When we create the story that drives our content marketing efforts, we should already know who our audience is and what we want to tell them. When it comes to the platforms, we know how we want to say it (text, video, audio) and where we want to tell it (website, blog, social media, etc.). And typically, we stop there because we have so much to monitor, measure, and manage that we become overwhelmed.

Yet, content marketing ought to be called constant marketing, because it’s always happening. David Meerman Scott talks about real-time marketing and how we have to be ready at any given moment to react and respond to relevant public conversations. What we often forget is that stories happen in real life all the time – informally when we are on the subway, on a plane, or at a cocktail party, as well as formally at a conference or business meeting. We are always telling and re-telling our story — it happens when someone asks, “So, what do you do?” or when we are up on the stage giving a presentation.

For the purpose of this post, let’s focus on the presentation aspect of content marketing. Whether you are pitching in the boardroom or delivering the keynote address at a conference, it is your job to educate, engage, and inspire the audience. Good storytelling is the strongest, most reliable way to do this.

Truth be told, not everyone is a proficient storyteller. Some people are just born with the skill — Bill Clinton, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Louis C.K., to name a few — and have an innate ability to spin a good yarn. While most of us may not go down in history as a notable orator, there are a few presentation tricks we can use to polish our storytelling skills and prepare ourselves to win over any audience.

Avoid telling the entire story

Chances are you have a limited amount of time when you are presenting. But you can use these limitations to your advantage.

Presenting is not an exercise in how to spew out a ton of information in a short amount of time — your audience is savvy, and you will likely lose their attention within minutes if you don’t give them an opportunity to focus on your most important points, or if you fail to meet their expectations for being engaged and entertained. It’s your goal to meet those expectations and, more importantly, to keep their eyes on you (and not their iPhones).

Two weeks after your presentation, the audience may not remember everything that you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. So don’t go crazy and try to cover everything you know about your topic. Choose two or three ideas that a.) you are passionate about and b.) you know will be attention grabbers. By focusing on a few points, you will come off genuine, authentic, and relaxed — a win-win for everyone in the room!

Swab the decks

Stop relying on PowerPoint. Seriously, stop using it. Presentation tools like PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi are becoming crutches for presenters who feel like they will fall down unless they have their slides!

If you cannot tell your story without the use of slides, then you are in more trouble than you think. Slides are for support only! They are to be used to evoke an emotion, or to make a point. The best decks should be meaningless without the presenter’s own voice to provide context and color for the story.

If you feel you must use slides, keep these tips in mind:

• Use only high-resolution images — no clip art, and no stock photos. And have them bleed out to the far edges of the slide.
• Use only one idea per slide.
• Avoid using bullet points.
• Get rid of the cheesy animations.
• If you have a Q&A portion of the presentation, or you go off on tangents as part of your presentation, hit the “.” (period) key — this will make the slide go to black, bringing the audience’s eyes back to you, rather than staring at a slide that has nothing to do with what you are talking about.
• Use as few slides as possible. Too many slides are distracting and can dilute the power of the presentation.

Remember: A presentation is not a meeting — it’s a performance

Pete Townshend once said, “The audience is thick and doesn’t appreciate quality . . . you do something big on stage and they go ‘Ahhh!’”

What he meant is that the audience won’t get hung up on fancy charts, specific data points, or minutiae. They won’t know if you skipped a point or forgot something you were planning to say. What they will notice is if you look nervous and fidget. For many people in the audience, your presentation might be just one in a long series of meetings they have to attend – chances are that at least half of them don’t really want to be there. Take a chance, and make it fun, entertaining, engaging. Get them to pay attention. This skill only comes with practice and experience. So, rehearse your presentation. Practice it in the mirror. Record it on your smartphone and listen back. Take the time to create a compelling performance and you will win every time.

While we continue to craft our content strategy and proliferate it across all media, let’s not forget that there is no better way to tell your brand story than in person — so they get their information right from the horse’s mouth. So from this day forward, I urge you to make your presentations an integrated part of your content marketing strategy. When you have the opportunity to present to an audience, it’s critical to be interesting, captivating, and focused on the story itself — not fumbling with a bunch of slides and data that may only confuse the audience. If we take half the time we spend on creating effective presentations, audiences all over the world will be more than thankful.

