Posts tagged as:

content marketing

Ski Journalists’ Startup Shows Business the Way with Content Marketing

by Mark Nagurski

Last week we profiled an interesting startup on one of our sites, Iddictive.com – and although the company is a privately run enterprise it’s a perfect demonstration of exactly the kind of content that businesses could, and should, be producing online.

Founded by a couple of freelance ski journalists, SnowCarbon.co.uk encourages ski lovers to swap air travel for the greener option of rail travel – cutting carbon emissions ‘by up to 90%’ in the process.

“We’ve selected 30 of the best ski resorts that are convenient to reach by train from the UK. Click on the name of a resort to see a brief summary of the resort and sample train journey, plus a journey map and details of the carbon benefits of travelling by train.

Click on “Resort review” and you’ll find an independent review over 4 pages written by one of our team of leading ski journalists. To find journey details, times, tips and fares, click on the green button, “Journey details and prices”.

By bringing together useful reviews, simplifying the search and booking process and delivering a strong eco-friendly message, Snow Carbon provides the both kind of content that skiers want and the kind of content that is likely to encourage them to travel by train.

While taking nothing away from Snow Carbon itself, this is the kind of detailed, well-crafted, content-driven site that train companies and tour operators should be creating themselves – or incorporating into their existing sites.

Eurostar goes someway towards that with their Ski Train section but it lacks the depth, passion and enthusiasm that Snow Carbon offers.

In short, smart businesses need to start thinking like journalists just as much as freelance journalists need to start thinking like businesses. And if there are any smart ski companies out their, they should be speaking to the Snow Carbon guys before someone else does.

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What Bad Conference Speakers Can Teach You About Great Content Marketing

by Mark Nagurski

bad content can be life threatening We’ve all been there. You’re at an event, ready to be informed and enthralled by the upcoming speaker – only to spend the next half hour checking email on your iPhone or flipping through the conference brochure to see what time lunch is at.

The next time it happens to you, spend a few minutes thinking how the presentation might be improved and you’ll learn a lot about what makes great content – whether that’s public speaking, blog posts, ebooks or podcasts.

Your Content Shouldn’t Be About You

The worst kind of conference speakers are the ones that talk incessantly about themselves. You know the type, they spend half their time talking through their resumes or telling rubbish anecdotes and ‘in jokes’ designed for their buddies in the third row.

It doesn’t matter what format we’re talking about, people don’t really care about you. They care about themselves. In content terms, that means they want to know how something will apply to them, be motivated to change their businesses or daily lives and take away ideas, tips, strategies and techniques that they can use themselves.

By all means use your own experiences to illustrate your points or add a little personality and humour, but the focus of your content must be on delivering something useful, informative or simply entertaining to your audience.

Start by asking: ‘what do my audience want to know’ or ‘what information would make their lives / jobs easier’?

You Should Share Something of Value

Bad speakers talk in generalisations and cliches. They tell you things you already know and try to pass off well-worn ideas as unique wisdom. Good speakers have the ability to both paint the big picture and get down to the detail.

Just like a speaking engagement, producing content in any format is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge of your industry. This means tangible, detailed ideas that people can take away and use; combined with an understanding of the bigger picture and what’s happening in your industry.

And if your topic is all ‘big idea’ use examples and metaphors to make these ideas concrete.

You Need to Bring Your Content to Life

Sometimes a speaker can have interesting content but they deliver it in such a boring way that you struggle to keep your eyes open long enough to take it all in. The same can be true of any kind of content – from white-papers to video to blog posts.

Great speakers learn to use images, body language, multi-media presentations and, most importantly, enthusiasm to help bring their topics to life. How can you do the same with your content?

You Should Tailor Your Message to Your Audience

Bad speakers drag out the same presentations and tired jokes every time they speak. This might save them some time, but it certainly shows.

Great speakers know how to adapt their presentations for particular audiences. Some may need more detail, others less. Some may be experienced in an industry, others might be relative newbies. Some audiences might be technical, or business savvy, or interested in investing, or potential customers and clients, or …..

Knowing your audience is half the battle, adapting your content to give them what they want is the other half.

