Strategy

Jul 03 2020

Content Marketing in 2020

Content Marketing 2020 — Photo by Marc Fanelli-Isla on Unsplash

Content marketing gets a bad rap because a lot of it is so badly wrapped. What happens in the land of marketing and business (b2b marketing or B2C – it doesn’t matter) is that someone takes a good concept and sullies it with poor execution. A strong intention becomes a watered down effort to lure people into a sales funnel with search terms. While SEO is a useful part of earning attention, it’s not the soul of content marketing. Let’s talk about that.

Content Marketing Strategy is About Being Helpful

Attention spans in 2020 are shot. The COVID-19 pandemic and other world events pushed us into having to consume more than our share of news. It’s built an intention of shutting out too much information. But what types of content earn attention? Helpful material never goes out of style.

One way to help: brevity. People want the payload, not the fluff. Whether it’s business goals or personal pursuits, skip the backstory and cut out the fat.

Guide people by making all your content simple to scan, easy to read, and worth bookmarking for later. By this, I mean: use subtitles and bullets. Create transitions and straightforward messaging. Don’t make people work to consume what you create.

Content Types for Context Types

Video marketing is an undeniable part of 2020’s content marketing landscape. It’s useful for when we feel like being nurtured, or when people’s content needs also match a desire to lean back and simply absorb the material. But what if many of your target audience are in a car for long stretches (like truck drivers or suburban commuters)? Then a portion of your marketing methods would be better suited for audio. If not a full fledged podcast, then at least audio content you can invite the recipient to play while commuting. Remember that just because you might prefer text, the most effective way to reach people is the type to choose. Never let your preference guide this choice.

Use Different Types of Content But Tell the Same Story

While matching content to the customer journey, remember that it’s preferable to tell your story across a variety of marketing channels. If a prospective customer is evaluating your product, shoot an Instagram video showing why your product is the better choice for them. Follow it with an infographic comparison chart or the like. Remember that you can get quite varied in delivery methods. Make a Slideshare of “How to Convince Your Boss to Buy Our Product for You” and arm your internal allies with what you know. But be sure that you use an editorial calendar or content calendar (however you prefer to call it) so you have an eye towards optimizing earned attention.

Perform a Content Audit

It’s easy to mistake content marketing efforts and published material for being actually useful. But there’s so much at stake. All content is a reflection of your branding. If the content marketing your organization creates doesn’t serve both the consumer of that material and the sales team, it’s not content marketing. It’s just content.

A content audit investigates whether your organization’s marketing strategy and tactics align with its business objectives. If funny dance videos don’t make the phones ring, then who cares? But at the same time, if your company still pushes bland white papers circa 2000 because you’re “doing b2b marketing,” then you’re missing far too many opportunities. There are so many ways to reach more people and earn more customers. But it takes effort and it can’t be phoned in. It’s 2020. Let’s get you ready for the years ahead.

May I Help?

I offer consultation around business strategy and marketing as it applies to content marketing and much more. I’m quite available to help, should you want to talk that over and see how I can get your company’s content marketing to serve you better. Just drop me a line via this contact form and I’ll get right back to you. Or email me directly: [email protected] . Either way. I’m here to help.

Jun 27 2020

Business Storytelling

Business storytelling is the act of using story as a way to interact with others to convey business values and/or business information. I like to say that “story is the best unit of memory” (tweetable) and that’s because the goal of business storytelling is to help information stick, both internally among various teams and leadership, as well as externally in alignment with marketing, sales, customer service, and other parts of a company.

Stories to Tell

There are three types of business stories the way I teach it:

Mission stories – stories that help people understand and align with the mission of the organization. “We work to give every mother the tools she needs to raise compassionate athletes.”
Belonging stories – these are stories that inform people that they are in the right place, so to speak. “Moms of athletes don’t always agree, but they all want their kids to have what they need to thrive.”
Growth stories – part motivational talk and part “corrective” language, this helps employees stay aligned with the mission of the organization. “While we want you to sell as many coaching packages as possible, it’s important to work within the budgets and schedules of the mothers you’re supporting.”

One doesn’t have to be any kind of master storyteller to make this happen. Remember that the definition of story is simply “an account of people an events.” While I’ll show you some story structure as it applies to business storytelling, essentially the spirit of your work here is to learn that a story helps people remember important information better than most any other tool.