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Audience image via Flickr Creative Commons

Web writing has, with few exceptions, put an end to the days of long-winded, verbose content, and has ushered in an era of quick, concise pieces you can read on the fly, while still reaping the benefits of the information gathered. So, how can these little black dots help transform your copy from good to great and help you draw readers in? Here are some easy-to-follow bullet point basics that can help make your content pop from the page:

Treat them like mini-headlines

Bulleted content should be introduced with short, catchy phrasing that draws the eye of the reader quickly. They not only tell the reader what each section is about, they’re like bookmarks that make it easy for them to scan the entire piece and return later for more information. For example, if you’re writing about the “Best Exercises for Toning your Abs,” a bullet may look something like this:

• The sneaky side crunch: A deceptively difficult move that not only tests your balance, it also torments your oblique muscles in a cruel-to-be-kind manner that will leave you bikini-ready in no time.

Use symmetry

Be consistent. Don’t make one bullet point three sentences in length and then make others six or eight sentences long. Keeping the look similar across each section will visually enhance your blog, article, or on-page content while making it more inviting to the reader.

Avoid a barrage of bullets

The idea here is to make your content easier to navigate, not more complicated. Using too many bulleted lists within one article (more than two, as a general rule) or using sub-bullets (or sub-sub bullets) will make your content look confusing, which will only turn off your reader.

Keep the flow

Use a parallel structure when creating your bullet points. In other words, stay consistent grammatically with the wording you use to introduce your bulleted list. Here’s an example of what not to do:

How can you stop snoring, improve your health, and get a better night’s rest? Begin by:

• Sleeping on your side
• Get rid of allergens
• Improving your sleep habits

Begin by “get rid of allergens”? That’s just not right. The middle bullet should read, “Getting rid of allergens.” Keeping it consistent will help improve your writing style and readability, and will keep you from looking like you don’t understand basic English grammar.

Slip in keywords

Bulleted content is the perfect place to add high-value keyword phrases to your piece. Search engines tend to give bulleted lists a little more clout, because they think the content has higher importance. Throw some targeted keywords in there and you may help improve your visibility.

One important parting note: bullets cannot save bad content. A bulleted list is only as good as the subject matter you’re writing about (and the writer who’s constructing them). So, as always, be sure to entice your readers with compelling and relatable content that portrays you as an authority on your respective topic and drives your readers to take action. Do that, and bullets may be just the weapon you need to keep your content from biting the dust.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

All in all it’s not a bad list, but it seems to me that our friends at LSSU missed an obvious target. I’m talking about 17 letters that can be combined to form what has become a ubiquitous and, frankly, increasingly cliché term: thought leadership.

Among content marketers, few words are so widely batted around or have generated greater buzz. As more and more people proclaim their content to be thought leadership, the term’s meaning has become diluted. These days, anyone with an opinion and a pulse can claim to be a thought leader, requiring little more than an internet connection to start publishing their so-called thought leadership.

No más!

It’s time to take a more critical look at thought leadership, and to define what it is and isn’t. Maybe we need the thought leadership equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval: a set of criteria to separate what’s often passed off as thought leadership from the real deal. The minimum requirements for earning that seal of approval would include ensuring that your content meets a few criteria:

It offers bold ideas that are new and noteworthy

To drive thought leadership, content either needs to put forth new ideas or provide fresh insights into old ones. Simply regurgitating what others have already written or said, while sometimes useful in its own right, isn’t a recipe for success. Don’t have anything new to say? Then sit tight until you do and remember that sometimes less is more. Producing one piece of thought leadership content that really says something innovative and bold is a much better strategy than publishing a dozen pieces that don’t say anything at all.

One of my favorite examples of a real thought leader who provides bold ideas is Bob Reynolds, the president and CEO of Putnam Investments. Mr. Reynolds does an admirable job, consistently producing insightful and provocative articles in his blog, “The Retirement Savings Challenge.”

