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#ContentCircus 1-5-21 Recap: How to Audit Your Content

We had another fabulous #ContentCircus last night on the topic of How to Audit Your Content. The last two weeks have really taken off, I appreciate everyone’s participation and sharing their smartitude. Here’s a link to the transcript from Hashtracking. I wanted to highlight some of the great points made during the chat:

 

Readability is a big area to address when doing a content audit. Anything you can do to better organize your information and make it easier for the reader to understand key concepts, is a good thing. Honestly, a lot of this comes down to simple stuff that we can all do, and #ContentCircus participants had some great suggestions:

 

After I’ve addressed readability, I will then move on to editing the actual information in the post. Is any of it outdated and needs to be removed? Is there a new case study or research study I have found that I can add? Also keep in mind as I add or remove material, I am still addressing readability, that carries over throughout the entire process.

 

Next we moved onto discussing using the proper search keywords and phrases during your content audit. Luckily, #ContentCircus community had many helpful suggestions for keyword research tools!

 

Next, we covered adding visual elements to your audited content. Note that as we address things like font size for text, headings and subheadings, now adding visual elements, we are (hopefully) making it easier for the reader to process information. That’s what we want. The easier it is for our ideas to flow to the reader, the more likely they are to understand those ideas, and their impact.

 

Finally, we talked a bit about Calls to Action. Whenever you audit your content, you should add a Call to Action that encourages the reader to take some next step based on who they are, their intent, and what action you want them to take.

 

So that was our first #ContentCircus chat of 2021! We had a wonderful discussion on auditing content, and I hope you can join the next #ContentCircus, which is every Tuesday at 7pm Central, on Twitter! Just follow the #ContentCircus hashtag!

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Performing a Content Audit That Increases Traffic and Conversions

I’ve been blogging for 15 years now, and in that time I’ve learned that the last two weeks of every year is when traffic to my site drops about 30-40%. Pretty much like clockwork, traffic begins to fall on the Friday before Christmas, it rises a bit the week after Christmas, then returns to normal levels the first week or so of January. Because of this, I typically don’t publish posts in that last 2 weeks of the year. I use that time to write posts for January, and I also use it to audit my content. So this year, I got the clever idea to do both; Audit my content, and as I am, write a post about my process!

So this is how I audit my content.

 

First, what is a content audit?

A content audit is the process of reviewing the content on your site, periodically. I know a lot of content creators hate auditing their content. Personally, I love auditing content, because I know that when I have finished auditing an individual post, it will be a better post. I know that every post I audit will be improved, so that’s why I enjoy the auditing process.

Now my process for auditing content is a bit different, which is why I wanted to talk about it. I go by the Greatest Hits model that I talk about in this post on the Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion. I look to develop roughly 10 posts which will be my signature content or Greatest Hits. These will be the pieces of content that I want to be successful. This is the content I will continue to promote, and continue to audit and work to improve. These are the 10 posts I want to be known for, my Greatest Hits. Think about a rock star; When you go to their concert, you want to hear their Greatest Hits.

Keep in mind that these 10 Greatest Hits posts should ideally cover the same or very similar topics. If you have 10 posts covering 10 different topics, that’s a problem. But if you have 10 posts covering 3 related topics, that’s much better. Think of it this way; These 10 posts will be the content you want to be known for. Just like a rock star is known for their Greatest Hits. It’s the same thing here, this will be your signature content. So choose wisely.

 

A content audit sounds like a lot of work, is it worth it?

My experience is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Posts that I have audited and improved have seen up to a 300% increase in traffic! There are two keys to seeing an increase in traffic when you o a content audit.  The first is you much IMPROVE THE CONTENT. You have to make the post better. This post will walk you through the process for improving the post, but it must be improved upon. After you have improved the post, then change the date to make the post more recent. For instance, if you are auditing a post from 2017, and you significantly change and improve the post, then you can change the date to say 2020. Search engines want to refer users to relevant and recent content. Use your content audit to improve the quality of the content and to make it a more recent post by changing the date. Doing both of these things together will result in a nice improvement in traffic to your audited post.

 

How often should you do a content audit, and what’s included?

So every 6 months or so, I first audit my current 10 or so Greatest Hits posts. I look at how each is performing.  I track them through Google Analytics and maybe even with Webmaster Tools. So I get that list of my current 10 or so Greatest Hits posts, and set them aside for now.

Then I look at all my other posts, paying close attention to the posts I have published in the last 6 months or so. What I want to do is find at least one post I’ve written in the last 6 months that I can move into my group of 10 or so Greatest Hits posts. I want to keep my Greatest Hits fresh, plus I want to force myself to continue to create content that is good enough to be worthy of being included in my Greatest Hits.

But I also look at past posts as well. Who knows, there could be a post I wrote in 2015 that’s suddenly taken off in search results. I want to check and make sure my older posts aren’t showing signs of life. If any of them are, I then put them in my list of potentials for my Greatest Hits, along with any new posts I have written in the last 6 months.

I take my current 10 Greatest Hits posts. Then I take any potential posts written in the last 6 months that could be added to my Greatest Hits, as well as any former posts I’ve identified that could be included. That will likely give me a list of 12-15 posts that are candidates to be my 10 Greatest Hits posts.

