Category: Content Marketing

Content marketing is not simply about building content. It’s about employing a specific strategy to employ content and social media marketing to improve the emotional response when people come into contact with your brand.

By using a mix of effective, proven content marketing techniques you can increase the way people feel about your brand, enabling positive reactions as they come into contact. Increasing the chances of building links and creating social media shares and mentions.

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Citations
Emily Jarvis Christoph Sisson Jay Bear Douglas Holt Peter Noel Murray Joe Pulizzi

Content marketing is street fighting, no holds barred, open warfare.

Content used to be cool.

But that time is gone

it’s no longer art, it’s no longer elegant. Yes the good stuff still exists but it gets drowned out. No one seems prepared to sift through the bytes of shite that are vomited daily.

It’s a myth that good, “quality content” rises to the top. You don’t do content marketing if you love content. You do it if you love the sound of the screams of your competitor make as you rip their eyeballs out.

One of the problems that people have when talking about this subject is they use the past to try and determine what we should do now. Myself included.

What is going to happen in the next 10 years is going to be completely different to what has happened in the past 10 years.

I don’t know what will happen, but I know it will be different.

Therefore, focus on fundamentals.

1. Help people.
2. Care about people, and make bloody sure they know you care.
3. Know your stuff, stay sharp and frosty.

Do those three things and everything else will fall into place.

Update:

Someone pointed out that they were confused about this post and that is mentions war and then “caring about people”. The war is of course metaphorical and directed at the other content your content is fighting against. I realise that using such aggressive terms whilst advising to use empathy may seem contradictory. I do not.

Indeed, when people go to war they care very much for the people they are fighting for. When you create a piece of content it helps to care about the people you are writing for and not such for the content you are compete against.

I think the idea that you are going to war against the competition is a valid one, perhaps I should have made this more clear. It is important to be able to use criticism as fuel to move forward.

I hope this makes things clearer.

Content marketing and what it is and what it isn’t.

• Blogging is not content marketing.
• Tweeting is not content marketing.
• Facebook advertising is not content marketing.

Of course the tools above could be what you use to implement content marketing, they are still only tools.

Content marketing has a problem, if everyone follows the same strategy, using the same tools, creating the same content, connecting with the same followers then you will most likely fail.

It’s not that you simply “do” content marketing. But that you must do it better than your competitor.

Not only that, but you must persuade the audience you are communicating with that your content is worthy of their time and therefore their tweet, link, facebook like, brand connection…etc.

Which highlights the two foundations of content marketing.

Communication and persuasion.

1. You must communicate the message, clearly and effectively. You need to transport your message into the brain of the person you are communicating with. If this does not happen, you have failed.
2. You must persuade the person you are communicating with to perform a specific form of action which will meet the objectives of the project. If you do not manage to persuade the minimum amount of people. You have failed.

Everything else, blogging, tweeting, networking…etc is an enabler to allow communication and persuasion to work.

This is what the foundational elements of content marketing are, communication and persuasion.

So when you try to improve your content marketing, don’t just focus on the using the tools, focus on the actual things that make up content marketing.

It is by improving your communication and persuasion skills, and then picking the tool for the job, that you get good at content marketing.

I am currently reading, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harariand quite early on he gives us his take on how the Homosapien became the dominant species on the Planet Earth.

It struck me that this reason is the same reason people get websites to rank.

Which is.

“The ability of getting vast numbers of humans to cooperate using the power of stories”.

Stories in the context of religion, nations, tribes, companies. All exist because we imagine them and we do it in cooperation with each other.

To rank a website you need other people to hold a story in their head. That story will help in them giving your website a link, a retweet, a Facebook like or whatever reaction you need.

To create a story that sticks, you need people to believe in it, and believe and trust in the messenger.

We may think it’s all about seo, social media, internet and shiny technology. But really the roots of how to rank a websites are buried deep within our human psyche and why about 70,000 years ago we became the dominant species on our planet.

You don’t just “do” content marketing, you use the very technique that makes us Human.

It’s 5.30 and i am sitting in my garden at dawn, under a half moon. It’s quiet apart from loud chatter from the garden birds. Easy to think at this time of the day. Another swig of freshly made coffee and I am ready to tap something out.

I was going to call this article, “How to beat the ass of Kim Kardashian,” but that does not scan right. Plus I have done Kim Kardashian’s ass before, which also does not scan right. Perhaps I should leave Kim Kardashian’s ass alone.

