This Is My Favorite Marketing Newsletter Because ...

I get about 60 digital newsletters a day. I love this one.

The graphic header is recognizable, yet shallow enough to show the crux of the blog post without scrolling down. So critical. 

Hubspot sends this out multiple times a day (two? three?). I always glance at it and I often read the intro. I click through maybe four out of 10 times.

Sometimes I tweet it. Every month, I draw from it for Marketing AdVents, the award-winning monthly newsletter of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC), which I edit. 

This newsletter meets the objective: It makes me click through to the blog.

Yes, the blog content is superb, but the enewsletter design gets me there.

Finally, this is the only enewsletter I receive that looks like this and persuades like this.

Serving Enewsletters? Get to the Meat!

©CreativeCommons by Heather Joan

I got an e-newsletter today-- one of about 60. This one featured four boxes, each with a stock photo. Every box had a headline, 35 words of fluff copy, and a link to the company’s blog. The meat sat on the click-through. I never got there.

Here's a better recipe for electronic newsletter tidbits:
1. Skip the headline.
2. Cut the intro.
3. Jump to the meat.
4. Serve.
5. Repeat.


Details
This copywriter served four dishes and four headlines:
• 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Social Presence Now
• Is Your Brand Too Bland? Avoid These Pitfalls of "Wallpaper Copywriting"
• Reputation Management — the Secret Weapon
• 3 Twitter Tips That Will Boost Your Twitter Marketing

Not horrible, but very commonplace headlines. “Nothing to see here. Move on."

So what brought me back?
Nothing tasty, that's for sure. Just curiosity. A couple minutes later I wondered if these guys could teach us all a lesson. I went back to my trash folder, retrieved the email, and checked to see if they had anything to offer.

Here's my review.
• I've seen those headlines too often.
• The short 35-word intros to each item were even more trite than the headlines (for example, “Twitter is a fast moving social network. New content pushes older content out of the way fairly quickly, meaning that it's easy for your tweets to go unnoticed. If there's an important tweet that you want your customers to…”) [yawn]
• The meat was buried on the click-through link. I never made it there.

Cure
If you want readers to look further, tell us one thing we don't know. A single item we don’t know is better than four items of old news.

Sadly, the meat (see below) was there! But it was buried in paragraph three on the blog post. Why not put this on the cover page instead?

"When you pin a tweet, it's the first thing visitors will see when they come to your Twitter page …Here's how to pin a tweet:
• Locate the tweet you’d like to pin.
• Click the three little dots (extra tools) menu at the bottom right of the tweet.
• Select 'pin to your profile page.'"

Forty-eight words of pure meat. So why didn’t the writer serve me this tasty morsel first?

Beats me.

Is Personal Branding A Load of Manure?

Photo courtesy of Ardonik @Creative Commons

In their early November podcast , Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster dissected the value of "personal branding."

Does everything we do (or don't do) -- on or off the social web -- end up creating our personal brand, like it or not? Should we care?

Mark says yes. Tom says no.

Check out their differing points of view.


Schaefer POV
• Today, we have the ability to create a reputation/image/brand through what we do, say, and write on the social web. Therefore, it's important to establish our reputation online to demonstrate our values, how we work, and how we think.
• A few years ago I had the opportunity to interview at a Fortune 500 company in NYC, but a friend of mine told me to be sure that I would be allowed to continue to work on my personal brand, even if I were employed by this company. I never thought of it that way before. In my experience, when you worked for a big company, you were subsumed by that company.
• Personal branding and authenticity go together. Tom has talked about how he is careful because he represents his company in some way. Like it or not, a certain "containment" or "formula" guides what we choose to present or not present on the web. That is part of our "brand."
• Marketing myself would never occur to me while I'm working for a company, but today that is probably a smart thing to do.
• What can an accountant, for example, do to become "known" for his brand? He/she could create a blog about new principles/regulations, which would create a brand. It's also about networking, speaking, and writing. He/she could become established on LinkedIn or other online networking tools to demonstrate, "This is whom I am, this is how I think."
• The brand you present can be commensurate with your experience. Even if it's not a lot of experience, you can show, "This is what I believe, this is what I read, this is who I know, this is what I am curious about, etcetera."
• Personal branding also involves being smart about building business relationships. You still have to connect person-to-person. Social media doesn't deliver business like personal relationships do.
• I would encourage marketers to think about personal branding strategically. Even if you are secure in your job today, think about creating a long-term online presence.

