Logical Appeals
What types of content appeal to the left side of our brains? Sam suggests feature comparisons, testimonials, and white papers may be important types of content to provide. If we want to sell stuff using this approach, we need to think about creating evidence to bolster our claims.

Emotional Appeals
What types of content can create an emotional appeal? Sam suggests the following types or features of this type of content: crowdsourced, video/audio, and tone are most important. I agree that developing more affective content designed to appeal to viewers’ emotions can move the needle on an engagement level, but just creating this type of content will not guarantee it. We still need to compete for their attention and getting someone to contribute to crowdsourced content is getting increasingly difficult unless there is a prize component attached.

One additional appeal we can add are ethical appeals.

Ethical Appeals
What types of content can we create so as to appear as trusted expert? While Sam doesn’t call out ethical appeals by name, he does ask us to consider where customers fit in to the equation. It’s good advice, and I’d recommend content in this category would need to be balanced and have a fair-minded approach. We would especially want to consider the readers’/viewers’ perspective and acknowledge what questions and concerns they may have that would preclude or solidify a purchase. I’m not saying that ethical appeals are the “magic sauce,” but it’s one more appeal to (formally) consider.

In addition, we’d want to test various content to…

1. Provide the best type of content for the consumer’s place in the purchase process
Higher funnel content needs to generate awareness and connect on an emotional level. Left-brain type content may be more important in the research phase.

2. Provide content types for different types of consumers
It’s all good. Some consumers over index as more logical decision makers or as more creative right brain decision makers. It may be more difficult for brands to create video and audio content than just churn out text-based content. However, different types of content appeal to different audiences.

3. Provide the right content type for specific media channels.
Brands may decide the best course of action is to syndicate video/audio type content that links to more logical or ethical content types. Or, the opposite may be true. Providing content types that travel best in social media may create more visibility than even a video. The content needs to match the context.

If time and budget allow, we can create multiple forms of content and carefully design tests that can be repeated at various intervals to determine the best course of action.

The Transformation of Business
Gone are the days when consumers would walk into a store and get all of their information and questions answered by store clerks prior to purchasing a product. Even consumers who formerly would do research online prior to making purchases, online or face-to-face, now research products, check ratings, poll their friends on Twitter or Facebook, search for infographics, whitepapers, and FAQs, as well as read countless reviews, blog posts, and forum discussions before making an online purchase or stepping foot inside a retail store.

In addition, marketers need to customize digital experiences and downloads for consumers with an eye to potentially more than one device including web, notebook, netbook, tablet or mobile device.

Layer Listening in Social Networks with Goals of Establishing Relationships and Delivering Expert Customer Service
Are you listening to what your customers are saying about you in social networks? And are you participating in those networks and providing content to help influence how consumers perceive your brand? Or even asking customers to contribute ideas to improve your products and services? Pearson indicates that these areas provide huge pre-commerce opportunity areas for brands.

Let’s Say You Get the Argument: What are Next Steps?
Pearson & his colleagues at WCG have developed what they call the Four As — awareness, assessment, action, and ambasadors to understand and create your new digital strategy. Here are some action steps for you to follow to begin to craft your new pre-commerce strategy:

Awareness: brand awareness is now created when customers can evidence your participation and engagement
1. Listen to what consumers are saying online
2. Join in appropriate conversations at appropriate times
3. Provide the right content at the right times

Assessment
1. Provide content consumers can “download, view, read, and act upon” when, where and how customers need it
2. Assess how well you’re meeting customers’ needs prior to purchase or purchase intent.