So I go with Pokemon Go, what can go wrong with that?

Today you are going to take Pokemon Go and beat it into the ground, at least you think you are.

Because you are going to publish a blog post, what was it called? “10 ways to blah blah blah”.

You have finally finished the article. You are happy, even though you know the blog post will fail. You are happy because you know it meets your primary goal, which is to get your dumb ass of a boss off your back.

It wont work of course because people are not interested in reading “10 Ways to blah blah blah”. But your dumb ass of a boss, the marketing manager doesn’t realise that.

As a blogger for hire, a word slave, you know that the end reader is not whom you should be pleasing. The person you need to please is your dumb ass boss, who always requires stuff to be done at the last minute, who has no thought for strategic planning or connecting up with what was produced last week. Plus each time he goes to a conference he comes back with a new technique, be it longer copy, every blog post being a list, infographics… etc.

Unfortunately no one yet has told him that content marketing is dead, that it’s more about building a better product these days. You are wedged between the ass of Kim Kardashian and Pokemon Go. Or at least your content is. In other words, no one will notice your blog post. But they will be hunting down an content to do with Pokemon Go.

The answer the marketing manager yells is “more promotion”. “Lets buy sackfuls of the stuff”. As if promotion can be bought off the shelves of the local Kwicky Mart.

“Your cousin once had a drink with that journalist on the Times,” the marketing manager yells at the social media intern. “Get him on the phone now, there’s a drink in it for you.”

But these days, unless the story is about Pokemon Go and physical injury, the journalist will not be interested.

In this scenario, when the media has moved on (as it always does) from the craze of Pokemon Go, the marketing manager yells out, “We need Pokemon Go content here people, has any one thought of an infographic.”

If this sounds like your boss, I empathise.

Content marketing is not dead.

But your content marketing is dead, or never gets seen which is the same thing. Simply because there is too much competition for the attention of people out there and no amount of promotion is going to work.

It’s no longer about the content, it’s about the product.

“But I make content,” you explain.

No, what you are really making is a product. Great content should be seen as a stand alone product. It must earn it’s right to exist in the Universe. Everything else is filler, and as a blogger for hire you know all about that.

Content marketing is seen by some as marketing the product the company is selling. This is the wrong mindset, unfortunately the marketing manager wants the company product marketed and does not care about the content, but is told that content marketing is the way. But this leads to a failed content marketing campaign, because the content is never given enough investment in time and money to work.

The often cited example of content marketing is the Michelin Guide, but this is a stand alone product. It has always stood alone with no direct competition and is nothing to do with the selling of tires.

Do you really think that content marketing with blog posts is going to achieve a successful ROI?

Blog posts can support the buying process as a consumer searches for specific, narrow, product information. But as a stand alone product that changes your emotional relationship between the consumer and the brand, c’mon, forget about it.

The solution to this problem is simple:

1. You find what the crowd hungers for.
2. You produce that which they desire.
3. You feed the crowd before the competition turns up.

The content you produce must:

1. Earn its place in the Universe.
2. Exist in a space with no or little competition.
3. Be conceived of as a standalone product.

Very few will get this right, and this is good because those who do will get a very tasty ROI.

I fully accept the irony of the fact that this is a blog post, which in a way it has the purpose of marketing my content marketing services. But that’s not really true, I write this because the issue has been in my mind for a number of months. I help businesses with their communication and persuasion because I enjoy developing solutions to the problems that arise.

So even if no one reads this blog post it has at least enabled me to organise and justify my thoughts.

Thus it has earned it’s right to exist.

As a content marketer it is something you need to know about, because so many people are playing it and seeking information online. It is creating a massive, rabid crowd that will devour content. Whenever these trends explode and reach critical mass there is huge opportunity for anyone who uses content creation to market their brand or business online.

What is Pokemon Go?

It’s an app you download to an iPhone or Android and uses augmented reality to direct you to places in the real world, via a map to collect stuff.

How much does it cost?

Pokemon Go is free

How does Nintendo make money from this?

It’s share price has risen during the first week of its release, increasing the value by $7.5 billion. It also has access to a huge amount of personal data.

Is it available in the UK?

No, as we publish there is no time soon that Nintendo is planning to launch in the UK. As of now, the app is only officially available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand

How popular is this?

