Hustle, Hustle, Hustle

I need to work harder. I have 11+ communities that I need to build around 11+ different topics. I don't have much idea how to do that, let alone doing it quickly, but that is what I need to do at work right now. The only idea I really have is to write. Write blog posts, write newsletters, write tweets, write Facebook status updates, you name it. Writing is what I do best and content marketing is what I know. I don't have any other solid ideas, and at least great content and content marketing has already been proven to work to build a community. It's just not something that gets done quickly. However, if you start and do it well, then it will work wonders in terms of building (and keeping) an active community.

I've Blogged About Recruiting and Have Never Worked in HR

I spent about nearly two years writing blog posts for the RPOA, a recruitment association that was a client of one my previous clients, Webbright Services. I never worked a day in the recruiting industry when I wrote my first blog post for them, and if I remember correctly, I seriously said that the fact my mother has over 10 years experience in human resources as part of my credentials. However, when you write weekly blog posts for a recruiting association that are based off of hours of webinars for recruiting professionals, you can learn quite a bit about recruiting in a short amount of time. It's not the only example from my career, but it's a gig that I enjoyed.

Perhaps that's just what I should do: watch a ton of videos and webinars about the topics I need to focus on and write blog posts based off of what I've watched and learned. I should do this every day and see how far I can go. I wish there were 11 days in a week, then it could be one topic for each day of the week. Alas, that is not  the case, so I'm probably going to have to shoot for writing multiple times per day to make magic happen.

Excellent, Original Content is a Rallying Cry

Sure, there are tons of people doing original content and who have something to say. Not all of it is great and not all of it eventually congregates people into a community around it. But, if you're one of the few who can write well and who has important, interesting things to say, then that's a competitive advantage that's for competitors to replicate. By the time the effort put original content yields results that turns heads, competitors are playing catch-up. The idea and hustle of original content is part of that "golden moment' I previously mentioned. If this is truly the moment I've been training for, then I need to work harder and better utilize the training that I have. That training is in content marketing, writing original content and in being a chameleon who can write well on nearly everything.

Original content and content marketing is also a golden opportunity because so few folks in my space are doing this well. They fill their blogs with a company announcement featuring the product's newest features and latest updates.

BORING!

Nobody cares. Nobody wants to read about what's new in version 4.1. How is that valuable to anyone except the company? Current customers don't care because what's new may not be anything they want or is relevant to them. After all, they were perfectly happy on the previous version and probably had no idea about an upcoming version or what was going to be in it. Too many folks have the misconception that the company blog (one of the best places for original content) is for current customers or should be about the company, when the company blog should be about potential customers and what they want to read about. The company blog is a fantastic way to pull people in, pull folks in who don't yet know about you.

Enough About Me and Enough about Writing Here

It's time to start writing elsewhere. My personal blog isn't the platform to be building those other communities that I need to build, although it makes great practice.

How to Ensure Originality in Your Content Marketing

Every Thursday, I will republish my best articles from Technorati.com. Since Technorati redesigned its website and is under new managements, tens of thousands of articles that were previously published on the site are no longer available. I have been given explicit permission to republish my work on my own website. If your biggest content marketing challenge is creating original content, then you're not alone. Almost 70% of B2B marketers said this was their biggest challenge, according to a B2B marketing trends survey from content curation platform Curata. The next two biggest challenges for B2B marketers were having the time to do it (65%) and finding high quality content (43%) to drive a content curation strategy.

