No one is nice in the post office. People point out when you walk in the exit. They glare at you when your 6-year-old cousin unhooks the nylon rope containing the crowd of people. They send you to the end of the line if you forget to grab a delivery confirmation sticker. The term “going postal” is an apt one.

It takes effort to mail a letter. It costs money. It kills trees. It takes time. Which is exactly why you should send more letters. (Okay, maybe not the trees part.)

Seth Godin said, “stamps are underrated. Friction rewards intent and creates scarcity.” Friction: you braving the be-hated post office makes you special to your audience. If you aren’t special, you aren’t reaching your audience, regardless of the amount of free and easy email or web content you spit out.

Number two on Copyblogger Sonia Simone’s “49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing,” said many internet marketing gurus are giving mail a shot. Let’s repeat: the top marketing professionals, who regularly produce quality content, are having to find new ways to reach their target audiences and are going retro. They aren’t changing their content—- they are changing their delivery. “The same techniques that make your online content marketing work will do beautifully offline,” writes Simone.

Here’s how.

1. Perhaps the top focus of content marketing is gaining trust. Letting your audience see their attention was worth a stamp is one great way to establish a relationship.

2. Listening is another. Follow up your letter with a personal email, connect with them via social media outlets, and respond to questions and comments. Engage with your audience.

3. Talk like a human. Just because you are writing on real paper doesn’t mean you have to sound like a textbook. Voice is key—make yours stand out.

4. Give them something worth reading. We hear this all the time—- because it works. Don’t tell your audience your company is amazing. Show them what you can do.

5. Use rich keywords. Why, you ask? Google isn’t sending spider bots through the air to search printed work. Yet. But your audience will search the web about your topic using your language. You want them to find you-again.

6. Make it pretty. Mike Arauz posts beautiful art and graphs with his blog posts. They make me appreciate his writing more, help me understand some of his ideas, and they gets me to interact with the data. He engages my feelings and my curiosity which is the point: your market is human, not hard-wired.

7. Direct your audience to more great content- on and off your website. If an audience is sent directly to your website, they will see it as a marketing ploy. If you direct them towards articles, blogs and how-to videos throughout the web, you offer them a service, build trust, and keep them coming back to you for more.
One last tip? Print it on recycled paper. For the trees.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Content Marketing, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.