Action:
1. Customers have acted on your offer in some way

Assessment
1. Assess how well you’re doing in social media by measuring interactions and ranking sentiment to arrive at positive share of conversation

Ambassadors
1. Build relationships with these loyal customers
2. Provide them with even more information
3. Give them opportunities to share their positive experiences of your brand

Note: It’s no mistake that assessment is listed twice — Pearson argues it’s critical to regularly keep score on how well you’re doing. See page 20 for a list of questions to ask if you’re ready to begin (or improve) your efforts on these fronts. Please note that Pearson has some caveats for this model:

“It is driven by customers, not corporations. The customers will decide when they listen, what they’ll discuss on the internet, where they’ll research their purchases, and where they’ll make them. Brand loyalty won’t come from the cave-wall paintings, it will come from persistent, positive interaction between a company, its brand, and its customers” (18).

Check out his text for more information on how to do each of these well. Then, you can use the following four criteria to measure how well you’re doing:

1. Search — where does your brand show up in search results and “within the customer-search journey?”
2. Peers — how do influencers rate and recommend your products and services?
3. Active Sharing — how often do influencers in step #2 above share your content?
4. Available Content — how often do you provide fresh content for influencers to share and are you providing it in the form they want to share?

Pearson gets social media. You will too — once you read and apply the important and timely advice he offers in Pre-commerce. After reading, you’ll be able to outline imperatives specific for your brand in order to create real change in the ways you connect with consumers and in the results you help your company achieve.

I started taking pictures to have some examples of various tactics.

1.Building Wrap and Free Food Cart

Squarespace wrapped a building just a block from the Austin Convention Center and across from the Hilton Hotel. In the picture above you can see the food cart they stationed in front of the building to serve free food to conference attendees. The only downside of free food this close to the event is that lines were long during lunch hours.

2. Pedicab Posters

Notice the signs on the back of the pedicabs? Here’s another opportunity for brands to get advertising exposure. I’m sure brands could even sponsor pedicab rides.

These riders worked all day and into the night to carry attendees from panels in one location to another, as well as from different bars and restaurants back to hotels in the evening.

At $10 per person/per ride, it was an economical way to help mitigate things being so spread out. Also, these pedicabs were much easier to flag down than traditional cabs.

3. Visual Storyteller

Ogilvy hired digital artists to create visual notes of several sessions each day. In addition to these huge poster size pieces, they printed a quantity of these for sxsw attendees.

Personally, I really like this tactic. It provides something of value that people can take home with them, in addition to being available online. It’s an example of social object that can be used to generate conversations online (like this blog post).

4. Charging Stations

This tactic has been executed by many a brand. It’s highly useful for conference attendees. AT&T’s charging station was between the bookstore and the coffee bar. And, as you might guess, it saw plenty of traffic. In addition to having the kiosk as pictured, they had a bar and chairs where people with chargers could plug in and relax. Of course, in the process of charging their device, attendees could get a little info about AT&T products and services.

I stopped in at this booth several times during the conference. I do wonder, however, how AT&T measures the effectiveness of this brand exposure.

5. Stickers

Are you the type to put stickers on your laptop? There were plenty of these available. Enough that you could go home with a full laptop lid if that’s what you’re in to.

Also, if you wanted to collect pins for your badge holder, those were really prevalent, too. I have to say, though, a brand’s pin would really have to be unique in order to stick out from all of the different options.

6. Social Objects

I’m biased (I commissioned Hugh at Gapingvoid.com to create a series of prints for Intel at CES in January (see Gapingvoid Art Gallery on Inside Scoop), but I think using social objects like his fun artwork is a really dynamic way to help generate conversations in social networks for a brand. Consumers appreciate the gift and blog, tweet, and share pictures of the artwork, while each mention racks up another activation point for the brand. It’s a win-win in my opinion. Quite a few of the presentations I attended included Hugh’s artwork in their slides.

7. Tattoo Arm

Here’s an original idea that I hadn’t seen before. Rackspace gave away tattoo arms. It’s conference swag that really fits in with the culture of the conference. It’s something unique, and really cool. Plus, I bet they have created conversations online because of using them. However, what is the life of the freebie? Will people keep it once the novelty wears off? A t-shirt might have more longevity, and could even become a collector’s item depending on the artwork.

