my 2 cents

Content Marketing Creates Opportunities for PR and Journalists

 

It's all about content now.

With social media opening new ways for marketers to reach out and connect with consumers directly, a key to effective social media outreach becomes the content itself.  Self-serving hard-sell material doesn't seem to be what works best on social media platforms. 

For content marketing to work, what marketers put out there -- regardless whether on digital platforms or via traditional media -- must draw people in and keep them coming back for more.  To do that, the material being offered needs to be interesting and relevant to the intended audience, and not simply a blatant sales pitch.  The "sales" part of it will kick in by gradually getting the audience to trust your brand and rely on it for good information.

It's the type of writing that Public Relations people are trained to do.  It mixes journalism and marketing, with the selling part very subtle, if there at all. 

The increasing focus on content marketing is creating new opportunities for PR agencies, freelancers and laid-off journalists. 

It's a whole new world.

 

Image:  Forbes Magazine

Content Marketing Challenges

 

A new survey from my friends at MarketingProfs, where I'm a contributing writer, shows most B2C marketers now use content marketing, even as they continue to be challenged by determining the effectiveness of their efforts. 

Eighty-six percent said they are now using various forms of content marketing to reach consumers.

Social media and websites are the most commonly-used platforms, with 84% of respondents saying they utilize them.  E-newsletters follow close behind, with 78% and online videos and blogs round out the top five at 70% and 69% respectively.

Content marketing is here to stay, but the biggest challenge, after "lack of sufficient budget," is producing enough content and creating content that engages the target audience. Just having content out there doesn't do much good if it doesn't get read or doesn't move people to take some form of action.

That's where good PR people (note, I said "good") should be utilized by marketers.  It's always been a role of PR practitioners to take marketing messages and craft them into engaging content.  That's what we do when we draft a news release or a feature article or a speech.  When we pitch a story or segment idea, or when we script a video or write a blog post or newsletter, we've got to make it interesting enough to get read or viewed and compelling enough to help create a desired response -- buying a product or service, understanding or agreeing with a position on a issue.

PR people are trained or learn from experience to walk the fine line between the blatant, hardcore sales messages of advertising and informative unbiased journalism.  It's that combination, leaning a bit toward the unbiased journalism part of the equation, that enables PR results to have a credibility that advertising usually just doesn't achieve.

So it makes sense that the PR function should be involved in the content marketing task.  It should, of course, be a collaborative effort, coordinating with marketing, advertising and sales.  But PR should be given a very strong, if not decisive, voice in the process to ensure the content in content marketing doesn't get diluted to the point of ineffectiveness by the other marketing and management disciplines.

It will take an enlightened and trusting top management to put such a structure into place and enforce it, but it should pay off in terms of producing and disseminating solid content that attracts attention and engages in an effective way.

 

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An Ongoing Marketing Challenge: Harnessing Social Media

 

Marketers have long recognized the tremendous opportunities presented by social media.  In theory, it can enable them to laser-target their messages, be timely and engage in almost a one-on-one relationship with customers and prospects.

In theory... that's the key phrase that's been tricky for so many marketers to get past.  Theory doesn't always seem to match up with reality.

This is proven by a recent survey of consumers in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France and Germany.  It shows that 65% of respondents said they would stop using a brand if it annoyed them on a social media site. Forty percent said they would be annoyed by receiving messages from a brand they haven’t followed. And even among those who follow a brand, only 48% said they felt positive about receiving marketing messages.  That means more than half don't want to be bothered by blatant marketing messages.

The survey bears out what we already suspected, that social media is a good and accepted source of word-of-mouth recommendations.  Sixty-eight percent of consumers say they've investigated a product recommended by friend online, and 15% actually made a purchase based on an online recommendation.

The challenge for marketers is how to engage and get across marketing information without turning people off online.  We've come to accept ads and other marketing messages on many media platforms like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, and even online sites like YouTube and Vimeo, where we've learned to sit through the 15-second pre-roll ad before we can see the video we really clicked to see.

But social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have a more personal feel to them, where an ad or marketing message can feel like an unwelcome intrusion ... almost an invasion of privacy. 

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution to this challenge, but some marketers might be able to overcome possible negative feelings if they carefully -- very carefully -- temper what they say and how often they say it via social media.  The trick is to provide useful information --useful to your consumer, not necessarily useful to you the marketer.  And do it only when it's really appropriate.  Too much can be a turnoff, even to loyal customers.  At first, it can be just an annoyance.  But keep peppering people with messages and they may eventually "unfollow" or "unlike you." 

Each marketer must find the mix of messages and frequency that works for their customers -- emphasis is on "works for their customers" and not on what works for the marketer.  It's a slippery slope, for sure, and it's not for everyone.