Google trends show it’s as nearly as popular as sex. Interest in the keywords of Pokemon Go, sex, Tindr and Snapchat, over the past 30 days.

When you type in “How popular…” Google suggests puts Pokemon first and Pokemon Go, 3rd.

This from Forbes.

The data gets even more staggering. As of 48 hours ago,Pokemon GO was installed on 5.6% of all Android devices in the United States, and is installed on more Android phones than Tinder (insert “Pokemon is now more popular than sex” joke here). Not only that, but on average users are spending twice the amount of time engaged with Pokemon GO than they are on apps like Snapchat.

Can Pokemon create bad headlines?

Primal brain headlines have already been created such as “Pokemon Go player finds dead body in Wyoming river while searching for a Pokestop” Expect more of this as the media generates headlines to surf the wave of interest in this subject.

How nuts are people for this?

Anecdotal evidence suggests, “very”. Whilst your wife is giving birth to your child, a Pokemon shows up and you have to low key catch it….

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Can local business take advantage of this?

Yes.
This is big and not to be ignored because you think this is silly.
Whenever something such as this becomes this popular, if you are ahead of the curve you can create attention grabbing content and improve your brand.

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This may do little for passing trade but this image is being used by high authority news sites. Sometimes it’s not about what the thing actually does, but about the sizzle you can create around it.

Even museums can use Pokemon Go to help them, when this museum found Pokemon and Pokestops all over their location, they took screen shots to use in their content marketing.

Your business may become a Pokemon stop, if this is the case you can create a Lure module to attract other players, this lasts for 30 mins and can be advertised on your Facebook or other social media page.

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This aspect is a fast moving part of the game and more and more ways of local business taking advantage of Pokemon Go are coming to the surface as I type.

This is a fast moving story, as more people use it and they are already using it in number that are making Snapchat look, “megh”, it will be something which could potentially create massive returns for a clever content marketer.

Updates will be blogged about and sent out over the email list.

Get in contact if you need more ideas of how to use Pokemon Go to make your business message sizzle.

****UPDATE 1****

SEO consultant sacked in Singapore for complaining about the unavailability of the game in that region. Via Chris Gilchrist

Some people are so desperate to play this game they are employing a hack.
UK rollout of Pokémon Go delayed – here’s how to get it on iPhone and Android now – Guardian

Pokémon Go: armed robbers use mobile game to lure players into trap – Guardian

Intriguing response from a Dad: “I Don’t Understand Pokemon Go, But I Give It Five Stars For Getting My Dumb Son Out Of The House”

Although some of this may be made up, but even made up stuff is getting shares due to the intense interest of the story.

****UPDATE 2****

Content marketing blog posts about Pokemon GO

3 content marketing lessons from the success of Pokemon Go  Brafton.com Author, Kyle Gaw Twitter

3 Pokémon GO Lessons For Social Media Marketers addthis.com Author, Christian Brink Twitter

How Pokémon Go Is Disrupting Marketing as We Know It ama.org Author, Zach Brooke Twitter

Will Pokémon GO become a marketing platform for local businesses? clickz.com Author, Al Roberts

Pokemon Go, A Marketer’s Dream sugarspunmarketing.com Author, Jennifer Cario Twitter

How pokemon go might change marketing as we know it square2marketing.com Author, Mike Lieberman Twitter

***UPDATE 3***

If you are actually playing it as a game, (as well of researching as a business opportunity of course) you may want to check out these tips on playing.

There are some who say not every business can benefit from using Pokemon Go in their content marketing. But this is about attitude and your mindset. To be effective in creating great content you need to be able to look everywhere, you also need to be able to understand what drives crazes like Pokemon Go and be able to present viable content ideas that protect the brand and yet attract large numbers of the right kind of people.

Content marketing ideas for Pokemon Go:

Tesco could create an article that advises it’s shoppers to play Pokemon Go with safety in mind when in their stores. Highlighting the fact that whilst Tesco wants you to have fun, they care about their shoppers.

Brewdog could produce a “No drinking whilst playing Pokemon Go beer”.

An insurance website could highlight the accidents that could happen whilst playing Pokemon Go. As with the Tesco idea, highlighting that the company cares about their users and making sure the core aspects of their products are being promoted (provision against accidents).

Recruitment websites could collate stories of people spending too much time playing Pokemon Go at work and people who have resigned just to play the game. A twist could be where an employer offers Pokemon Go playing time or even an office league.