It takes a stand and presents a clear point of view

Leaders shouldn’t sit on the fence, so make sure that your content offers a definitive point of view. Putting a stake in the ground can mean taking risks, but if all your content does is toe the line, it doesn’t qualify as thought leadership. This is often a particular challenge for big corporations. Concerned that they might alienate a part of their customer base, some corporations shy away from taking a stand. Unfortunately, doing so turns their content into factual reporting, rather than providing insightful thought leadership.

It reflects high-quality (preferably original) research

Sometimes content that’s floated around as thought leadership can come across like a high school term paper. You can help avoid that pitfall by making sure that you’re using the best sources and respected research. Use online tools like LexisNexis to direct you to high-quality news articles and industry reports, rather than turning to the likes of Wikipedia or Yahoo News (both are fine resources, but not ones that you should be citing in your thought leadership efforts). Ideally, your content will also reflect your own research (conducted in-house or commissioned through a third party), which will help guarantee that you really do have something unique to say.

It hinges on its credibility

Your thought leadership efforts will fall flat if your content isn’t credible. Help ensure that all of your work is accurate and logical by thoroughly fact-checking it. You can also raise the caliber of your content by collaborating with people who are well known and respected in your industry. One way to do this is by soliciting influencers or subject matter experts to write a foreword to your next white paper or provide quotes for your next report. If you don’t have access to anyone who fits the bill, you can build up your own credibility by looking for opportunities to contribute content to other places and building a name for yourself over time.

It’s also important to remember that no one is an expert in everything. Stick to creating content that falls into your sweet spot, rather than trying to pontificate on subject matter that’s beyond your realm of expertise. For example, in his blog for Putnam, Bob Reynolds can get very political. When he does, however, his posts are limited to news from Capital Hill that pertains to retirement savings issues, not U.S. foreign policy or gun control. 

It looks to the future

The best thought leadership efforts don’t just look at present situations, but also help forecast the future. If your content offers informed predictions about how things will be at some point in the future, it’s going to stand out. See if there are ways that you can use current data to forecast future trends or make other predictions that your readers will find useful.

(If you would like to read more about thought leadership efforts, check out this post from my company blog.)

So tell me, do your thought leadership efforts pass the test, or are we making a ginormous mistake by not retiring this overused phrase?

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Human mind image via Shutterstock

With dreams of great success, they invested $48,000 in a truck and opened the El Charrito taco truck in Stamford, CT, selling delicious authentic Mexican food.

And the results? Unfortunately, it generated very little business.

Until one day a guy named Adam came to buy a taco. He loved it and wanted another, but he had one problem: He didn’t have the cash to buy another. Alex gave him another one for free and told him to just pay her back when he could. Later on, he paid her back, but he also did much more to repay the favor.

Alex didn’t know it at the time, but Adam was a well-known food blogger for Chowhound. He went back and blogged about El Charrito. The result? Lines of people began to show up. El Charrito is now a very popular destination in Stamford; it has been featured in local media and was even profiled on a ”Best Of” Foods show on the TLC cable channel (where I heard about them).

When we talk about content marketing, we usually think of content that is created by the business itself (the owner or someone on their team). But what we often overlook is some of the most potent content around: customer-created content, or what I would call “social content.”

In the awesome new book, “Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends are the Key to Influence on the Social Web,” author Paul Adams explains exactly why this type of content is so powerful.

He says:

“When people are unsure about how they should act or feel, they observe people around them. This is known as social proof. Research shows that when we observe others, our brains simulate what they are feeling.”  

Later, Adams explains that, “Social proof can be used to show people the preferred course of action or appropriate behavior.”

It reminds me of something Daniel Goleman said in his (also great) book, “Social Intelligence:”

Our brains contain recently discovered cells called “mirror neurons.” These cells act sort of like a neural-WiFi. They are what allow us to pick up on, feel, and mirror what others are feeling. When you observe one person telling an exciting story and see their friend’s face and body begin to respond with similar signs of excitement, that’s the mirror neurons in action!

