MackCollier.com

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How Twitch Streamers Are Taking Repurposing Content to the Next Level

Repurposing content means to get multiple uses out of one piece of content. For instance, it could mean writing a long blog post, then repurposing that blog post into a white paper, or a podcast episode, or an infographic. Repurposing content is especially important for companies with a smaller content team, where every piece of content needs to achieve maximum results.

For the last couple years, I’ve been watching how streamers on Twitch are building their communities. It’s been fascinating to watch these streamers leverage smart marketing tactics to create and build engagement around their streams. In fact, they really aren’t calling themselves ‘streamers’ anymore, they are now ‘content creators’. Whatever you call them, they are smart, and there’s a lot you can learn about how they are building their channels and brands, that you can apply to your own company’s content strategy.

For example, I recently started watching one streamer, excuse me…content creator, called NickMercs on Twitch. Basically, here’s what Nick does; He plays video games on Twitch most every day for about 8-10 hours a day.  So he has 8-10 hours a day of content he has created. He then takes that content, and distills it down to about 15-20 mins of the ‘best’ content (think of it as a highlight reel), then creates a new video from that content, and posts it on YouTube. Typically, the videos he posts on YouTube get 300,000-400,000 views in the first 24 hours!

This is a wonderful example of the power of repurposing content. Nick is able to monetize his Twitch content, then he takes that content and repurposes it as a shorter video for YouTube, and he can make ad revenue off it as well. So in essence, he’s found a way to monetize the same content, twice.

Now I can already hear many of you asking “That’s great, but you’re talking video games on Twitch and YouTube. How does that relate to my business and my content?”

You’re right, the odds are your business can’t create a video a day for YouTube that gets a few hundred thousand views. But what you can do is learn from what’s working for Nickmercs, and apply it to your own content creation efforts.

Nick is doing two things with his content that your business can and should replicate:

1 – He’s creating content for his audience where they are. The primary age group for Twitch viewers is around 18-24 years old and mostly male. This same audience that watches Twitch channels will often consume similar content on YouTube. So by taking his Twitch content and repurposing it into shorter YouTube videos, he’s getting a chance to reach a similar audience, but on a different platform. This is a smart content play, because if the people that watch his videos on YouTube enjoy them, he has a great chance to convert them into viewers of his Twitch channel.

You can do the same thing for your content. Whatever industry or space your content serves, there’s bound to be at least 2-3 main sites where your audience goes to get its content from. Think about how you could take your content and use it in multiple ways to reach a similar audience on different platforms. For instance, let’s say you’ve identified that your audience wants to consume content from blogs, and Twitter. You could post informative content on your blog, then turn around and have a Twitter chat around the same topic on Twitter. The end result is that one form of content helps promote and push people toward the other form of content.

2 – He’s customizing the content for each platform. On Twitch, Nick’s streams can last for several hours. But most people won’t watch an 8-hour stream on YouTube, in fact it may not even be possible to republish the Twitch stream on YouTube due to Twitch’s TOS. So what Nick does is, he changes the content from Twitch to make it more in line with what the YouTube audience wants.  He takes an 8 hour stream, and cherry-picks the ‘highlights’ or best plays, and condenses it down to a 20-min video, and posts that on YouTube. This results in content that’s better suited for YouTube, plus the content itself promotes Nick and the content he creates on Twitch. He is able to not only monetize the videos on YouTube, but he uses them to drive the YouTube audience back to his Twitch stream, and hopefully convert them to viewers or subscribers there.

Now if you think about what Nick did here, he basically took long-form content (his Twitch stream), and condensed it down and shared the ‘highlights’ as a YouTube video. So he got two very effective pieces of content from one. I like this idea of taking ‘highlights’ from your content and using that as new content or to promote other content. Think about the applications; You could take a series of blog posts about the same topic and condense them into a shorter white paper, and offer that as a freebie to newsletter subscribers. Speaking of your newsletter, you could publish an issue where you give pull quotes or highlights from multiple blog posts as a way to incite subscribers to read your blog. You could use those same pull quotes to promote the posts when you share them on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The end result for Nick is two standalone pieces of content that he can very effectively monetize, but that also work well together as one serves as promotion for the other. When you are looking at your own content, think about how you could take your long-form content and break it down into smaller pieces of new content, focuses on your ‘highlights’ or best content, and how could that content be used to build an audience for your business, but also push that audience back to your long-form content.

Now, speaking of pushing back to long-form content. There is one thing about Nick’s content strategy that I don’t like. Notice that in this example, the content he is creating and repurposing is going on two platforms that he does not own. I would much rather see the main content be on a platform that Nick owns, like a website, but I do understand that Twitch as a streaming platform is currently a much better alternative than any tech that Nick or another streamer could use on their own site. But the thing I’m always stressing to clients is to own the platforms where your content lives. Too many businesses even in 2020 feel that they don’t need a website as long as they have a brand page on Facebook.

Own your platform, own the experience. Then when the day comes that Facebook and even Twitch goes away, you’ll be ok cause you’ll still have your own platform where you can create all the content you want.

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Don’t Sweat the Technique: The Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion

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For most of us, we write a new blog post, then maybe we share it on Twitter and Facebook, and hope for the best.  We tell ourselves that ‘good content will find an audience.’