Along with the correct mindset, it’s useful to consider what journalists need for their work and how you can help them. If you have an interesting story about Pokemon Go, a journalist could benefit from using it. You simply have to promote them with the right story, at the right time.

***UPDATE 4***

A pizza joint in New York, linizio.com, has been getting a lot of press mentions by dropping a lure to attract Pokemon and claims sales are up 75%. It’s not the fact that sales are up, but the press attention is what is the real win. Create a sizzle and then create a narrative around that which highlights the original sizzle.

Pokémon Go is helping restaurants and bars make money
Pokémon Go Brings Real Money to Random Bars and Pizzerias
Gotta catch ’em all: Pokemon Go is boosting business for restaurants

Finding new ways to use Pokemon and then using it to get media mentions is an effective way to links and social mentions.

There are enough of these “how business is using Pokemon Go”, to increase brand and revenue for it to be happening everywhere. If the next phase in the roll out of the app is to focus on getting business to optimise their locations by dropping lures and other items which we don’t even know yet, then it makes a lot of sense to add this to the marketing toolbox.

We note in this article from Gizmodo that Nintendo are considering commercial tie ups with the likes of MacDonalds.

Fancy a new career as a PGO, Pokemon Go Optimiser?
it’s only a matter of time before a new job is created to help business to market using Pokemon Go and other augmented reality apps which are obviously now being talked about, could Hogworts be next. A petition for such a Harry Potter game has now been created.

More Pokemon Go links:
If You’re Ignoring Pokémon Go, You’re Making a Huge Business MistakeBusiness owners and marketers can’t afford

A useful map created by paulypresleyrealty.com, of downtown Austin, Texas. Real estate websites should approach this as a bit of fun, but also consider that it can lead to real links – such as this one – and that although a business owner may not think they are in the Pokemon Go business, they should consider that this is how marketing works online. You create and interesting bit of content and now an SEO blog in Cornwall, UK is now linking to you, adding to your Google authority and possibly giving you a bump in the rankings.
Which is a good thing.
Pokemon Go in Austin: 13 of the Best Places to Catch ’em All

***UPDATE 5***

More useful advice from content marketing bloggers.
Pokémon GO Proof Participatory Content Is A Game Changer!
Pokemon Go?—?Content Marketing Lessons For All Of Us
How Pokemon Go Is Paving the Way for Business
And news of who is making money out of this.
‘Pokemon Go’ could generate billions for Apple
What Pokemon Go & Snapchat Have That Angry Birds Never Did?

You have a finite marketing budget and every penny has to work if you are going to compete effectively. The problem is thepeople you want to reach, are greeted with a huge amount of digital noise each day and for your content to reach them it needs to do quite a lot of work.

To get your message to connect to these people, you must find some way to get their attention, get them to come to your website and get them to buy your stuff. Nothing complicated about that. One way to to achieve this is to employ a content marketing strategy.

Sounds sexy doesn’t it?

These days adding the term, “strategic” makes anything sound more powerful. “Kids, we are going to initiate a strategic, ice cream acquisition methodology that will have an intrinsic, synergistic outcome with the soda we are about to drink.”

It’s natural for any digital marketing person to overcomplicate things, this is mostly because we tend to think about the stuff way too much than is normal. We forget the simplicity and elegance that is effective content marketing.

Because at it’s most fundamental, content marketing is about only two things.

• Communication
• Persuasion

Everything else is fluff.

When buying content from anywhere, ask these two questions.
“How is this piece of content going to be communicated?”
“How is this piece of content going to persuade anyone?”

If the answer is overly long, or difficult to understand, then it probably wont work. For something to be effectively communicated it must be able to reach the person it is aimed at. It must cut through all the digital noise and distraction and be able to get in front of the gaze of whom it is for.

A content marketing professional will tell you that the content will be “promoted”, but what does that actually mean? How is your digital agency actually going to promote your content to the people it is designed to reach.

The truth is that content promotion should begin even before the content is conceived. Most regard promotion as a thing that happens after the content is created, however if you design the content promotion before the content creation you can make sure the content is extremely effective at achieving its promotional goals.

For example, the people who will be interested in such content, or in the problem that the content is addressing will already know what will attract them – because really it’s not about the content is it? It’s about the solution that the content solves with regards to a specific problem, such as, “Which is the best Hotel I can stay in Rome, for the least amount of money?”.