So the final step is to whittle those 12-15 posts down to a group of 10. What’s my criteria for which posts I remove from Greatest Hits consideration? First, I look at the 10 posts I have as my current Greatest Hits. Are there any posts that aren’t performing as well as the rest of the group? Then I look at the 2-5 posts that are my candidates for adding to the Greatest Hits list. For these 2-5 posts, the first thing I look at is the topic. Are these posts covering a topic that isn’t well-represented in my current 10 Greatest Hits posts? If so, and if it is a topic that I want to be known for, then there’s a great chance I will move that post into my 10 Greatest Hits list.

 

I have my group of 10 Greatest Hits posts that I will audit, what now?

Ok, I’ve finally settled on my group of 10 posts that will be my Greatest Hits posts. Now I’m ready to begin the actual audit and improvement process for these 10 posts. Here’s what I want to review for each post:

  • Readability. Is the post easy to read? Clear takeaways. Can the reader easily find and understand the key lessons from the post?
  • Does the post have the latest information?
  • Search Keywords and Phrases. What are the target keywords and phrases for each post?
  • Visually appealing. Is there visual elements that are pleasing to the eye? No walls of text!
  • Clear calls to action. Is there a clear and obvious way to keep the reader engaged with my content?

 

Readability

The first area I look at for my 10 Greatest Hits posts when auditing them is readability. For me, that means first scanning the post quickly to see how pleasing it is to the eye. I don’t want to see a wall of text. I want to see smaller blocks of text, organized with headings and callouts to point the reader toward key points that I want them to understand. Also, I identify the key lessons I want the reader to take from reading this post. I make sure each lesson is clear and succinct. To be honest, a lot of brutal editing needs to happen to each post. You have to remember, every 6 months or so, I will do this process again. Every time a post is involved in that auditing process, it will likely have changes made to it, maybe additional text will be added. So if I’m not careful, I could end up with 10 posts that are bloated 5,000 word monstrosities! I have to add what makes sense, and take out what doesn’t. And if I only add, then I need to make sure that the post’s readability isn’t negatively impacted.

 

Does the post have the latest information?

This is where I can typically make the biggest positive impact on a post. I might write a post on a topic, then 3 months later come across a research study that confirms what I wrote. I can then go back and add the research to my post, to improve the quality of the post, and also give more credence to the claims I made in the post. I may also come across a case study that is an example that I can add to the post, which will also greatly improve the quality of the post. By the way, this is why I tend to avoid dated content like ‘Here’s Your 2020 Guide to Creating An Amazing Content Strategy’ in my Greatest Hits collection. I would rather write ‘Your Guide to Creating An Amazing Content Strategy’ and work to refine and improve that post every 6 months via my content audit.

 

What search keywords and phrases am I targeting?

This is important for two reasons. First, it helps me make sure I am focused on the right keywords and phrases, and throughout the post. In fact, as I was ending the previous paragraph, I changed it from ‘and work to refine and improve that post every 6 months’ to add ‘via my content audit’ at the end, simply to get the phrase ‘content audit’ in the post again to help search engines understand what this post is about.

Second, making sure I am targeting the right keywords and phrases also helps me with the overall structure and content of the post. Its almost like a double-check of all the other areas like readability, key takeaways, etc. Notice also that I purposely handle the other areas such as readability and latest research first, then keywords. I write for people first, search engines second.

 

Make every post visually appealing.

We love visuals. Pictures, video, anything visual catches our eye and refocuses our attention. Also, visuals help break up walls of text. In general, I try to add visual content from three different categories to my Greatest Hits posts; Images, Video, and Infographics or Callout boxes.

Images are self-explanatory, as are videos. In both cases, you want to choose images and/or videos that help illustrate your content’s key points and concepts. For instance, if I were doing a case study of a brand ambassador program that Chick Fil-A was doing, I might want to add a video of the company’s CMO talking about why the program is working for the brand. Keep in mind that if you can show key concepts using different formats (text, audio, video, etc), that it helps the reader learn those concepts.

Also, think about adding infographics or callout boxes to highlight and illustrate key takeaways and concepts. Tools like Canva and Thrive Architect (affiliate link) can help you create infographics and callout boxes.

 

Adding clear Calls to Action to your posts

This is where a lot of us falter. We fail to add good Calls to Action on our Greatest Hits posts. Which is really unfortunate, because our Greatest Hits posts will ideally be the posts that are our most popular. A lot of people will be reading these posts, and if they are arriving from a search engine, it will likely be the first time they are exposed to your content. So at a minimum, you want to make sure they know how to stay engaged with your content.

How many of you have watched PBS during their famous ‘pledge weeks’ where they ask viewers for donations? Typically, during these pledge weeks, PBS offers its best programming. It will debut a new series by an acclaimed filmmaker like Ken Burns, or it will show a live concert by The Highwaymen, or other special events. PBS will show its best content, and during the airing of these shows, it will ask for money. It’s the same concept with your Greatest Hits content. These are your 10 best posts, so you’ve earned the right to ask for something from your readers. It can be as simple as asking for a comment, or asking for a subscription, or asking for a sale. The point is, your best content should have clear calls to action included.