But is that really true?  Can we realistically expect to spend 30 mins writing a blog post that becomes a masterpiece just because we publish it?  Or do we need a more robust strategy to give our content a fighting chance to be seen among all the other millions of pieces of digital content that are being created right now?

I would say that we do, and I think we can take a lot of inspiration from how rock stars create and market their new music.  Let’s look at the creation process and then the promotional process:

Step One: Writing the songs

This is where the rock star gets the basic idea for the song down on paper.  The lyrics, the chorus, the title.  None of this is finalized, it’s sort of a rough draft of what the song could be.  The songwriter is telling a story and while the fine details may need to be ironed out, the basic idea is there. This is very similar to you writing a draft for your blog post.  You might want to revisit that draft and refine it, but you have the general idea down for your post and the point you want to make.  If you need advice on how to write an awesome blog post, here’s my 2,000 word guide on how to do so.

Step Two: Recording and producing the song

Now at this point many bloggers feel their post is finished, and they will publish it.  But rock stars take their song, and give it to a producer.  That producer will then consult with the rock star on the song’s arrangement and musical elements and how they can compliment the lyrics of the song.  This would be very similar to a blogger handing her post over to an editor to review it before publishing.  If the rock star works with a stellar producer, the end result will be a much better song, just as when you let an excellent editor review your post, it will be improved.

But again, most bloggers skip this step and never let their posts be edited or reviewed.  This might not be as big of a deal for a seasoned blogger that can self-edit, but for the new blogger especially, it helps to have a trained set of eyes reviewing your content.  One of the key areas where bloggers short-change themselves is on the post’s headline.  Headlines are an art for bloggers and songwriters.  John Denver’s iconic song Leavin’ on a Jet Plane was originally released as ‘Babe I Hate to Go’.  His new manager listened to the song and recommended the change based on what the song was actually about. Many bloggers have the same issue, they summarize the post with the headline instead of actually telling readers what its about.  Here’s some tips on improving your headline writing.  Headlines are insanely important, so are the visual elements of your post; the picture you use to accompany the post, any videos you choose.  Sweat the details.

Step Three: Promoting the song and helping it find an audience

Now for the average blogger, this means sending out a tweet on Twitter, an update on Facebook, and hoping for the best  Rock stars do this as well, but they also actively court radio stations to play their songs.  Rock stars know that radio play is wonderful exposure for their music.  You can do the same thing by actively courting friends and fellow bloggers to promote your content.  You can also greatly improve your chance of having other bloggers promote your content if you do two things:  First is actively promote their content.  If you are already promoting my content and you ask me to promote yours, odds are I will unless your content is a complete mis-match for my brand.  Second, selectively ask bloggers to promote content that they would be interested in.  Don’t ask me to promote your new blog post on how to grow an organic garden.  But do ask me to promote your new post on launching a brand advocacy effort at your company.

BONUS: Social media isn’t just Twitter and Facebook anymore.  Social media savvy artists are leveraging multiple tools online, a blog, Twitter Facebook but also Instagram (big hit with artists and fans) and YouTube.  The point is to hustle.

Step Four: Promotion leads to hit songs and that leads to concerts and appearances

As a rock stars’ new music is promoted, some of those songs will find a large audience and become popular.  One hit song can take a band playing local clubs and turn them into an international star.  As rock stars start to create hit songs, their fanbases grow and spread.  So connecting directly with them via concerts and appearances makes good sense.

You can do the same thing with your blog posts that become popular.  Let’s say you write a blog post “5 Tips For Marketers That Want to Crush It On YouTube Today”, that ends up being incredibly popular.  The popularity of that post makes you more marketable.  You can reach out to twitter chats and ask to co-host, I bet the #YouTubeMarketing twitter chat (if such a thing exists) would love to have you co-host to discuss the tips from your post.  Also, reach out to bloggers and ask to write a guest post on YouTube marketing tips.  Remind them of how popular your post was and they will probably be interested as you have already proven that your topic resonates with readers. All of this means more exposure for you and your content.

Step Five: Rock stars take their biggest hits and create a Greatest Hits album

There’s a lot of talk about ‘re-imaging’ content these days, but rock stars have always done this.  They take their most popular music and use it in as many ways as possible.  One example is how rock stars that have had a successful career will sell a Greatest Hits album.  This gives fans new and old a way to get most of the rock star’s biggest hits and most popular songs, all on one album.

Now at this point, it’s time to take a step back for a second.  A week or so ago I was watching a PBS documentary on John Denver.  Denver had a pretty long musical career, from about 1969 to 1984 or so.  About 15 years, and for the majority of the 1970s, he was one of the biggest musical stars on the planet.

But as I was watching this documentary, I realized that I could only really recall 2-3 hit songs of Denver’s.  Rocky Mountain High, Take Me Home Country Roads, and maybe Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.  Sure, there were a few others and diehard John Denver fans are already rattling off several other songs, but for the casual John Denver fan, that 15 year career resulted in maybe 3-5 songs that were memorable.

