Brands Want Content Curator Jobs

It isn’t often that someone writes EXACTLY what I’ve been preaching to B2B clients for years. But today, Josh Sternberg nailed it in his column in Digiday. Hats off to Josh, my guest blogger. I have reprinted his article here, unedited. Thanks Josh!

-------------------

Digital media has emboldened many brands to consider themselves publishers. After all, American Express has credibility on financial matters and Coke has a network 36 million Facebook fans. Who needs publishers to serve as intermediaries?

The problem is publishing is a lot harder than it looks, or rather it’s a lot harder to do it with the consistency, day after day, that’s needed to build a long-term audience. That’s leading some brands to hook onto the idea that their role lies more in the curation of content.

Curation is the vogue digital term for the ability to not only aggregate and distribute carefully selected information, but also to provide a unique voice on top of the original pieces of information. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, it seems like all the world is curators now. Brands want in on the action.

Brands are trying to establish themselves as trusted sources of information. Hop onto Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, and you’ll see brands that gather up articles from all sorts of publications and push them out to their followers. For example, look at IBM’s Tumblr, A Smarter Planet, which is a stream of curated content focused on areas of Big Blue’s core competencies. Or there’s American Express’ Open Forum Tumblr (yes, Tumblr is apparently a good platform for curation) that has cultivated a business community online by providing relevant tools and information to help business owners succeed.

“If a brand is an expert in a certain topic, their reputation might make them a credible source of information,” said Neil Chase, svp of editing and publishing at Federated Media. “But if a company that makes toasters gives health advice, they might not be credible. If they’re sending out recipes, that’s a reason to trust them.”

There’s little doubt that brands can amass sizable audiences of their own nowadays. Show me a chief marketing officer who isn’t interested in an owned, earned, paid media model — often in that order — and I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. It’s been four and a half years since Nike marketing chief Trevor Edwards plaintively said, “We’re not in the business of keeping media companies alive.” Translation: We can build direct connections with audiences, thank you very much.

The devil is in the details. Brands aren’t set up to be publishers. They don’t necessarily understand the editorial process or have the stomach for the length of time it takes to build an audience. Take AmEx’s OpenForum, for instance. It took four years to get 1 million people aboard, and now it gets about 150,000 unique visitors per month. They have the resources to build and cultivate an audience others may not. Additionally, OpenForum was put on the shoulders of the end-user: small-business owners. These business owners are able to communicate and share ideas with one another, but they must be American Express Cardmembers. AmEx recognized the need to provide small-business owners with a connection platform and information that will help their business succeed.

“Not everyone is meant to be a storyteller,” said Colleen Decroucy, CEO of Socialistic, a social media agency. “Brands, as marketers, are trying to have these conversations and what do they have the right to own and see any ROI off of that.”

Publishing content in 2012 can be immensely complex or surprisingly simple, depending on your approach. Curation straddles the line. It can be difficult figuring out not only what tools to use, but also what platforms and, of course, what content to share. The plus side is that once you do figure out how you want to curate — how it becomes part of your broader communications strategy — it’s pretty easy to establish a voice.

Steve Rubel, Edelman’s evp of global strategy and insights, suggests brands start by having an editorial point of view and deciding where the content will live — the brand’s site or aggregation sites like Tumblr or Pinterest.

“The best way to do it is to identify a high-interest topic that you want to be perceived as an expert in,” he said. “Curate that topic and provide some context around it. If you’re curating a lot of content in a topic area, over time that leads to expertise and credibility.”

Brands need to be careful in not only what, but how much they curate. There can’t be articles that make the reader question why a brand is sharing it. Also, brands need to make sure they’re not just regurgitating content, but instead offering readers/followers valuable information, as readers will quickly determine the curated content — and thus the brand — is not worth their time. Since consumers have their own tools for curating – Storify, Storyful, etc. – brands have to know each of their customers and have the credibility in their field to get consumers to trust the content they spread.

“It takes time to build that reputation, whether creator or curator,” said Chase. “It might take faster if you’re good at what you do, but you still have to get it up and running. You’re competing with a lot of other stuff in people’s in-boxes.”

There’s also a limit to what curation can do. At the end of day, if brands want to be publishers, they need to put in the hard work, warns Jonah Bloom, KBS+P’s executive director of content strategy. “It’s more likely that original content changes minds than just being a filter,” he said.

