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5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing
Jan 23rd
5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
You need lots of content, you know that, but you also know that content creation is one of the more time intensive marketing activities you have to tackle.
While you do need to create your own content as the foundation for your total content and teaching strategy, you can – and should – supplement your content with that from other people.
Image hazel.estrada via Flickr CC
One of the best services marketers can provide these days is to act as a filter for all that’s being produced out there and aggregate the best of the best on behalf of our communities.
Finding and sharing consistently high quality, relevant content and adding insight to this information is not only a great way to increase the volume of your content, it’s a great way build trust in the value of your content.
Here are five ways to add other people’s content to your routine.
Cobrand a winner
Lots of people produce great content in the form of downloadable white papers and eBooks. In some cases they do this to attract newsletter subscribers and links, but quite often they do it because they know something about a topic and want to document it.
With just a little bit of searching you can probably turn up a great eBook that your network would love to get their hands on. Now, some people might simply link to this content, but I’d like to suggest another way.
What if you approached the eBook author and asked if you could send it out to your networks, with full credit to the author, but with the ability to add one simple information page about you or your company at the back?
With this approach you could potentially build a library of content overnight with the right topics and content.
Here’s how to get started.
Use the Google filetype operator to find lots of potential candidates on just about any topic you can imagine. Here’s how it works. If you want to find PDF documents and eBooks about content curation, for example, you would type: content curation filetype:pdf into a Google search box.
This tells Google you are looking for content related to content curation, but you only want results that are pdf files. This way you’ll probably turn up any number of candidates for cobranding projects.
Email newsletter snacks
Publishing a weekly email newsletter is a proven way to stay top of mind with your community. Of course, offering a great free eBook as mentioned above is a great way to build that weekly newsletter list.
As you compete for inbox space you must keep in mind that your newsletter content must be consistently useful, relevant and convenient.
One of the best ways to meet these qualifications is to produce high quality content filtered from other sources and delivered in snack-sized bites. Think in terms of an email newsletter that might contain 5-6 great articles presented with abstracts that lay out in about 100 words with someone might want to click through and read the rest.
Using tools like AllTop, GoogleReader, NewsVine or PopULRs you can easily locate and aggregate content related to topics of interest to your readers. You may also be able to locate local bloggers that could be great candidates for guest content and strategic relationships.
Curate a magazine
The idea of curating content is very hot right now, but in order to really make it pay you’ve got to also be ready to add insight. So many people look at curation as something more closely aligned with republishing.
Republishing content you find does have value, but narrowly targeting a very specific topic and becoming known as a trusted source of insight on the vast array of information being published on any topic is how you take content curation to a new level.
Below are some of my favorite tools for creating your curated online content magazines.
- MySyndicaat – http://mysyndicaat.com/home
- Scoop.it – http://www.scoop.it/
- Storify – http://storify.com/
- Curation Station – http://curationstation.com/
You can also use tools like Delicious, Evernote, Pinterest or Pearltrees to simply clip, bookmark and organize content you find for republication.
If you want to really know how to get great at this follow Robin Good – Here’s a great place to start – What Makes A Great Curator Great?
RSS to HTML
This technique is perhaps a bit more technical, but it also allows you the greatest control.
Just about all online content these days comes powered by RSS making it easy to convert whatever find into a feed that can be converted to HTML code and displayed on any page we like.
For example, if you wanted to publish positive mentions of your firm on a new page on your site you simply set up Google Alerts so that you received notice that your firm was mentioned. Click through to the page and assuming it’s something you want to publish to your site you would bookmark the content using PinBoard and tag like “ournews.”
PinBoard creates tag based RSS feeds so anything you tag with ournews can be displayed in a specific RSS feed. This gives you total control over what you want to appear in the feed.
Once you create the feed you can take it to FeedBurner or RSSInclude to convert the feed to HTML code that you can embed on a page or widget to easily display the content from the feed wherever you choose.
Then any time you bookmark a new item it will publish to the page.
Ask little things
One of the best ways to get lots of people to create content for you around a specific topic is to ask lots of people to answer one very short question.
This can be a great way to collect lots of suggestions, opinions and insights to support or start a topic of interest to your readers.
The other powerful thing about his approach is that you can often get higher profile contributors to participate if all you are asking them to do is answer one question or finish one statement.
Once you collect all of your answers you simply collect them and add context and analysis.