So what type of call to action should your Greatest Hits posts include? Let’s go back to the Buyer’s Journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

When a visitor arrives at one of your Greatest Hits posts, you need to understand where they are in the Buyer’s Journey. That will help determine what type of call to action they should receive. For the purposes of your content audit, there are two main factors to consider when deciding where the visitor is on the Buyer’s Journey:

1 – The post itself. Which of the four groups above is the post aimed at? Whatever group it is aimed at, your call to action should be focused on moving the visitor to the next step in the process.

2 – Referral sources of traffic. If the post is getting a lot of traffic from search engines, that likely means those visitors will be arriving at your site for the first time. So your call to action would likely be focused on encouraging them to subscribe to your content, or download a white paper, or sign up for your newsletter. You want to extend the interactions with this person. On the other hand, if the primary sources of referrals for your post are sources like social media or email, that suggests that the visitors are familiar with you and your work. So your call to action would likely be further along the Buyer’s Journey.

 

So that wraps up our content audit, now let’s put it into action!

Originally. I had planned on ending this post here. We’re already over the 2,000 word mark, and I’ve covered all the key points I wanted to make. But, I think it would be helpful to see this process in action.  I want to now walk you through how I audit and improve one post.

Here’s the post; Great Customer Loyalty Programs Are Built On Offering Great Experiences.  This post has some potential, but it also needs a lot of work.  It has 1165 words, and one image, of a Ferrari. The main keyword phrase this post is targeting is ‘loyalty programs’. While this post needs work, I like the two hypothetical stories about the cereal loyalty program and the one for Ferrari. But the post doesn’t have much more than that. So I wanted to walk you through my process for improving the quality of this post.

 

First, let’s tackle readability. Let’s start with the title; “Great Customer Loyalty Programs Are Built on Offering Great Experiences”. We need to improve it, I like that the keyword phrase ‘customer loyalty programs’ is in the title, but we need to jazz it up a bit. The new title will be “Here’s How the Best Customer Loyalty Programs Create Happy Customers’. This makes the title more interesting, but it also means the title is now making a specific claim that the post has to back up. The post has to now show you how a customer loyalty program can create happy customers.

Let’s also add new information. Now I want to keep most of the post as it is, but I do want to add new content to support it. Specifically, I want to add content that explains and justifies the claim made in the title. So I want to show how offering great experiences leads to happy customers. I have some research to support that claim, so I will add it to the post. I will also add a couple examples of great customer loyalty programs that offer members great experiences as a reward Pairing these actual examples with the hypothetical ones the post already has, will help facilitate learning and retention of the post’s core concepts.

Revisit targeted keywords and phrases. Now I will review the post and make sure that I have focused on the correct keywords and phrases, and have them placed in the post in a way that will make sense to both the reader, and search engines which will be crawling the post. Also, note that I addressed readability for the READER first, then move to the search engines. Write for the humans first, then the machines.

Adding visual elements. For now, I want to add at least a screenshot of the new customer loyalty programs I am adding as examples. If I can find video of an executive at these companies talking about how their loyalty programs work, I may add that. If nothing else, the screenshots will help break up the text and give the reader visual information that supports the text.

Adding Calls to Action. For this post, I will add an email link so readers can contact me if they have questions about their own loyalty programs. I will also add links to other posts I have written on loyalty programs. The assumption is that over time, most of the traffic to this post will come from search engines, and those people will likely be first-time visitors to my site.

 

So that’s the process! You can view the audited post on Here’s How the Best Customer Loyalty Programs Create Happy Customers here.

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#ContentCircus 12-15-20 Recap: How to Create Content For Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Last night we had our second #ContentCircus chat, and our topic was How to Create Content For Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey. We had a wonderful discussion and I wanted to share some of the key takeaways.

For buyers who are Unaware, your content should focus almost completely on the customer. Think about it, you are trying to connect with buyers who do NOT know who you are or why they should buy from you. Why would you try to sell to such a buyer? Your content should focus completely on the buyer, what’s interesting and relevant to them. Figure out how your product or service fits into the lives of your buyer, and create content around those intersection points.

Once you move buyers to being Slightly Aware of who you are, then you create content that helps these buyers understand how your product or service fits into their lives. You create content that illustrates how you can solve problems for them, or help them in some way.

When you reach the Interested stage with a buyer, it’s finally time to SELL them on your product or service. These buyers are doing final research before they decide on which product or service to buy. So they want detailed content that talks about the products or services they are considering purchasing. This is the ONLY stage where you should directly sell via your content.

When the buyer is ready to make a purchase, the only job your content has is to show them how to complete the sale. No need to keep selling them, the buyer is ready to buy.  Just take their money!

Now, what about after the purchase?  What type of content should you create then?

 

Another great #ContentCircus comes to a close! Here’s the transcript so you can read all the tweets. The first two chats have focused more on strategy and tactics for the more senior content roles like Chief Content Officer or Director of Content Strategy. Our next #ContentCircus on 12-22-20 will focus on our favorite content creation tools! This will be more helpful for Content Marketing Managers and Content Strategists who are more directly responsible for content creation.

Thanks again to everyone for joining, see y’all next Tuesday for #ContentCircus, and back here tomorrow!

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Improve Your Content Marketing By Doing These Three Things

content marketingAbraham Lincoln famously said that if you gave him 6 hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first 4 sharpening his axe. The point is that when you improve your process, you get better results.

Too many companies today are in a rush to ‘try something new’ when they aren’t getting the results they want from their content marketing efforts. I always advise companies to first look at their current processes and see if they can improve what they are already doing. Often, I find that companies complaining about not getting the results they need from their content marketing efforts also don’t have clearly defined strategies and proven tactics guiding those efforts.