Webster POV
• In short, I'd say personal branding is a load of manure.
• Where does "brand" come from? It's where a product or company tries to give itself a personality. I already have a personality, which is a result of what I have done.
• To me personal brand was invented and discarded by Tom Peters 50 years ago in his book on 50 ways to build brand "you."
• Personal brand is not about spreading your fame. What is most important is that a group of my colleagues and clients believe that I will do what I say I will do.
• Your personal brand needs to take second place to the corporate brand. When Mark talks about developing "personal brand," he is talking about displaying your skill.. which makes him unique from, say, an accountant.
• To me personal branding is telling a story about yourself, not simply having an online presence. Networking, for example, is as old as the hills.
• I get that it's good to have things you own that demonstrate who you are: content and so on. The dark side of personal branding is that inexperienced people who do this, often demonstrate that they aren't very good. In other words, mere links, if they're weak, don't drive business.
• In the early phase of social web, you could be at the top if you were good at content marketing. However as the web matures, you also must be good at what you do, not just good at content marketing or how you present yourself.

Thank you, gentlemen, for a fascinating conversation that, we're sure, is to be continued ...


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Starved for Content? Feed This.

Creating content from other content isn't about repeating or copying. It's about repurposing. Start with a rich source, then add to, expand upon, enhance, comment about, or -- in this case -- condense from that source. Voila! New and different content. 

Recently, I downloaded Curata's eBook, "How To Feed the Content Beast." And now I have my own blog post, short 'n sweet.

In other words, learn and share at the same time.

1. Turn an ebook into a series of blog posts, or a series of blog posts into an ebook.

2. Create a transcript so content “snackers” can scan the information from a webinar.

3. Host a real-time tweet chat and republish it as a crowd-sourced blog post.

4. Pull sound bytes out of a long-form report and use them as tweets and Facebook updates.

5. Give quotes new life as graphics for use on visual platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.

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You Might Think Everybody Does This. Uh… no. But Everybody Should.

Writers tend to do a lot of online research. As the editor of a marketing newsletter and a relentless blogger, I visit hundreds of websites, download dozens of whitepapers, pile up racks of statistics, and read a lot of blogs.

Sometimes a website will ask me to leave an email address and I will (though often reluctantly) IF I want the product badly enough. That’s what happened when I visited Vidyard.com to download their whitepaper “Video: the New ROI Star of Marketing.” What I never expected was the simple, non-pushy “nice-to- meet you” email that arrived 24 hours later:

Hi Nancy,

Thank you for stopping by the Vidyard website. I wanted to reach out to you to see if you were looking to learn more about video marketing or if you have any questions about Vidyard.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or if you think Vidyard might be a fit for your specific use case.

All the best,

Ally

From all the websites in all the urls in all the world, this is the first-time I’ve ever received an email like this. Phone calls from salespeople, yes. Thank you for downloading XYZ, yes. Glad you downloaded, now how about buying this, definitely.

But a simple, short, no-pitch email offering help if needed? Not once.

This classy follow-up tells me these folks are very good at what they do.

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For Content Marketing, Headlines Power Tiny eNewsletters

Headlines rule Facebook's PAPER app.

Digg does it. Huffington Post does it. Even NAPL VP Bill Farquharson is going short. And you know what? I read at least one piece from each of these content providers during my morning "keep up" ritual. Why? I can't resist clever headlines.

DIGG
Consider this NPR headline featured by DIGG. "So You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent." The story focused on "the wisdom of crowds" — ordinary people who, as a group, forecast better than the CIA or the experts. Killer interesting.