It’s time to make other people’s content one of your content foundation planks.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For You
Jan 16th
5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For You
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
You’ve heard enough about the need to produce content that I’m guessing you’re probably blogging away and curating, aggregating and filtering all manner of content. But there’s one type of content that you may not be focused on and I happen to think it’s some of the most potent to be had – and that’s customer generated content.
Your customers, the ones that already know, like and trust you, are more equipped to tell the real story of your business than an army of writers in any marketing department, so why not engage them to do just that.
Imagine taking your best, most loyal, most vocal, customer with you on your next sales call and asking them to simply explain the real benefits they’ve realized because of the work you’ve done for them. That’s the power of customer generated content when done right and that’s why you need to routinely find ways to acquire it.
Below are five ideas to help you get your customers telling their stories.
One question testimonial
Create a survey that asks every customer one question. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is it that you would refer us. Now, set the survey up so that if the answer is 1-4 the survey taker is redirected to a page that apologizes and sets the expectation that they will hear from someone immediately to find out what went wrong.
If it’s a 5-7, send the customer to a page that says, you’re not happy until they are happier than that and ask them to suggest how you could have done better.
For the 8-10 answers, redirect them to a form that allows them to submit a testimonial and ask them to check a box if they would agree to be interviewed for a case study.
This is a great way to automate testimonial generation and keep a real time pulse on how you’re doing. I use Wufoo forms to run this process, but I’ve heard good things about Formstack as well.
Video appreciation party
I’ve written about this before, but it’s such a great way to get lots of great video content that I thought I would share it again.
Once a year or so hold a client appreciation event to say thanks and create a networking event for your clients and prospects. Hire a video crew for the event and, after a few bottles of wine have been emptied, ask some of your clients to talk about their experience with your firm on camera. Then also let them record a five minute commercial for their own use too.
This is a great way to get lots of testimonials and case studies in one day and your clients will get very engaged in swapping stories and selling each other on the benefits of working with you.
Tell us your story
Getting your customers to share their experience is a very powerful form of content. You can sit across the desk and interview your customers in order to extract this kind of content or you can employ a handful of tools that make it very easy to capture these stories.
For audio only content a testimonial recording line from AudioAcrobat is a great way to go. You simply provide your customer with a phone number that they can call and record their story. The service then produces an mp3 and code to embed on your site for people to play the recordings.
You can also use a tool like MailVu that allows you send a link with a video capture tool so your client’s with a web cam can record a video testimonial or story and submit it with little work on your part.
Community knowledge base
What if you could find a way to get your best customers to willingly shoulder creating answers to questions and best practices? Tools like ZenDesk and GetSatisfaction make it easy for you to enable community members to provide help and archived advice to other customers and prospects.
Robin Robins, founder of Marketing Technology Toolkit in Nashville, TN involves her customer community in an incredible way. She has created a membership program that allows her mostly IT business customers to receive ongoing business building support through coaching, training and tools she provides.
She has created what she calls “accountability groups” in the membership program and customers head up these groups and do a great deal of work keeping participants engaged and on track. Heading up these groups is not a paid position; loyal and committed customers that want to play a bigger role in the community do it.
Help your peers
Using a tool like Google+ Hangouts, Skype Video Conference or GoToMeeting Video Conference you can easily host and facilitate a group video conference where your customers and their peers can discuss important industry and business challenges and trends. You can record and archive the event and create some very useful and engaging content.
This is not a sales event, but by virtue of the fact that you have included customers in the conversation, there will be the inevitable discussions about what you’ve done to help them address a challenge.
Creating opportunities to capture the stories your clients have to tell is an important piece in any fully developed content strategy.
So, what have you done to get your customers talking?
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Getting an Education Through Content Creation
Jan 3rd
Getting an Education Through Content Creation
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Many business owners, and certainly most marketers, have succumbed to the need to consistently product high quality, education based content as the foundation of their marketing efforts.
Without looking too hard you can see that many successful organizations lean very heavily on their content to generate and convert leads. In fact, the wildly successful online marketing service Hubspot appears to do little more than produce, aggregate, syndicate and promote useful content as a way to expose potential customers to their way of doing business. (Granted they do a lot of it.)
With content production comes work, however, and that’s the part that even marketers that realize how important good content is struggle with.
I’ve written many posts about tools that make content production easier and even where I find inspiration for things to write about, but there’s one bit of leverage that I’ve not shared that may help kick your content production into high gear.
