So many white papers and e-books are downloaded but never read. Don't let yours be among them.
So how do you turn "should read" into "must read" and eventually into "did read".
It’s a common refrain: “We’re a B2B company. We can’t do the same things those B2C funsters get up to.”
Another good one is: “Our product/industry/niche is just too serious and boring for content marketing.”
But it’s worth pointing out that shedloads of content are published every day for which “boring” might be a polite description (“predictable” and “unnecessary” would be others.)
Surely the goal of all these white papers, reports and e-books isn’t to capture unqualified leads whether or not anyone reads the content. Your content shouldn't be only relevant or even only interesting. It also should be compelling and irresistible.
Here's how.
Presented at the PCOA2015 conference: Adelaide, December 2015.
Social media has given everyone a voice—from the largest brand to the kids next door—and that makes it harder for your message to be heard. No wonder so many managers remain
cynical about social media’s role in modern business. But ignoring social media can be just as damaging as relying too heavily on it. So it’s time to bust the myths, ditch the hype and ignore
the vanity metrics as we explore how your business can identify the right channels, tactics & metrics to reach the right audience and drive concrete business outcomes.
Let Me Tell You a Story: Finding the Narrative in Your Content MarketingJonathan Crossfield
Storytelling isn't just one of many creative options in the marketing toolkit. It is an essential part of communication. If your content doesn't guide the story, the reader's brain will create its own — and it might not be the story you want.
An exploration of how our brains really work, why story is the grammar of our minds and how you can get your message across more effectively by integrating storytelling techniques across everything you do.
Hunting Hippos: Winning Approval from C-Level for Content MarketingJonathan Crossfield
All of the buzz and opportunity surrounding content marketing may have you excited about what you can achieve for your business. But how do you sell your new ideas and strategies to the boss back at the office? Stop looking at gold star content strategies, thinking "They'll never let me do anything as cool as this." You might be surprised what you can achieve if you approach your "HIPPO" in the right way.
The Art of Persuasive Content: Three Ingredients and Five Steps to Better Con...Jonathan Crossfield
Why does one blog post succeed while another on the same topic disappears without trace? And what does 'good writing' mean anyway? From Aristotle to zombies (yes, zombies), learn how the art of rhetoric can help you to develop, commission and produce more effective and persuasive content.
10 Tips to Build an Audience with Content Marketing — Lessons from the Nightc...Jonathan Crossfield
A version of the presentation recently presented at Content Marketing World Sydney as well as in a webinar for the Content Marketing Institute in May 2013.
By looking at how a nightclub builds and maintains an audience, it is possible to extract a number of lessons to help brands more effectively use social media and content marketing to get more customers from the 'dancefloor to the bar'.
Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned Inside a NightclubJonathan Crossfield
Presented at ADMA Forum on Friday, 24th August 2012, this is my attempt to show how a lot of the concepts we talk about in social media and content marketing are nothing new. In fact, there's a lot we can learn from nightclub DJs.
Is social media relevant to small business or is it just confused hype? How can a small business owner make sense of how the social web works? Facts, figures and strategy to help SMEs finally 'get' what the social web really means.
everyone talks about how the major brands are using social media - but what about the rest of us? What does it all mean to someone who only has a couple of employees and a marketing budget smaller than the coffee bill?
Presented at the PCOA2015 conference: Adelaide, December 2015.
Social media has given everyone a voice—from the largest brand to the kids next door—and that makes it harder for your message to be heard. No wonder so many managers remain
cynical about social media’s role in modern business. But ignoring social media can be just as damaging as relying too heavily on it. So it’s time to bust the myths, ditch the hype and ignore
the vanity metrics as we explore how your business can identify the right channels, tactics & metrics to reach the right audience and drive concrete business outcomes.
Let Me Tell You a Story: Finding the Narrative in Your Content MarketingJonathan Crossfield
Storytelling isn't just one of many creative options in the marketing toolkit. It is an essential part of communication. If your content doesn't guide the story, the reader's brain will create its own — and it might not be the story you want.
An exploration of how our brains really work, why story is the grammar of our minds and how you can get your message across more effectively by integrating storytelling techniques across everything you do.
Hunting Hippos: Winning Approval from C-Level for Content MarketingJonathan Crossfield
All of the buzz and opportunity surrounding content marketing may have you excited about what you can achieve for your business. But how do you sell your new ideas and strategies to the boss back at the office? Stop looking at gold star content strategies, thinking "They'll never let me do anything as cool as this." You might be surprised what you can achieve if you approach your "HIPPO" in the right way.
The Art of Persuasive Content: Three Ingredients and Five Steps to Better Con...Jonathan Crossfield
Why does one blog post succeed while another on the same topic disappears without trace? And what does 'good writing' mean anyway? From Aristotle to zombies (yes, zombies), learn how the art of rhetoric can help you to develop, commission and produce more effective and persuasive content.
10 Tips to Build an Audience with Content Marketing — Lessons from the Nightc...Jonathan Crossfield
A version of the presentation recently presented at Content Marketing World Sydney as well as in a webinar for the Content Marketing Institute in May 2013.
By looking at how a nightclub builds and maintains an audience, it is possible to extract a number of lessons to help brands more effectively use social media and content marketing to get more customers from the 'dancefloor to the bar'.
Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned Inside a NightclubJonathan Crossfield
Presented at ADMA Forum on Friday, 24th August 2012, this is my attempt to show how a lot of the concepts we talk about in social media and content marketing are nothing new. In fact, there's a lot we can learn from nightclub DJs.
Is social media relevant to small business or is it just confused hype? How can a small business owner make sense of how the social web works? Facts, figures and strategy to help SMEs finally 'get' what the social web really means.
everyone talks about how the major brands are using social media - but what about the rest of us? What does it all mean to someone who only has a couple of employees and a marketing budget smaller than the coffee bill?
