Content Marketing Institute » Content Marketing World

Content Marketing Storytelling: Secrets from the Big Screen

Robert Rose — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:00:36 +0000

This past September, I was honored to speak at Content Marketing World. My talk was called “Storytelling Secrets From Hollywood.” Since that time, I’ve had a few people ask me for the slides. Inspired by these requests, I’ve been having some fun learning about video-editing programs. So here, I thought I’d go one step further and develop a little video for CMI readers.

The video embedded below is the basis of my presentation at Content Marketing World 2011. I’ve since added some more visual elements to the storytelling — including clips from some of the movies I reference. (Hopefully, I’ve made them a little more fun to watch). Of course, if you’re interested in viewing the on-demand version of my talk, it’s available here.

Creating Your Brand Journey

If there’s one question about content marketing that gets asked almost as much as “What’s the business case?” it is simply this: “What should we talk about?”

Chris Brogan and some others have recently written that the customer is your story, and as much as I love Chris and appreciate his work, I disagree with him here.

The Customer is Your Audience for Your Brand’s Story

The customer is not your hero. The customer is the one you want to take on the journey — the one who, at the end, identifies with, is inspired by and/ or is influenced by the hero. Should your audience be placed in the middle of your story? Well that’s for you to decide as the creator of the content marketing effort.

Your brand should always be the hero that will be transformed. Joe Pulizzi and I talk about this in Chapter 3 of our book, Managing Content Marketing. At its heart, the answer is to weave a compelling, emotionally connected story around your brand.

In 2012 and beyond, the main reason you will be successful is because you have a specialized expertise — and because you can create a differentiated experience for your customers with that expertise. You (ideally) have a passion for the BIG idea that this expertise represents, and you’ve asked the question, “What business are we really in?”

So, in this presentation (and in the book, with much more detail), we go through the stages of what Joseph Campbell called “The Hero’s Journey,” translating it into what we call “The Brand Hero’s Journey.”

This is a construction (certainly not a template) that you can use to help brainstorm and create an emotionally engaging story for your own content marketing programs.

It’s Your Story: Make it Remarkable!

Image courtesy of Flickr/Graham Smith

7 Basic Content Marketing Principles for the Corporate Marketer

Nate Riggs — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:00:25 +0000

The last time you heard from me on CMI was just before Content Marketing World in Cleveland.

Since then, I’ve changed gears a bit, moving from the entrepreneurial life of an independent social business consultant to the team-focused corporate environment at Bob Evans Restaurants. It’s been an interesting move for me, especially in terms of building out our own content marketing department.

In the process of doing this, I’ve forced myself to step back and really try to drill down on what I feel are the most important principles in content marketing that will guide my own decisions now and going forward. My hope is that by sharing some of these principles, I’ll be able to help you guide your decisions when doing the same for your company.

Please, feel free to take these ideas, use them, and add anything I’ve missed in the comments. Fair?

Treat content marketing as another potential revenue stream for your business

If you ask most business owners if they would consider their company to be a publisher, the answer would be a quick “no.”

That makes sense. If you’re a restaurant or retail shop, publishing is not really your business. Or is it? Companies like Starbucks and Hubspot, which have exploded as a result of their content marketing efforts, look at their content as a mission-critical part of their businesses and, in some cases, a potential revenue stream. Because they’re willing to sell some of their content, they’re also willing to make deeper investments in producing that content.

When you’re planning your content to market your business, don’t forget to consider how your brand can potentially sell some of the content you create. Your content can always be assigned a value and that can be used to create additional offerings down the road.

When content is king, consistency is the queen

I picked that one up from my friend, Eric Vessels, in a patio conversation over beers a few weeks ago.

Eric and his partners have been running a content marketing business since before the term was even popularized through Joe’s work. Eric’s company, What They Think, has become the single largest online publication for executives and business owners in the printing industry, with revenues in the millions — not too shabby when you consider that the company is operated by just a handful of partners.

One of the stories that Eric shared with me years ago changed my perception of how content works on the web. He and his team pride themselves on never having missed a single publishing deadline in over 10 years of operating What They Think. Come hell or high water, their newsletters are always on time, and fresh content is always up on then site when they say it will be. No exceptions and no slips.

Consistency is queen.

Change your focus from publishing content to programming content

Every Wednesday night, my fiance and I look forward to watching the hit series, Modern Family. It’s hysterical, and while we don’t watch a ton of TV, the program has become a welcome part of our weekly routine.

Then, a funny thing happened. We started watching this show called Happy Endings that airs immediately after Modern Family. That one was funny too, and so our Wednesday night TV viewing time investment has essentially doubled, all while staying on the same television network.

Television and radio have always bought into the idea of programming content. And, rightly so, it’s media. Much different from things like books and articles that are, for the most part, intended to be read and digested once or twice by a consumer, media programming has been designed to keep end users coming back over and over again by establishing a placeholder on that consumer’s calendar.