To get the best results from your content marketing, you need an efficient system in place to produce your content. Think of your content marketing as a water hose, with the goal being to have as much water as possible flowing through that hose. If you have a 50-foot hose attached to a faucet and that hose is a tangled mess, what happens when you turn the faucet on?  Not much, right?  Maybe a small amount of water would drip out.  But as you start working out the kinks in the hose, more and more water comes out, and when you completely straighten the hose, water will be gushing out of the end of the hose.

If your content marketing isn’t getting the results you want, you probably have a lot of ‘kinks’ in your hose that you could remove and get more water flowing. There’s probably a lot of things you could be doing to improve your existing content marketing efforts that would net you better results. Let’s be honest, today more than ever, it’s better to improve your current efforts, than spending money on something new that may not work. I’d rather see you spend less to get the same or better results.

Let’s start with three areas you can work on to improve your content marketing efforts.

Define Your Who, What, and Why. 

Let’s follow Simon Sinek’s advice and Start With Why. The ‘why’ as it pertains to your content marketing, is your strategy. Why are you using content marketing, what are you trying to accomplish, and who are you trying to connect with. The ‘why’ comes first because it encompasses and guides all elements of your content marketing efforts.

The role of strategy development for your content marketing will fall to your Chief Content Officer in a more developed company with a larger content marketing team. For smaller companies with smaller teams, the strategy development function would fall to the most senior role on your content team, or perhaps to the most senior position on your marketing team. In terms of hierarchy within the organization, the Chief Content Officer will usually either report to the Chief Marketing Officer, or possibly report directly to the CEO.

Regardless of who has the responsibility, it is vital that your company’s content marketing efforts are guided by a solid strategy. This only ensures that your content marketing efforts will be more effective and efficient. That means less time on content creation and execution, along with better results. The head of your content marketing team will work with the head of your marketing team to ensure that your company’s content efforts are in sync with the company’s larger marketing strategy.

It all goes back to planning. The more planning you do, the better results you will achieve. So when fleshing out your content marketing strategy, ask and answer these three questions:

  1. What are we doing? (Why are we using content marketing?)
  2. Why are we doing it? (What do we hope to achieve?)
  3. Who are we doing it for? (Who is the audience we need to reach via our content?)

 

Now let’s look at ‘What’

In terms of your content marketing efforts, the ‘what’ refers to the tactics you will use to execute your content marketing strategy (the ‘why’). Many marketers get strategy and tactics confused. Tactics are used to execute the strategy. The strategy is what you want to accomplish, the tactics are how you will accomplish it.

The Director of Content Strategy will be responsible for helping to develop the tactics to support the larger content marketing strategy, and they will work with the Chief Content Officer toward this end. The Director of Content Strategy will also work with the content marketing team to execute the strategy through those tactics. For smaller companies with less developed content teams, this responsibility can fall to the Content Marketing Manager. In general, the Chief Content Officer designs the strategy, the Director of Content Strategy then determines the tactics that will be used to execute that strategy.

What does tactics include in this context? Anything that is used to deliver content marketing to the end audience. It could be certain digital tools, like blogs or podcasts. It also be certain social sites such as Twitter or Facebook. It could even be formats, such as white papers, or pamphlets to be included in print newspapers.

Think of tactics as being the battle plan to execute the strategy. Let’s say you are a war general and you are tasked with defeating an enemy city. You decide that the best way to do this is to cut off supplies to that city.  That is your strategy. To execute this strategy, you decide to position your navy in the harbor to block supplies from coming into the port. The naval blockcade of the port is the tactic you are using to execute the strategy of cutting off supplies to the enemy city.

So the Director of Content Strategy works with the Chief Content Officer to develop the tactics to execute the content marketing strategy, and they then work with the content marketing team to help facilitate content creation via those tactics. Based on the size and cope of your content marketing team, the Director of Content Strategy may or may not be tasked with actual content creation.

 

Finally, let’s look at ‘who’.

So ‘why’ is the strategy for your content marketing efforts, and ‘what’ are the tactics you will use to execute that strategy. ‘Who’, is the audience for your content marketing, the person you are trying to reach. The determination of who the audience is will come from your content marketing strategy, and tactics will be chosen based on who you want to connect with and what actions you want them to take as a result of interacting with your content. The ‘who’ is listed last simply because the members of your team tasked with content creation will have the most direct contact and engagement with your intended audience. Thusly, positions such as Content Marketing Manager or Content Strategist for smaller teams, will fill this role. In general, these roles will focus on content creation, but will also assist the Director of Content Strategy and Chief Content Officer in the development of content tactics and strategy.

So the workflow could look like this; The Chief Content Officer develops the strategy, the Director of Content Strategy develops the tactics, then the Content Marketing Manager creates content for those tactics, to reach the desired audience. This is the level where your content creators will live, so obviously, having multiple content creators with experience creating content via multiple mediums (audio, video, written, print, etc), is a big plus.