Think about that for a minute.  Even truly successful rock stars only have a handful of big hits over their entire careers.  Now think about your favorite blogger.  Name your favorite 3-5 posts from your favorite blogger.  Hard to do, isn’t it?  The point is that you are NOT going to have many posts go ‘viral’ and it is often hard to predict which ones will.  You can improve your changes through simple trial and error, but for most of us, even if you blog for years you will be lucky to have even 2-3 posts that truly spread like wildfire.

So as a blogger, you want to make it as easy as possible for other people to find your best content.  Look at the top right of this blog.  Notice I have created a Most Popular Posts section.  These are hand-picked posts that I want you to check out.  These are some of my ‘greatest hits’.  Also, when I share posts on social media sites, I focus on about 10 posts that cover topics I want to be known for.  Community-building, brand advocacy, content marketing.  It helps brand me, plus it gives more exposure to posts that cover topics that I want to see be more popular.

The Secret Bonus Tip: 

JessicaTweet

Hopefully you’ve picked up on something while reading this post.  There is a LOT of work involved in creating successful content.  It’s not just about writing a masterpiece in 15 mins and then waiting for fame and fortune.  You have to work hard on writing great content, and even harder promoting the content after its done.  Now all of this process becomes easier as you become more experienced, but there’s no shortcuts.  You need to have a robust strategy in place for creating your content, for polishing it, and then for promoting it.

I’m guilty of this too.  Too often I whip out a post in 30 mins, then tweet it on Twitter and that’s it.  Professional bloggers don’t do this.  They invest hours in each post.  They research, they agonize over the perfect headline, the perfect accompanying picture.  They sweat every detail.  Which is exactly why their content has an audience that hungrily devours everything they write.

I love the tweet from Jessica above.  She’s killed it with #CMChat as she’s turned it from being a Twitter chat to a literal online empire.  But it took hard work and harder sacrifices.  Following your dreams and creating something amazing usually does.

So change the focus of your content creation.  Stop thinking of each post and throw-away, but instead view every piece of content you create as a potential mega-hit that you are releasing to the public.  Focus on the creation, the post-writing editing, and the publishing and promotion.  And if you need help, I’ve created this graph to keep you straight rockin’ your content from now on:

$300 BILLION (4)

PS: It took about 10 hours to write this post, including research, visual elements and creating a custom graphical checklist.  And now the real work begins..and all I’ve done is increase the chances that the content will be more popular.

Pic via the amazing Kmeron

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Selling Your Passion vs Selling Your Product

The vast majority of companies I work with are using social and digital media to build awareness for their brands. Typically, they contact me because their efforts aren’t getting the results they need. One of the first mistakes I often find is that these companies are selling before the buyer is ready to make a purchase. You can’t sell to someone that isn’t ready to buy, and if you are trying to build awareness with customers, obviously these customers are unaware of who you are and why they should buy from you.

So instead of selling your product or service directly to these customers, you talk about the customers. Think about it, if you see or hear a marketing message, but it’s about something that you can relate to, that interests you, then you pay attention! If you want to grab the attention of unaware customers, then you talk about the customers.

In this post, Tom Martin talks about how he networks at events. He makes a point to talk to the person he’s just met and hone in on any common interests. Why does Tom do this? Because by talking about something that BOTH Tom and the person are passionate about, it helps the person more easily connect with Tom. The other person will let their guard down and be more willing to listen to Tom. On the flipside, if Tom had introduced himself and immediately started talking about him, about his business, the person would have likely lost interest very quickly. So Tom smartly puts the focus on the other person, let’s talk about you, let’s find a common ground, and let’s talk about that something that we are both passionate about. Also note that Tom adds that one of the people at the event later remarked that someone had told her that they appreciated that Tom didn’t sell them immediately, but now that they’ve talked to him for a bit, they want to hear ‘the pitch’.

Your marketing should follow the same path that Tom does when trying to connect with new customers. First, focus completely on the customer. Then, once you have their attention, focus on that common passion point that relates to both the customer, as well as your brand. After doing this, the customer will be more open to ‘the sell’, so then you start to promote and market your products and services directly.

A key element, perhaps the most important element, of connecting with a customer is establishing trust. Once the customer trusts you, they will lower their guard and give you their full attention. Think about how you interact with your friends. How much of your conversations revolve around common interests? We can relate to our friends, and we trust our friends.

So shouldn’t you talk to your customers as if they were your friends? Remember in the previous post we talked about how Bill Samuels Jr at Maker’s Mark said the brand strove to view his customers as friends, and he called this ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

What’s the common interest or passion point that runs through your brand and your customer? If you’re looking to build awareness with your customers, start there.

 

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How to Create Content That Builds Customer Loyalty

According to new research from CMI, 81% of B2C companies are focused on creating content that builds loyalty in 2019.

So what does content that builds loyalty look like?  First, let’s think about some of the things that make you loyal to a business or organization:

  • Consistent experience. You know that every time you shop at that store or on that website, that you will get a consistent experience. There’s a certain quality expectation that you have, that this business typically meets. And once you are loyal to a particular business, you will typically forgive an occasional sub-par experience where it could be a deal-breaker for a business you are NOT loyal to. The AMA has also found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty.
  • You can relate to the brand. They hold values that are similar to yours. They prize and promote the same ideals and beliefs that you are drawn to. Patagonia supports the environment and sustainability. This appeals to their customers. Chick Fil-A is closed on Sunday so its workers can attend church. The brand wears its religious values on its sleeve and that appeals to its customers.
  • They make you feel appreciated. I love shopping at Publix because the workers there always seem happy to see me and happy to help. When I shop at WalMart, I see a lot of long faces, and no offers to help. If I have to ask for help, they act like I am burdening them. Smart businesses value your business and win your loyalty as a result.