What if you looked at content production as a way to get yourself educated?
See, I’ve found that one of the surest ways to get something done is to increase the payoff for doing it. (It’s sort of why after months of not being able to get our taxes organized we magically get it all done one day in early April – the payoff, or perhaps threat of fines, makes it a high priority.)
So, what if instead of always writing about the things you know, you chose to include writing about the things you need to or should know.
For example, as a business owner I need to know more about cash flow, balance sheets, profit and labor productivity. Not so much so that I would advise others on these things, but certainly enough that I can understand them, teach them to my staff, use this data to run my business and, in some cases, teach my CPA how to actually be an adviser.
So what do I do? I ask around and find what some are calling the best book on these matters. (Here’s the one I landed on: Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential) I read the book. (That part most people do) Then I find the author, interview him, create a podcast, and write about the very subjects I needed to know more about – an act which deepens my learning.
This is such a powerful way to learn what I need to learn, get advice from leading experts, and produce high quality content all at the same time.
You likely couldn’t make this your only content strategy, but you can certainly create a list of 8-10 topics that you need to know more about and go to work on finding someone that would be happy to teach you while you create content.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
20 Content Marketing Ideas for 2012
Dec 29th
I know–just the phrase “content marketing” is enough to instill fear in many small business owners. But why? As SMBs, we’re pros at using content as a way to attract customers and build word of mouth. We’ve been doing it our whole entrepreneurial careers! But we seem to forget this when the “content marketing” term is brought into the discussion. However, the idea of leveraging content marketing as a lead generation strategy doesn’t have to intimidate you. There are virtually an endless supply of content marketing strategies at SMBs’ fingertips.
Here, I’ll start you off with 20.
Below is just a handful (OK, a few handfuls) of content marketing ideas your business can implement and profit from in 2012.
- Create a free course on a topic related to your business and invite people in your neighborhood to attend. For example, if you’re a caterer, maybe it’s how to host the perfect dinner party. If you’re an accountant, maybe it’s on what you need to know before filing your taxes this year. Promote the event using both local print and online resources.
- Send out a direct mailing thanking your customers for their patronage in 2011 and sharing what you hope to bring them in 2012. Make sure you’re top of mind as the New Year hits.
- Compile your 20 best/most trafficked/most commented on blog posts into an ebook and offer them as a free download.
- Participate in industry-specific Q&A sites and help solve others problems. Don’t promote your business, but do include a link to your website in your profile so people can find it on their own should they be interested.
- Dedicate 30 minutes a week to commenting on relevant blogs to build relationships, get your name out there and create authority.
- Creating a buying guide related to your industry. If you sell a product, focus on the different specs, installation, uses, etc. If you offer a service, focus on the best questions to ask when evaluating a vendor, the different types of services, etc.
- Start an industry-specific Twitter chat. Invite guests to co-host with you.
- Put together an informative blog series (maybe three posts long) to capture traffic for a competitive keyword phrase show expertise in a particular area. Later, bundle the posts together and turn them into an ebook.
- Create a video interview series where you chat with influential people in your industry or community and post the videos on your website.
- Start an email newsletter.
- Host a weekly Google+ hangout to talk about timely issues and topics.
- Be a guest on a podcast.
- Get other local business owners together and hold a workshop on a hot issue in your industry. Or, get together with other business owners in different industries and talk about how you’ve used the Internet/Facebook/Twitter to increase business.
- Write guest posts for other blogs in your industry.
- Review products/services/books you like.
- Write case studies for your website. Promote them.
- Create a tool to help your community. If you’re a tax preparer, maybe it’s a deduction finder or a planning worksheet. If you’re a social media consultant, maybe it’s a list of Twitter conversation starters for people not sure how to jump in.
- Write a white paper detailing a specific issue affecting your industry, what it means and your take on it. Get other experts to share their opinions as well. Include them in the whitepaper.
- Speak at your local Chamber of Commerce. Create a PowerPoint presentation to go along with it and then post it on your website.
- Start a video grab bag series where you answer common questions on YouTube and post the videos on your blog.
See how easy that was? Twenty powerful ways to use content marketing to build awareness for your business. You don’t even have to break a sweat.