Everyone knows the power of stories, but when asked to come up with them, we struggle. Either we second guess ourselves as to the story's relevance, or we just come up blank and can't think of any. Unlocking Everyday Narratives: The Power of Storytelling in Marketing will teach you how to recognize stories in the moment and to recall forgotten moments that your audience needs to hear.
Key Takeaways:
Understand Why Personal Stories Connect Better
How To Remember Forgotten Stories
How To Use Customer Experiences As Stories For Your Brand
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?Cut-the-SaaS
Discover the transformative power of AI in content creation with our presentation, "Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?" by Puran Parsani, CEO & Editor of Cut-The-SaaS. Learn how AI-generated content is revolutionizing marketing, publishing, education, healthcare, and finance by offering unprecedented efficiency, creativity, and scalability.
Understanding
AI-Generated Content:
AI-generated content includes text, images, videos, and audio produced by AI without direct human involvement. This technology leverages large datasets to create contextually relevant and coherent material, streamlining content production.
Key Benefits:
Content Creation: Rapidly generate high-quality content for blogs, articles, and social media.
Brainstorming: AI simulates conversations to inspire creative ideas.
Research Assistance: Efficiently summarize and research information.
Market Insights:
The content marketing industry is projected to grow to $17.6 billion by 2032, with AI-generated content expected to dominate over 55% of the market.
Case Study: CNET’s AI Content Controversy:
CNET’s use of AI for news articles led to public scrutiny due to factual inaccuracies, highlighting the need for transparency and human oversight.
Benefits Across Industries:
Marketing: Personalize content at scale and optimize engagement with predictive analytics.
Publishing: Automate content creation for faster publication cycles.
Education: Efficiently generate educational materials.
Healthcare: Create accurate content for patients and professionals.
Finance: Produce timely financial content for decision-making.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations:
Transparency: Disclose AI use to maintain trust.
Bias: Address potential AI biases with diverse datasets.
SEO: Ensure AI content meets SEO standards.
Quality: Maintain high standards to prevent misinformation.
Conclusion:
AI-generated content offers significant benefits in efficiency, personalization, and scalability. However, ethical considerations and quality assurance are crucial for responsible use. Explore the future of content creation with us and see how AI is transforming various industries.
Connect with Us:
Follow Cut-The-SaaS on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Medium. Visit cut-the-saas.com for more insights and resources.
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
Financial curveballs sent many American families reeling in 2023. Household budgets were squeezed by rising interest rates, surging prices on everyday goods, and a stagnating housing market. Consumers were feeling strapped. That sentiment, however, appears to be waning. The question is, to what extent?
To take the pulse of consumers’ feelings about their financial well-being ahead of a highly anticipated election, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey. The survey highlights consumers’ hopes and anxieties as we move into 2024. Let's unpack the key findings to gain insights about where we stand.
The Forgotten Secret Weapon of Digital Marketing: Email
Digital marketing is a rapidly changing, ever evolving industry--Influencers, Threads, X, AI, etc. But one of the most effective digital marketing tools is also one of the oldest: Email. Find out from two Houston-based digital experts how to maximize your results from email.
Key Takeaways:
Email has the best ROI of any digital tactic
It can be used at any stage of the customer journey
It is increasingly important as the cookie-less future gets closer and closer
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
Videos are more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. That’s why it’s estimated that 82% of consumer traffic will come from videos by 2025.
And with videos evolving from landscape to portrait and experts promoting shorter clips, one thing remains constant – our brains LOVE videos.
So is there science behind what makes people absolutely irresistible on camera?
The answer: definitely yes.
In this jam-packed session with Stephanie Garcia, you’ll get your hands on a steal-worthy guide that uncovers the art and science to being irresistible on camera. From body language to words that convert, she’ll show you how to captivate on command so that viewers are excited and ready to take action.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
Digital Commerce Lecture for Advanced Digital & Social Media Strategy at UCLA...Valters Lauzums
E-commerce in 2024 is characterized by a dynamic blend of opportunities and significant challenges. Supply chain disruptions and inventory shortages are critical issues, leading to increased shipping delays and rising costs, which impact timely delivery and squeeze profit margins. Efficient logistics management is essential, yet it is often hampered by these external factors. Payment processing, while needing to ensure security and user convenience, grapples with preventing fraud and integrating diverse payment methods, adding another layer of complexity. Furthermore, fulfillment operations require a streamlined approach to handle volume spikes and maintain accuracy in order picking, packing, and shipping, all while meeting customers' heightened expectations for faster delivery times.
Amid these operational challenges, customer data has emerged as an important strategy. By focusing on personalization and enhancing customer experience from historical behavior, businesses can deliver improved website and brand experienced, better product recommendations, optimal promotions, and content to meet individual preferences. Better data analytics can also help in effectively creating marketing campaigns, improving customer retention, and driving product development and inventory management.
Innovative formats such as social commerce and live shopping are beginning to impact the digital commerce landscape, offering new ways to engage with customers and drive sales, and may provide opportunity for brands that have been priced out or seen a downturn with post-pandemic shopping behavior. Social commerce integrates shopping experiences directly into social media platforms, tapping into the massive user bases of these networks to increase reach and engagement. Live shopping, on the other hand, combines entertainment and real-time interaction, providing a dynamic platform for showcasing products and encouraging immediate purchases. These innovations not only enhance customer engagement but also provide valuable data for businesses to refine their strategies and deliver superior shopping experiences.
The e-commerce sector is evolving rapidly, and businesses that effectively manage operational challenges and implement innovative strategies are best positioned for long-term success.
The session includes a brief history of the evolution of search before diving into the roles technology, content, and links play in developing a powerful SEO strategy in a world of Generative AI and social search. Discover how to optimize for TikTok searches, Google's Gemini, and Search Generative Experience while developing a powerful arsenal of tools and templates to help maximize the effectiveness of your SEO initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Understand how search engines work
Be able to find out where your users search
Know what is required for each discipline of SEO
Feel confident creating an SEO Plan
Confidently measure SEO performance
2024 State of Marketing Report – by HubspotMarius Sescu
https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
· Scaling relationships and proving ROI
· Social media is the place for search, sales, and service
· Authentic influencer partnerships fuel brand growth
· The strongest connections happen via call, click, chat, and camera.