As the use and importance of content marketing continues to rise, there's added pressure on content creators to come up with new and original content regularly. Duplicate content isn't cool, but creating original content can be a challenge when you are covering some of the same topics over and over again. So, just how do you ensure originality in your content marketing without resorting to copying or running out of ideas? Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Involve More People in Your Content Marketing Process - If you have only one person writing for your blog, then creating original content is going to be a huge challenge. One person can only do so much. When it comes to your business blog, allow employees from sales and customer service to contribute as well. These folks have insight into customer questions and pain point, and can offer something incredibly valuable to the blog, something that your original blogger could have missed. For other forms of content marketing, involve a team or maybe outsource a project or two to a content marketing firm. A fresh perspective could be all it takes to get the original content you've been craving.
2. Don't Rely So Much on Copyscape - Too many people think Copyscape is the magic wand to finding original content and to banishing those plagiarists. However, Copyscape is not a silver bullet. First of all, simply rewriting something into your own words doesn't absolve the crime of plagiarism. Think of this as putting someone's book or academic report into your own words, and then putting your name on it without giving credit to the original author. The ideas aren't your own, and without proper citation, even the rewrite is still plagiarism despite passing Copyscape. Second, there are things that ought to be cited and be verbatim in content, such as a quote, a definition, a set of statistics, a phone number, and a book title. This is where human judgement comes in, as rewriting these things may make your content less powerful, not more. Third, Google hates duplicate content, but an entire article that's copied and pasted is very different from including a quote or an excerpt of someone's book or blog post. Original content is much more than having unique text. It's about having unique ideas while being able to give credit where credit is due.
3. Conduct Your Own Research - A great way to be original is to conduct your own research with a survey or analysis of data, and then to report the findings. This method may take a while, but the goal is to find something new and to have a lot to write about, more than just a single blog post or white paper.
4. Update/Repackage Current Content - No one says that once you publish something, that's it. Get more mileage from your content by updating the information, or repackaging the content. For example, if you've written 20 blog posts about anti-virus software, then take those 20 posts and turn it into a guide or an eBook about anti-virus software. You can make this original by adding an author page and an introduction in the beginning, a description of your company at the end, and updating any statistics you used in the posts. Okay, you've technically copied yourself, but you own that content. No one's going to ding you for that.

Social Marketing Tactics Balance Customer Attraction, Retention

Every Thursday, I will republish my best articles from Technorati.com. Since Technorati redesigned its website and is under new managements, tens of thousands of articles that were previously published on the site are no longer available. I have been given explicit permission to republish my work on my own website. Websites, blogs, and social media marketing strike the best balance between customer attraction and retention, according to an October 2012 survey from Constant Contact. In its survey of over 1,000 small businesses, the small business marketing firm also found that the tactics least effective at striking the balance were daily deals and online ads. This balance is critical as small businesses need to use their marketing dollars wisely, and if certain tactics can do both, then that's better for the business.

So, just how can small businesses better use websites, blogs, and social media better? What can be done so that customer attraction and retention rates improve by using these tactics, and using them more effectively? Here's how to master these tactics to do just that:

Blog and Post Regularly

Obviously, if you're only blogging and tweeting once a month, you can't expect these tactics to attract and retain customers. You're not doing it enough for anyone to notice. With social media, you should be posting/tweeting/updating at least once a day. With blogging, you should be publishing at least one post per week. With your website, you should work on adding more pages to it at least once a month. When you are employing your tactics often enough (but not so often that you overwhelm people or that your quality suffers), people will take notice of what you are doing and what you have to say. Only then, will you be able to attract and to retain customers.

Create Content with Your Customers in Mind

If all you're talking about is your company's products/services, this award you won, this event you attended, and how great your company is, then these tactics won't retain and attract as many customers as you want. The reason is that your customers don't care about any of those things. They really don't. They care about whatever problem they have and how to solve it. They care about working with a brand that knows what it's doing. They care about spending their money on a solution that will work. Since that's what they care about, that's what you need to talk about in your website, blog, or social media update. Talk about their problems and pain points, and how to solve them. Talk about your industry, where its going, and offer best practices for doing X and Y in your industry. Talk about solutions that work, and what customers ought to spend on such solutions (Yes, be the brand that reveals the number). These people will thank you for it by becoming a customer and encouraging others to become customers.

