Tag: Site Management

content strategy, Men's Health Magazine

Some good thoughts from the Content Marketing Institute for bloggers that getting serious about blogging ‘on purpose’…

If one thing is certain in life it’s that very few ideas are genuinely groundbreaking, never-seen-before moments of genius. The reality is that almost everything that we do now is either a reinvention of the wheel or a plain-and-simple rehashing of something that has come before.

Some might say these ideas are lame concepts created for and by people too lazy to come up with something of their own. If you believe that, then you’re missing out on a lifetime of learning. Put simply, ideas are very rarely about the concepts themselves but more about the execution. It’s in the execution that brilliance lies.

I use reverse engineering a lot, and when it comes to content strategy, there are few better ways of using this little trick than by “borrowing” content flow and content strategy from the guys and girls who know it best.

Magazine planning has been perfected over decades of iteration, and the very best print-based titles leave a footprint that offers the ultimate blueprint from which you can create your perfect content strategy online.

Source: Reverse Engineer Content Strategy | Content Marketing Institute

For years I said I don’t need no stinkin’ editorial calendar but my results got better when I started thinking like a publisher. This article will help you understand how so go to the source and drink it in…

Related articles
0

How to Get the Biggest Boost from Sharing Content

A rich infographic with valuable tips about optimizing your curation:

Full story at: http://contently.com/blog/2012/10/09/how-to-get-the-biggest-boost-from-sharing-content-infographic/#

0

I just concluded my ‘lunch and learn’ series on information and content management at The Docking Station in Green Bay, WI today. The first two classes were shot via video camera and unfortunately you can’t see the screen but you can hear the narrative. The last class was captured using a Google+ hangout and I’ll be using that from now on. Questions? Feedback?

This is [almost] everything I think I know about the topic with a couple of bonus videos thrown in at the beginning…

0
Logo of Blosxom (new Version)
Image via Wikipedia

Happy Monday! Time to talk about trends in blogging and content marketing. First, though, a confession. I accidentally used decaf instead of regular and I’ve been dragging my butt around all day. This blog is fueled by coffee and now that I’ve had a good cup, life can start [at 3:27PM]!

Here’s my bias; blogging is a fundamental component of a successful content marketing campaign. I haven’t bought into the ‘siteless web’ model yet — I believe that a blog is the foundation of a successful online presence and I use a ‘homebase and outpost’ or ‘hub and spoke’ model for content marketing that I first heard articulated by Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse a few years ago.

There are three reasons that strike me as being important at the moment:

  • You own your blog — you don’t own Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Twitter
  • They are inexpensive and easy to update
  • According to HubSpot, active business blogs get 7x more traffic than static websites

These all sound like great reasons to me! If you need someone who is smart and beautiful, however, to tell you the same thing in more detail I highly recommend content marketing genius Heidi Cohen. Heidi had an epic post last week called Blogging Is Dead – Long Live The Blog!. In it she said…

“Call me a contrarian but blogs should be a core aspect of any organization’s marketing strategy regardless of whether you’re a B2C, B2B, not-for-profit or a solopreneur.” Source: Blogging Is Dead – Long Live The Blog! [Research] | Heidi Cohen

I soooo recommend you go to the source and read her article in toto. People usually turn to me after reading an article like this and saying to themselves “Makes perfect sense. Where do I get started?” You see, I’m not a content marketing expert like Heidi — I just tell people how to implement what she advocates. I can help you create a successful blog that is the focal point of your content marketing campaign…

Here are some great articles I read this past week about blogging and content marketin trends:

http://storify.com/e1evation/blogging-and-content-management-trends-for-this-we

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
0
English: Facebook icon Español: Ícono de Facebook

Here’s something all-American content marketers can relate to!

What makes up the ‘meat’ of an effective content strategy? Digital Strategist Mark Smicklas decided to illustrate what he believes is crucial with this amazing infographicinspired by the American Classic.

Source: Food for Thought: The Content Strategy Burger [INFOGRAPHIC] | The Content Strategist

Now I’m hungry!

