You're top of the journalist class.
Staffing firms are all over you.

You've got the shinny trophies.
Ad agencies want to speak to you.

You understand Search Engine Optimization.
Every one of your words is found on the web.

You follow all the great bloggers and find fault in their work.
You have conversations online with all the players in your industry.

You're words are read my millions.
And they keep coming back for more.

You're so great your actually an ingenious salesperson, too.
Your content brings in leads and drives revenue.

But hang on. Something's wrong here.
Quality content does not grow on trees.

Problem 1: You do brilliant work. Sometimes.
Hey, nobody's perfect. You can't hit the nail on the head every time.
And there's a new judge out there. The toughest of judges.
It's the reader. The reader is in control.
The brilliant work does not always motivate the reader.
And that damn testing technology can really be a buzz kill.

Problem 2: Great work is had to sell.
Your words may sell readers if they get to readers.
But the great work stands for something.
It says something. It stands out. It sticks it's neck out.
And to many clients, all those things are scary. Really scary.
Doing great work and selling great work don't always go hand in hand.

Problem 3: You don't sell your own products as well as you sell your clients.
Your words romance readers.
Your words speak to their unique attributes.
Your words are relevant and hit the heart.
Do you as much about your clients as you know about their customers?

So how does a great writer create great content these days?

Try following these simple steps to create the content that appeals to readers, search engines AND your clients:

1.) Get to know your clients and their wants and needs. Build relationships with clients to earn trust.
2.) Get to know the target audience and their wants and needs. Deliver it to them in a compelling way.
3.) Before the pen hits the pad, put in the extra hours to get to know
the competition, site analytics, conversion metrics, keyword
popularity, optimization strategy, social conversation, motivators and
other data points necessary for review.
4.) Tests and experiment with your ideas and content using AB testing and multavriate testing technology and testing methods.

Follow these rules, your great work will make it's way to readers and help make the world and the web a better place, one word at a time.

Take the test below. Offer comments. Add more questions and answers. I'll compile all of your input into a more robust Test Widget for all attendees of my Content Marketing Webinar on July 22nd at 1pm ET.

Answer 7 out of 7 Correctly
You've got the right idea! Customers are counting on you!

Answer 5 out of 7 Correctly
There is hope for you yet. Educate your employees and coworkers to support content marketing initiatives.

Answer 3 out of 7 Correctly
Not so hot. Reach out to other companies and educational opportunities to further your strategy.

Answer 1 out of 7 Correctly
Well, you aren't a lost cause, but you need some help. Attend my Content Marketing Webinar to get your company back on track.

QUIZ

1. Most of the time, your company:

A. Is completely focused on selling products and services.
B. Views “send more information” requests as a sales obstacle.
C. Demands specific ROI measurement for all marketing investment.
D. Has well-worn marketing paths that are easy to follow.

2. Your company views traditional marketing as:

A. Working extremely well so no need for much change.
B. Only slowly eroding so no need for the bells to go off.
C. Solid in comparision with social media that has no ROI.
D. Required to push customers through the sales funnel.

3. Which resources and tools are at your fingertips?

A. Social media experts who are in-the-know.
B. Storytellers who engage readers and win the war of words.
C. Measurement tools that track content performance.
D. Tools that find the hot topics and keywords for SEO.
E. All of the Above

4. You know the following about your customers:

A. What they think is hot and what’s not on your website.
B. Wants and needs documented by customer service reps.
C. Wants and needs documented by conversations/phone calls.
D. What they’re saying about you in the social media sphere.
E. All of the above.

5. Marketing campaigns should tested by:

A. Live readers with testing technology.
B. Your management team, then rolled out.
C. Your marketing team, then rolled out.
D. Focus group tests, then rolled out.

6. The content on your site:

A. Showcases your knowledge, experience and expertise.
B. Engages readers with stories well told.
C. Touches the hopes, fears and hearts of your customers.
D. Keeps readers coming back for more.
E. All of the above.