Connect the Three

Do not operate your website, blog, and social media in three separate silos! Connect the three of them with links as well as a comprehensive strategy. For example, your blog should be easily accessibly through your website, preferably through its own link in the header navigation bar. This is a mistake many small businesses make, as they either aren't connected at all or the only link is in the footer navigation bar. An extra step you can take is to include your blog feed right on the home page, so visitors can also peruse specific articles. Social media should be as accessible from your website, and your blog should include social sharing buttons with each post. On the flip side, use social media to promote your blog posts and your webpages.

As for a comprehensive strategy, think about the strengths of each tactic individually and consider how to use them in a marketing campaign, for example. If you have a new fill-in-the-blank that you want to generate buzz about, use all three to their strengths to generate that buzz. With your blog, do a post that reveals just a piece of the fill-in-the-blank, including a call to action to download, or to register, or to buy, or whatever the proper action is. Your website should have a new page dedicated to the fill-in-the-blank, which can easily be shared on social media or promoted on the home page. Your blog post should also include a link to this page. Social media should be used to drive traffic to both pages, with an even smaller piece revealed to entice clicks.

Keep in mind that, "we have a new fill-in-the-blank! Click here to check it out," is neither enticing, nor revealing. It doesn't give any reason to check it out. This is an example of the talking about yourself problem that we discussed. It emphasizes you and the new thing too much without showcasing what's in it for the visitor or customers.

How Do You Define Quality Content?

And is more quality necessarily better or desired?

This is a question that I struggle with every time I have to work with Zerys, or that I think about having to work with Zerys. Zerys is a project management tool designed specifically for content projects, with a built-in marketplace of thousands of professional writers. There's some great writers on Zerys, and out there in general, but it seems that for every great writer there's at least one horrible writer competing against them, wanting to do work for me but really just making me incredibly frustrated (I could do a whole post on the stupid things these people write and expect to get paid for).

But, they somehow got into the system, which makes me wonder about this idea of "quality content". When it comes to the content that's needed for content marketing projects, you of course want stuff that's quality. But, I do think that part of the definition of quality is something that's just good enough to engage the reader and to accomplish the marketing goal. I also think that quality content should include formatting, such as subtitles, bullet points, numbered lists etc. There aren't enough writers (and even clients) out there who understand how these small things bring great value to a blog article or a web page.

Quality is Objective, To a Point

Everyone can agree that quality content doesn't have any spelling or grammatical errors. Quality content makes strong arguments and backs those arguments well. Quality content is easy to read and doesn't have awkward phrasing. After that, quality is subjective. Things like tone, length, and perspective, and what's preferred, differ from person to person. Those things change depending on the comment format and the specific marketing goal. The objective parts of quality have no excuses. Those parts can be fixed and improved upon as you practice writing and as you revise. The subjective parts needs to be known before you even start writing, as they can make a huge difference in what needs to be written and how. An article that's meant to inform will need to be written differently from one that's meant to persuade.

I bring this up because one of the most common complaints I get from potential clients about my writing is that "it's not the style we wanted" or "prefer a different style."

I don't know what that means.

If you do, please explain it to me. "Style" can mean a whole range of things while meaning nothing at all. Style includes diction, sentence structure, organizational structure, and writing goal (to inform, persuade, or entertain). It could also be a euphemism for, "I didn't like it." The latter is at least somewhat constructive criticism that I could work with and think about with my current clients and with my next new client. I can't do anything with, "prefer a different style." On the one hand, style is relatively easy to fix. I just need to know the style that's preferred. On the other hand, I also suspect that those clients don't really know what style they want, and because they don't know what they want, they can't take the time and to work with me to improve or to do better.

You Don't Need Hemingway to Do Your Blog

Even if Hemingway was alive and available, I'm really not sure how many people would jump at the opportunity to have him write the blog. He probably doesn't have the right style, or wouldn't end every blog post with a call-to-action to call the company, and certainly wouldn't care enough about keyword density. Somehow, I think that some would argue it's too much quality or not the right kind of quality.