Now, when we are talking about ‘who’, the importance of creating quality personas to accurately define your ‘who’ cannot be overstated. Your content persona is your best ‘guess’ or summary of who the person you are creating content for really is. It can and should be as detailed as possible. The persona can include characteristics like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Occupation
  • Martial status
  • Where they live
  • Income
  • Number of children
  • Pain points or problems they are facing (this can be focused on either home life or workplace, as relevant)
  • Type of content they enjoy and prefer

The best buyer personas give the content creator an accurate view of who will be interacting with the content the manager or strategist creates. It tells the content creator ‘this is who you are writing for’. Personas that are an accurate representation of the desired audience can be a huge asset for the content creator.

 

A Well-Defined Content Strategy Pays For Itself

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 57% of B2B companies have no content marketing strategy. That’s a staggering stat. If you have no strategy guiding your content marketing efforts, then you will get worse results.

To improve your content marketing results, define your why (strategy), your what (tactics to execute that strategy), and who (people you want to reach via your content).

Need help designing a content strategy for your company or improving your current one? Email me, I can help with that.

 

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#ContentCircus 12-8-20 Recap: Where to Post Content

Last night we had our first #ContentCircus chat on Twitter! #ContentCircus happens every Tuesday night at 7pm Central, and we discuss a variety of topics, focusing on content creation, strategy and execution.

Our topic for last night was ‘How to Decide Where to Post Content’. One of the things I always try to do with all my content; whether it’s a post here or a Twitter chat discussion, is I want you to think strategically about the actions you are taking. If you have a sound strategy in place that guides your actions, that means you get better results, with less time and resources required. Thinking strategically about your content creation efforts will be a topic we will revisit often at #ContentCircus.

We had a great discussion last night and I wanted to highlight a few of the wonderful points made by participants:

I loved Becky and Paul’s answers here because they cover two important areas to consider when deciding where to create content. In general, it’s always best to create content that will connect with your desired audience. If you are a business, this is current and potential customers. But Paul makes a great point as well: If your goal is to build awareness and establish thought leadership, then you may want to post on sites with an established audience. Creating long-form content on sites such as LinkedIn and Medium has become popular in recent years because it can ‘fast-track’ your efforts to gain exposure and build an audience for your work. I think this approach can absolutely work, my caveat would be as your exposure grows, try to steer that audience’s attention back to platforms that you own, such as your blog or website.

 

This has always been a pet peeve of mine: Companies and content creators who try to create content for too many channels. It’s always better to focus on FEWER sites and channels, not more. Content creation is a bit of an art, and you can achieve better results when you focus your efforts. I love Becky’s point about focusing on fewer channels, and after you nail down your efforts there, then you can experiment with new sites or channels. I’ve seen so many companies burn themselves out on content marketing over the years by trying to do too much in too many places. Start with fewer sites, nail down the content creation process, then once you are seeing the results you want, experiment with new sites and channels. It will simply take time for your content creation efforts to gain traction, so grow slow and grow smart.

 

Social media channels are not ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to content. Every channel is different with a different audience and its own expectations for the content there. The culture on Reddit is not the same as the on Twitter or the one on Line. It’s important to know the differences between the userbase for each channel.

 

So those are a few of the fascinating discussions we had in #ContentCircus last night.  Here’s a transcript of last night’s #ContentCircus, hope to see you there next week!

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Content Case Studies: How Wistia and Evernote Leverage Customer Stories to Promote its Products

One of the most effective ways to market your products and services is to have your current customers share their experiences with other customers. The reality is, we trust other customers more than we trust your brand. So if you can find a way to let your customers market for you to other customers, you want to be smart enough to do so. One way to do this, is by creating case studies or testimonials from your current customers and using those in your content strategy. I have testimonials on my homepage, I have short case studies from my clients here.

I wanted to look at how Evernote and Wistia are using Customer Stories to highlight how their customers and clients are using their products and services. I wanted to specifically highlight the efforts of these two companies ,because I think both are doing some things well, and I also see some areas for improvement. If you were to combine the best elements of both efforts, I think you would have a fantastic mechanism for sharing customer experiences.

Before I show you what these companies are doing with their customer case studies, I wanted to talk for a moment about the actual value of case studies. Case studies can be a wonderful learning tool IF you use them correctly. Case studies are so popular because we want to see what works for other companies similar to our own. But the potential problem from a presentation point of view can be that the audience will take the case study and understand how the case study applies to that company, but not be able to make the connection to how the same concepts could apply to THEIR company. In other words, they may understand how your product helped Apple achieve great results, but they don’t understand how to take what worked for Apple, and make it work for their brand.

You overcome this by including abstract examples that highlight the key concepts that you want the audience to understand. You spell out the key takeaways from the case study, and help the audience understand why and how your product or service helped another company, so the audience can better understand how your product or service could help them as well. Just remember that the brain is more likely to learn a concept if you give both literal (case studies) examples of the concept, as well as abstract (here’s an example of how your company could use…) examples.

 

Let’s first look at Evernote:

Evernote has a collection of short customer case studies which they are calling Customer Stories.

evernote customer stories

Here’s what I like about Evernote’s Customer Stories: You can immediately spot the feature of these Customer Stories that I really like: They include the industry the customer is in, as well as the size of their company. This helps establish the relevance of the Customer Stories. If I have a company running a fleet of 5 food trucks in the Atlanta area, the, Guayaki story on the right will immediately grab my attention because it’s coming from a similar background as my company.