The way Goleman describes this phenomenon is very powerful: “Emotions are contagious.” 

Really think about what these two authors are saying: The most powerful type of influence is when a person shares emotions, actions, and feelings with another. It influences us on a deep, even subconscious, level.

There’s only one problem, though. When you, as a business owner, share something about your business, people aren’t influenced by it like they normally would be in regular conversation. Why? Because they know you want to sell them something, and this puts their guard up. It blocks (or at the least somewhat dulls) the natural influence that goes on between two people.

But, when you add social content to your strategy, things change: 

• When you share case studies, you are allowing prospects to vicariously go through the experience that someone else has had. They get to “feel” the same process and results.
• When you ask customers to submit testimonials and then share them with your prospects, it will have a much greater impact than your own words about your business ever will.

Would El Charrito ever have become as famous if they just kept telling people their food was awesome? Maybe. But it probably would have taken much longer. One post from food blogger Adam and everything changed. His excitement for their food was contagious and it spread to his community of followers.  

If you are looking to encourage this type of social interaction to generate excitement and enthusiasm for your business, here are four ways to prime the pump:

Ask, and you shall receive

Whenever I get an email from someone complimenting one of my products, I ask them if they would mind if I share it with my prospects. Surprisingly, most are glad to do it (in fact, I can’t think of anyone who has ever said, “No”). Social content works the same way: 

• If someone contacts you to compliment your product or service, respond by asking them if they would mind tweeting it out to their followers.
• Likewise, if someone tweets a compliment to you, then reply or DM them and ask them if they would share the same thing with their friends on Facebook.
• If they share with you how your product or service has helped them, get their permission to put together a case study about them, which you can post on your website, or submit as a guest post on other sites. As long as you explain how it helps others to see reviews and testimonials from your customers, most will be glad to help you out. 

Do unto others

If you want people to tweet about your products or services, then you should make it a point to tweet about others’ products or services that you like. If you want testimonials, then give testimonials — it’s the “Golden Rule” in action.

It’s what Robert Cialdini calls the “rule of reciprocation” in his book, “Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion.”  When people see you do something like this, many people will respond and do the same for you. 

Give thanks

When people actually make an effort to socially share their love of your product or service with others, then you better make sure to thank them, sincerely and appreciatively. When you do, it may just encourage them to “pay it forward” for you and others. 

• You can thank them privately (good), or you can thank them publicly (even better). 
• Thank them through your social media channels, or acknowledge them in your email newsletter. They’ll appreciate the acknowledgment, and others will be indirectly encouraged to do them same. 

Do amazing things

The last thing I need to add is that if you don’t do something worth sharing, then don’t expect any of the above suggestions to produce any results. If all you do is the same as every other business in your category, then why would anyone want to share about that? You must find ways to impress and amaze people for the above three ways to work. (Remember why Adam blogged about El Charrito in the first place? It was the amazing food and the amazing act of kindness that inspired him.)

Your customers might not be famous bloggers, but they each have a social network they are connected to. When you ask and encourage your fans to share their love of your product or service with others, you’ll never know who or how many they can reach.

And when you get their permission to share their stories as case studies with your prospects, you get to share their excitement about your business with others.

Social content is a powerful tool that must be included in every content marketers toolbox. Make sure it’s in yours.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Commandments image via Shutterstock

• “Your car needs a whole new exhaust system,” your mechanic tells you.
• “There’s no way to fix that tooth except with an implant that may cost $3,000,” says your dentist.
• “This tax deduction is entirely legal and none of my clients has been challenged on it,” promises your accountant.

Do you go ahead with their recommendations? Probably — provided you trust them. Trust is huge. If you’ve got the trust of another person, they’ll follow you, buy your products or services, and recommend you to others. If you don’t, they’ll push back, demand concessions on price or terms, and take their business elsewhere.

So, any way that your content can build trust is golden. One way to do this is through what I call the “how-to-work-with” (HTWW) type of content. HTWW content provides advice on how a prospective client can get the best possible results from a company like yours.