20 Content Marketing Ideas for 2012
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
4 Questions to Ask Yourself About Content
Dec 20th
Most of us have been told that we need more unique, relevant content on our websites. We need stuff that will differentiate us from our competitors, convert customers and give the search engines something to rank us for. Unfortunately, many of us take that as an excuse to add random blog posts and pages to our sites that do little more than take up space. But that’s not really what we mean when we talk about creating content.
As a small business owner, you want to focus on creating content with a purpose. Because the truth of the matter is, not all content is created equal. If you’re going to spend time fattening up your site or your blog, you want to make sure you’re adding the right meat instead of wasting your time throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Below are four questions you should ask yourself before starting in on any content marketing strategy.
1. Who Are You Building Content For?
Have you created user personae to connect content to conversions and help you understand your audience’s specific needs? If you haven’t, I’d encourage you to do so. By breaking your audience into specific buckets, you can create content based around their specific user intents. Once you know the intents, you know what kinds of content you should be creating.
You should also think about what type of content will help you best meet your needs:
- Blog posts
- Authority articles
- Videos
- Images
- Electronic documents such as PDFs
- User-generated content
Ideally you’ll want to use a mix of these and try different formats, but think about how each format can specifically address a user goal. If your audience is notoriously busy and on-the-go, for instance, then audio that they can download and take with them may address their needs better than a written tutorial.
2. How Will Your Content Aid Lead Generation?
As I mentioned above, you don’t just want to create content for the sake of creating content. You want there to be a purpose driving your content creation. One of the most common reasons for starting in on a content marketing plan is to aid lead generation.
You want to give some thought as to how your content will help you attract and convert more customers. Will you be creating blog posts and white papers to help get that initial consumer attention, or will you focus more on buying guides to attract consumers coming to you later in the conversion funnel? Or, ideally, will you do both?
Either way, you want to really think about how your content is going to compliment what you’re doing elsewhere so that it works for your site and brings value. If you’re going to dedicate resources to creating content, you want to make sure it’s having a positive effect on your bottom line. Otherwise you’re just throwing away money and calling it “blog posts.”
3. How Will You Spread the Word About Content?
Yes, we’re back to the dreaded S-word: Self-promotion. If you don’t have a plan for how you will promote and spread your content, then you don’t really have a content marketing plan. You just have a lot of content.
When it comes to spreading the word about your content:
- What sites do your customers visit to find and consume content?
- Which users are really active about spreading content?
- Where does your audience go online to ask questions and connect with others?
- How much time do you have, realistically, to promote your content?
Take all of these things into account, because, despite what the Internet (and Google) would like us to believe, good content does not spread itself. We still need to help light the spark that will build the flame.
4. How Will You Track Your Content?
With the content created and being spread to the right audience, you’re now left to track its success. Tracking your content helps you identify things like:
- The type of content your audience most responds to
- Communities most accepting of your content/brand
- Who your brand advocates are
- Your ROI for specific content pieces
This data can be invaluable in helping a small business to determine where time is best spent and what types of content are most profitable.
Creating a content strategy means more than just slapping a few new blog posts on your site and calling it a day. As SMBs with limited time and resources, you want to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck with the content you create by focusing on targeted content, created for a specific user, with a direct purpose. Anything else is just playing.
4 Questions to Ask Yourself About Content
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
The Content Multiplier
Nov 26th
The Content Multiplier Is An Information Marketing Strategy Developed And Tested By The Creators Of The World Entrepreneur Success Training Program That Allows Marketers To Create Quality SEO And Keyword Optimized Unique Content That Search Engines Love
The Content Multiplier
The largest independent content sites
Nov 17th
Quantcast makes it easy to see the largest one million sites in the US (by traffic). There’s a signficant consolidation going on, with the vast majority of popular sites being owned and controlled by larger, public companies.
Because onine traffic follows, as most things do, a power law curve, the top 100 sites account for a huge amount of overall web traffic–probably more than the next 900 sites combined.
After removing public companies and those that only do commerce, here are the thirty independent companies on the top 100:
facebook.com
twitter.com
wikipedia.org
answers.com
wordpress.com
craigslist.org
tumblr.com
pandora.com
whitepages.com
manta.com
photobucket.com
yelp.com
wikia.com
webmd.com
hubpages.com
metrolyrics.com
inbox.com
squidoo.com
grindtv.com
drudgereport.com
coolmath-games.com
city-data.com
urbandictionary.com
wunderground.com
chacha.com
bleacherreport.com
twitpic.com
deviantart.com
cafemom.com
zimbio.com
typepad.com
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Content Cash Secrets Videos
Oct 13th
Step-By-Step Videos Show You How To Make Money Online On Autopilot With Mini Sites. 60% Affiliate Payout.