Speaking of Guayaki, let’s look at their Customer Story:

As you can see, it’s pretty short. There’s not much information here. Oddly, it does include a link on the right to Download a PDF of this page, and that version actually includes another paragraph of information and also clarifies that the company used EverNote to cut training time. I’m not sure why that additional content wasn’t included on the website.

Here’s What Needs Improvement: I’ve already touched on how short these Customer Stories are. I think some additional information, especially speaking to a business problem that the customer solved by using Evernote would be helpful. I also think that some short videos from the customer talking about how Evernote helps them in running their business, would be great. Ideally, I’d like to see some screencasts from the customer showing them using Evernote as they do in their daily routine. This would help the audience understand how they too could use Evernote successfully. Plus, video content has such high engagement levels, I think some video content from the customers themselves would really take these Customer Stories to the next level. In fact, Evernote could even do a video podcast with their customers talking about their experience with using Evernote, and then post on a video hosting site such as YouTube, then embed the video on that Customer Stories page for each customer.

 

Now let’s switch gears and look at how Wistia is using Customer Stories on its site:

wistia customer stories

Here’s What I Like About Wistia’s Customer Stories: Wistia has dozens of Customer Stories on its site. Unlike the Evernote Customer Stories, the ones on Wistia’s site are really in depth for each company. Each Customer Story includes plenty of quotes from the company, carefully explaining how it has benefited from using Wistia. And the Customer Stories also include video content! Sometimes it’s an interview with someone at the customer’s company, other times it’s examples of work that the customer has created by using Wistia. I think the Customer Stories do a great job of explaining who the customer is, what they do, but also helps the audience understand how they are using Wistia to be more successful. Wistia has done a really nice job with their Customer Stories.

Here’s What Needs Improvement: I think the Customer Stories would be more useful to the audience if they followed Evernote’s example and gave us information about the customer’s industry, and number of employees on the front page for the section. But honestly, that almost feels like nit-picking at this point, since Wistia has done such a good job with the content on each Customer Stories entry.

 

And if you are curious, I noticed that both EverNote and Wistia have a Customer Stories entry for CoSchedule. So you can check out both and see which one you prefer. Here’s the CoSchedule page on Evernote’s site, and here it is on Wistia’s site.

 

So that gives you an idea of how your company can integrate customer testimonials into your site’s content. Just remember to help the audience understand the important concepts that you want them to learn, and also make sure the customer talks about how they are using your products or services to grow their businesses. And finally, use the testimonials as a way to promote the customer. Give them some link love, let them brag on themselves a bit. After all, they are helping your company, by agreeing to give the testimonial. I think one of the companies I looked at in this post did a much better job with this than the other one. Look for yourself and see what you think.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Buyer Personas, Online Food Sales Spiking, #ContentCircus Debut

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to close out 2020 with a bang! Here’s a few marketing and business stories I found that I think you will like:

 

One of the themes I’ve been focusing on is how buyer behavior has changed in 2020, how your business can adjust, and what opportunities are created by the changes.  Bazaarvoice, a former client, has found that 42% of US shoppers, and 43% of European shoppers will be changing how they buy food and beverages. That means more online sales, and retailers are adjusting their ecommerce offerings to meet the increased demand. Now, this creates two scenarios that I want you to think about: If your company sells food and beverages, how can you make the purchase and delivery process more frictionless for customers? Remember that shoppers will pay for convenience. And secondly, if more shoppers will be buying food and beverages from home, that means they won’t be spending that time leaving their house to shop for food. What will they be spending that extra time on, and is there an opportunity for your company to take advantage of that additional time that shoppers will have? Could they spend that extra time with your products and services? Something to think about!

 

Buyer personas are so valuable to your marketng and content creation processes, but few companies use them and use them well. This very in-depth article from SEMRush walks you through the process of creating your own buyer personas. Well worth the time to improve your efforts to identify, and create a digital experience that connects with your ideal customer.

 

I am thrilled to announce that tomorrow night at 7pm Central will be the debut of #ContentCircus! This will be a weekly Twitter chat focused on content strategy, creation and execution. Think of it as a natural evolution of #Blogchat, but focusing on all content channels, not just blogs. Please join us, a recap will be posted here on Wednesday if you can’t make it!

 

Thanks so much for reading, I will see you back here tomorrow!

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Case Study: How Patagonia and Caterpillar Match Content to the Buyer’s Journey

Let’s review the Buyer’s Journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

In looking at this process, you can see that some customers would be at each of these four stages of the Buyer’s Journey leading up to a purchase. Let’s quickly review the type of content you should deliver to these customers at each stage:

Unaware: These are customers that don’t know who you are or what you do. The content you create for these customers should be focused heavily on the customer, and light on the brand. When you create content that talks about the customer, it gets their attention, and you will need their attention to move the customer closer to a sale. When you hear companies talk about wanting to ‘build awareness’ via social media and content marketing, these are the customers they are wanting to reach.

Slightly Aware: These are customers who are beginning to understand who your brand is, and what it does. Content aimed at these customers should help them understand how your brand’s products and services fit into their lives. So at this stage, you want to shift your content a bit to begin to discuss your product and services, but in the context of ‘Here’s how our stuff can help you”. In that way you are communicating that you know and understand who the customer is, and also that you know how your products and services can help them.