8. Booth as Meeting Space with Couches

This tactic fits intrinsically with the SXSW culture. It’s also an answer to the question, “Who can throw the best party?” There were many different booths with chairs and couches available for attendees to lounge around and chat with each other. It’s such a different experience than CES in which there are even bigger crowds.

I really liked the Austin Chronicle’s interpretation of booth seating. See the casual couches in the photo above. It fits right in with the “Keep Austin Weird” slogan you see around town. They know their audience. So too does the Guardian, which offered much more yuppie places to sit and talk in keeping with their brand.

9. Posters

Some of the people who hang posters have developed it into an art form — hanging it in such a way so that it sticks out past the pillar or post.

You have to understand, however, SXSW is huge. To get the most out of it, you have to go with a plan.

Then, you have to come back and organize your notes and mine slideshare for the panels you missed in order to get real value from it.

Here are the 5 Big Ideas I (re)learned and want to share from SXSW Interactive 2011.

1. It’s critical to uplevel focus on content and content marketing

• People try to fix a web presence in one or two ways: add new technology or redesign; no focus on content.

From panel: Not My Job: The Ultimate Content Strategy Smackdown (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-1

• A discussion about content strategy should come around to how you leverage the content you have. The content is raw material, some of it good or great, some of it perhaps less so. But how you use it, package it, distribute it … can all add value and ensure a valuable asset, a value to both the audience and to the company.

From Blog Post:
http://rjiblog.org/2011/03/11/sxsw-ultimate-content-strategy-smackdown/

• By giving content away, you enable the ability to dramatically increase your global reach, ability to inspire, spread ideas, and engage a passionate user base.

From: TED: Radical Openness (click through for audio) http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-3-7309997

2. It’s critical to create many different types of content.

• It’s not just text. It’s convergence. Think apps, games, infographics, PPTs, PDFs, video, FAQs, etc.

From panel: Future 15, Convergence, Dan Shust
http://www.slideshare.net/ResourceInteractive/dan-shust-sxsw-future15-convergence

3. Learn how to create great content for the right context: Or, Say it short and make it a story.

• The less you say, the more they’ll remember.
• Our brains are wired for stories. Make it a short story (even though it takes longer to create because it’s more difficult).
• Data isn’t a story. Data: the king died. Then, the queen died. Story: The king died. Then, the queen died of grief.
• Successful communication is not about technology. It’s about story.

From: Saying It Short Writing Workshop with Betty Draper (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/helenkleinross/saying-it-short-preso-for-slideshare

4. What are the necessary elements of a content strategy? OR, Cultivating relationships and building trust matter.

1. Creation: the trick to marketing is having something so cool that you want to talk about it even if you weren’t in the business. (Hugh MacLeod)
2. Curation: Brands have the expertise, the time, and the money to be great editors and curators of digital content. It seems reasonable to conclude that one part of being a great brand is now also being a great curator. (Steven Rosenbaum)
3. Cultivation: We have entered a new era in which developing strong consumer relationships is pivotal to a brand or company’s success.(Gary Vaynerchuk)

• The creation and curation of relevant content, coupled with the cultivation of a relationship, leads to trust.

Ok, so this panel wasn’t at SXSW 2011, but it’s a preso entitled Creating, curating, and Cultivating the Social Web, by Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager at Samsung for the Marketing 2.0 and Social Media Conference 2011 in Paris on 3/28/2011, and it’s based on SXSWi 2011 so I’m including it here.

http://www.slideshare.net/socialnerdia/creating-curating-and-cultivating-the-social-web-by-esteban-contreras

See slide 9 for tips on how to create.
See slide 26 for tips on how to curate.
See page 40 for tips on cultivation.