HTWW content is particularly useful in the case of a commodity product or service. Say you’re driving your vehicle on an empty gas tank, and you arrive at a place with three gas stations. Reward cards aside, you’ll likely choose the one with the lowest price. That’s because there’s a low-perceived difference among brands of gasoline.

So if you have a “me-too” product or service (a commodity), one of the most potent ways to stand out from the competition is by providing your clients with content that helps inform their decisions. By making this content available (whether it’s text, video, audio, graphics — they all have a role to play), you show your willingness to help customers achieve their desired outcomes.

Think of your clients’ worst fears

Imagine you’re a home renovation contractor who genuinely tries to do good, honest work for a fair price. Yet, at every social event you go to, you’re regaled with horror stories of contractors who started projects and abandoned them half-completed, or of cost estimates that kept increasing. Maybe a roof collapsed or a basement flooded due to a contractor’s error. You’ve found that trust for contractors often is low.

So, you need a way to show that you’re trustworthy. Getting past that barrier is key to getting a chance to show what you can do for your clients, and this can be achieved through HTWW content.

Your first task in generating this content is to determine what tends to go wrong in working with a company like yours, or what clients fear might go wrong. In the case of a home renovation contractor, this might include the homeowner not being aware that summer is a particularly busy time for contractors, and that jobs may take longer then than they do in winter. So, the content you develop might point out that projects carried out in the winter may mean a shorter period of disruption, dust, and noise.

Describe the games some renovators play to keep expanding a project’s scope (“We can put a new roof on the whole house, not just the extension”). Be open in talking about fraud — how some contractors invoice for high-quality materials while substituting lower-quality. Regardless of the situation you use as the foundation of your content, you can follow these steps to help narrow your focus:

• Think of the most common situations under which projects or transactions in your business tend to go sideways.
• Determine the causes of the problems.
• Develop recommendations on how clients can help avoid those problems, or fix them when they occur.

What allows your company to provide really great service?

After you’ve detailed some nightmares, think of your “dream” projects — ones where you or your company really rocked. What went on between you and your client to make this magic happen?

For a home renovator, this might include the contractor and homeowner agreeing ahead of time on realistic costs and deadlines. The client provided input but didn’t micro-manage, didn’t ask for major changes halfway through the project, and was available to answer questions promptly.

Steps for creating this type of content include:

• Thinking of situations that resulted in a satisfied (or delighted) client.
• Listing the factors that led to this joyous state of affairs.
• Describing them in terms of ways clients can influence the process in a positive direction.

Be sure to tell your clients how they can save money on a project (wouldn’t that work for you?), such as outlining which parts of the work they can do themselves if they want, or when it’s possible to use lower-cost materials without negatively affecting project quality.

Generate content

If you’re generating content in text form, bullet points are a good way to communicate HTWW information. Organize your content in a useful way — maybe categorizing it as actions to take “before the project starts,” “during the project,” and “at completion.”

In my opinion, video is a particularly good medium for HTWW content — the idea is to build trust, and this is best done if your spokesperson is able to present ideas in a face-to-face way. It doesn’t matter if they’re not telegenic (and it may even be better if they’re not). Just as some people think that anyone who’s physically attractive can’t also be smart, viewers may assume that anyone who comes across as “too slick” may be lacking in ethics.

Content that is generated in cooperation with a satisfied client is perhaps the most useful and credible. For example, you can create an interview — in a video or audio format — in which the client describes the factors that made for a successful project.

An added benefit of the HTWW content process is that it can be used for your company’s team building and internal development efforts as well as for leads and sales. Perhaps your leaders have never sat down and thought about what strategies are more likely to result in successful transactions or projects, or what factors to attribute problems to. Developing HTWW content is a chance to think through these issues. The result can be better service, and a better work environment for yourself and your colleagues.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Image courtesy of Carl Friesen

There are certain basic steps successful content marketers follow to create content, as well as questions to answer before beginning any campaign:

1. Branding/messaging: Who are you, and what do you represent and offer? What do you need to say? How can you provide value to your customers?
2. User profiles or personas: Who are you trying to reach? What do they care about? Where and across what channels do they consume content?
3. Define the campaign: What types of content are best for these users? How will you distribute it so there is a cohesive user experience across all components of the campaign?

