content

Marketing Writers Face Dramatic Shift

Bon Jovi at the Verizon Center

Current content conversations focus on the written word as conveyed via interactive or print. That’s about to shift toward more immersive media experiences, forcing marketers to write and design for live environments. Immersive media creates a new demand for dramatic writing skills, usually the domain of more artistic forms such as plays, films and broadcast.

The crossroads is here.

While most content marketers focus on blogs, newsletters, white papers and guides, the need to develop visual and audio centric media increases.

In discussing the Google Glass Project/augmented reality session for next week’s xPotomac conference with Patrick Ashamalla, we focused on these challenges. In many ways, interactive designers and writers know this shift is caused by the untethered internet.

Today, most companies create a flat experience filled with text on a digital canvas, e.g. a website, document, infographic, or the like. These forms of content require a stakeholder to invest time reading, in essence a distraction from their real personal or business life.

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Customer Experience Trumps Content Marketing

Content Mind Map
Image by MindMapInspiration

More and more voices state that content marketing overhype has jumped the shark. They’re right. As a primary strategy content marketing is overhyped. Instead, brands should focus on customer experience marketing.

Before we go too far, let me say I love content, all forms of it, too, not just online, but events, print, and music, just to name a few. Brand developed content (cough, advertising) offers a great tactical toolset, one of my favorites.

That doesn’t necessarily mean content marketing should serve as every company’s primary outreach strategy.

Why not just make Facebook your primary strategy? Should we have that conversation again?

A better strategic approach focuses on marketing tools as extensions of the brand experience.

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4 Reasons to Integrate Marketing Now

Two rivers converge
Image by Chiri_dr

Marketers need to harness media convergence and integrate to maximize the impact of their various communications, on and offline.

Convergence has been brought about by the arrival of mobile and social media. The combination has empowered customers to access the Internet anywhere and discuss it.

The resulting anytime anywhere access to the Internet breaks the isolation of any one type of media form, including radio ads in the car and newspapers in a local subway.

Convergence creates the need to integrate, the process in which all communications from a company or organization — regardless of form — work together to present a unified brand experience for a customer. Integration yields more leads, creating better ROI for marketers. It includes cross promotion of ideas, themes, and calls to action, including participation in social media.

A recent CMO Council study showed that only 9% of respondents believe their interactive marketing efforts are highly evolved and integrated. This online integration issue doesn’t even consider integrating marketers’ efforts in the traditional advertising, public relations and direct marketing disciplines.
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How to Avoid Content Marketing Fatigue

exhaustion.

Image by Jessica Darliingx

The great content marketing debate over quality information versus frequency raged on last week.

Following the debate I realized content burnout is an issue I suffered from in the past and resolved. Here is my answer to the inevitable issue of burnout.

It’s not enough to trudge through the hard times and make it to the other side. Sometimes the desert is wide and vast. Letting your content publishing wane and eventually go fallow becomes tempting.

Instead, build a repository of evergreen content to avoid fatigue, much like you would grow a savings account in case of hard times.

Back-up content empowers you to have a bad week, and throw out or refine content to meet a schedule.

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SxSW Success Begins Now

Sxswdemographics

I closed more than $500,000 worth of consulting deals from the past four SxSW interactive festivals.

Every year has produced at least one new successful business relationship, making the event a must attend for me. Yet, many of my colleagues complain about their lack of success at Sx (as veterans call it).

Some ask me how I achieve success at SxSW when others seem to struggle. Here are my tips to make the most of this great opportunity:

Get Started Now

SxSW winners are made before the show, not at the event.
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Live and Die with Headlines

Writing
Image by deathtiny41

In a world driven by social network and search engine marketing, you live and die by headlines.

Today’s social media blogosphere discussion revolves around content marketing, but little is said about the actual headlines.

Too bad. Writing great headlines matters more than ever.

Attention spans have shrunk, and if you can’t interest someone right off the bat with a great, witty headline then you won’t get read. It’s as simple as that.
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How to Differentiate Your Content

Different
Image by Ksenia Krneychuk

After my speech two weeks ago on blogging, a TribeUp NYC attendee asked me how to differentiate content.

I’m sure other strategists have their methods, but here’s how I do it.

There’s one critical precursor to success: You must possess substantial knowledge about your topic area, and keep abreast of current trends, not only in the mainstream but on the edge of your sector. Become a subject matter expert.

If you don’t, it will be difficult for you to compete. You need this knowledge to determine the trends you should cover.

Start with Irreverence

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The Rise of Dynamic Content

Today’s release of Hubspot 3 marketing automation software at the Inbound Conference marks the rise of dynamic content, a method of customizing the way individuals view content, images or actions. Now small and medium enterprise marketers can easily deploy dynamic content segmented by niches.

Dynamic content harnesses database marketing to serve unique content to people based on a wide variety of factors, including their sales history, social media preferences, historical content preferences, and prior interactions with the company.

Delivery mechanisms for dynamic content include both online web pages and forms, and emails. Of course, if you engage in direct mail, you can deliver print pieces based on segmentation and individual preferences (depending on your vendor).
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