 

 

 

social media is a popular source of word-of-mouth recommendations, with 68%  of consumers saying they had investigated a product recommended by friend online, and 15% actually making a purchase based on an online recommendation.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/187775/consumers-punish-brands-which-annoy-them-on-social.html#ixzz2D448cajc

found 65% of respondents said they would stop using a brand if it annoyed them on a social media site. Forty percent of consumers said they would be annoyed by receiving messages from a brand they haven’t followed . And, even when they’ve followed the brand, only 48% said they felt positive about receiving marketing messages.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/187775/consumers-punish-brands-which-annoy-them-on-social.html#ixzz2D43C8LwY

found 65% of respondents said they would stop using a brand if it annoyed them on a social media site. Forty percent of consumers said they would be annoyed by receiving messages from a brand they haven’t followed . And, even when they’ve followed the brand, only 48% said they felt positive about receiving marketing messages.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/187775/consumers-punish-brands-which-annoy-them-on-social.html#ixzz2D43C8LwY

 

Millennials and the News

 

 

MediaPost reported on a survey they conducted which asked Millennials (ages 14 - 34) how they access the news.  The results are interesting.

TV is still tops with young people, with 73 percent saying they rely on TV to keep up with the news.

A close second, which shouldn't be surprising, is Facebook, with 67 percent saying they regularly check FB to see what's happening.  Twitter keeps about a third of young people informed, the survey found.

The survey didn't differentiate whether those who rely on social media follow the FB pages and tweets of legitimate news sources, or if they rely on links, re-tweets or paraphrasing from their social media "friends."  Where they get their news on FB or Twitter can make a difference in the accuracy of what they're seeing, and that should be of concern.  We know how easy it is to manipulate what gets re-posted.

While social media enables us to select our own news content based on our interests and those of our friends, it also risks giving us a narrowly-focussed slant on what's happening in the world.

Watch TV news or thumb through a newspaper and you'll, hopefully, get a broad view of what's going on.  Or, at least, it's there if you want it.

So while it's great that young people want to know what's happening in the news, it's important that they get their information from sources that provide a broad and reliable perspective.  FB and Twitter may not always be the best sources for that broad and reliable view.

 

Other Voices: Seasonal-themed Facebook Campaign

We open this space from time to time to others, to get a variety of ideas and views.  This post is written by Stan Johnson, who works as a freelance writer for Qwaya, a Facebook ad manager tool.  She writes about social media trends and strategies.

 

People who use Facebook for business realize that one of the good things about this medium is that you can constantly change your page based on any number of factors. Just using the calendar as a reference, you could find hundreds of different occasions to change to a new theme.  On a big holiday like Halloween, you might want to attract more fans by creating a themed page, post or app.

Sears, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Progressive Insurance and a wide assortment of other brands have used a Halloween theme, and they’ve all proven very popular.

Here are some tips that may help you theme your FB page for Halloween.

Find True Seasonal Influence

Focus less on the technical history of the holiday and more on what it’s become in the land of commercialization. Halloween not only means dressing up, candy and spooky creatures, but also encompasses more adult-based activities like parties and food and cocktail recipes. So you have an incredibly wide range of influences to select from. Don’t settle on something as overused as a vampire or zombie (unless you can add your creativity to it); draw your Halloween influence from a unique corner of the genre and work to create an exclusive theme.

Give Technology a Whirl

Some of the best themes out there use technology via applications. For instance, an app that allowed for regular pictures to be turned into zombies was big for one company, while a game full of pumpkins was big for another. Don’t be afraid to let your creativity shine through with the use of technology. Apps are easy to create, and delivering something Halloween-based can put you on par with the big players.

Research the Competition

You want to ensure that you use parity, not plagiarism. Look at your competition, direct and indirect, to see what they’re doing.  While you can use them for inspiration while also referencing their methods, avoid copying anything directly. If they’re using a regular post, make an app. If they have a cool way to encourage sign-ups, do them one better and offer more incentive.

Don’t Scare People Away

There’s a side of Halloween that’s very dark. Unless you’re catering to this niche in some fashion, try to avoid that side of the season and air more on the side of whimsical. You can still go a bit gruesome while keeping it wholesome. You’ll just have to focus more on caricatures than characters. Whether it’s Facebook ads, a page post, a download app, etc, keep it light. You don’t want to go to the dark side and alienate your base. People-friendly images, videos and apps. That’s what you want.

Creating a themed page can be quite easy or it can be very difficult. It all depends on how you personally approach the subject. For Halloween, remember to find your influence while keeping things original and playful. Appeal to a mass audience during this season.

 

 

 

Text Overload

I saw a news report this morning that said the typical teen sends and receives some 3,800 texts every month.  3,800 texts!!