Open-mouthed smile

Enhanced by Zemanta
0
SR 99 construction bypass and ramp looking south

A friend who works with in construction industry is skeptical. He’s not convinced that ‘inbound marketing’ [blogging and other social media tools] can be applied to the construction industry. I respectfully disagree! I’ve seen content management and marketing for thought leadership applied to everything from Agriculture to Yoga and I believe it will work in the construction industry as well. Why?

Here are some of my beliefs:

  • Most companies have great stories and content — they just don’t use it as well as they could…
  • At the core, all great marketing is great storytelling
  • At the end of the day, every business is a people business

First, though what is this ‘thought leadership’? A simple definition might be a public display of expertise that can be easily found by people who are searching for it. How does a brand accomplish this? Though effective content management and content marketing. Because of my core beliefs, I think any company — even a construction company — can use the content they have or can create to tell great stories that attract people to their brand.

In his thought leadership classic ‘Brand Stand‘, Craig Badings tells the story of Dick Dusseldorp, a thought leader in the Australian construction industry before the phrase ‘thought leader’ was cool…

During the 1970s and 1980s, when union action on most construction sites in Sydney were crippling the construction industry, the sites on which Lend Lease was building suffered no such misfortune. This was because Dusseldorp’s philosophy was to create a community of interest between Lend Lease’s key stakeholders. When other companies around him were banging heads with the unions, with resultant long delays and cost overruns on projects, Dusseldorp was sitting down with the workers and unions and discussing their issues. The results were agreements, jointly committed to by workers and management, and a share in the resulting rewards for buildings completed on time. He was a master at getting people to transcend their traditional conflicts and work towards mutually beneficial goals.

Badings, Craig (2009-07-08). BRAND STAND (Kindle Locations 237-243). BookPal. Kindle Edition.

How did he do it? In part he used content management and content marketing along with other communication skills to position his firm at the thought leadership center of his industry in his country. Speaking of Dusseldorp’s organization Lend Lease, Badings says…

It launched a website… along with a four-part DVD series, using a former TV journalist to interview a number of independent third parties about their views on the future workspace and its impacts across business, design, people and location. As a result, Lend Lease reached those who made decisions about office space and helped stimulate and frame the debate around the impacts and implications of future work environments in Australia. Through the series, the company engaged communities linked to its industry and positioned itself at the centre of this debate. It is the logical place to be as a leader in the construction industry, but Lend Lease has done it in a way that doesn’t push the company’s point of view. It took the approach that it would rather invite leading experts in this field across various disciplines to participate in and frame the discus-sion.

Badings, Craig (2009-07-08). BRAND STAND (Kindle Locations 224-231). BookPal. Kindle Edition.

Joy Davis, CSI, CCPR, of CSI in Albuquerque, says…

“In many ways, construction is a relationship-driven business, and at the root of every great relationship is trust. No single person can know everything about construction, so we need trustworthy experts we can turn to who can help us achieve our goals. Thought Leadership is a strategy based on the idea that you can be your clients’ preferred expert – a person they trust, and whom they think of first when they have a question, or a new project.” Source: Thought Leadership and Social Media in the Workplace

Every business — not just construction — is a people business, but because of the critical nature of construction projects trust may be even more important. How can that trust be most effectively engendered? Content management and marketing for thought leadership may be an answer that the construction industry has overlooked! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
3

This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

John Jantsch
Image via Wikipedia

John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…

“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.

Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).

It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:

I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…

Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…

“Make yourself a better resource

Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.

Share content to draw attention

Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.

Filter personalized content

A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.

I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…

Related articles
3

65% of internet users have paid for online content

If you’re a blogger looking to generate revenue, here’s something that might interest you…

“Nearly two-thirds of internet users – 65% – have paid to download or access some kind of online content from the internet, ranging from music to games to news articles to adult material. Music, software, and apps are the most popular content that internet users have paid to access or download, although the range of paid online content is quite varied and widespread.” Source: 65% of internet users have paid for online content | Pew Research Center’s Internet.