· Time saved with AI leads to more creative work
· Seeking: A single source of truth
· TLDR; Get on social, try AI, and align your systems.
· More human marketing, powered by robots
ChatGPT is a revolutionary addition to the world since its introduction in 2022. A big shift in the sector of information gathering and processing happened because of this chatbot. What is the story of ChatGPT? How is the bot responding to prompts and generating contents? Swipe through these slides prepared by Expeed Software, a web development company regarding the development and technical intricacies of ChatGPT!
Everyone knows the power of stories, but when asked to come up with them, we struggle. Either we second guess ourselves as to the story's relevance, or we just come up blank and can't think of any. Unlocking Everyday Narratives: The Power of Storytelling in Marketing will teach you how to recognize stories in the moment and to recall forgotten moments that your audience needs to hear.
Key Takeaways:
Understand Why Personal Stories Connect Better
How To Remember Forgotten Stories
How To Use Customer Experiences As Stories For Your Brand
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?Cut-the-SaaS
Discover the transformative power of AI in content creation with our presentation, "Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?" by Puran Parsani, CEO & Editor of Cut-The-SaaS. Learn how AI-generated content is revolutionizing marketing, publishing, education, healthcare, and finance by offering unprecedented efficiency, creativity, and scalability.
Understanding
AI-Generated Content:
AI-generated content includes text, images, videos, and audio produced by AI without direct human involvement. This technology leverages large datasets to create contextually relevant and coherent material, streamlining content production.
Key Benefits:
Content Creation: Rapidly generate high-quality content for blogs, articles, and social media.
Brainstorming: AI simulates conversations to inspire creative ideas.
Research Assistance: Efficiently summarize and research information.
Market Insights:
The content marketing industry is projected to grow to $17.6 billion by 2032, with AI-generated content expected to dominate over 55% of the market.
Case Study: CNET’s AI Content Controversy:
CNET’s use of AI for news articles led to public scrutiny due to factual inaccuracies, highlighting the need for transparency and human oversight.
Benefits Across Industries:
Marketing: Personalize content at scale and optimize engagement with predictive analytics.
Publishing: Automate content creation for faster publication cycles.
Education: Efficiently generate educational materials.
Healthcare: Create accurate content for patients and professionals.
Finance: Produce timely financial content for decision-making.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations:
Transparency: Disclose AI use to maintain trust.
Bias: Address potential AI biases with diverse datasets.
SEO: Ensure AI content meets SEO standards.
Quality: Maintain high standards to prevent misinformation.
Conclusion:
AI-generated content offers significant benefits in efficiency, personalization, and scalability. However, ethical considerations and quality assurance are crucial for responsible use. Explore the future of content creation with us and see how AI is transforming various industries.
Connect with Us:
Follow Cut-The-SaaS on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Medium. Visit cut-the-saas.com for more insights and resources.
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
Financial curveballs sent many American families reeling in 2023. Household budgets were squeezed by rising interest rates, surging prices on everyday goods, and a stagnating housing market. Consumers were feeling strapped. That sentiment, however, appears to be waning. The question is, to what extent?
To take the pulse of consumers’ feelings about their financial well-being ahead of a highly anticipated election, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey. The survey highlights consumers’ hopes and anxieties as we move into 2024. Let's unpack the key findings to gain insights about where we stand.
The Forgotten Secret Weapon of Digital Marketing: Email
Digital marketing is a rapidly changing, ever evolving industry--Influencers, Threads, X, AI, etc. But one of the most effective digital marketing tools is also one of the oldest: Email. Find out from two Houston-based digital experts how to maximize your results from email.
Key Takeaways:
Email has the best ROI of any digital tactic
It can be used at any stage of the customer journey
It is increasingly important as the cookie-less future gets closer and closer
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
Videos are more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. That’s why it’s estimated that 82% of consumer traffic will come from videos by 2025.
And with videos evolving from landscape to portrait and experts promoting shorter clips, one thing remains constant – our brains LOVE videos.
So is there science behind what makes people absolutely irresistible on camera?
The answer: definitely yes.
In this jam-packed session with Stephanie Garcia, you’ll get your hands on a steal-worthy guide that uncovers the art and science to being irresistible on camera. From body language to words that convert, she’ll show you how to captivate on command so that viewers are excited and ready to take action.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
Digital Commerce Lecture for Advanced Digital & Social Media Strategy at UCLA...Valters Lauzums
E-commerce in 2024 is characterized by a dynamic blend of opportunities and significant challenges. Supply chain disruptions and inventory shortages are critical issues, leading to increased shipping delays and rising costs, which impact timely delivery and squeeze profit margins. Efficient logistics management is essential, yet it is often hampered by these external factors. Payment processing, while needing to ensure security and user convenience, grapples with preventing fraud and integrating diverse payment methods, adding another layer of complexity. Furthermore, fulfillment operations require a streamlined approach to handle volume spikes and maintain accuracy in order picking, packing, and shipping, all while meeting customers' heightened expectations for faster delivery times.
Amid these operational challenges, customer data has emerged as an important strategy. By focusing on personalization and enhancing customer experience from historical behavior, businesses can deliver improved website and brand experienced, better product recommendations, optimal promotions, and content to meet individual preferences. Better data analytics can also help in effectively creating marketing campaigns, improving customer retention, and driving product development and inventory management.