So if you want to create content that drives loyalty. let’s work these same characteristics into that content:

 

Consistent Content Builds Loyalty

Refer back to the AMA study that found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty. It stands to reason, you are loyal to brands in great part because you know that you will have a consistent experience with that brand during every interaction.

The same level of consistency should translate to the content you create. When you create consistent content, you give readers the opportunity to learn more about you through the content you create. This helps develop your readership, which in publishing terms is your equivalent of customer loyalty. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the tone, quality and topic of your content is consistent so that you can develop and grow a readership for it.

The easiest way to do this is to pick 2-3 Topic Buckets for your blog. These will be 2-3 topics that are related to both your business, and your customers. Think of how Red Bull creates content focused on athletes performing amazing tricks and stunts, not the actual energy drink. Patagonia creates content that focuses on the environment and sustainability, not selling its clothing products. You want to create content that focuses on how the products and services you sell fit into and enhance the lives of your customers.

Also, you want to create consistent content on a consistent schedule. Unfortunately, I break this rule all the time (my blogging resolution for 2019 is to get back on a regular posting schedule). The best way to handle this is to be realistic about how often you can create new content for your blog, and go from there.   It is much easier to shoot for one post a month and then write more if you can than it is to shoot for 3 posts a week, and have to scale back to 1 a week. Shoot low and try to build up, that’s easier and will motivate you to keep blogging more so than aiming too high and missing the mark.

As for what days are best to post on, that’s really subjective and greatly depends on the audience you want to reach. In general, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for publishing new content. But you should always experiment, it could be that your audience wants new posts on the weekend, not during the week. Think about who your audience is, and when they would likely have time to read your posts.

 

Content That Helps the Audience Relate to You Builds Loyalty

What does it mean to ‘relate’ to someone?  In general, it means that you understand their point of view. You see the world as they do or you understand where they are coming from.

How does this translate to the content you create? You can help the audience relate to your content by offering examples (real or hypothetical) of how customers could use your products or services in their daily lives.  Or by sharing how you use these products or services. The idea is to communicate to your customers that you understand them enough to know how your products or services fit into and enhance their daily lives.

Another way to create content that your audience can relate to is by sharing your corporate values. If your company supports certain charitable organisations or causes, don’t just mention that, tell why you picked those particular causes and how they align with your company’s beliefs and values. Share with your audience what makes those causes important to your company and why. Customers who share your beliefs and support those causes will be drawn to your company and will be more likely to support it as a result.

 

Communicate to Your Audience That You Appreciate Their Attention 

Showing appreciation to your audience is a wonderful way to build loyalty with them. You can do this by encouraging your audience to interact with you, and by responding when they do. If you accept comments on your posts, you can encourage customers to leave comments on your blog. This can be a great way to cultivate customer feedback via the comments section. So it just makes sense to respond to as many comments as possible from your readers as that only encourages them to leave more comments.

You can also use your content to communicate to your customers that you take their feedback seriously. Patagonia often received criticism from its customers about its packaging. Most customers wanted to see Patagonia move away from sending garments in bigger boxes and toward smaller bags with would, in theory, involve less waste and less impact on the environment. So Patagonia decided to take its customer feedback seriously, and did a test run using bags vs boxes as customers had suggested.  Patagonia then published the results of the shipping experiment on its blog, The Cleanest Line. I covered the experiment and findings in a past episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

 

By applying these three methods, you can create content that helps build customer loyalty. It’s all about relating to the customer, being open to them, and opening up to them as well.

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Creating Fans Through Storytelling

One of the best ways that brands can create fans is through storytelling. Specifically, through telling stories that relate to the brand, but that also tie into themes that are important to the customer. When done effectively, storytelling also helps the customer get a better understanding of what the brand is about. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and giving us a ‘backstage pass’ to see what goes on within the brand.

Last night I talked to the Advanced Social Media class at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and one of the examples of creating fans through storytelling was what Robert Scoble did years ago with Channel 9 videos while he was still at Microsoft. He would take a small camcorder and just go up to the cubicles of his co-workers and ask them to explain who they are and what they do. This was wonderful storytelling because it helped us understand more about the people who worked at Microsoft, and the culture at the brand. It made it a bit easier for us to relate to the brand once we could see the faces of the people that work there, and understand more about WHY they loved working there.

More recently, look at what Whole Foods did with wiping out its Instagram feed to raise awareness of declining bee populations around the world. This was powerful storytelling that tied into themes that relate to the brand (protecting the bees that help create the foods we love), while also giving us greater insights into what the brand is passionate about. Anything that a brand can do to help its customers better understand what it stands for, will always aid in creating fans.