How to Leverage The WIFM Factor

For a society that has often shunned discount coupons as something distasteful, it’s somewhat surprising that the popularity of discount companies like Groupon, Living Social or RockBottom has reached such a feverish pitch.

But for those of us who are died-in-the-wool direct marketers, and who understand the power of the greed factor or the “What’s In It For Me?” (WIFM) factor, it makes complete business sense.

As any good marketer knows, there’s no point to sending out a 1:1 marketing message without a compelling offer. Offers are the reason you give your target to “act now,” while the rest of the message is crafted to present the most compelling reasons why the product/service is perfect for them.

Offers have often been treated with disdain by many marketers. But I was always taught to lead with your BEST offer — the offer the recipient won’t find anywhere else; An offer that is too good to refuse; And an offer that will compel the target to raise their hand and say “count me in!”

If positioned properly, a superior offer to the right audience will achieve dramatic results (fantastic email open, click through and conversion rates; superior direct mail response rates). No matter how you measure it, a marketing initiative with a superior offer will propel a sales program to a new level of success.

But in my experience, that’s not what companies do when putting together the offer.

Instead, they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince their organization that a paltry “10% off” is necessary for their initiative, and everyone is disappointed when the email open rate/direct mail result is dismal.

But now the “put forward your best offer” strategy has been proven to be true once again.

Take Groupon, for example. I got caught up in the excitement the first time my local golf course offered a round of golf for 4, 4 pull carts, and 4 tokens for a bucket of practice balls (a $118 value) for only $50. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to smell a deal because it seems over 400 people took advantage of this offer!

Now, let’s do the math together… that means this Groupon deal generated $20,000 of gross revenue. And, since Groupon keeps half, the golf course received $10,000 in revenue… up front… before the buyers even took advantage of the offer. Why is that good news?

It’s called C-A-S-H F-L-O-W. The golf course ran an offer, and got $10,000 in sales just like that. They don’t need to wait for the coupons to be redeemed (in fact, some folks will forget to redeem them).

But more importantly, it proved that a good offer — no, a GREAT offer — works. It drove their target to respond… immediately.

So, the next time you spend marketing dollars to put together an email or direct mail campaign, stop and spend some time on offers. Your goal should be to put together your BEST offer in order to get your BEST result.

And, if that particular golf course hadn’t used Groupon for distribution, they would have received $20,000 in cash instead of $10,000.

But this golf course has never asked me for my email address… or my mailing address, so they don’t seem to have a database. Which means they have no idea who their customers are… and that’s just shameful.

LinkedIn. Networking... for Dummies.

It seems that plain, old-fashioned, good manners have been tossed out the window along with handwritten notes and real blind dates.

I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn – (in their words: [It’s] the world’s largest professional network that connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.) and there’s nothing better than being able to review a prospective client or employee biography, or participate in a peer-to-peer dialogue on a hot marketing topic in one of my favorite marketing group forums.

But lately I have been getting invitations from complete strangers to “link in” to them. And often, they’re from lands far, far away, where I’d have to use my Nancy-Drew-turned-anthropologist skills to find it on a map.

Why not take the time to write a personal note to me like: “I’m a talented art director with heavy B2B direct marketing experience. After visiting your website and looking at the types of clients you work with, and the types of work that you do, I think I could be another resource for you if you ever have the need for new talent. Would love to connect.”

Clearly, this would help me put the individual into some sort of perspective, understand why they want to link in to me, and help me determine whether or not I might want to make a connection with them. But no. Instead, they default to the standard “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn.”

How can I be a person you trust if you’ve never met me? Done business with me? Been introduced to me?

Before you initiate contact with a complete stranger on LinkedIn, here are a few tips:

• Do your homework. Why do you want to connect with this individual, but, more importantly, why should they want to “accept” and connect with you? Use that information in your “request to link in” message. To learn more about them and their company, visit their website, Google their company name or their individual name. It’s not that hard, but it will help make the connection more relevant.