And so if you ask the people whom you are going to promote the content to, “What content are you actually interested in?”. Then you immediately know that this is what they want and not only that the person is probably going to be interested in seeing the content when it comes out.

This is a very good technique with journalists, simply asking them, “What content are you interested in seeing next week that will help you with your own work?” Is the perfect question for a deadline focused, overworked journalist.

When it comes down to it, getting your content to be properly communicated is a simple process of using techniques that are common sense and conducive to the positive interaction with your fellow human beings.

If your answer to, “How should we communicate this content?” Is simply to shout about it blindly over your social media network, it is going to be drowned out when up against content that has already been promoted to highly influential people in the creation phase.

The relationship with the individual the content is being promoted to is crucial, and should be deemed as an asset to be invested in.

But in this world of push button marketing the human relationship is often neglected and yet it is essential to the effective communication of any content.

Persuasion is where things get interesting.

First you must know what the point of your content is, what is its objective? Your content must justify its reason to exist in the Universe. It has to earn its keep. It must impact on the reader and be able to persuade them to perform a specific action, such as a retweet, or to allow them to think about something differently. For example develop a stronger emotional attachment to your brand, so next time they are thinking of buying they are more likely to buy.

Content marketing is rarely used for direct sales, although it can be. It tends to be more effective in positioning the brand in the mind of the consumer in a positive light.

This is more akin to seduction, even to romance. It is subtle and it is nuanced, but it does not have to be complicated. There are distinct steps towards a piece of content being able to persuade.

• Desire
• Trust
• Resonate
• Motivation
• Action

Desire.
People must hunger for information that will give them the ability to solve the problem in their head.
Trust.
Your voice must be trusted, no reason to doubt your message should exist. You build trust by showing you know your subject, by caring about the people you are communicating with.
Resonate.
An individual must relate emotionally to the message, this is because a change in the state of mind must occur for things to move in the direction of motivation and an action.
Motivation
Sometimes the objective is to achieve a positive social signal, get a link or some other overt action. These should be seen as physical acts which the reader has to be motivated to perform, a click of a mouse, a few clicks of a keyboard. You need to be able to motivate the reader to action.
Action
If there is no action have you really persuaded. This is the point of the whole exercise, to initiate change. To make something happen, even if it is something internal, which cannot be seen such as a change in attitude.

Content marketing can be deep with regards to implementation and as a whole can have a lot of moving parts which have to work smoothly together. But fundamentally the technique is simple and straight forward. There is no need to overcomplicate things, unless of course your motivation is that you need to hide something.

Our content marketing, mastermind group is now taking applications for membership. You can read more on what a mastermind group is here, here and here.

I say applications because we are only inviting experienced content marketers to join and will reject applications if we think the group is not suitable for you. I realise that some people need more basic training, which will be addressed by future product launches.

Myself (Lyndon Antcliff) and Andrew Burnett have been in many such groups. I ran a content coaching group for many years with great success. We noticed there wasn’t currently anything like this available and quite a few people wanted our help but didn’t desire to book us for solo time, which can work out very expensive.

Sure there are free Facebook groups you can join, but the problem is the noise to signal ratio is very high and they tend to have members who whilst keen, are not experienced enough to help you and yet seem to spend masses of time on Facebook. Because our mastermind group is a paid group, we automatically increase the commitment of the members. Nobody is interested in just killing time.

Between us, Andrew and I have at least a couple of decades of experience in the space, working with and for a number of prestigious agencies, along with helping some of the biggest companies out there craft content and develop strategy. We also have spent lots of time helping and training others, learning about how to solve the different problems people in the space have.

You probably have a number of issues to deal with that are sensitive and cannot be talked about in an open forum, it may even be something you don’t want to talk about with your work colleagues. Having a place where you can go and talk to a trusted bunch of people with a proven track record, who care about solving your problems is of huge benefit.

And then there is trust. Something not talked about enough but of huge importance. You need to be able to have confidence in those who you share your problems with. You absolutely need to trust people with certain issues and sometimes you may not want to share everything with your work colleagues and it is good to have a place you can go to get honest and useful feedback.

People who I have trained in the past, know the power of such a group and the high ROI it can achieve. Many have gone to build highly profitable agencies and digital properties. I would love to help you do the same.
So, should you join or should you not?

As long as you fit the profile, that is up to you to decide.

If you know me, you already know how useful something like this is, go read more information on what it is we can offer you and let me know.