But when you break it down, what seems like an enormous number starts to feel a bit more reasonable -- about 126 texts a day.  That's still a lot, but not outrageous.  It's in the range of how many emails I get on a typical work day.

I remember back several years ago, when I got a new cellphone that had texting capabilities.  Why would I ever want to text, I thought at the time.  Then I saw how helpful texting could be.  I was meeting a friend after work at a music club downtown, and she was late.  I happened to glance at my phone and I noticed I had a text message.  Up to this point, the only texts I ever received were from AT&T Wireless giving me an update on my cellular account and from one other friend who had been trying to prod me into the 21st century.  But here was a text from my friend saying she was in the cab and would be there in 5 minutes.

Amazing!  I didn't have email capability on that old phone, and even if I did, I might not have been checking emails.  But the text popped up on the screen, giving me the information I needed.

I gradually began texting, at first mostly in reply to someone else's texts to me.  But now I'm a bonafide texter (never when behind  the wheel, of course) and texts are my primary means of communication with some people.  If I call or email my son, it could take 3 - 4 days or more to get a response.  Send him a text and I almost always get a prompt repsonse.  It's the same with many other people I know.

In a client meeting last week, I got a text.  Turns out, it was from the person sitting across the table from me, sending me a private comment on the discussion taking place in front of us. 

So now, although I'm a long long way from the teen average of 126 texts a day, I get several texts daily.  Thankfully, I'm still quite a distance from text overload.

 

Weekend Thoughts: Sharing

One of the great things about social media is the ability it gives us to share our thoughts and opinions with many people at once. 

Have good news?  Throw it up on Facebook and all your friends can know about it instantly.  Got a cute photo of your kid or grandkid... or your dog?  Share it with everyone on Facebook and Instagram.

Got an opinion about something in the news headlines?  Send an email to dozens of your friends and business associates.

How great, right?  But here's where I'm going to don my "grump" hat.

Sharing opinions via a mass email is ok, but NOT when the sender includes everyone's email address.  Here's what often happens... and I'm sure this will sound familiar to you.

Joe sends out an email blast to four dozen people with cute dog pictures.  Because of all the pix attached, the email is 8MB and almost fills my email Inbox, the same Inbox that I rely on for work-related messages.  So I have to open it and, possibly, scroll down quickly to look at the pictures, and then delete the whole message.  To be polite, I'll probably send areply email to Joe saying something like "How cute!"

But if the sender has included everyone's email address in the "Send to" box, here';s where the problem begins.  Sally, who I don't know, sends Joe a note saying how cute the pictures are.  But she hits "Reply to all" so I get an email from her.  And then Bill sends a similar note, along with his own cute photos.  And he too hits "Reply to all."  There's back & forth with another dozen innocuous emails, almost all from people I don't really know.  

The process has added a dozen emails to my Inbox, which already gets, on a typical workday, anywhere from 150 to 200 messages.  So it means more stuff I have to open and delete.  

That's frustrating enough, but it really gets bad during a political season.  It's been especially bad this season, with people seemingly strongly polarized eitherred or blue.  I rarely try to sway others to my way of thinking via email, but some people I know (and some I hardly know) think an email -- whether originated by them or forwarded by them -- will convince me that President Obama was born in Kenya or that all the troubles in the world today have been caused by the current Administration.

A friend recently included me in a mass email she sent encouraging support for Obama.  She made the mistake of including all the email addresses in the "To" line.  There was some back & forth -- all of it going to everyone on the list.  Finally, when someone who disagreed with my friend sent an email that had to be more than 1,000 words long, I decided I'd had enough.  I asked my friend's friend to please take me off her reply list.  She did and she apologized.

But how much time and aggravation could be saved if people sharing by email would simply hide the mailing list as a bcc.  Please.

In News, First Isn't Always Best

 

 

"I'd rather be behind and right than ahead and wrong."

So said Associated Press executive editor Kathleen Carroll in a story in this week's ADWEEK. 

The article takes an in-depth look at the ever-growing pressure on media to be first to break news.  That pressure, which has been heightened exponentially by online and social media that can pump out breaking news in a single tweet or email blast, has caused erroneous information to be quickly spread.  And sometimes that wrong information gets picked up by major news organizations that usually have a very high credibility reputation -- The New York Times, CNN, NPR, FOX News (well, sort of) and others.

It takes time to verify information, and editors must feel tremendous pressure to jump onto the bandwagon as news of Michael Jackson's or Joe Paterno's death, or whether Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was killed or not in the Tucson shootings runs wild online.  No one likes to be last.  But quality newsrooms don't want to be wrong.

Many people subscribe to the idea that just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true.  It used to be that many of those doubters relied on mainstream news -- newspapers, network TV, radio -- to verify breaking news items we'd see online and in social media. 