Innovative formats such as social commerce and live shopping are beginning to impact the digital commerce landscape, offering new ways to engage with customers and drive sales, and may provide opportunity for brands that have been priced out or seen a downturn with post-pandemic shopping behavior. Social commerce integrates shopping experiences directly into social media platforms, tapping into the massive user bases of these networks to increase reach and engagement. Live shopping, on the other hand, combines entertainment and real-time interaction, providing a dynamic platform for showcasing products and encouraging immediate purchases. These innovations not only enhance customer engagement but also provide valuable data for businesses to refine their strategies and deliver superior shopping experiences.
The e-commerce sector is evolving rapidly, and businesses that effectively manage operational challenges and implement innovative strategies are best positioned for long-term success.
The session includes a brief history of the evolution of search before diving into the roles technology, content, and links play in developing a powerful SEO strategy in a world of Generative AI and social search. Discover how to optimize for TikTok searches, Google's Gemini, and Search Generative Experience while developing a powerful arsenal of tools and templates to help maximize the effectiveness of your SEO initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Understand how search engines work
Be able to find out where your users search
Know what is required for each discipline of SEO
Feel confident creating an SEO Plan
Confidently measure SEO performance
2024 State of Marketing Report – by HubspotMarius Sescu
https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
· Scaling relationships and proving ROI
· Social media is the place for search, sales, and service
· Authentic influencer partnerships fuel brand growth
· The strongest connections happen via call, click, chat, and camera.
· Time saved with AI leads to more creative work
· Seeking: A single source of truth
· TLDR; Get on social, try AI, and align your systems.
· More human marketing, powered by robots
ChatGPT is a revolutionary addition to the world since its introduction in 2022. A big shift in the sector of information gathering and processing happened because of this chatbot. What is the story of ChatGPT? How is the bot responding to prompts and generating contents? Swipe through these slides prepared by Expeed Software, a web development company regarding the development and technical intricacies of ChatGPT!
Product Design Trends in 2024 | Teenage EngineeringsPixeldarts
The realm of product design is a constantly changing environment where technology and style intersect. Every year introduces fresh challenges and exciting trends that mold the future of this captivating art form. In this piece, we delve into the significant trends set to influence the look and functionality of product design in the year 2024.
How Race, Age and Gender Shape Attitudes Towards Mental HealthThinkNow
Mental health has been in the news quite a bit lately. Dozens of U.S. states are currently suing Meta for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by inserting addictive features into their products, while the U.S. Surgeon General is touring the nation to bring awareness to the growing epidemic of loneliness and isolation. The country has endured periods of low national morale, such as in the 1970s when high inflation and the energy crisis worsened public sentiment following the Vietnam War. The current mood, however, feels different. Gallup recently reported that national mental health is at an all-time low, with few bright spots to lift spirits.
To better understand how Americans are feeling and their attitudes towards mental health in general, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey of 1,500 respondents and found some interesting differences among ethnic, age and gender groups.
Technology
For example, 52% agree that technology and social media have a negative impact on mental health, but when broken out by race, 61% of Whites felt technology had a negative effect, and only 48% of Hispanics thought it did.
While technology has helped us keep in touch with friends and family in faraway places, it appears to have degraded our ability to connect in person. Staying connected online is a double-edged sword since the same news feed that brings us pictures of the grandkids and fluffy kittens also feeds us news about the wars in Israel and Ukraine, the dysfunction in Washington, the latest mass shooting and the climate crisis.
Hispanics may have a built-in defense against the isolation technology breeds, owing to their large, multigenerational households, strong social support systems, and tendency to use social media to stay connected with relatives abroad.
Age and Gender
When asked how individuals rate their mental health, men rate it higher than women by 11 percentage points, and Baby Boomers rank it highest at 83%, saying it’s good or excellent vs. 57% of Gen Z saying the same.
Gen Z spends the most amount of time on social media, so the notion that social media negatively affects mental health appears to be correlated. Unfortunately, Gen Z is also the generation that’s least comfortable discussing mental health concerns with healthcare professionals. Only 40% of them state they’re comfortable discussing their issues with a professional compared to 60% of Millennials and 65% of Boomers.
Race Affects Attitudes
As seen in previous research conducted by ThinkNow, Asian Americans lag other groups when it comes to awareness of mental health issues. Twenty-four percent of Asian Americans believe that having a mental health issue is a sign of weakness compared to the 16% average for all groups. Asians are also considerably less likely to be aware of mental health services in their communities (42% vs. 55%) and most likely to seek out information on social media (51% vs. 35%).
AI Trends in Creative Operations 2024 by Artwork Flow.pdfmarketingartwork
This article is all about what AI trends will emerge in the field of creative operations in 2024. All the marketers and brand builders should be aware of these trends for their further use and save themselves some time!
A report by thenetworkone and Kurio.
The contributing experts and agencies are (in an alphabetical order): Sylwia Rytel, Social Media Supervisor, 180heartbeats + JUNG v MATT (PL), Sharlene Jenner, Vice President - Director of Engagement Strategy, Abelson Taylor (USA), Alex Casanovas, Digital Director, Atrevia (ES), Dora Beilin, Senior Social Strategist, Barrett Hoffher (USA), Min Seo, Campaign Director, Brand New Agency (KR), Deshé M. Gully, Associate Strategist, Day One Agency (USA), Francesca Trevisan, Strategist, Different (IT), Trevor Crossman, CX and Digital Transformation Director; Olivia Hussey, Strategic Planner; Simi Srinarula, Social Media Manager, The Hallway (AUS), James Hebbert, Managing Director, Hylink (CN / UK), Mundy Álvarez, Planning Director; Pedro Rojas, Social Media Manager; Pancho González, CCO, Inbrax (CH), Oana Oprea, Head of Digital Planning, Jam Session Agency (RO), Amy Bottrill, Social Account Director, Launch (UK), Gaby Arriaga, Founder, Leonardo1452 (MX), Shantesh S Row, Creative Director, Liwa (UAE), Rajesh Mehta, Chief Strategy Officer; Dhruv Gaur, Digital Planning Lead; Leonie Mergulhao, Account Supervisor - Social Media & PR, Medulla (IN), Aurelija Plioplytė, Head of Digital & Social, Not Perfect (LI), Daiana Khaidargaliyeva, Account Manager, Osaka Labs (UK / USA), Stefanie Söhnchen, Vice President Digital, PIABO Communications (DE), Elisabeth Winiartati, Managing Consultant, Head of Global Integrated Communications; Lydia Aprina, Account Manager, Integrated Marketing and Communications; Nita Prabowo, Account Manager, Integrated Marketing and Communications; Okhi, Web Developer, PNTR Group (ID), Kei Obusan, Insights Director; Daffi Ranandi, Insights Manager, Radarr (SG), Gautam Reghunath, Co-founder & CEO, Talented (IN), Donagh Humphreys, Head of Social and Digital Innovation, THINKHOUSE (IRE), Sarah Yim, Strategy Director, Zulu Alpha Kilo (CA).