Interested: Customers at this stage are now considering making a purchase. So your content should shift more toward the product itself. NOW is when you can FINALLY start to sell your brand’s products and services. Customers at this stage are doing research in your products and services and those of your competitors, before making a purchase decision.

Ready to Buy! Customers at this stage are…ready to buy! Your content should do one thing, help them complete the sale.

 

Most company blogs create content that’s focused on either customers who are Unaware (building awareness) or customers who are Slightly Aware (helping customers understand how your products and services fit into their lives). So let’s look at two company blogs that cater its content to each of these groups. This will help you understand what such content would look like if you are trying to reach the same group for the same reason.

 

Case Study of a Company Blog that Focuses on Unaware Customers: Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line Blog

If you want to create content that raises awareness, you focus almost exclusively on what’s important to the audience you are trying to connect with, current and potential customers. You talk about the ideas, themes and beliefs that are important to your potential customers, because that’s how you get them to pay attention to your content.

Patagonia does a wonderful job of creating customer-centric content on its blog, The Cleanest Line. Its content is focused on ideas, themes and causes that are important to its customers, but which are also important to the brand and its founders:

  • Protecting the environment
  • Sustainability
  • Being active outdoors and enjoying nature

Almost all of the content on The Cleanest Line is focused on one or more of these areas. By positioning its content in this way, Patagonia is communicating the values and beliefs that are important to the brand. As a result, it attracts the awareness of people that share those same values and beliefs.

The content being created at The Cleanest Line is almost completely focused on topics other than the clothing that Patagonia sells. This is how you create content that builds awareness; By NOT directly selling to the customer.

As a sidenote, The Cleanest Line has changed a bit over the years, from a standalone site and blog, to now being completely integrated into Patagonia’s main website. Also, the posts are now called ‘Stories’, which I like and I think that encourages people to read the content by identifying it as being ‘stories’.

So check out The Cleanest Line, and note how the content is focused on what’s important to the customer, and almost none of it directly promotes its clothing or sells to those same customers. This is how you position your content if you want to build awareness.

 

Case Study of a Company Blog That Focuses on Slightly Aware Customers: Caterpillar’s On the Level Blog

Now let’s talk about how content changes when you create it for slightly aware customers. To reach customers at this stage, you still want to talk about what’s important to these customers, but you also want to talk about how your company’s products and services fit into the lives in your customer’s lives. Additionally, since this audience does have some awareness of your company, it will include some current customers. This is why your content transitions from being completely about the customer in the Unaware stage, to being about the connection between the customer and the company in the Slightly Aware stage.

With that in mind, let’s look at Caterpillar’s On the Level Blog. As soon as you see the topics of the posts on the blog, you can immediately see that the content is focused on connecting with project managers on construction sites. The content focuses on issues and problems that will be encountered on the construction site, and also focuses on how Caterpillar products and services will help managers succeed with their projects. Also note how the content here is different than the content you see on Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line blog. Patagonia almost never blogs about its products, Caterpillar does often. Also, note how the focus of the content is more narrowly defined on the Caterpillar blog.  This makes sense, as Caterpillar is speaking to a smaller audience. This is a byproduct of trying to reach an audience that is further along the Buyer’s Journey.

Here’s some of the posts up on the On the Level Construction Blog:

buyer's journey

As you can see, this is type of content is geared toward managers working on a construction site. Many of them are probably already using Caterpillar machinery, or are considering doing so,. The content is designed to be helpful and provide guidance for these construction site managers, but it also wants to help them understand how using Caterpillar machinery can make their projects go smoother.

 

So that gives you a good idea of the difference between the type of content you should create to reach Unaware customers (The Cleanest Line blog) and Slightly Aware customers (On the Level Construction blog) along the Buyer’s Journey.

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Introducing #ContentCircus!

Starting one week from today on December 8th, I will be launching a new Twitter chat called #ContentCircus! #ContentCircus will be focused on three areas:

  • Content Creation
  • Content Strategy
  • Content Execution

#ContentCircus will be every Tuesday night at 7pm Central. We will have a topic related to each of these three areas every month, and the last Tuesday of every month will be OPEN MIC, just like we had with #Blogchat!

Helping companies improve their content strategies and creation efforts is the work I love. I love teaching companies how to create content that resonates with customers, while also achieving desired business outcomes. And while I will always be partial to content created on blogs, content in 2020 takes on so many forms across so many tools and platforms. I think there’s an opportunity to create a robust Twitter chat with content as a focus that can benefit both content creators as well as the companies that hire and work with them.

So why not just bring back #Blogchat? 

I started #Blogchat on a whim in 2009 as a way to better catalog a Twitter conversation around a blogging question I asked on Twitter. It quickly grew into one of the first chats on Twitter. It WAS the first Twitter chat to monetize with a sponsor, and ended up being live at events like South By Southwest, Content Marketing World and Blogworld and New Media Expo. Companies such as Dell, Adobe, Club Med, Pilot Pen and others have sponsored #Blogchat. Every important thought leader in the blogging and digital space co-hosted #Blogchat during it’s 10-year run and at its height, #Blogchat was generating 25 Million impressions in one hour on Sunday nights!