• Post a RECENT and DECENT photo of yourself. No, not the one with you holding your kids (save that one for Facebook) or your dog (funny, but not appropriate for a business networking site). And don’t take one with the camera on the top of your computer (not very professional). Schedule time with a professional photographer. And, when you crop the photo to place it on the site, don’t show me more than your head and shoulders. Your face gets really, really, tiny when the image on LinkedIn is about ½” high.

• Complete your bio… please. Your bio should be robust and as complete as possible, otherwise, I start to wonder if you’re trying to hide something. Didn’t go to college? That’s nothing to be ashamed of… just that by listing your Elementary School only, it looks like you only went as far as the 5^th grade (helpful for those looking to reconnect to their 1^st crush, but again, not appropriate for a business networking site).

• Ask for references. 1^st class LinkedIn profiles always have a few references included. So why don’t you have any? If no one will endorse you, why would I want to do business with you? And why would I want to “link in” to you?

• Be prepared to be rejected. If your bio is incomplete, or I don’t know you, or you’ve not given me one good reason to get to know you, I’ll reject your invitation. And, if I suspect you are abusing the LinkedIn platform, I’ll report your request as SPAM. So, consider yourself warned.

8 Tips for Maximizing Landing Page Conversions

During my “down” time over the holiday season, I was able to catch up on lots of my white paper and research reading… and have gathered a succinct set of tips for those marketers seeking to optimize landing page conversions. I could spend a lot of time lecturing on landing page strategies, but most people reading this want me to just cut to the chase…


1. Click This… Right Here… Right Now: When you invite someone to do something (in an email or via direct mail or web banner) and you take them to your destination page, keep the information on that page clear, concise, visually clean and with directions so simple your 4-year old would understand. You want your target to sign up for a newsletter? Then ONLY offer that sign up option on your page. You want your target to download something? Then that’s the FOCUS of your page. Don’t clutter it up with navigation bars to the rest of your site (it will only distract the user from the assigned task). Don’t offer other options (after all, they arrived at the site because of one of your clever copy points; don’t muck it up now!). And DO NOT introduce a new offer/option. Distractions will only serve to dilute your desired result. If you want to add those options AFTER they take the desired action, then design a “thank you” page with additional offers/options/navigation tools.

2. Watch Your Language: Every little word offers a subtle nuance that can be misinterpreted and prevent the user from completing the desired task. Words like “Required fields” sounds harsh. How about turning that around and using “Optional” for those fields not required? You’ll be surprised how many people supply you with the optional information anyway.

3. Looks Count: Clean and uncluttered works best; WHITE or lightly colored backgrounds are far preferred over reverse type out of a dark color. If you want to include an image, people like looking at images of people. Smiling people… good looking people. Not a box shot or, a picture of the product – unless it’s being used by smiling, good looking people who are being more productive in their lives as a result.

4. Forget the Small Print: Don’t try and trick your user. Make sure they know exactly what they’re signing up for and reiterate the benefits of doing so. Trickery only makes people angry… and then they opt out at the first opportunity.

5. Don’t Ask if You Don’t Need To Know: If you have no plans to create a direct mail campaign, then why gather a mailing address at first contact? If you’re never going to call me, why ask for my phone number? And really, is my birthdate, marital status, eye color, or shoe size relevant to how you’re going to market to me? If so, then by all means ask away! But if not, why not try dating me first before asking for my vital statistics.

6. Forms Designed by Real Users: When designing forms, make sure users can jump to the next field by clicking on the “tab” key; ask for a phone number with 3 different boxes (the first box is for a 3-digit area code and, once completed with three keystrokes, it should jump the cursor to the next box automatically). I personally HATE having to input a phone number only to be told I didn’t follow the correct format for YOUR site (who had time to read your instructions??).

7. Confirm Our Relationship: Either create a pop up window (“Thanks for registering!”) and/or send me an email confirmation. Otherwise, I’m not sure you ever got my registration form. So I’m not sure if we’re dating… or not. Or if I need to fill out the form again. Confusion is NOT the way I should end our meeting.

8. Keep Those Divorce Papers Handy: Once registered, you have to nurture our relationship. Don’t keep knocking on my door every day (unless I agreed to your daily visits); the first time you email me after I register should be part of the “wow!” factor. Relevant to me and the information I just shared about me. Best offer. Best foot forward. It’s like arriving at my doorstep for our first post-meeting date and forgetting to put on a clean shirt.