Business Storytelling Approach

The goal of every story you tell should be to convey information in a memorable (and maybe even repeatable) way. Because these are business stories, and the goal isn’t to become some kind of master storyteller of fairy tales or something, let me give you a few more details to consider:

Clarity – Business stories must be succinct and clear. There should never be a surprise. Instead, people need their information to be straightforward and understandable.
Brevity – The attention span of people these days is diminished from stress, from too much information, and from a shift in how we prefer to consume knowledge. Create brief stories. Snacks more than meals. And seek to be as brief as possible while staying clear.
Metaphors – To craft a compelling story, sometimes an easy tool is a metaphor. “Life is a stream. It flows in one direction and when we step out of the water, we can never get back in at the exact same moment.” That sort of thing is a metaphor.

The first two should be used all the time. The last is a tool you can use more as a condiment than a meal. (A metaphor.) “Think of metaphor as a condiment, not a meal.” <– that’s a tiny business story to remind you how to use metaphors in your writing. (Not much in the “account of people and events” department, but we’ll stretch the definition a little.)

Content Marketing Thrives on Compelling Stories

I’m working on a project with my friend Saul Colt. The goal is to help physical stores and galleries all across Canada to build online storefronts to enable these organizations to sell online. While brainstorming ways to earn more sign-ups for this project, I came up with two different ideas (stories) that complement the project and can be told as content marketing (in this case, on Instagram).

The project is called “shopHERE powered by Google” and because I want to encourage more people to sign up, I proposed storytelling elements that are a play on “shop here.” The first is built around regional business pride and uses the hashtag #myshopishere . The second is about women-run businesses and the uses the hashtag #shopHER (minus the e. Get it?) They’re meant to be quite relatable (as good stories are).

If I didn’t tell you much else about the campaign, can you imagine the kinds of photos people will take for ‘My shop is here?’ Pizza places. A favorite nail salon. Maybe a cool pawn shop would be part of it. And of course ‘Shop her’ is about empowering women owners, like an auto body shop, and an MMA gym, and so on.

The projects are content marketing designed to drive awareness and signups to the shopHERE powered by Google project, but the STORIES are about regional pride and woman-owned businesses. Make sense?

Storytellers Invite Their Listeners to be the Protagonist

The power of storytelling works best when it becomes a collaboration between the creator of the story and the consumer of that material. The reader or listener or viewer best experiences compelling storytelling when they are invited to tell the story from their perspective and participate in it themselves.

Star Wars has stuck with us better than many other media properties because the stories are bigger than the main characters. Even if you don’t want to be Luke or Leia, you can decide if you want to be an Imperial Tie fighter pilot or a rebel scout or someone else in the captivating stories that follow.

Story, as it turns out, works best when it is a collaboration.

In business, this can happen in branding. On the day I wrote this to you, Nike’s website has a tag line that says “Where All Athletes Belong.” They’re pushing inclusivity and this goes beyond a marketing strategy and instead pushes deep into the fabric of their brand stories overall. It matches.

Story Structure is a Powerful Starting Point

You’ve watched a TED talk before, I presume. Reserved to no more than 18 minutes (there are very few exceptions to this online), presenters are trained and drilled in how to craft stories that start with cores of data visualizations or case studies and add an emotional connection to the material. Sometimes these are funny. Other times, they make us see what we thought we fully understood in a new light. And even other times, we simply enjoy the experience and go along for the ride.

The structure of TED, the little details, how it all gets wrapped together into a compelling narrative is worth understanding for your future business communications as well. I recommend Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo, a book that is every bit as useful today as the day it was published.

How to Get Started

With business storytelling, you might be thinking: “Okay, I don’t disagree with you, Chris, but I’m not sure what to do now with this information.” Fair enough. I’ll help.

Write a story of what your product/service is and who it helps. The agile user story template works well for this: As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>. Being able to answer this succinctly helps you see your business more clearly.
Work on a few sentences around this: The type of people who buy from us are ___ . They like __ and they don’t want ___ . (This is a belonging story.)
If you were hiring a new employee today and she will be working from home, what story does she need to know that sums up the culture of your organization? Are you sticklers for timeliness? Are you a very collaborative company? Are the rules cut and dry and there’s not really a lot of flexibility? (Remember, this isn’t always a bad things: franchises must follow the systems that are in place.)
Write a few sentences around the ideal customer experience. “If everything went flawlessly, a customer would start on our website and click here. And then…”
At a team meeting, host an exercise around “A meal we used to have at home.” Have people write down some details or a paragraph to explain something about food that inspires at least a little emotional attachment.