Great content has basic building blocks

Just as successful professionals and companies share similar traits, so do great content marketing campaigns. In fact, upon comparison, I’ve found that they all have four important elements, which I describe as the Four “Is“:

1. Inform: Before you tell customers about your product, you must let them know you’re out there. That’s the basics of content marketing, but content marketing campaigns have to go farther and reach more deeply to engage and keep customers coming back for more.

   Content Marketing Institute does this better than anyone. Through daily emails, engaging eBooks, and valuable white papers, its content creators churn and burn on important digital and marketing issues of the day. Even when the topic presented on a given day isn’t relevant to your job, or you haven’t needed to consider a challenge that’s being discussed, by joining the CMI community, you’re an informed customer. Remember, an educated consumer is our best customer.

2. Instruct: It’s your job as the content marketer to explain your product to your customers. In as many ways as you can, see yourself as a teacher, patiently walking customers through each part of the buying cycle.

   Neiman Marcus understands that women are confused about fashion, so it sends out an email every Tuesday with the latest style tips. Of course, there are links to buy those items, but it makes me feel good to know that when I pick up that yellow blouse, I’m in the know about what fashionable people are buying and wearing.

3. Inspire: Creating an emotional connection with customers is vital in today’s marketplace as competition flies at you from every direction. With so many good causes to be a part of, how can you truly inspire others?

   One blog I follow is called Lil’ Blue Boo. The blog chronicles the life of Ashley, a young mother who is fighting cancer but is still able to make gorgeous handmade children’s clothing — and shine her positive attitude onto the world. It’s a great example of how everyday struggles can inspire us; but, more importantly, it demonstrates how real stories hook us in, ignite our curiosity, and keep us returning day after day, week after week. Ashley may be ill, but she’s clear — you can get ideas, recipes, and tips from her, and you can also buy from her advertised vendors and from her clothing store. She’s running a business, and it’s mind-blowingly inspirational to share in her positive attitude and strong belief in the future.

4. Initiate: In this great big world, where few of us even know all of our immediate neighbors by name, it’s important to make your customers feel part of a community.

   Gwyneth Paltrow does a great job of this (go ahead, roll your eyes) with her GOOP newsletter. She recently did two newsletters about getting ready for a photo shoot and preparing for the Oscars. By pulling you into her glamorous world, she makes you feel like she is one of your best girlfriends — which makes you more likely to open the next GOOP newsletter.

Get in front of people

Distribution is critical to a great content marketing campaign. If you defined your earlier three questions well, you’ll know what you need to about where, when and how your users consume your content. Make sure you create the right types and distribute across the right channels.

Success builds upon success

Once you’ve had a successful content marketing campaign, you’ll keep having them.  DNA keeps replicating: Make sure you inform, instruct, inspire, and initiate your customers and you’ll have chain after chain of great content marketing campaigns.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

The most important lesson I’ve learned so far is that a successful writing partnership requires a deep level of intimacy with customers. A professional writer no longer just delivers static brochures or web content. Writers today are ghost writing blogs, conducting executive interviews, creating more personal customer success stories, and more. As such, when I work with my customers, I need:

• To understand how they speak and think
• To challenge them on some of their ideas to build strong value arguments
• To make them work hard with me to find the story, because their idea may form a great starting point, but it might not be compelling enough to get their readers to act
• To get them to stand back and ask the question: Will my audience be interested in this? Does it address their pain points?
• And sometimes I need to educate them, because what they think is important might not be that interesting to their customers. It can be sensitive stuff.

Unless both parties understand and appreciate the essential role that great chemistry and mutual respect play, it can be tough to create the perfect partnership between content provider and client.

Content is a human business, and sometimes you just don’t gel with a potential business partner. Very rarely, I have experienced a personality clash — that situation where you meet someone and there’s tension for no apparent reason. It happens, right?