#Blogchat soon took on a life of its own, and was a wonderful way to connect with new and emerging bloggers, and give them valuable guidance on how to improve their craft. You sense the ‘but’ is coming, right? But…my clients weren’t individual bloggers. So over time, the audience for #Blogchat and my desired audience began to become fractured. But I loved doing #Blogchat so much, and I felt an obligation to give back and do all I could to help bloggers become better bloggers. But over time, #Blogchat began to become a big time sink and other than sponsorships, I really could get enough money back from it to justify the time I needed to spend with the chat to continue its success.

So in 2019 I finally decided to end #Blogchat. But I didn’t end my love of Twitter chats. I still believe that chats are the best source of value on Twitter. And I always had in the back of my mind maybe I could bring #Blogchat back, at least for a one-shot.

Then one day it hit me: Why not do a Twitter chat focused on content? Boom! That would allow me to cover a topic that’s more in line with my desired client base and which would let me better promote my business services. Additionally, we could cover content creation using tools other than just blogs. So since the topic would be more closely aligned with my business, I could justify spending more time with the chat, to help it grow and be more valuable to as many content creators as possible.

What will be the focus of #ContentCircus?

The topics for #ContentCircus will all fall into 3 buckets; Content Strategy, Content Creation and Content Execution. In most months, we will have 4 Tuesdays, so 4 topics.  We will pick one topic from each of these buckets, and the 4th topic will be OPEN MIC, held on the last Tuesday of the month. OPEN MIC is something I started with #Blogchat. During OPEN MIC there is no set topic, everyone can discuss anything they want related to content. It’s a great chance for anyone to ask questions on content topics that we haven’t yet touched on.

We will also be focusing on these buckets as they relate to content tools and platforms as well.  For instance, we might talk about how to create more engagement on Twitter one month, and how to take better photos for Instagram the next month.

Over time, as the community grows, we will bring in co-hosts who are subject matter experts. One of the things I loved about seeing the #Blogchat community grow was that it gave me the opportunity to bring in popular thought leaders who could not only offer valuable insights to the #Blogchat community, but the exposure from co-hosting #Blogchat was also great for the co-hosts. A true wn-win.

And yes, we will have sponsors for #ContentCircus. Lining up sponsors honestly is not a concern at this point, that will take care of itself later on. As with #Blogchat, any sponsorships with #ContentCircus will be structured so they add value to the community, and aren’t a distraction.

So I’m excited about #ContentCircus and I’m looking forward to creating another community that can help others become better content creators. See you next Tuesday at 7pm Central on Twitter!

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Two Things You Can Start Doing Today to Immediately Make Your Business Blog More Interesting

Let’s be honest, most of us do not get up every morning ready to read our favorite business blog. I have great sympathy for the writers and content managers who are tasked with creating content for their company’s blog. Drawing people to a business blog, and engaging them so they become regular readers is a very difficult task. Here’s two strategies I use to help clients create more interesting and engaging content for their blogs:

1 – Talk less about your company and more about what’s interesting to your customer. Remember that when you are building a readership for your blog, you are attempting to connect with people that have little or no awareness about who your company is or what it sells. So you have to find a way to interest these readers, and the way to do that is by talking about things that are interesting to them, then relate those things back to your company.

I love marketing. Let me rephrase that; I love GOOD marketing. Good marketing often goes unnoticed, and makes everything better, not worse. When I first started blogging in 2005, my goal was to make marketing interesting to people that didn’t understand marketing or care to read about marketing. I did that by attaching marketing to things that DID interest them. I talked about how music artists use marketing, or how sports teams use marketing. And as I did, I talked about how those same marketing lessons could apply to their businesses.

You should do the same thing with your company blog. Focus on your audience, the people you want to connect with and reach. Figure out what’s interesting to them, and how you can tie that to your company. Think about how what your company sells can impact the lives of your customers and make their lives more meaningful. Blog about that impact, because once they see the impact, they will become interested in your content and in learning more about how your company can help them achieve that impact.

2 – Tell stories. Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to get the attention of your readers. There’s two main ways you can do this, by telling stories of your customers, or telling stories about your company. By telling stories about your customers, you make the content more relatable to your readers. It’s easiest to see the content from the customer’s point of view many times than it is the company’s point of view.

You can also tell stories about your company. This is a great way to tell the history of your company or to talk about the values that your company holds dear or the causes it supports. This is a great way to connect with your readers by letting them know you support causes and ideas that they hold dear, or by talking about your company’s history, and making the case that your company has a long and successful history.

Here’s a simple example of how a company can use storytelling to tell its history. A couple of years ago I talked about how Maersk, a global B2B shipping company, created an incredibly engaged community on Instagram and Facebook. Maersk’s social manager discovered that the company’s archivist had amassed a collection of roughly 30,000 images associated with the brand over the last century. The images were literally sitting in a cabinet collecting dust for the most part. No one had ever thought to use them, but the social manager decided to use them to tell the story of the Maersk brand and what it does. So the brand started sharing the images on social media. This helped educate others on what the company does (global shipping), but that it has been doing that for a long time! And all it took was using images that the company already had on hand, that it saw no real use for.

As luck would have it, just as I am writing this post this morning, ProBlogger left a great tweet with 14 types of stories you can tell:

 

So hopefully, that gives you plenty of ideas for how to make your business blog content more engaging and interesting. Keep in mind that building a readership for any blog is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistency is the name of the game. I will have a blogging recap of what happened here in October on Monday, to give you an idea of how this blog is doing. Even with a much greater output of posts, it still takes a while to build a readership.

Hope that helps you!