Trends In Paid Search: Navigating The Digital Landscape In 2024Search Engine Journal
The search marketing landscape is evolving rapidly with new technologies, and professionals, like you, rely on innovative paid search strategies to meet changing demands.
It’s important that you’re ready to implement new strategies in 2024.
Check this out and learn the top trends in paid search advertising that are expected to gain traction, so you can drive higher ROI more efficiently in 2024.
You’ll learn:
- The latest trends in AI and automation, and what this means for an evolving paid search ecosystem.
- New developments in privacy and data regulation.
- Emerging ad formats that are expected to make an impact next year.
Watch Sreekant Lanka from iQuanti and Irina Klein from OneMain Financial as they dive into the future of paid search and explore the trends, strategies, and technologies that will shape the search marketing landscape.
If you’re looking to assess your paid search strategy and design an industry-aligned plan for 2024, then this webinar is for you.
5 Public speaking tips from TED - Visualized summarySpeakerHub
From their humble beginnings in 1984, TED has grown into the world’s most powerful amplifier for speakers and thought-leaders to share their ideas. They have over 2,400 filmed talks (not including the 30,000+ TEDx videos) freely available online, and have hosted over 17,500 events around the world.
With over one billion views in a year, it’s no wonder that so many speakers are looking to TED for ideas on how to share their message more effectively.
The article “5 Public-Speaking Tips TED Gives Its Speakers”, by Carmine Gallo for Forbes, gives speakers five practical ways to connect with their audience, and effectively share their ideas on stage.
Whether you are gearing up to get on a TED stage yourself, or just want to master the skills that so many of their speakers possess, these tips and quotes from Chris Anderson, the TED Talks Curator, will encourage you to make the most impactful impression on your audience.
See the full article and more summaries like this on SpeakerHub here: https://speakerhub.com/blog/5-presentation-tips-ted-gives-its-speakers
See the original article on Forbes here:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2016/05/06/5-public-speaking-tips-ted-gives-its-speakers/&refURL=&referrer=#5c07a8221d9b
ChatGPT and the Future of Work - Clark Boyd Clark Boyd
Everyone is in agreement that ChatGPT (and other generative AI tools) will shape the future of work. Yet there is little consensus on exactly how, when, and to what extent this technology will change our world.
Businesses that extract maximum value from ChatGPT will use it as a collaborative tool for everything from brainstorming to technical maintenance.
For individuals, now is the time to pinpoint the skills the future professional will need to thrive in the AI age.
Check out this presentation to understand what ChatGPT is, how it will shape the future of work, and how you can prepare to take advantage.
A brief introduction to DataScience with explaining of the concepts, algorithms, machine learning, supervised and unsupervised learning, clustering, statistics, data preprocessing, real-world applications etc.
It's part of a Data Science Corner Campaign where I will be discussing the fundamentals of DataScience, AIML, Statistics etc.
Time Management & Productivity - Best PracticesVit Horky
Here's my presentation on by proven best practices how to manage your work time effectively and how to improve your productivity. It includes practical tips and how to use tools such as Slack, Google Apps, Hubspot, Google Calendar, Gmail and others.
The six step guide to practical project managementMindGenius
The six step guide to practical project management
If you think managing projects is too difficult, think again.
We’ve stripped back project management processes to the
basics – to make it quicker and easier, without sacrificing
the vital ingredients for success.
“If you’re looking for some real-world guidance, then The Six Step Guide to Practical Project Management will help.”
Dr Andrew Makar, Tactical Project Management
Beginners Guide to TikTok for Search - Rachel Pearson - We are Tilt __ Bright...
Editor's Notes
We’re still in lockdown here in Sydney so I’m back in my virtual classroom once more. Just try to ignore the lockdown hair.
Almost my entire content marketing career has been in B2B – with a particular focus on IT and telcos. And crikey, I’ve seen a lot of boring content over the years.
I should know. I’ve written plenty of it.
As a content writer for hire, I’m OCASSIONALLY brought in on a project early enough to suggest more creative ways to answer the brief or discuss with the client how to make their content more interesting.
But more often than not, by the time the brief reaches me through the agency machine, the approach has already been decided.
If the client wants a 2,000-word downloadable on sprockets, and the budget doesn’t include any further development time for me, then I’ll give them 2,000 words on sprockets.
And if I do manage to squeeze some colour or life into the copy, I’m used to seeing the client review process systematically remove it one tracked comment at a time because “it doesn’t strike a professional tone” or because they insist that words like “leverage” and “utilise” sound better.
They really, really don’t.
Sure, not all B2B content – as we shall see.
But shedloads of content are published every day for which “boring” might be a polite description. Two others might be “predictable” and “unnecessary”.
I regularly come across reports, white papers and articles that would require me to stab myself repeatedly in the leg with a fork simply to stay awake beyond the opening paragraphs.
And if your audience doesn’t stick around until the end, any proposal or calls to action you might want them to follow will be pretty much guaranteed to fall on deaf ears.
