Designated Editor

Byron White of IdeaLaunch

Try to talk clients into building true knowledge centers, not places for sales pitches

Build your content marketing assets

• Create knowledge centers
• Write FAQ sections
• Submit articles to other sites

Then what?

• Build internal links!!
• Get the word out; links come back
• Get conversations going, not followers
• Publish a printed book, on demand, and you become an expert

Analyze competition

• Apply expertise
• Position your company
• Find keen insight
• Shed new light
• Offer inside scoop
• Raise awareness
• Progress leads off with knowledge

Find the “essentially contested concepts,” topics with gray areas

• Follow thought leaders
• Find topics to debate
• Chime in
• Contribute
• Put ideas to work
• Stay on topic

Other tools

• White papers
  • Establish expertise
  • Make understandable
  • Infuse personality
  • Showcase insight
  • Can be a bit stale
    

• Video
• eBook     —-> downloads jumped 68% from 2007 to 2008
• Microsites —-> Talk the real talk
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Slide presentations —-> Slideshare.net

Please rate the following; which technique do you think lends greater credibility?

• Publishing a book, even an eBook
• 
  A full-on FAQ section
• 
  Microsites
• 
  Webinars
• 
  Podcasts
• 
  Videos
• 
  White papers
• 
  Commenting on thought leaders’ posts and articles

7/13/09
Content creation
Art of listening to the wants and needs of customers, science of delivering it in a compelling and engaging way

Constantly testing campaigns to put the reader in control: A-B testing, multivariate testing

Talk with people, not at them

The customers, not the company, need to be the focus

Insight and advice, not pushing products, features, or benefits

Content is the pipeline for warm leads –  Everything visitors do is tracked via SalesForce.com to see what they’re interested in

Optimize for search engines and readers

What to create content about?

• Keyword research – what’s popular
• Social media sphere – conversations, meaningful, leaders in industry
• Talk and listen – talk to customer service to hear about problems
• Surveys and polls

Keywords in position 11-50: low-lying fruit to write content about

What are the needs?
What can you get quick impact on?

• SpyFu.com
• RavenTools.com
• Google keywords
• Keyworddiscovery

Hire great writers

• Inhabit target audience
• Build credibility
• Are contagious

Learn how to pepper keyword content

Not just on keyword popularity

What are the needs?

What can you get quick impact on?

Online class: Writing for the Web: Guidelines for Writing Online
Manoush Zomorodi
Mediabistro

Users want

• Multimedia
• Specific answers to what they’re searching

Service-oriented content

• Advice
• Stats
• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Ratings
• Health information
• Test results

Users will read as little as possible, so be concise

Headlines

• Be sure to write searchable headlines and subheads
• Searchability trumps cleverness
• Keywords need to be in the headline

Sidebars

•     Provide easy access to supplemental bonus material, bonus points for multimedia
•     Guides
•     Recipe-finder
•     Audio & video

Photos and graphic elements
Illustrations can liven up a dry topic
    
Source information

•     Use firsthand/primary sources
•     Check credentials, be sure your experts reall are
•     Be sure the site itself is reputable

Blog

•     Tout and own your expertise
•     Stand out and get noticed
•     Keep blog very focused on one subject
•     Update consistently
•     Engage with users

July 8, 2009

“E-Commerce Differentiation: The Use of Content in the E-Commerce Environment” With Lee Bissonnette – FAO Schwartz @ eComXpo

When you go to the store, no one shops alone; when you shop online everyone shops alone: new realm is merging these two experiences

Be compelling in your space

Develop customer-centric focus

Use guerilla tactics as much as possible

Invest in the things we’re good at

Get social: not necessarily in social media, but speak to each other, partnerships, find new opportunities

Produce more content because that’s what our customers want

Figure out what we want to say to our customers

Content-based selling: information resource

Send to everybody: what it is that person wants to do? if you have a toddler, info about safe toys for that age group: that information get used, gets passed along and is valued

Product reviews

Challenge: small creative staffs

Spent $1.3 million on creative to produce the catalog last year: not shipping or printing, just creative and photography