End Clearly and Strong

Another detail. For whatever reason, it seems that the art of ending a story is lost on the world. The best endings point to what might come next. In many ways, the best endings are beginnings. This piece ends with me offering help, which might lead to a beginning. Your stories might end in different ways. But “stopping” and “creating an ending” are vastly different efforts and exercises. You want to end clearly. Like this.

If You Want More Help

My core business at StoryLeader™ is dedicated to improving your success with expressing yourself within (and outside of) your organization. I help you convey your intentions, clearly express your business goals and values and needs. And I’m an expert at turning that terrifying blank page into something you can run with and complete on your own with confidence. Never hesitate to drop me a line either by email ([email protected]) or by just filling out my contact form.

Sep 12 2018

The Myth of Solid Ground

Robots already vacuum the floors in lots of people’s homes. They mow lawns. They deliver things in some cities. It looks weird and futuristic until it somehow looks normal and commonplace. We rarely see the “future” when it’s already here.

We Make the Future Invisible Because We Want Solid Ground

I’ve spent a lot of my career on the other side of the hill from where most people are doing business. When people were just getting comfortable with fax orders, I was seeing that this web thing might be more important. When people built their first websites, I saw that tools like Twitter would be a powerful opportunity to reach out and connect with people in a better way. It’s not at ALL that I’m smarter. It’s that I’m willing (maybe even primed) to see how to slot “what’s next” into “what we do right now.” In some ways, that’s because I’m willing to throw away what I have right now in any aspect of my business.

The Myth of Solid Ground

The number one professional “complaint” I hear right now when advocating for a new strategy or the adoption of a new technology is this: “But I just got good at doing X.” It’s at this moment as a business advisor that I often have to gently say, “Doing X isn’t your core business. It’s a tool to earn you more customers. Be willing to throw it out.”

Ooh that bugs people.

We humans love to absorb something new, process it, and then forget about it. We love to master skills and then do nothing more with that skill. It’s like there’s a yellow “unprocessed” status, then a “green” status when we figure something out, and then we set it to “grey” and “this is how it will always be” status. Does that resonate with you? But, that’s the challenge.

Everything changes. That’s the big issue. The definition for “LIFE” even says “…including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”

Continual change IS PART OF THE DEFINITION OF LIFE!

Movement is Life. Nothing is Permanent. There is No Solid Ground.

Accept that robots are here. Accept that people are shifting from desktops to laptops to mobile to possibly “computerless” interactions. (Things like Alexa, Google Home, etc.)

Be open to the perception that almost every job that exists today might likely shift with the advent of artificial intelligence, and before that, simply from changes that technology and tools bring to the world around us.

Self-driving cars mean that people won’t make as many impulse stops, but it also means they’ll increase their browsing/screen/entertainment/learning/shopping time even more than now (which is at 6 hours a day).

Hold Onto ONLY The “Thing”

Whatever it is that constitutes your primary pursuit, that’s how you need to keep aligning your business efforts. The “how” of this will likely change a lot. Even the “what.” If anything, focus mostly on the “who.” Who are you serving? What do they need right now? What else do they need? What’s coming along that will make what I do for them unnecessary? Is there something else I can learn to do to replace that?

It’s not scary, the lack of solid ground. It’s just we need a shift in YOUR efforts. From “mastery” to “continual learning.” People will need people for quite some time to come. You have a role in helping others. It’s just the mechanics and other details that will likely change a lot in the coming years. (It’s already happening, but change is so hard to perceive until it’s fully in place.)

Where are you holding on a little too tightly to your “solid ground?”

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And thanks so much for your support.

–Chris…

Jan 15 2018

What Does it Take For Your Business to Stay Top of Mind?

When we’re at work, we want to believe that people think about our business all day long. In our minds, we’re the FIRST company a customer or prospective customer considers when a particular need arises. But you and I both know that’s not how it works.

What does it take for your business to stay top of mind?