AH, I hear some of you cry. But boring doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Does it?
Well, maybe I would hear you cry it if I was there with you today.
You might be thinking that lots of things may be boring while still offering value. People don’t download and read a white paper on sprockets to be entertained, right?
They download it because they want to learn something.
Who cares that the content is boring if the number of clicks or downloads still hit the campaign targets? You’ve still got a bunch of leads in the system, so job done, right?
So, if people are downloading your latest white paper, can it really be considered boring?
It’s worth remembering that the number of downloads or clicks doesn’t reveal if the content was actually effective.
All those metrics do is show that the title was interesting, or that the social media posts motivated enough people to follow the link, or that the email and landing page were persuasive enough to encourage people to fill out the form or click the download button.
In short, these metrics measure how effectively you enticed people to enter the theatre or sideshow tent. They DON’T measure the quality or effectiveness of whatever it IS that’s inside the tent.
Using clicks or download figures to argue the success of a white paper or suchlike is like a movie studio claiming its new blockbuster is a raging box office success despite audiences walking out of the cinema after the first few scenes.
Marketing may have used posters and trailers and publicity to make everyone aware of the movie to sell tickets and put bums on seats, but the content still needs to hold the audience’s attention until the credits roll.
Or why will they come back for the sequel?
Surely the goal of all these white papers, reports, and e-books isn’t just to capture unqualified leads and then never mind if no one actually reads the content.
Surely your content is designed to be read or watched right to the end.
You want them to absorb all of your information, to consider all of your carefully devised arguments — and hopefully be persuaded to do something as a result of consuming your content.
And that something can be as simple as accessing the related resources you’ve created to put the information into action — templates and the like — or subscribing to the newsletter, or even just satisfying the curiosity you’ve instilled in them by seeking out and reading more of your blog articles.
Your content has to have a reason to exist, a “what’s next” that gradually moves the individuals in your audience a little closer to your strategically-defined business outcomes.
Think about how you might measure some of those things.
How many clicked the link on the final page?
How many went on to download other content from the website?
How many went on to contact sales, or ultimately buy the product?
Whatever the intended outcome of your content, it’s far more meaningful to find ways to measure what people do after consuming it than whether they simply downloaded it.
Focusing primarily on clicks and downloads can hide the other issues that can undermine the effectiveness of your B2B content.
And that means the marketing teams in these companies seem to go on making the same mistakes over and over, while their results stubbornly refuse to improve.
All of those leads captured from that LAST white paper on sprockets didn’t result in any new sales, but maybe this next one will somehow do better.
And if the poor results are ever questioned …
Well, of course. This is B2B. Sprockets are boring! What do you expect?
It’s as if being a B2B company lets them off the hook from trying to make their content more interesting.
The biggest mistake I see every day is the assumption that B2B content somehow operates under a different set of rules.
It’s always baffled me how B2B companies behave as if their customers undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation from “consumer” to “business” when the clock hits 9 each morning.
Yet so many B2B white papers assume that just because a person is in the office, they will actively choose to read 4,000 words of incredibly dense copy on the driest of topics.
Another classic B2B mistake is assuming the audience is interested in the company that published the content more than the actual topic.
The content continually heroes the brand – shoehorning in self-serving mentions and plugs at every opportunity. And the reader has to get past a bunch of self-serving waffle before they can get to the good stuff.
You have to earn that interest — which is presumably one reason why the content exists in the first place.
So cut the self-serving waffle. Slash the company bios. Ditch the lengthy introduction from the CEO that talks about the history of the company before reiterating once again why the white paper is worth reading. WE KNOW!
We’ve already read the email, landing page, and whatever else. That’s why we downloaded it! Stop talking about yourself! Stop selling the content to us and give us what we came for!
Some B2B content is little more than a thinly-disguised sales pitch. This is still content marketing we’re doing here, not advertising.
The content might have been promoted as a useful guide to whatever the topic is – but when you actually read it, the content is really only concerned with how their product deals with the topic.
Now this kind of thing might satisfy an INTERNAL audience — those stakeholders that ultimately approve the content for publishing — because it supposedly positions the company as an industry thought leader and their product as the solution to just about everything.
But it’s likely to leave the audience cold, and with plenty of unanswered questions.
And that risks driving them to someone else’s content in search of a broader and less one-sided perspective on the topic.
And then of course, there’s the B2B content that seems to require a decoder ring to decipher. The information is provided with little explanation or context, and the language is so full of industry jargon, buzzwords and corporate cliches that it’s virtually impossible to understand what the content is actually trying to say.
It’s like the entire thing has been smudged all over with vague-sauce.
What does “an enterprise-grade solution” actually mean, anyway? Tell us what it does.
I recently read one brand’s beginner’s guide to launching an online business. And it was full of technical and industry terms like domain names, SEO and AdWords — without once spelling out what these things actually are — never mind how to use them. You and I know these things very well – but someone who’s never run a website before, let alone an online business, would have no idea what they mean.
For the reader, it may only take a few paragraphs before these mistakes cause them to lose interest.
Think about yourself for a moment. How many white papers, e-books and suchlike have you downloaded over the years out of a sense of professional duty — but that you never actually got around to reading?
How many did you start to read but lost interest quickly because … well, to be fair, the cat’s litter tray really did need emptying.
And that means it’s time for my fruit bowl analogy.
Shelley, my wife, is always at me to eat more fruit. I’d like to eat healthier too – or at least I know I should. So, if we both agree, you’d think I’d be the peak of nutritional fitness.
Good intentions may fill my fruit bowl each week, but good intentions don’t mean my choice of snack during the day is a plum or a banana.
Eventually, I’ll throw out the uneaten fruit in the kitchen which is now overripe and a tad mushy.
And sure enough, I’ll probably stock up on more fruit next time I’m at the shop.
Funnily enough, cheesy and sugary snacks never seem to reach their use-by date in our house.
