test and measure and you’ll begin to see what people respond to.

In an upcoming email, I’ll show you how to do that. It’s easy.

For now, check out Copyblogger’s reference on writing irresistible email headlines.

And tell me: What compelling headline has come into your inbox lately that grabbed you by the peepers (and got you to open the email)?




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