But since some of those rumors that swirl about online have crept into news reports on mainstream media, it seems the public is losing confidence in the news media overall.  The Gallup poll from last summer had 66 percent of Americans feeling the media reports stories that "are often inaccurate."    That's up from 34 percent who felt that way 25 years ago. 

Despite the growing lack of trust, many still rely on major news organizations when they want to find out what is really going on.  But they probably won't get to those news organizations via the traditional route -- opening a newspaper or tuning in to CNN or a network or local TV channel.  As more of us have smartphones and tablets, we look for news online.  But still, when we want to know for sure what is happening, we'll use our portable device to link into the website of The New York Times or CNN or NBC.  Because we still trust those old-line news organizations to be reliable and get the story right -- even if they're not the fastest.

Adweek quotes Julie Moss, director of Poynter Online -- a site for journalists -- about the choice news organizations make between being first and being right.  "I actually do believe it matters less and less who's first with something, particularly when you have two or more people reporting on the same thing.  What matters is originality. I assume that in most cases, we will get beat."

Maybe so, although if you're second on a story but you get it right, then I'd say you've won.  You've won the public's trust.

 

You can't always believe the headlines

 

"Social Falls Short on Customer Loyalty; Traditional Methods Encouraged"

That headline in a MediaPost story this week caught my eye.  It flies in the face of all the hype we've been hearing about the wonders of social media.

The study, which surveyed 5,000 people in the U.S. and western Europe, found that only 18 percent of the respondents felt that their interaction with a large company or its brands via social media would encourage them to buy from that company again.  The number slipped down to 15 percent for social media interaction with smaller businesses like local retailers. 

The report says social media appears to be one of the least effective means of encouraging customer loyalty and other techniques that are more likely to resonate with consumers should get priority attention and budgeting from marketers and retailers.  The other techniques mentioned include a home delivery option, control of channels and frequency of communications received from a company, and a choice of ways to contact the company with questions or problems.

With all the talk about how impactful social media can be when connecting consumers with a company or brand, the survey begs a few questions.  

First, could the survey simply be wrong?  Might the questions asked have been leading, tilting toward desired responses?  The other question is who commissioned the survey and what might they have to gain from a particular set of findings?

Aha!  That might be the problem with this survey.  It was done for Pitney Bowes, whose mailing equipment products like postage meters are threatened by a reduction in pieces going via the U.S, mail as more promotional pieces and even billing is done electronically via email and other digital platforms.

"Sophisticated social media and Web interaction can be time-consuming and expensive and outcomes are difficult to measure," says the report. 

So would our friends at Pitney Bowes have us stay locked into our old methods of interaction, and ignore or avoid new technology?  

I think many marketers and their agencies are getting it right as they experiment with social media and other forms of digital communication, while looking for ways to measure and determine the ROI on the new opportunities that the Web afford us.

We also need to show a healthy skepticism when we see surveys, asking who conducted or who paid for the research, and what might they have to lose or gain by its findings?

# 500

 

This is my 500th post at my 2 cents.  Who would've thought?

I remember when I began to blog, nearly five years ago.  My friend CK (Christina Kerley), who got me started, had been an active blogger for well over a year, even though I had told her at first that she was wasting her time.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

So here I am... 500 posts and nearly 2,000 comments later.  Comments have come from people I know, from many I don't know and from some who I've come to know online and in person.  Comments have been from people throughout the U.S. and Canada, and from Europe, Australia, Asia, India, the Middle East and South America.  None yet from Africa or Antarctica, but you never know.

What I had called a waste of time when CK began has turned out to be a rewarding activity, in so many ways.  Blogging has encouraged me to look at things a bit more closely.  It's brought me several new friends who I sometimes engage with offline or even in person.  It's brought me some business, although that was not the reason I began to blog.

About a year after I began my blog, I was fortunate to participate in the Blogger Social, which was held here in New York.  More than a hundred people I had been communicating with online gathered to meet face-to-face and get to know each other.  I met friends from as far away as Australia and Oman and as close as nearby towns in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

A series of comments by Australian Gavin Heaton on a post by Des Moines' Drew McLellan led to a collaboration by 100 bloggers worldwide, and a book called Age of Conversation. I am proud to have been a part of that and the two succeeding volumes.  In addition to bringing together more than 200 of us who contributed chapters to the books, it also raised upwards of $15,000 for some worthwhile international charities.

Some of the bloggers who were active when I began have since stopped or migrated to other social media platforms.  I'm on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and a few others, but I still enjoy writing my blog most.  I'm not confined to 140 characters, first of all, and, OMG, I don't have to write in shorthand.

So I hope you'll stay with me here and maybe, with some luck, we can celebrate 1,000 posts together.

Thanks for all the comments and encouragement and, most of all, thanks for reading and letting me pass along my 2 cents.

David