I’m the same with white papers. I regularly download interesting-sounding reports and e-books that I feel I “should” read. The information they promise is directly relevant to my work, or the research is relevant to some of the projects I’m working on. There could be a number of professional reasons.
Good, healthy, nutritious content.
Of course, like most people, I don’t read them there and then. Whenever that email came through or I spotted that social media post, I was probably already in the middle of something else. It’s the working day after all.
So I quickly download it while the link is in front of me and put the content aside until later. In my case, that’s a folder in my Dropbox so I can easily access all of these downloadables on my iPad.
But, like my fruit bowl, when I do have a few free minutes, I’m far more likely to choose something that I want to read rather than what my conscience is telling me that I should read. And my iPad is stuffed with content that is more likely to capture my attention.
So — far too many of those worthy and good-for-me reports and white papers end up staying unread — until the information in them gradually passes the best-before date.
It’s 2021. That detailed report on digital trends I downloaded and briefly glanced at in 2019 is probably not that useful anymore. So, it gets deleted.
Unread.
As an aside, you really don’t want to see my bookshelves, which are full of fiction and non-fiction books I’ve yet to get around to reading. I’m sure my to-read pile can be seen from space.
Thing is, I’m betting many of you watching this could say the same. And while a physical book pile is a constant reminder, a digital to-read pile is much easier to ignore.
Which is why having your content downloaded is the easy bit. It’s having your content read that’s the real challenge.
So how do you turn “should read” into “want to read” and eventually into “did read”?
How can you create B2B content that’s irresistible and demands to be read right now?
A big reason why B2B content can be boring is that it lacks humanity – it doesn’t appeal to the reader or viewer on an emotional level.
And emotion actually has far more to do with how the brain interprets the world and makes decisions than many people realise.
When you’re working on the business side of a topic, product, or industry, you may be focused on what the product is rather than what it does – viewing it primarily in functional and technical terms – which can be quite different to the customer’s perspective.
Products and things aren’t that inherently interesting.
It’s people who make them interesting. It’s people who give them meaning.
That’s why a central tenet of content marketing is that the product isn’t the story – people are.
B2C knows this almost instinctively. B2B sometimes has trouble thinking quite the same way.
So, is your content about things or is it about people and what they can do with those things? Instead of writing in the abstract, place your content in the real world. Their world.
Content marketers often rely on data and numbers to convey information and motivate consumers.
And there’s no doubt that such data-rich content can work – to a point. However, numbers aren’t nearly as persuasive, nor as easily understood, as we would like to believe.
In short, numbers exist in a different reality – at least as our brains perceive them. They’re just too abstract, relying on us to interpret them by comparing them against our personal experiences to give them context.
Hence why so many people disbelieve or dismiss the stats on things like smoking because their granddad smoked 40 a day until he was 90.
We don’t connect with numbers. We connect with people.
So yes, this is where storytelling comes in.
I mean, it had to at some point. You can’t talk about content marketing without mentioning the importance of storytelling at least once, right?
Evidential proof – including data – is still important to give our stories accuracy but it is the human story that the brain latches onto. It is the story that gives those graphs and stats context.
It is the story that helps the reader or viewer to recognise how the information fits into their own experience or understanding of the world.
This is why it’s always important to provide real world examples wherever possible for every statistical insight or fact you present. Here are the numbers, and here’s what that trend meant for Jenny and her business.
Now, if you think that telling stories of real people working with sprockets or whatever is still a tad too pedestrian and boring, take your content a step further by looking at it from a completely different or even surprising angle.
One way to do this is with a highly creative analogy or metaphor. This can allow you to blend some fiction in with your fact to create a hyperreal world your audience will happily spend a little time exploring.
Done well, it’s clear to the audience what is fiction and what is fact.
By taking the topic in an unexpected or quirky direction, people will be more inclined to stick with it to see where it leads.
Analogies also make complex ideas and concepts easier for others to understand — and by crikey if B2B content doesn’t regularly get itself bogged down in complex ideas and concepts.
Analogies use concepts and references that the audience is alREADY familiar with as a framework for understanding UNFAMILIAR ideas and concepts.
This thing you’re trying to understand is like that thing you already know very well.
I’ve used analogies throughout this presentation, for example. Not only the fruit bowl analogy I outlined earlier, but also every slide in this presentation takes a comic book image that once described one thing and uses it to put a different slant on a completely different concept.
In 2013, U.S. tech company Sungard released a brilliant e-book titled — The Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide — which was supported by an email and social media campaign.
One of the reasons I love this content so much is how the theme works in two important ways.
It works as an analogy to explain the various steps of an effective disaster recovery strategy — how an enterprise business ensures business continuity and the safety of its data when the unexpected happens.
In the real world, business continuity is usually about restoring normal operation after a crucial data centre suddenly goes offline — or something like. It’s all about redundancies and backups and how quickly you can get the website and other online services running again.
But that’s already the everyday experience of the people that this content is targeted at — and therefore it’s not exactly exciting for them to read about. It’s certainly not as compelling a story as a zombie apocalypse.
And back then, zombies were everywhere in pop culture.
I suspect many of the IT professionals I’ve worked with over the years were more at home in a Walking Dead t-shirt than a business suit. So this theme targeted the intended audience by understanding what else they may be interested in – and playing to that.
Importantly, this e-book campaign worked.
The e-book smashed the expected download rate three times over. Overall, the campaign received a 150% higher click-through rate and 200% higher click to open rate compared with previous Sungard campaigns.
More importantly, it captured a bunch of high-quality leads for the company – and when we’re talking enterprise technology on this scale, I’m guessing they only needed to close one or two of those deals for the campaign to have a positive ROI.
It also went on to win a swag of marketing awards as well.
Colourful analogies like these can be effective ways of explaining otherwise boring technical concepts. They can also make the content more fun and irresistible to read.
Better still, every little pun, every unexpected twist, every wry joke may help to make the content more memorable.