7. Your SEO and editorial department is:

A. Praised and worshiped by all employees.
B. Soon to be hired but taking a long time.
C. Soon to be outsourced but taking a long time.
D. Non-existent and we have no outside resources.

Answers: (No Cheating!)

1. A, 2. A, 3. E, 4. E, 5. A, 6. E, 7. A

But in the business world, winning is hard to calculate. Play-by-play score is difficult, if not impossible. Daily success seems to goes unnoticed and unrecognized by managers. There’s no green monster scoreboard offering competitive updates. Winning. Loosing. Whatever. After all, it’s just a work day

Enter Content Testing. Also known as Landing Page Optimization. The sport throws different experiments to readers with different headlines, graphics, copy and incentives for action. Experiments test readers motivation and help find out works and what does not work online. Scores are calculated by action and activity taken by the reader. Winning and loosing is tracked and scored.

It’s the new sport in business. Get your seasons tickets now.
The fans are lining up to discuss stats and performance with the same traditional sports passion.

The allstars on the team include A/B testing and multivariate testing. Design and technology like GWO combine to removes the guesswork and always find the best path for success.

Like all sports, the fans are a key player in this business sport. Readers are THE success or failure story of the each team of experiments. Success or failure is determined by the fan.

Think about all that the next sporting event you attend.

Online marketing is becoming a sport for most companies. Scoreboards are now possible. The fans are gatherings. And stories are even being told

The art and science of information graphics includes distilling complex information, establishing a hierarchy, insolating what's important and what people “need” to know, simplifying the message and making it look interesting, easy-to-understand and COOL.

It's typically aimed at complex problems or stories that need a better communication path. Let's take the topic of Social Media. How do you visually explain the social media sphere? How do you explain the expansiveness of the sphere and the conversations that define what it is? Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and Brian Solis took on this challenge in the creation of The Conversation Prism for client Futureworks PR. They recognized that by categorizing social networks, and presenting them in a visually rich way, as a means to the end of conversations that may be individual but form a prism along the way, the complexity would thereby be reduced to a simple explination of what social media is, how people use it and how conversations are the centerpiece of it all. Yikes, what the hell did I just say there? That's exactly the point. Information graphics to the rescue.

Hourly, even by the minute, we're bombarded with immeasureable amounts of information from the widest variety of sources that seems to grow every day. Information Graphics can help the worthy ideas and complex topics quickly surface to the top and be found, read, mentally stored and even passed around by web readers traveling at high speeds.

With the hiring of three new employees at ideaLaunch within two months, the hiring of hundreds of new LifeTips Gurus (to make the world a better place one tip at a time,) and new interns helping us with social media monitoring, the time has come to dig into the management toolbox and pull out a few old stand-by tools (and rules) that I've used over the years. These tools have helped me build three successful companies from the ground up (Freelance Access, LifeTips and ideaLaunch), and I realized that these tools apply to both social media and employee management.

Firm. Employees need a manager who is firm. When rules are not enforced, rules get broken and the wall eventually comes tumbling down. Likewise, your communication in the social sphere needs to be strong. Vague posts or mindless thoughts carry little weight and don't get passed around.

Fair. Employees need a manager who is fair. Unethical or irrational managers cause turnover and foster unhealthy environments. Likewise, social conversations require seeing, and acknowledging, different sides of the coin. Unfair declarations typically scare away readers who are just passing by and effectively end the connection and conversation quickly.

Fun. Having some fun in the workplace has been proven to increase productivity, increase the hours worked by employees and improve retention. Likewise, entertainment value is in demand by social media audiences.

Let me know if you think I've missed an “F”. Or if you think these tools are worthy of being packed into your management tool box. Anyone? Bueller?

The history of content marketing offers a deep, dark, exciting and expensive history, worth mention:

1995. White Paper. Noone was sure where the web or marketing or content marketing was going to go. Design was changing the help of Adobe, MacroMedia, QuarkExpress and Microsoft. New tools for designers, copywriters and content marketing specialists. The text base roots of the academic start of the web were changing. Interactivity was the driving force thousands of companies decided all at once was what they needed to compete with CDRoms, Desktop Publishing, Multimedia Collaboration and more. Excitement was in the air. Content Marketing was born perhaps with the famous white paper.