5. Rest/renewal breaks, game play, and doing social good can make us better more engaged people.

• We’re more productive when we build in intermittent renewal along the way
• We’re not meant to operate the way computers do – at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time
• Your sense of purpose–to serve something greater than yourself–is a source of great energy
• 4 nights in a row of 5 or fewer hours of sleep = functionally intoxicated.
• The critical issue is the value you create, not the hours you work.
• Myth: One hour less of sleep will add one hour of productivity to your day.

From panel: The 90 Minute Solution: Live Like a Sprinter (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-2

• Gaming unleashes our natural ability to be the best version of ourselves.
• Our generation will achieve 10,000 hrs of gaming by the age of 21. We can harness that for good instead of escapism.
• The opposite of play isn’t work – it’s depression.
• 3-4 hours of Call of Duty decreases PTSD response in veterans. vs. 6 hrs of gym time for the same response.

From panel: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How they can change the world (click through for audio)
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-2

• For every pair of shoes that are bought, Tom’s Shoes gives one pair away.
• The best thing you can give your employees is the opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves.
• You don’t need advertising: just focus on giving and that story will be told by your raving fans.

From keynote: Blake Mycoskie, Toms Shoes
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/south-by-southwest-2011-recap-5-7309926

]]> http://marciahansen.com/blog/5-big-ideas-from-sxsw-uplevel-your-digital-marketing/feed/ 0 http://marciahansen.com/blog/create-your-content-strategy-bring-your-dish-to-pass/ http://marciahansen.com/blog/create-your-content-strategy-bring-your-dish-to-pass/#comments Sun, 27 Mar 2011 02:27:17 +0000 Marcia Hansen http://marciahansen.com/blog/?p=1140 I attended my first SXSW this month, and I am intrigued by various sessions about creating and marketing content that seeks to inspire, entertain, and educate an audience, be it an audience of consumers who have grown more skeptical about what you have to offer, students who have become more and more disengaged by coursework and classrooms, and even some SXSW attendees who are less than enthralled with the size and spectacle that SXSW interactive has become.

See Various Sessions: Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, Content First, Everything Else Second, Not My Job: Content Strategy Smackdown, Brave New World: Debating Brangs’ Role as Publishers and No Child Left Inside: Mobile Tech Meets Education.

These days I’m mainly focused on creating content for a large brand. In my opinion, creating and marketing compelling content for a brand can be one of the most important intersections of business, social media and marketing because it gives the brand something to have conversations about and around other than their products — conversations which, by and large, are falling on deaf ears. You can think of this more engaging and compelling content as the dish-to-pass that you bring to a potluck. Like most any meal among colleagues or friends, it’s the object that warms them up and creates an opening for conversation and connection.

Good Content & Good Potlucks
The content you create serves many purposes and can meet different business objectives. Like any good potluck — the event gets better the more different kinds of dishes there are. The types of content we can create may include videos, podcasts, text, slideshares, infographics, white papers, FAQs, apps, games, etc. Because of SEO issues and trying to serve the needs of a diverse audience, creating as many of these types of content as possible is important and necessary. Plus, you can consider how you might aggregate content to invite conversation and build engagement. Of course, when you’re ready to ramp things up, you can ask your users to help create content.

Having worked for several large brands, I know that content development and content aggregation can be one of the biggest challenges facing teams because of all of the different forms that “content” can take. And, from what I’ve seen, not many brands are staffed with expert content developers in all of these areas.

Content Strategy Priorities
Once you have your business objectives in hand and before you begin creating all these different types of content, you should consider the following.

1. Define the target audience
2. Identify the content topics that will appeal to each audience
3. Specify the level of content detail to provide and all associated metadata
4. Create appropriate calls to action to achieve business goals (engagement, sales, etc.)
5. Develop an editorial calendar to guide and prioritize the creation and publishing process

Next Steps
Once you have a content development strategy, then some next steps include:

1. content marketing: as you create the content, you also need to figure out the mix of paid media and social media you’re going to do to promote the content and build engagement around it, as well as how content aggregation might fit into your plans.
2. content measurement: define your plan so you know what content is working and you’re able to fine tune your efforts
3. content management: (not to be overlooked) you need to define the lifecycle of the content and what plans you have to maintain, archive, or delete.