Huffington Post
HuffPo's "Morning Email" opens with two or three catchy headlines and brief copy blocks (mostly sans graphic), followed by more terse headlines within come-hither sections. The Scuttlebutt, Top Stories, Culture Catch-up, Sports Scouting Report, Other People's Business, International Intrigue—these sections are broken into paragraphs and one-sentence copy blocks with links. For me, short works. I'm scanning; I'm reading maybe only two pieces … but I'm reading.

Farquharson Has A Short Attention Span newsletter
Bill Farquharson started his "Short Attention Span Webinar" series in February 2009. These little gems run about 5 minutes on Bill's YouTube channel and  typically get 700 to 800 views. The first time I saw Bill refer to "short-attention -span," I knew he was on to something .. and he is. It's now 2014. Bill is still cranking out the webinars and promoting them in a short-attention-span eNewsletter that also features minimal copy, several headlines, and some links.

There's more. Even Facebook's app Paper is geared toward promoting tiny content with a “newspaper” feel. Text and link posts are designed to resemble paper, while clicking unfolds the link like a newspaper.

Perfectly petite!

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Panda Pounds PR Regurgitation, Pleas for Fresh Content

Alan Caulfield, CC By

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land's News Editor has covered search news for over five years. Upon the release on May 20 of Panda 4.0, Google’s latest search engine algorithm, Schwartz noted that public relations web services got hammered. “PRWeb.com, PR Newswire, BusinessWire, and PRLog all seem to have lost significant rankings in Google. PRNewsWire.com seems to have shown a significant drop in SEO visibility, dropping 63% after Panda was released.”

Say What … Say Why.

Jacco Blankenspoor, a website developer from the Netherlands, concludes, “If there’s anything to learn from this Panda update, it’s that Google prefers longer, broader posts over the shorter, more targeted ones. Also, although there are some exceptions, they really don’t like pages consisting of tons of links. More importantly, they are actively enforcing these policies.”

SEER’s Sean Malseed commented on lower traffic at hoovers.com, businesswire.com, prweb.com, prlog.org, and sbwire.com, noting that “Google has been saying for more than a year that links in press releases shouldn’t carry any value.”

So what Does Panda Like?

Tender Nuggets. If you got hit by Panda or want to please Google in the future, Blankenspoor suggests you focus on quality. “Use a healthy combination of content and links, and make sure people stick for a few minutes so Google know your page is worth sending visitors to.”

Fresh Fodder. Writing on the Moz Blog, Cyrus Shepard noted five things to reach for going forward:

• a high ratio of original content
• pages devoid of empty content that merely links to the meat elsewhere
• sites that reject content “farming”
• sites with a low ad ratio
• pages free of affiliate links and auto generated content.

In short, Panda likes to chew on fresh content, new grown insights, and blooming branches of original thought. Ya gotta love it.

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Put Your Pitch on Pinterest

London Street Art by RebeccaW, CC BY

Yesterday we posted some stats about Tumblr. Today we pin our post on Pinterest, yet another visual social media powerhouse.

What is it?
Pinterest helps users set up any number of “bulletin boards” to which they can “pin” (that is, embed) visuals and film urls from all over the Internet, including their own desktop.

Stats
On March 4, 2014, Craig Smith, director of marketing by day and digital marketing blogger by night, had plenty of Pinterest stats to offer.

• Total number of Pinterest users on July 10, 2103 (last update) … 70 million
• Percentage of Pinterest users who are women …  80%
• Percentage of Pinterest daily traffic coming through mobile apps … 75% (2/6/14)
• Number of Pinterest business accounts on …  about 500,000 (7/1/13)
• Monthly Pinterest Pageviews …  2.5 billion (5/9/13)
• Average number of daily article pins … 5 million (9/24/13)

According to ShareThis, Pinterest outpaced email to become the third most popular sharing channel in the fourth quarter of 2013. Meanwhile, Pinterest shares increased 58 percent, making it the fastest growing sharing channel in 2013. On May 16, 2014, Pinterest enjoyed a new infusion of $200 million in funding and boasted 70 million users, with more than 70 percent of those in the U.S.