You Know Bad Content When You See It

It’s pretty easy to spot a bad conference speech when you hear it. There are no boos or heckles, but there aren’t very many questions or discussions after the fact either.

Great speakers create interest and while you may never set foot on a conference stage, you canout the same ideas to use in your own written, video or audio content.

Make it great and they’ll be clamouring for more.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons [1]

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7 Ways to Use Web Content in Your Business

by Mark Nagurski

What do you want your web content to do?

Web content is a pretty wide-ranging field, encompassing everything from on-site text and blog posts to whitepapers and videos. With so many practical outputs to be considered as part of a content strategy, the first question needs to be: what do I want my web content to do?

Unless you’re in it just for the laughs, this should be a business goal of some variety – although sometimes those goals will be delivered indirectly (i.e. raising your social media profile can lead to new sales enquiries, improved customer service etc…)

With that in mind, I decided to pick out 7 business goals that web content can help you achieve – and a brief note about how you might go about each. It’s not a complete list by any means but these 7 points do cover a lot of ground.

Get Found Online (SEO)

Search engines love great content – for two reasons. The first is pretty obvious – the text on your website can be indexed by search engines, so if it’s written with your keywords in mind, you’ll perform better in the rankings. But search engines also love lots of inbound links, and great content gives people something to link to: like cool videos, informative articles and useful resources.

Try: Text is still the number one choice for SEO. Use blog posts to keep it fresh and target your key search terms.
Fuel a Social Media Strategy

Social media is based on conversations – and conversations need to be about something. That something could be what you had for lunch but if you want to use social media for business then that something should be in some way business related. Creating great content provides that topic of conversation.

Try: Again, fresh content in the form of blog posts is a good idea – remember strong titles and sharable formats (like lists).
Attract New Prospects

There are quite a few websites out there. More than anyone could possibly visit in a lifetime. So to compete you need to give people reasons to visit your website rather than someone else’s (i.e. the competition). Education and entertainment both work well, so by creating informative and interesting content you give people reasons to visit your website and take the first step in becoming customers. And if you consistently produce good content you give them reasons to come back and start forming a relationship with you and your brand.

Try: Consider what kinds of information will make your prospects’ lives easier. Use a combination of simple formats (whitepapers, articles, detailed FAQs) alongside formats that allow for a little more entertainment value (infographics, video tutorials, audio interviews).
Demonstrate Your Expertise

Increasingly expertise is the competitive advantage that businesses are looking for – but finding ways to let your prospects know how smart you are is the tricky bit. Web content can play a big part in this process and give you the opportunity to put your smarts in front of the people who matter.

Try: People absorb information in different ways – deliver your content in a variety of formats and you stand a better chance of getting through.
Differentiate Your Business

Expertise can be a competitive advantage – but you still need to attract attention and set your business apart in order to get people to listen to you in the first place. So while most businesses continue producing standard websites which focus on design over content, putting content first can help you create a distinctive web presence, communicate your USP (see below) and show off a little personality.

Try: Be the first to try new media formats. Re-purposing text content into multimedia formats can give it a new lease of life.
Communicate More Effectively

Getting your point across can be hard enough at the best of times so picking the right communications tools can give you a massive head start. Some ideas are best communicated in text but others come across better visually, in motion, aurally, in diagrams or from a third party perspective. Using all the content tools in your arsenal can make a big difference to how well you communicate with your prospects, customers and the world at large.

Try: Pick formats on the basis of how well they communicate your ideas. If something would benefit from a visual example, use video or diagrams. If it’s better coming from someone else, use outside experts or case studies as content sources.
Create New Revenue Streams

And content can even be profitable in its own right. People will – and do – pay for online content all the time. Online training courses in particular are huge business, as are subscription-based membership resources, niche online publications and downloadable information products.

Try: Don’t be afraid to experiment with new business models online. If they are well-planned the investment needn’t be huge and you can often partner with others to deliver the concept. Online magazines, membership programs and elearning are all within the grasp of even the smallest organisations.

The great news is that even at this stage, if you’re considering how to best use web content for your business, you’re still way ahead of the game and have the chance to achieve considerable competitive advantage.

But it’s not going to stay that way for long.

Pics: Flickr Creative Commons [1] [2]

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