In The Thank You Economy keynote, Gary Vaynerchuk advocated developing strong relationships with consumers and showing them that you care — not in just fuzzy-feel-good-ways — but in authentic ways before, during, and after the sale. As he writes in his book by the same name, “If your organization’s intentions transcend the mere act of selling a product or service, and it is brave enough to expose its heart and soul, people will respond” (ch 1).

Add one more quality to the list of what makes for great content: genuine. People can tell when you’re faking it.

Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive.

Seth Godin, Linchpin

I really believe what Godin is saying in the above quote, and I’ve tried to put it into action in the work that I’ve done. From responding in a personal voice on Twitter, to doing man/woman-on-the-street video interviews myself, to hosting a weekly Internet radio show, these are all projects in which I’ve tried to bring a personal face and greater level of connection to a very conservative Fortune 100 brand. If you work for a large business, then you know that we usually hire out creatives for these types of things. So from that perspective, I’ve also taken risks in my career by doing more creative projects than simply managing the project or content that is produced.

In fact, I think more Fortune 500 brand social media managers, directors, and executives need to actually “do” social media for the reason Godin states, rather than delegating it to agencies or entry-level employees. However, that is not to say I’m recommending that big brands to abandon all caution and do something like the new TV show Undercover Boss, which I think is too risky for most brands, especially those that are already very risk-averse.

Below are 3 ways simple ways the people working for big brands can show a little humanity in the social media world without freaking out their more conservative colleagues.

1. small group events – There are several variations on this theme that start with bringing a small group of people together, treating them well, and asking for their help, opinions, and feedback. I’d also recommend doing social media PR around the event to generate word of mouth conversations in social networks. Also, don’t forget to follow-up with attendees to further build those relationships.

2. conference sponsorships – you don’t have to drop huge sums of money here, and yet you can show up in small but very visible ways that leave social media footprints. One of my favorite sponsorships from last year was at BlogWorldExpo. We sponsored the conference programs every day and I gave out a fixed number of Starbucks gift cards to attendees who found me and shared driving safety tips with my radio show listeners.

3. shoot casual video – One of the first social media projects I managed was back in 2008. We shot a series of eight informational videos that are more casual and friendly than the usual scripted ways we show up in regular TV advertising. It was a small but cautious step forward – we still had a video crew and scripts, but there were no suit and ties nor contrived set. We shot at a crew member’s house in their driveway. I know the customary advice is to interview employees about new programs or products, but inside a big corporation, it could likely involve multiple departments and a more lengthy approval process. If you go with more conservative video, then you also have the option of choosing less conventional distribution options — say on websites where you don’t traditionally appear or even on Facebook.

These are just a few ideas. There are lots of ways conservative big brands can show up in social media. If you’re working for a conservative brand, I’d recommend taking it one small step at a time. You can still find ways to put on a human face and create flexibility for the brand.

FrienderBenders.com is social media and user-generated content. Visitors to the site can choose from among four bad driving characters: Texting Tessa, Make-up Mary, Johnny Distracto, or Hungry Horatio and add their own photos and choose from one of the sound effects.

Do you want to tease one of your friends about eating in the car? You can send him a Hungry Horatio complete with a picture and sound effect. The application creates a short Flash animation of a funny car crash featuring the unique bad driving character you created.

FrienderBenders is meant to be social. You can share your funny animation with your friends via email, save it to Facebook or other social networks, or even embed it on your blog so visitors to your site can see your creative talents.

If you’d like a walk-through of the application, here’s an interview I did on TechWebTV with David Berlind of Information Week at Web 2.0 demonstrating the site:

Click over to FrienderBenders.com and be sure to come back and let me know what you think. Feedback welcome!