When you’re planning your content, try to think more like a television program director and less like a single-book author.

Promote the human brands behind your content marketing with the same support you would give your company brand

Welcome to the age of Internet celebrities! Who’s yours?

Let me put it this way — I had never heard about Thomas Nelson Publishers until I started digging the stuff that Michael Hyatt writes on leadership and values on his blog. I was never really a big fan of Ford until I started following Scott Monty. I hadn’t even heard much about Edelman until Steve Rubel and David Armano piqued my interest with their content.

Brand has shifted, folks. Because of the social web and content marketing, human brands are now equally as (if not more) important as company brands. Companies merely exist. People, on the other hand, are very much alive.

When planning your content marketing strategy, be sure to consider what human brands will help you carry your company’s brand into the online conversation and how you will help them shine.

Be willing to trade being perfect for being one of the first

Speed is everything in content marketing, and I think a lot of marketing teams get stuck on this one. For traditional marketers that want our content and work to be perfect before it hits the digital shelves is simply part of our business DNA. That’s not a bad thing, but be willing to make the choice to let some of that go.

There are real benefits related to getting attention from search traffic and fresh consumer eyeballs on the content you publish, but only if your content hits the market as one of the first to arrive. On the web, waiting 48 hours to hit your publish button can mean the difference between first page placement for a certain phrase and being buried in the SERP sand.

Keep in mind, too, that the Internet conversation is ongoing. You’re allowed to evolve your opinions and thoughts on just about anything, and your audience will appreciate that you are brave and attentive enough to do so.

In content marketing, teasing people is a good thing

What did you listen to on the way to work this morning? If it was a morning radio talk show, you were probably teased and didn’t even know it.

My friend Lex McAllister reminded me of this a few months back when I joined her on her radio show, No Excuses. Lex, like other talk radio hosts, makes it a consistent practice to tease her listeners before going to commercial breaks in order to hook them into the content that’s coming up next.

When you’re starting to execute on your content marketing editorial calendar, make sure that you are building the expectations and affinity of your audience by teasing them with the content you have coming up next.

Do a good job and be ready to be on call

Number seven is the deadly sin in content marketing, if you forget about it.

I was raised by two registered nurses who liked to make extra dollars by working overtime or being on call. Having pagers go off during dinner was simply part of the norm in my parents’ house. And why not? Why not make a little extra cash by hedging your bets that it would be a slow night. (That said, it’s rarely a slow night in hospitals.)

Now, think back to why you are doing content marketing in the first place. Yes, every business wants to boost sales and build brand awareness; but the truth of the matter is that to reach those goals you must first succeed in building an online conversation around the content objects you produce.

When and if people will be talking about your content (and the humans who put it out there for discussion), make sure to be ready to participate in real time. Look at ways to staff your online presence with humans from your company, and make sure to design shifts and assign staff to man the outposts on weekends and evening hours. Don’t be afraid to put members of your team “on call” at home, but make sure that you compensate them for that time.

If you want to win big bonus points, reward them BIG time if they can show you that they consistently respond to your customers in less than 10 minutes.

What’s your take on these seven principles of content marketing?

What did I miss?

Content Marketers: Leverage Those Relationships!

Pam Kozelka — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:00:36 +0000

One of the thousands of things we learned at Content Marketing World is that people still want (or you could even say need) in-person events. The event itself took the efforts of 100 people, from the staff to speakers to the event team and sponsors. The response from so many of you on the success of the event has been overwhelming and has prompted many questions on how we managed to put it all together.

One specific question that kept coming up was, “How did you get the word out there?” Well, I can tell you, a great deal of our success can be attributed to the content produced on the Content Marketing Institute, as well as on Joe Pulizzi’s blog, CCO magazine, and on our social media platforms. But the biggest asset we had was recognizing how important it was to leverage our relationships.

What does that mean, really? You need to ask! You may see this a lot on Facebook — a friend asking if any of their friends has something they need, knows some key information or, most importantly, has experience with something they are looking to do. People trust the answers that come from their friends.

Can this be applied to business? Certainly, but only if you are ready to take advantage of it.

Many companies are already doing this. For example, this screen shot from Eloqua shows how they leverage their relationships to search for potential employees:

And here’s a shot from NPR’s request for new content:

And, this picture shows how Junta42 reached out for suggestions for naming the official drink of Content Marketing World 2011:

There are a lot of people producing a lot of content. Over 11 billion web pages currently exist with thousands of new pages of content being created every day. What is as important as producing quality content relevant to your audience is that you engage with your audience to ensure they understand the fundamentals of what you are sharing and want to learn more from you, the expert.

Here are some tips that we use to do this in our regular content efforts, as well as for Content Marketing World:

1) Initiate a conversation by commenting on blogs

There is no better way for people to get to know you and that you are an expert than by commenting on their content. Tell them what you like, what you don’t like, what you learned, what you agree with (or disagree with). Or, you can ask a follow-up question. The choices are endless.