Humour can be a great tool to maintain a reader’s attention. And laughter, or even just mild enjoyment, is associated with an increase of pleasure hormones in the brain like dopamine, which aids in the creation of memories.
Now having your audience remember your content and the information within it — is a pretty basic goal for any content marketer.
So, appealing to emotions such as humour with creative ideas and analogies – yes, perhaps even zombies – can serve a very clear and useful business purpose. This isn’t creativity for creativity’s sake.
Making your content fun isn’t being frivolous.
Humour and amusement are also associated with a reduction in stress hormones like cortisol, which is known to impede memory.
So, it’s best not to create content that stresses the reader by making them work harder to understand what it is that you’re trying to say.
Good writing, effective writing, professional writing is both easy to read and easy to understand.
After all, the goal of any sentence is to convey an idea, a message, a snippet of information from the mind of the writer into the mind of the reader as cleanly and unambiguously as possible. Anything that gets in the way of that goal – anything that makes the reading harder – means the writing becomes less efficient.
And to me, that seems rather un-professional.
Now, here's a scary fact. The majority of people out there – and I include business managers in this, the people you may be targeting with your content – don't have a university-level reading ability.
That’s not a bad thing. It’s not always necessary. And its why newspapers and magazines usually target a reading age of around 14 or 15.
But the language I come across in a lot of B2B content wouldn’t be out of place in a university thesis.
So what does this mean for your content when it’s written for a reading age higher than that of most of the readers it’s intended for?
Well, two things. First, a lot of bad writing is from people punching above their weight by trying to emulate a style of writing they’ve seen used elsewhere that supposedly sounds more professional and impressive — but is probably just archaic.
I’m not knocking this. Writing is hard at any level. But academic and technical writing in particular are acquired skills that can take specialised training and practice to master.
An exceptional copywriter or an experienced journalist may still struggle with technical or academic writing because these are very precise forms with their own rules and conventions.
These are writing styles that can’t easily be impersonated — and the result is usually incorrect word use, a lack of clarity, bad grammar, tautologies, contradictions, inconsistencies and more — all of which are rife in B2B content because of this belief that these extremely formal styles appear “more professional".
Of course, there will always be circumstances where the precision and formality of technical writing is necessary.
When you’re reading the instructions to install that new piece of software or replace that engine part, you want unambiguous and unembellished clarity presented in as few words as possible – ideally alongside simple diagrams and pictures.
In fact, purely instructional or utilitarian content like this can benefit from having as few words as possible. Think of IKEA assembly instructions for example, which use simplistic illustrations and diagrams with virtually no text.
So technical writing is useful when you need to publish certain types of content such as manuals on how to use your product, or perhaps support-based content — when the reader needs to know how to put tab A into slot B, for example.
But it’s totally unsuited to content that needs to explore ideas, present opinions or persuade with convincing arguments — y’know, all of that thought leadership that us content marketers keep banging on about.
Secondly, you're making even the best reader work harder than necessary to absorb your information. The more effort someone has to put in to decipher each paragraph, increases the likelihood that your content will be put aside for later — which, of course, never comes.
Research into the use of language in legal documents, for example, found that 80% of people prefer them to be written in plain English.
So far, so very unsurprising. However, you may be MORE surprised to learn that this preference for simple, plain English INCREASES with the reader’s level of education and specialist knowledge.
Even the people who are most equipped to understand the industry-specific conventions, jargon, acronyms, and excessively formal phrasing of your content don’t really want to if there’s something better on the telly.
Your audience just wants to solve a problem or learn something new without being made to feel like they’re studying for a Ph.D.
Of course, you’re not the only person involved in creating and approving this content.
Like I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve seen many great ideas slowly get pulled apart by the stakeholder review process until it’s no more remarkable than anything that the company published before.
The more radical, risky, or creative your idea, the harder it can be to get it through the stakeholder machine. The more stakeholders there are, the more likely it is that the final content will be defined by those stakeholders with the most conservative ideas and the least appetite for risk.
While there may be regular WiPs with some stakeholders — usually those closest to the project, such as the marketing manager or client — other stakeholders such as legal, brand, product and so on, may not be involved in the process until the content is ready for their feedback.
Stakeholders may also provide competing or contradictory feedback according to their particular responsibilities. Suddenly, you’re trying to satisfy everyone’s competing priorities — can you plug this new feature, can you remove that word, why isn’t there a 500-word introduction from the CEO?
And zombies? Why are we talking about zombies? Remove the zombies please! We’re a serious business!
The content ends up at the centre of a tug of war between expectations – with plenty of compromising as a result.
Of course, many stakeholders may be reviewing your content without the benefit of understanding the reasons for all of the creative decisions that led you to develop the content in this direction — the research, the insights, the examples from elsewhere that the content needs to compete against, and so on.
Suddenly, they’re hit with something unexpected that threatens to take them far outside of their comfort zone.
Without that context, the content may seem like a huge leap from what they’ve reviewed before — and they won’t necessarily know how it got there.
As a result, their feedback may attempt to undo those creative decisions, dragging your content back to something that more closely resembles what they’re used to seeing. In other words: safe, conservative, expected.
And the more radical or different the content is to whatever the business has published before, the bigger that leap becomes —
and the more work is involved in dealing with all of that feedback as the content is slowly killed by a thousand cuts.
Which is why so many content marketers continue to take the safer route of producing something they know will get approved with the minimum of fuss. It may be unremarkable, it may even be boring, but at least it got done.
Defending your decisions after they’ve been challenged is never as easy as communicating them as they’re made. That initial reaction can be hard to shift – particularly when there are many stakeholders involved.
So take your stakeholders on the creative journey with you — even if this is just an occasional WiP email that preps them on what to expect. Explain the reasons behind your decisions — with proof points when you have them — so that they’re not blindsided by a highly creative piece of content that risks triggering a flurry of risk-averse feedback.