Background
Pinterest went live as an invitation-only website in March 2010. By December 2011, Pinterest had made number five in Hitwise’s list of top ten social networks, beating out Linked and Google+.  By January 2012, the website was a popular means of self-expression for some 12 million enthusiasts sharing their idea of visual “cool” with the world. 

Marketing Uses
Erica Ayotte, former social media manager at Constant Contact, calls Pinterest "a virtual bulletin or cork board that allows users to find and curate images and video." Does Pinterest have a corporate application? Yes. Pinterest is ideal for inspiration, exposure, ecommerce, market research, and—perhaps most important—building brand devotion.

Pinterest appeals to consumers who want to know something about “who you are” without an attached sales message. Interacting on Pinterest offers consumers a sense of personal connection with a brand or, as Chris Litser, senior VP of sales and marketing at Constant Contact, puts it, "Success on Pinterest is all about engaging visitors and suppressing the urge to overtly sell."

Finally, Pinterest is an excellent way to promote a blog. Add the "pin it" button to every post and page on your site, making it simple and easy for readers to pin your posts.

More Info
Some reports indicate that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic that other social media sites, even Facebook. Check Hubspot for their free eBook, “How to Use Pinterest for Business.” This report notes that any business that relies on driving a high-volume of website traffic to increase sales should consider joining Pinterest. 

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Leftovers To Feed the Content Beast

1. Turn an ebook into a series of blog posts, or a series of blog posts into an ebook.

2. When you host a webinar, create a ride-along transcript so content “snackers” can scan the information. Later, turn the transcript into a slideshow.

3.  Capture a real-time tweet chat and republish it as a crowd-sourced blog post.

4. Pull sound bytes out of a long-form report or white paper and use them as tweets and Facebook updates.

5. Give quotes a new life as graphics; use them on visual platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.

6. Always read blog comments; they serve as both fodder and inspiration for tweets and short blog posts.

7. Use Evernote to snatch tidbits from all over the web; use liberally.

8. To keep readers abreast of change, revisit last year's article as the basis for a retrospective (e.g., "That Was Then, This Is Now.")

9. Rely on white papers for blog wraps like this one. (And thank you, Curata, for your ebook, “How To Feed the Content Beast.” You inspired me.)

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Short-Form Content Gets the Look

Marketers today need content and plenty of it. Ebooks and whitepapers make great giveaways, but, increasingly, users demand their info in bite-size chunks. Enter short-form content.

By definition, short-form content is created quickly and consumed even faster. Widely used examples include tweets, Facebook and/or LinkedIn status updates, Instagram photos, and even truncated blog posts and articles.

Josh Schwartz, a data scientist at  traffic analysis firm Chartbeat, took a look at how people scroll through Slate articles. His data shows that readers can’t stay focused. "When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway."

Popular apps and software like the following confirm that users are hungry for short and sweet.

• Vine, a mobile app that features seven-second video clips. Example: Airbnb.
• Tapestry, an app that employs digital index cards by which users tell a "short story," one card at a time. Example: Patch.
• Infographics that turn complex textual information into a picture. Example: 10 Ways To Use Infographics.
• Pinterest, a collection of photos gathered from around the web to tell a particular story. Example: Amnesty International.
• Flipboard, software used to "build" your own magazine on any subject, simply by aggregating web content. Example: Evernote.
• Snapguide, an app that lets users create and share concise step-by-step "how-to" guides. Example: School of Architecture, Kingston University London.
• Snapchat, a mobile photo and video sharing service developed by Stanford University students. Talk about short! Messages posted to Snapchat self-destruct after they're viewed. (P.S. Snapchat is H-O-T, having recently turned down a $3 billion buy offer from Facebook.) Also consider SnapChat Stories, eager to grow in ever smaller ways with  VC money  waiting in the wings. Example: Sorry, no examples are available; they've all self-destructed.

There's one more short-form app I'm compelled to add because it's so futuristic. This app -- Summly  -- generates short content for users automatically. Developed by a 17-year-old Brit and recently sold to Yahoo for a rumored $30 million, Summly delivers machine-generated news summaries to mobile users.