2) Reply to other people’s blog comments

If someone takes the time to comment on your blog, show them your appreciation by thanking them, answering their questions, or sharing an additional insight. So many opportunities exist to build and extend your relationships with fans and followers, so try to take advantage of any opportunity to make an additional connection.

3) Participate in social media

Spend at least five minutes every day commenting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, About.me, or other relevant social sites. For Content Marketing World, here are the major things we did:

Members of our team personally reached out to each of their LinkedIn contacts and asked them if they were attending the event. When someone replied for more information it was sent to them or when they replied no, we asked why. Every response gave valuable information for our planning.
We personally direct messaged (not auto replied) any new followers on Twitter to see if they were planning to attend. As with LinkedIn, any time a follower replied with an answer or a question a follow up direct message was sent.
We leveraged the networks we already had. Many of our contacts have asked us to promote their great events, which we are always eager to do. In exchange, we asked if they would be willing to help us promote our event. We gave each of these partners a unique coupon code for registration to use with their audience so we could track which of these were most beneficial for us.

4) Engage across multiple platforms

Use whatever media you can to get the word out there. For instance:

Put your thoughts in print
Share them on social media sites
Write regular blog posts
Create a white paper
Guest post on other blogs
Write a book
Attend events
Make videos.

Want more ideas? Here are 42 ways you can use content to connect with your audience.

5) Ask your friends and followers when you want information or feedback

If you have a great idea, need a question answered, need some advice… whatever it is, ask. You may never find the answer otherwise, and people like to feel like they are being helpful or influential.

6) Take advantage of in-person events

If you want to host an event, that’s great. For us, the experience of Content Marketing World validated our hopes that our audience wanted to be there. But it’s important to attend events too, and make sure you participate not only in the sessions but also in the networking events. These are priceless opportunities to ask your questions, learn something new, and meet really cool people.

At Content Marketing World, Jim Kukral got on his knees to ask the audience to produce exciting content.

I would like to do the same. I ask you to continue to build amazing relationships, but make sure you leverage those relationships in as many ways as you can.

Just look what it has done for us!

How Brownies and Bridesmaids’ Dresses Proved that Social Media Works

Ahava Leibtag — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:30:29 +0000

“How do we know it works?”
“Can we prove that we’ll affect the bottom line?”

Aren’t these the client questions you receive most often about social media? When my clients ask them, I explain that social media is about building relationships with customers. All the different tools — Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. — are the distribution vehicles you choose to get your message across. When you choose the right delivery vehicle for the right message, you can ensure your success.

My guess is that everyone has heard by now how great Content Marketing World was. While I was there, I had two experiences that I’d like to share because they illustrate exactly how to answer the above questions for your clients.

I desperately needed chocolate — and then I received a brownie delivery

On the third day of CMW, I had just about enough of all the candy, but I still had a craving for chocolate. So I tweeted:

Only 1 thing wrong with #cmworld–not enough chocolate. Gotta find @Junta42 some orange chocolate

About 15 minutes later, Pam Kozelka (Joe Pulizzi’s right-hand woman) shows up with brownies. This is a perfect example of how social media is really about building relationships with customers and picking the right delivery vehicle to accomplish your goals. Twitter is instantaneous. It’s communication that can happen immediately with one side making a statement and other side responding. Pam caught my tweet, wanted to make me happy, and was able to do so — immediately.

How Nordstrom will make me look absolutely fabulous

I had a similar experience with Nordstrom. I learned about Nordstrom Dave at CMW. He tweets about men’s fashion, and I asked him if he has a female counterpart. Meet @NordySanda. I tweeted my latest fashion conundrum to her: My sister-in-law wants her bridal party to wear champagne-colored bridesmaids dresses for her big day in December! She instantly replied with a full page of dresses that would be perfect. All I needed to do was pick the one I liked.

How this can help you with your customers

You need to stress to everyone — senior-level executives, social media trainees, and others — that social media is about building important relationships with customers. In both of the above situations, I needed something. I sent out my request on Twitter. I got an immediate response. That isn’t always possible in every situation, but when companies show that level of commitment to their customers, they demonstrate that the relationship is paramount. This is how to earn loyal, returning customers — the so-called raving fans we are all chasing.

Oh, and even though I ate the brownies, I could still fit into the champagne dress I picked out. So, there were happy endings all around.

Do you have any social media stories with similar happy endings? Please share your comments with us.

Results-Driven Blogging for B2B Brands [Video]

Michele Linn — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:00:29 +0000

Blogging was a hot topic at Content Marketing World. In this video, Alison Bolen from SAS shares the two things B2B brands must be doing when blogging.

Lee Odden also has a great wrap up post from Alison’s presentation if you want to learn more.