Another instance of storytelling is what Maersk did with its archival photos. Kerry did a wonderful podcast with Maersk’s former head of social media, Jonathan Wichmann. Wichmann explained that when he took the job, he discovered that Maersk had an archivist who had thousands upon thousands of photos associated with Maersk and its shipping containers over the last century. He asked why no one ever used the photos and the brand’s response was ‘who would care?’  So Wichmann started posting the photos on Instagram and other social media sites and they were an immediate hit. These photos helped tell the story of the brand, and also helped us understand what they do, and for how long the brand has been doing it.  All of this also made it wasier to trust the brand, especially when you consider how long they have been providing the same services.

If your brand wants to experiment in creating content that helps tell the story of your brand, think about what stories you can talk about that tell what’s important to your brand, but that aren’t entirely focused on your brand.  Whole Foods talked about why we need to pay attention to declining bee populations.  Maersk by sharing its photos was also telling the story of why the work it does is so important. Yes, the pictures were mostly about the brand, but those pictures are also the history of shipping on the sea. It helps us understand what Maersk does, and what role in plays in global commerce.

And also, think about how you can lower your guard a bit and help us understand a bit more about what your brand does and who it is. Show us the people behind your brand, like Scoble did at Microsoft. GE does this with its employees, encouraging them to go on social media and talk about the work they do, as a way to increase the quality of job applicants. People better understand the culture at GE and why people love working there, and they are more likely to apply for open positions.

Above all, this is a potential competitive advantage for your brand. By engaging in storytelling with your customers, by opening your brand to them, you make it easier for your customers to better understand your brand, and relate to it.  Which makes it easier for your customers to TRUST your brand.

And when your customers trust your brand, then they can advocate for it. Interactions lead to Understanding which leads to Trust, which leads to Advocacy.

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Social Media is Destroying Our Ability to Create Impactful Content and Meaningful Connections

Go scan your timeline on Twitter or your news feed on Facebook.  Look at the articles being shared, and more importantly, look at the headlines.

After a while, you’ll begin to notice something. The headlines are written in a way to attract people that are already on Twitter and Facebook.  This is important, because the content is created in a way to attract people from social media sites, instead of creating content that appeals to your blog’s current readers and subscribers.

Social media has trained us to chase bigger numbers.  We want to go ‘viral’, we want more social shares, we want that flood of visitors from Twitter that gives our analytics a nice hockey stick.

But there’s a trade-off in this approach, and it’s one that a lot of us haven’t really thought about. If you chase new readers, what impact does that have on your current ones?  Because when you chase new readers, you change the way you create content.  You create content that will be more likely to ‘go viral’ on Twitter and Facebook.  When in reality, you should continue to create content that your CURRENT readers love.

We rail on companies for trying to acquire new customers and ignoring their current, loyal customers.  But it could be said that we do the same thing with our own content.  We chase more shares, more visitors, when we should be delighting the people that are ALREADY reading and enjoying our content.

A few months ago I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he said that social media has nothing to do with the success of his radio show.  He said he built it before social media, and even now, he’s not on Twitter at all.  He does repost show updates on Facebook, but that’s all designed to drive people off Facebook and back to his website.  He said if social media went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his show in the least. And he has the most popular radio show in the country.

Seth Godin really doesn’t use social media either. He blogs every day, and every one of his pithy posts gets thousands of social shares. For years he wasn’t even on social media. He now does have a Twitter account for his blog, but all it does is repost his daily blog posts.

Rush and Seth are both great marketers and both highly successful.  And neither really uses social media in any meaningful way.  Certainly, neither is creating content that’s tailored to sharing on social media. Now you can easily say that both of them built their following BEFORE Twitter and Facebook, and therefore don’t need either of them. And you’d be right. But the point is, neither is altering their content to leverage social media.

I think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us. I was looking back at my early blogging from 2006 and 2007, before I joined Twitter or Facebook. I blogged in a completely different style, it was almost like every day I was writing a letter to friends. As a result, I had a devoted community of readers, many of which commented on every post I wrote, and we had wonderful discussions in the comments section. Then, I would go and read their blogs and leave comments as well.

When social media sites came along, the conversations for many of us moved from our blogs to those social media sites. We lament how commenting fell off a cliff on our blogs, as it was ‘just easier’ on everyone to comment on Facebook and Twitter.

But along the way, we also changed the way we created content, and that change in the way we create content had an even bigger impact on dampening the number of comments on our blogs. We stopped writing in a way to elicit conversations. We trust people that we understand, and we understand people we can connect with. Those connections start by creating content that helps us be vulnerable and accessible to our readers. Ironically, this is the very type of content that the ‘experts’ have told us not to create.  Don’t inject too much ‘personality’ into your posts, you don’t want to offend potential customers or clients. Focus solely on business, don’t blog about your passions, that’s being ‘off-topic’.

The reality is, the only true value you get from your blogging is in the connections that you make. It doesn’t matter if you are a personal blogger or if you blog for business. I can tie about 80% of the business I’ve gotten over the last 10 years of consulting to about 10 people. Those are all people that I made connections with over time, via my blog. Maybe once every 6-12 months do I get someone that I don’t know who comes to my blog from a search engine, and we end up doing business. Almost all of my customers know ME first, then trust me, then decide to do business with me.

What if there were no social media sites? What if you could only create content on your blog, and that was the only way you could connect with potential customers and potential friends?