Content Cash Secrets Videos
10 Ads That Were Banned For Sexual Content
Sep 4th
If there is a number one truth in advertising it must surely be this: sex sells. And a lot of sex sells a lot of things. As the late, great comedian Bill Hicks dryly noted, sex can be (and often is) used to advertise absolutely anything at all. Sometimes, however, those zany advertising types go a little too far for some peoples’ tastes and wind up getting their creations banned. Here, then, are our top ten television ads that were banned for sexual content. Enjoy!
10. Bud (Superbowl)
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? The couple in this ad don’t appear to suspect a thing! This ad for Budweiser Light gave a new meaning to the term ‘beer goggles’ when it was shown during the Superbowl of 2007 and was swiftly banned in the US. The skinny dipping, nudity and sexual content were obviously just too much for some. Those party poopers.
9. Microsoft XP
Let’s face it, computer operating systems are not the sexiest things in the world but that didn’t stop this commercial for Microsoft from being slapped with a ban in the US. Dubbed ‘the unexpected experience’, the guy in this ad is having a bit of trouble with his partner’s bra when technology takes over…
8. Renault
Banned from daytime TV in the United Kingdom, this ad featuring soccer superstar Thierry Henry and burlesque performer Dita von Teese was a recent addition to Renault’s ‘va va voom’ campaign. There is also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from R ‘n’ B singer Rihanna. The ad, which features Von Teese seductively taking off her bra, was deemed too raunchy for day time audiences. Their loss we reckon.
7. Ikea
Ikea’s ‘Tidy Up’ campaign caused quite a stir across Europe and this one was the most controversial of the lot. Focusing on the embarrassment of not having a tidy home, the ad is about a child’s alarming discovery. Original and funny, the ad is actually quite innocent but anything involving minors and sexual activity probably rang a few alarm bells with the censors. Subsequently it was banned in the UK.
6. Centrum
Banned in the US in 2007 for nudity and general sexiness, this ad for Centrum is based on the idea that their products keep you looking and feeling young. Featuring two very different sets of strip poker players, this naughty ad could have you reaching for the vitamins!
5. Vegetarian Society
Hey, vegetables can be sexy too! Banned in the UK for containing sexual content, the censors obviously had something other than dinner on their minds when they saw this. And we can see their point! This rude food takes the whole idea of sexy cooking to the extreme. Warning, you may have to simmer down after watching this.
4. NewYorker Underwear
Taking the ‘sex sells’ theory to the limit, the model in this notorious ad is literally (barely) dressed to kill! Banned from American TVs, the ad is about as hot as it gets. Before anyone writes in, we have been assured that no elderly men were harmed in the making of the commercial.
3. Agent Provocateur
This ad was banned from British televisions for the simple reason that Australian pop star Kylie Minogue is just too damn sexy! The raunchy 2001 ad features the delightful Ms Minogue riding on a mechanical bull in Agent Provocateur lingerie. As well as being seriously hot, the ad does have some artistic credentials as well, as it was voted best cinema advert of all time by advertising sales house Digital Cinema Media (DCM).
2. Durex
By their very nature, condom adverts regularly come under the scrutiny of the censors. This ad for Durex from their ‘feelings are everything’ campaign was no exception. Featuring British actor Dominic Cooper, the funny ad was deemed unsuitable for UK audiences when it was made a few years back. We think you’ll agree the message, although a touch unsubtle, is an important one.
1. Eva Mendes Obsession
This arty ad for Calvin Klein’s fragrance Obsession features another sexy celebrity and was banned by US networks in 2008. The censors’ main problem was with sultry actress Eva Mendes’s exposed nipple. The makers recut the commercial, making it suitable for post 9pm audiences and, in a great PR move, kept the original available for all online! We can all be grateful for that I think.
View full post on Business Pundit
WPSynonymizer – Making unique content out of duplicate content
Sep 2nd
WPSynonymizer – WPSynonymizer is a content spinner engine built on synonyms and is intended to make duplicate content of autoblogs in to unique content – by changing certain words in the content – thus making the content different.
WPSynonymizer – Making unique content out of duplicate content