Pew always does a good job! If you’d like to read the entire study, you can go to the source. Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

Related articles
1

The importance of curation

From a 30,000 foot view, there are two types of bloggers; creators and curators. Let’s talk about curation as an ‘art’ form…

“Content aggregation (the automated gathering of links) can be seen on sites like Google News. Overall, this type of aggregation has been seen as a positive thing for content creators and publishers, and up until very recently, it was left to technology. Content creation, meanwhile, was a human effort.

But all that changes with curation — the act of human editors adding their work to the machines that gather, organize and filter content.

“Curation comes up when search stops working,” says author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky. But it’s more than a human-powered filter. “Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.”

Part of the reason that human curation is so critical is simply the vast number of people who are now making and sharing media. “Everyone is a media outlet”, says Shirky. “The point of everyone being a media outlet is really not at all complicated. It just means that we can all put things out in the public view now.”

Who are curators? What can they gather and re-publish? Do they have the right to get paid for curation? If so, who’s adding the real value, the content makers or the curators/publishers?

For creators — people who’ve spent their careers making content and trying to sort out an economic model — curation can seem like an end-run around hard work. And so the conflict ultimately comes down to this: Is curation about saving money? Or about adding value? The answer, it appears, is “yes” to both.

http://curationnation.magnify.net/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=X4R3BR2QN5MNHDJC&widget_type_cid=svp

“A lot of it is economic — doing more with less — and it has crossed every media industry,” explains Allen Weiner of Gartner Group. “If you think about the tools you want to give an editor to make him or her more complete, you want to give them curation tools.” It could be “something they add to their own content. As more old media companies attempt to do more with less, publishing tools that allow this efficiency without demeaning the product quality … [are] going to be very important.”

So certain things are clear — there’s an economic imperative to add curation to the content mix. And from a user perspective, well done curation is a huge value-add in a world where unfiltered signal overwhelms noise by an ever increasing factor.” Source: Why Content Curation Is Here to Stay

My guess is that this blog is 3% creation and 97% curation. Does it work? You’re here, aren’t you?

0

Creators and Curators

From my perspective, there are two main types of blog content; creation and curation…

“The idea behind curators and content curation is that there is such a flood of new content pouring through the Internet pipes these days that being aware of all of it and sorting it out in meaningful ways is simply not possible. Curators are people or organizations that do the hard work of sifting through the content within a particular topic area or “meme” and pulling out the things that seem to make most sense. This effort involves significantly more than finding and regurgitating links, though.” Source: Who are your curators? | Content curator | Digital Curator

You don’t have to ‘create’ original content in order have original blog content — you can curate content from other thought leaders for incorporation into your site. The content you aggregate from other sites [properly attributed, of course] along with your perspective is a public reflection of your brand as well! I rarely post anything without at least one quote from another thought leader — in fact, it’s usually those quotes [like the one in this post] that encourage me to weigh in on my blog in the first place. Where do you fall on this issue?

Related articles by Zemanta
4

There is no ‘easy button’…

'THAT WAS EASY!'
Image by spackletoe via Flickr

…for social media, but there are some good, fast, and cheap tools that are simple to use and support the social media lifestyle. Unfortunately, most companies are taking a different approach. My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel scratches his head here…

“I was in a meeting recently where I witnessed a demonstration of a very well developed internal social network for a fairly sizable, though not very well known company. This particular tool was (almost) completely custom coded by the developer and web design shop for their client. While I sat through the meeting, I wondered “why did they build this from the ground up? isn’t there an off the shelf package to do this?” Which, being one of outsiders, I asked “so, why did you build this from the ground up? isn’t there an off the shelf package to do this and didn’t the client ask for an evaluation of best-of-breed software before giving you the go ahead to do this?”” They chose us because we have passion…

Here’s what I have found. You don’t have to have a spectacular website to dominate as a thought leader, but having a good blog with good content and social media connections helps! Most important? It’s not expensive dollar-wise, but it does take a certain mindset. My formula for using a blog for thought leadership? Good system and process based on a couple of free tools! Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
0

Start a Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