This work we’re talking about is called branding. And in the old days, that would mean thinking up names and logos and colors and what have you and you’d call it good.
Kit Kat candy bar wrappers are red. They’re the ones with four “fingers” of crisp wafers surrounded by chocolate. There you go. That’s what they are. They compete with other candy bars by being crispy, easy to share (who shares their candy bars?), and beyond that? Who knows?
Your business isn’t a candy bar (unless it is). And even if you’re a candy bar, that’s a massively competitive space. Anything like this: candy bars, chips, and soft drinks are seemingly easy to brand and sell, but it’s actually a lot of work. (Later in the week, I’ll interview Eric Plantenberg about what it took to bring Humm Kombucha not only to the average soft drink consumer but also onto the shelves of Target and Walmart. He’s their chief strategy officer.)
To stay top of mind, you have to make it utterly clear what you solve for your buyer. There’s an easy starter recipe to build this kind of thing. Want to hear it?

The four levers you can adjust to improve brand awareness and retention

I have four simple ways to look at helping a customer or prospective customer remember your business and your brand (no matter how big or small your copmany). Think of this as a recipe you can work with.
What’s in the mix?
Goal – Any time you intend to reach out and connect or communicate in any form (advertising, bringing attention to the business, reaching out to customers, etc), be VERY aware of the goal of your customer/buyer. Why would they look for you in the first place? What’s THEIR goal that you help them achieve?
Clarity – Any time you talk about your business, be clear. I help companies use tech to improve customer interactions. It’s taken me ages to land on that. Clarity is about making what you solve utterly simple and straightforward. How can you make what you do for people super easy to understand and straightforward?
Simplicity – Clarity almost covers this, but sometimes you can be clear but you might get fancy. Simplicity is just that. Keep the menus brief. Make everything succinct. Don’t over-extend. That sort of thing.
Repetition – Say it. Say it again. Make it tweetable. Make it rhyme, maybe. Make it stick. Repeat. This right here is my biggest miss. I tend to create and release, which lets me brag about my big brain or something, but this doesn’t help STICK into people’s heads the easy story of how I help people.
You can’t be top of mind if you’ve already been forgotten.

The recipe is simple but not easy

Solve their goal. Be clear about it. Keep it simple. Repeat the story. That’s really “it,” but you already know there’s more to “it” in the long run.
And yet, have you mastered this part about your business? Probably not. When you’re not around, would someone you’ve spoken with know how to sell you/your product or service? Not the way you’d WANT them to, at least. Right?
If you want to stay top of mind, this is the work. Build something memorable in service of your customers’ goals and you’ve got a chance. Make it easier for them to buy and easier for them to get what they need, and you’ll stay in the story longer. But for now? Ask yourself how well you handle those four simple ingredients.
And if you need help, I’m here for you.

Oct 23 2017

I Get a Lot of Things Wrong

It’s become something of a strategy for me to jump into something, try to do it, fail, and then learn a little bit in the process. I learn more by failing than by studying something to death. But that’s not all.

I Get a Lot of Things Wrong

I get people wrong. I forget that not everyone should be taken at face value. For me, I just don’t know how to be a lot of different versions of myself. I’m me. No matter if you see me on a stage in front of thousands or say hi to me while I’m peeing in the men’s room, I’m the same guy. (Though I’m not going to shake your hand in the men’s room.) I take everyone at face value anyway, and then am willing to be wrong about them.

I get technology wrong. Sometimes, I think something is really dumb. Like putting text on photos. I thought that was dumb (said so in 2012). But emojis and gifs and text on photos is a HUGE part of how people communicate now. Whether or not you like it is immaterial. It’s what it is. I will always get some tech wrong. And other times, I’ll be right but it’ll take you 3 years to know it.

I get business wrong. I constantly bet too early on trends. I also fall into the marketer’s dilemma of thinking that of COURSE you know why this is vital. And then you forget to buy it. And I feel dumb.

I get content marketing wrong. I’ve been just posting those CBMXXX post titles for a while on this blog and was getting complaints. I felt like “screw that. Click just one and it’ll all make sense.” But. Um. I was wrong.

Wrong is Okay

I’m a fan of wrong. Because it also means that I’m learning and progressing and experimenting and that I’ll have the chance to learn from my experiments and exploration.

If my job is to help you use tech to drive better human interactions, I’m going to have to stay ahead of the curve so I can tell you where the dragons are. If I’m turning the NEXT into the NOW and giving you ways to turn insights into opportunities, that means I’ll probably have a few failures in the lab before I can give you a tried and true thing.

I’d rather be wrong than out of date. I’d rather be wrong than certain of something no one else cares about any longer.

Mistakes will happen, that’s for sure. But I’ll share the learning from those, too. And you’ll appreciate that.
Right?