Would that change the way you created content? Would you go from focusing on increasing social shares, to increasing subscribers and readers?

I bet you would. I know I am.

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Trust is the Currency On Which Your Content Trades

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed.” – Denzel Washington

I recently came across this video on YouTube about what social media usage is doing to us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKd2QVrQVIM

But it was Denzel’s quote at the start that really grabbed my attention. I’ve been saying for a while now that social media in general in headed toward a breaking point. Overall trust in major platforms like Facebook and Twitter continues to fall, as users of these platforms aren’t sure how their content is being shared and if they have equal access to everyone else’s content. I believe users were already becoming a bit tired with the platforms, but recent concerns over a lack of transparency and explanation of how our thoughts are shared and curated with others has reached a tipping point for these platforms. It’s a big part of the reason why I’ve been advising you for a while now to double-down on your blogging efforts. Too many companies use social media as its primary communications channels, and a blog is often an afterthought. If anything, that order should be reversed.  If Twitter and Facebook go away tomorrow, I will still have this blog, and that makes it the most powerful communications channel I have.

But this whole debate about where social media is headed brings up the larger issue of trust in relation to the content you create, that I create, that we all create. If you, as a content creator, aren’t trusted to create content that will be useful and relevant to your audience, then your content will be invisible. Remember yesterday I talked about how the best marketing is invisible but the worst marketing BECOMES invisible? It’s the same thing with your content. If we don’t see the value in your content, we’ll ignore it. And unfortunately, as we see in the video above, our attention spans are being ‘trained’ by social media to shrink every day. For a content creator, this means it’s even easier to pass over your content, plus it means that many of us won’t have the patience to stop for 2-3 minutes to read your post, then leave a thoughtful comment on it. Unfortunately, this is simply the way of the social media world in 2018.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I started blogging before sites like YouTube and Twitter were launched, and before Facebook became mainstream. So I started creating content in a world before 2.3 second attention spans. In a time when having thoughtful discussions in the comment section of every blog post was the norm, not the exception. I suspect it was simply easier to build trust with your audience when you could interact with them every day in an actual discussion.

And perhaps that fact hints at why there is so much distrust on social media today. It seems as if the number of deeper discussions and interactions on social media has decreased, distrust and trolling on social media has increased. We don’t talk to each other anymore, we yell at each other.

Perhaps this is part of the reason why podcasting is taking off in popularity, and has been for years. Hearing a human voice matters, and it’s a form of content you can create that, at least from one side, can replicate having an actual conversation with someone.

I do know this; Likes, ReTweets and Shares are the currency of social media, and those are not the best ways to establish trust. I will admit, I have often been guilty of RTing a link that was shared by someone I trust, without actually reading that link to verify the value of the content. I trust my friend, so if they feel the content is worthy of being shared, I do too. Maybe my friend did the same thing, maybe we all messed up together! But the trust I have for my friend was created by our personal interactions.

As you move forward with your content creation efforts heading into 2019, think about what elements make your content more trustworthy, and what could cause people to trust it less. Think of the value of your headlines, is the value promised in the headline reflected in the post itself? If not, you may be using ‘clickbait’, a quick way to lose trust.

But are you creating content that helps facilitate interactions directly with your audience. Or content that makes it easier for them to understand your voice and your point of view?

If you can do that, I believe you make it easier for us to put down our devices for a few seconds, and to actually listen to what you have to say. And that’s incredibly powerful.

 

QUESTION: If Facebook and Twitter disappeared tomorrow, how would YOU connect with your customers online? Would you have a way to do so, or did you just assume that “Facebook is my website”.  When did Noah build the Ark? Before the rains came.

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Why is Red Bull Blogging About Video Games?

Red Bull Blogging About Video Games

I was doing some research for a new post (right) and came across this post for tips on how to win at PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, one of the hottest mobile games right now.

What’s interesting is the post was on RedBull.com.  Red Bull sells energy drinks, they don’t sell video games.

So why is Red Bull blogging about video games? There’s actually a few very good reasons why they would:

  • Red Bull’s core customer base is male millennials. Male millennials like video games, so Red Bull figures if their customers are going to be looking for content about video games anyway, why not give it to them so they can stay on RedBull.com? PUBG Mobile is one of the hottest mobile games right now, so why not create the content that its customers will be looking for?  There’s plenty of content about Fortnite as well, so Red Bull has all the video game bases covered.
  • I’ve blogged about this before, but Red Bull is involved in the events, topics and themes that are important to its customers. Red Bull’s focus on video games could be part of a larger move to develop a greater presence in the eSports space.
  • Not only has eSports seen spectacular growth over the last few years, but there’s a potential sponsorship play to be had. Emerging competitor G-Fuel has made a name for itself by sponsoring top eSports athletes, including top Twitch streamer DrDisRespect (who I blogged about here). Red Bull has been dipping its toes in the eSports space for a while, the next step could be to start sponsoring eSports athletes or streamers, and help facilitate larger events. It’s a formula that worked incredibly well for Red Bull with the X-Games.