1997. The Early Years. The disk is king. Floppy and CD ROM. AOL mailed out floppy’s to millions. Slowly freighted with technology difficulties, these content vehicles just did not take off. Dedicated practitioners banged out new media work, but the very criterion for judging what works and what does not work was not clear. Remember “Myst” and “The Residents Freakshow” that told an entertaining story in an interactive way? It was the age of the daring pioneers that typically produced one-hit content wonders that spawned dozens of successful imitators. The white paper was forced to upgrade slightly to keep up.

2000. Golden Years. Interactive agencies had “executive directors” and the entire content marketing field suddenly became more professional. Creative Copychiefs did all the work and learned to spin a different story with just the right spin. Virtually every major company had a website, and the Web was labeled as the future, unique, unparalleled, a revolution. Portals, convergence and one-to-one marketing sprang out of thin air. Businesses were all talking about who was cutting edge, leading edge or bleeding edge. The white paper was now part of the Chief Technology Officer bag of tricks.

2002. Dot Bomb. With record CPM’s, crazy PPC’s and introduction of CPA, the future looked bright for content marketing. But to many VC firms tossed big bucks at bad ideas, and it all came to an abrupt halt. The official Dot Bomb. We all lost money, pride, and pointed fingers at various villains. Content certainly got lost in the nuclear dust. Heck, the web got lost in the dust. The first and last companies to fall were the giants with big payrolls and no revenue. Web marketing seemed doomed. The white paper rises from the ashes and states “ I told you so”.

2004. Testing 123. Experimentation combined with rapid advancement in technology and bandwidth and analytics which lifted content marketing out of the rubble. Success stories were told better then ever, powered by wisdom and insight learned along the way. Flash put words and sound in motion. HTML pages were becoming a thing of the past. The wants and needs of customers were tested with multivariate and A/B testing. Copywriters and Designers finally had methods to test different headlines, graphics and copy and find out what works. Test after test, the white paper still worked well in driving leads and sales.

2005. SEO. Search Engine Optimization makes it’s way into the content marketing sphere. Successful companies learn achieve top listings despite lack of quality content and dubious value. The Google pattern confirms link popularity might be the secret sauce. Content becomes the primary gateway to appeal to both readers and the search engines. But readers seemed to be less important than the bots. The white paper was filled with lots of rich keywords for SEO.

2007. Social Content. Social media diggs in deep, and the centerpiece of it all is content marketing. This new form of conversational marketing takes hold with Linked In, FaceBook, Twitter and more. Words matter. Thoughts matter. Opinion matters. And the quality of the content starts to drive success of it all. The white paper gets passed around and debated amongst peers.

2008. Crash 2.0. Once again, the stock market dips to record lows. Marketing budgets are slashed. The entire eco-chain is stalled. Return on investment is demanded for all marketing spend. Affiliate programs seem to rise to the ROI occasion for some companies. But inbound marketing using content as the bait seem to offer a new science to marketing and the tracking necessary along the way. Cold Calls become a thing of the past, replaced by warm calls to prospects that are not always so warm. The 4 C’s are officially introduced: Contacts, Content, Community and Conversion. The white paper did not crash or burn.

2009. Content Marketing. Articles. Webinars. Content Widgets. WordBooks. Slide Decks. Blog Posts. Tweets. RSS feeds. And more. Content Creation. Content Optimization. Content Testing. And more. Words. Sounds. Motion. Emotion. Learning the wants and needs of customers, and delivering it to them in a compelling way. The white paper deemed by peers as boring perhaps, but protected on the endangered species list.

That’s the history of Content Marketing from my perspective. Along with the history of the White Paper… only appropriate for Byron White write about the White Paper. Let me know what you think.

Have a look at the John Cass Blog for some insight on his decision to join ideaLaunch.

Thursday 8 PM |
November 13^th 2008 | Rain | Palms Casino and Resort.

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