The larger content lesson is that Red Bull is focusing on customer-centric content. This is content that really doesn’t promote the product or brand, it promotes the information that its customers want, that can also relate back to the brand. So there needs to be some synergies in place for this approach to work.  For example, Red Bull could also write an article on “What You Need to Know to Get Accepted to College”, and it probably wouldn’t work as well, because while it’s also a topic that’s important to male millennials, the brand synergy isn’t as apparent.

Go back to the 3rd bullet point above.  G-Fuel has started sponsoring eSports athletes and Twitch streamers because they claim that their energy drink keeps you sharp, and mentally focused so you can do better while playing video games. If you’re a Twitch streamer, this has real appeal to you, because if an energy drink can keep you alert and let you play video games better, it literally means more money for you in the form of subs and donations. Red Bull could be making a lot of these same pitches to streamers and perhaps they’ve already started working on securing some sponsorships in this space.

Just remember that some of the best and most effective content you can create often has nothing to do with your brand or its products and services. When you create content that’s focused on your customers and more importantly on how your brand relates to your customers, that’s content that’s top of the sales funnel and does a great job of building brand awareness.

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Your Content Not Converting Has Nothing to Do With Your Content and Everything to Do With Your Customer

If you want to improve the ability of your blog to grow your business, you need to focus on creating content that converts. In simplest terms, a conversion is an action that the customer takes as a result of interacting with your content. There are many actions the reader can take when interacting with your content, and your content should be tailored so that they take the action (conversion) that you want.

This is where the trouble starts...

Raise Your Hand if Your Company is Blogging to 'Build Awareness'

This is the biggest conversion-killer of all. Think about that strategy; building awareness. Literally, that means you are trying to make people aware of your business, through your blogging efforts. So if you are trying to attract people that don't know who you are and don't know what you sell, what's the one thing your content can NOT do?

Sell to that customer.

Think about it: If I am unaware of who you are and what you do, why would you waste my time and yours selling your product to me? I don't know who you are, I don't know what you do, and I don't know why I should care. So clearly, selling to me is the worst thing you could do. It wastes your time, and mine.

And yet...this is precisely what most companies do that adopt a 'build awareness' content strategy, they create content that sells.

We're Not Like Those Guys, Our Content NEVER Sells!

This is the second biggest reason why your content never converts; Because when the customer actually IS ready to buy, your content doesn't move them closer to a sale! You've been beaten over the head with the 'social media is about relationships, not selling!' club so much that you go too far the other way and NEVER sell with your content. I don't blame you for this as much as I blame the 'social media purists' that push such nonsense. Of course your content can sell. You simply have to understand where the buyer is on their journey, and create the content they need today, with a bridge to the content they will need tomorrow.

This is the Four Stages of the Buyer's Journey. I'll be going into all four in much greater detail in a post later this month. But for now, let's focus on two things; the first and last stage, and the color of each.

First, note that the color of each stage is different. The color gets 'warmer' the further you move to the right, to signify that each stage moves the reader closer to being a buyer. It's also a visual reminder to you that when the reader is Unaware of who you are and what you do, they are also completely cold to your effort to sell to them. So don't even try. 

Second, note the first and last stages. As I said, there are two main reasons why most content doesn't convert. It's because you create content that sells when the customer isn't ready to buy, then when they are ready to buy, you don't sell to them. 

If your blog's goal is to 'build awareness' of your business, then don't blog about your business, blog about the customer you want to do business with! Sounds counter-intuitive, right? It isn't, this approach works because you're creating content that attracts the people you want to do business with! 

Let's say your company sells lawncare products. If you write a post titled "Five Pests That Are Keeping Your Lawn From Being Beautiful", that post would appeal to homeowners that want a beautiful lawn. A homeowner might read that post and think "Hey! My lawn has those brown spots, so THAT'S what causes them, I had no idea!" Then they will start to investigate your site and LEARN more about your products, but it all started by creating content that was focused on the customer, not your brand.

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Note About Content That 'Builds Awareness'

This content should only focus on the customer. Specifically, you focus on your customer's life, without selling your product. A good way to think of this content is creating content that teaches your customer the skills that also compliment your product. In the above example, you create content that helps the customer have a more beautiful lawn. Ultimately, this is the problem that your product solves, so create content that focuses on the problem, and that gives the customer advice on how to solve it. That gains their attention, and can eventually give you a way to promote your product to them! 

In general, the less interested the customer is in buying, the more your content should focus on the customer. The more interested the customer is in buying, the more you should create content that's technical and focused on the product. Just remember to give them a way to actually BUY the product! 

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How to Republish Your Old Posts Like a Rock Star

Republishing old blog posts has become increasingly popular among bloggers over the last few years. I’ve been doing this for about a year now, and I’ve seen spectacular results. I use a specific system for republishing my old blog posts, and I wanted to share that system with you.

I’ve often talked about how you can greatly improve your content creation efforts by thinking like a rock star. In fact, one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written focuses on adopting a rock star’s mindset to your content creation and marketing efforts. So let’s further think like a rock star when it comes to republishing our old blog posts.

Find Your Greatest Hits

Every rock star who has been successful eventually has a ‘greatest hits’ album. Let’s say you are a fan of Soundgarden, and wanted to introduce your friend to the legendary Seattle band. You may decide to give them a greatest hits album from the band.

In much the same way, you as a blogger should have a collection of ‘Greatest Hits’ posts. If someone was new to your blog and wanted to learn what topics you write about and are known for, what 10 blog posts would you show them? These 10 blog posts are your blogging ‘Greatest Hits’. And if you haven’t been blogging very long, you can go with your best 3 posts or best 5 posts. The point is to focus on your BEST work, the posts that you want to be known for, the posts that advance the ideas, thoughts and beliefs that you want to be associated with and known for.

I started doing this last year with this blog. I went through my archives and found several posts that I thought represented my best work. I then whittled that list down to my 10 ‘best’ posts. These are the posts that I want to be known for and the ones that I want to promote and see be more successful.

Your Greatest News, Now Remastered! 

Rock stars don’t just collect their greatest hits and resell them on a new album. They spice them up.  They remaster them to improve the sound quality, they repackage them with additional information on how the songs were writtten, etc. All of this improves the quality of the songs and makes them more interesting and appealing to fans.

In much the same way, you should ‘remaster’ your best blog posts. Here’s the checklist I went through with each of my greatest hits posts:

First, I selected my list of 10 posts that I would republish. Then, I scrubbed the posts for any outdated information. Are there broken links? Old videos from YouTube that are no longer hosted there? Next I see if there’s any outdated information or stats that need to be updated. Basically, I start with making sure that everything in the post as it stands now is still useful. Anything that isn’t, gets stripped out.

Then, I see what I can add. Are there any new studies or research that’s been done on this topic? Has my thinking evolved or have I learned something new that I could add to the post? By combining both these steps, I’m stripping out outdated information that no longer has value, and I’m adding in new information. The end result is that the overall quality of the post is improved.

Finally, I ask what is the ‘bigger idea’ behind this post? What’s it about? What core topic am I wanting to discuss, and am I doing this as well as I can? Remember, these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts are supposed to represent the core ideas, themes and beliefs that I hold dear. I also look at the post headline, and the post itself to make sure I am targeting the right keywords that are associated with the concepts I want to discuss. For example, if my post is about brand ambassador programs, then the keyword phrase ‘brand ambassador programs’ needs to be in the post headline if at all possible.

But Mack, Can’t I Just Change the Date and Call it a Day?

You can, but I wouldn’t advise it. Remember, these 10 posts are supposed to be examples of your best work. If all you can do is change the date of publication to today, is this really a topic you should be writing about? If I’ve written a post that covers a topic I am actually knowledgeable about, I can always find something new to add and a way to improve the post.

Having said that, changing the date of a post to make the post ‘newer’ will typically improve your search rankings alone. Google wants to serve the most relevant and RECENT content to its users. If I’ve written a post on creating an incredible content strategy from 2010 and you’ve written a similar post from 2015, your post will typically be higher in search results for terms related to ‘content strategy’. So it’s my job to improve and update my post, and make sure it has better content than yours.  Then I can update my post and give it a 2018 date, and guess what? My post will now show up higher in search results than yours. As it should, if my content is better and more recent than yours, it will and should be higher in search results.

And Here’s the Results….

Last year I used this process to update several of my older posts that I wanted to be known as some of my ‘best’ work.

One post I updated last Summer was this post on Red Bull’s content strategy and why it’s so successful. So to see how my efforts are working, let’s compare traffic to this post during 2018 so far, compared to Jan 1st-April 15th of 2017:

It’s a bit hard to see, but the blue lines represent pageviews this year, the orange lines represent pageviews for this same time period in 2017. That’s an increase in Pageviews of almost 400%, mostly from doing one update and refresh of this post, which was originally published in 2013. Not bad, right?

Here’s another example: this post: 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program. Like the Red Bull post, I updated this one last Summer. Here’s the traffic this year compared to the same period last year:

This post has ‘only’ had a 233% increase in pageviews, but notice that the increase was from 1,142 pageviews last year to 3,811 pageviews so far this year. But what I’m most proud about is that fact that this post now typically ranks on the first page of search results for the term ‘brand ambassador program’. For most of last year the post ranked in the Top 20 for that term, now it’s in the Top 10. This is huge for my business as helping companies launch brand ambassador programs is one of the key consulting services I offer.

And even though both these posts are doing great, when I do my next update on my ‘greatest hits’ blog posts, you better believe I am going to again update both these posts. Every time I do, the quality and comprehensiveness of the post is improved, which makes it more valuable to readers, and helps it rank higher in search engines.  Which drives even more traffic to the post.

 

So go through your blog’s archives today, and find your 10 posts that are your greatest hits. These are the 10 blog posts that you want to be known for, the posts that cover the topics you want to be associated with. Update these posts, don’t just give them a new date, scrub the posts, remove any errors, grammatical or fact-based. Then add any new information that you think improves the quality of the post. This can include new studies, new research, etc. Also, consider adding new visual elements, such as updating the pictures used, or adding videos.

The end result should be that you have improved the quality of your content, and that will increase traffic to your blog and to that content.  As a bonus tip: Regularly promote these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts of yours on social media. I have my 10 greatest hits posts, and I am constantly sharing links to these posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason why is simple: I want to remind people that they should associate me with the topics of these posts.

Finally, check out ProBlogger’s recent post on republishing your old posts and why it’s a good idea.