But more often than not, it comes down to a clash of working styles. I want my customers to stand out and be amazing. However, when I work with people who have an intrinsically conservative style (i.e., preferring to use formal language), are very set in their ways, or are not open to new ideas and ways to succeed, I sometimes find it to be a challenge for us to work together successfully. Conversely, if my writing style isn’t conservative enough for a particular industry or person (which is ok, too), our partnership just isn’t going to be a good strategic fit.

Based on this, it occurred to me that some guidance on how to identify the perfect content partner for you and your business could be helpful. With everyone claiming content to be the new “king of marketing,” it has become a priority; but to really win, you need to acknowledge the “queen of marketing” — context, and its related considerations.

Content and context are now firmly elevated to a strategic position in marketing (with some forward-thinking companies creating the role of CCO to reflect this). So here are five tips to help you identify a great writing or content partner that can deliver both content and context:

1. Look for good personal chemistry. It is vital to get on with your writing partners. Much of today’s written output will require you to work very closely — getting inside each other’s minds, and challenging each other, when appropriate. You want to work with writers who can bring out the best in you and your business. Are they going to be a pleasure to work with? Are they capable of capturing your spirit or your company’s essence? Are they curious and intelligent? Are they open and inspired? If you want some insight about these considerations right from the start, consider asking potential content partners to submit to a writing test: Ask them to interview you on any subject you are both familiar with, and see how they proceed, and what they produce (both aspects are important). Sometimes you’ll just know if someone is right or wrong, but if you’re on the fence, or want to be sure, a writing test can be a good tactic.
2. Find out where their passions lie. Look for someone who is a passionate business storyteller, is excited about your company, and can reflect your message and passion in what they produce. It’s one of those things that should be very obvious when you meet someone, but there can be talented content professionals whose passion is understated, so it’s best to rely on examples of your writers’ work, rather than personal impressions, when evaluating passion. Read their testimonials, ask for feedback from members of their network, and make sure their style and natural voice indicates that they would be a good fit for your team. You can also look at their broader body of work — the blogs they write (on any topic), other published articles, cross-published blogs, the way they use social media, etc., to get an idea of what they are passionate about. If they are able to express their passion in these areas, the chances are they have learned some valuable lessons that will benefit your business.
3. Find a strategic marketing thinker. Work with a content partner who understands the overarching marketing and messaging strategies of your company, and understands how important this is to everything you are trying to achieve as a business. The ultimate goal is to have this messaging subtly wrapped into all content developed. For example, I’ve been working with a young, up-coming IT monitoring company, NetGain Systems (www.netgain-systems.com). One of their key messages is they provide reassurance to customers by tracking IT performance 24×7 – it’s always on, in the background, tracking for problems and sending alerts, which means customers don’t have to worry about IT performance and can get on with more strategic work. Understanding this message, I interviewed one of their customers and shaped the interview to get the CIO to talk about the key message in his own words. He admitted he sleeps better – a powerful endorsement, especially for the IT monitoring industry. So make sure your potential writer knows what your core messages are, and has strong ideas for helping them come through in their writing. Writing professionals who understand the messaging dimension of business are worth their weight in gold and will be able to create even more powerful content for you.
4. Look for a proactive professional. You need someone with great ideas, who is familiar with — and can develop stories around — the emerging issues in your industry. The best sign you’ve found a great writing partner? The very first time you meet, he or she will come up with a bunch of great ideas for stories — and this is before being briefed about your business and goals. A great writer can see story opportunities everywhere, and while they may not be on the money with every idea initially, you know they will be once they’re on your team. A proactive and creative professional will be constantly on the pulse with new ideas, angles, and approaches. They will feed your content channel months in advance, as well as alert you to topical news that must be acted on immediately. In an always-on world, this is essential and means you can be assured that the quality of your content will be taken care of.
5. Watch out for “yes” people. If you want to do something amazing, don’t work with writers who will blindly follow your lead and say yes to every idea. Your writing partner should be free to challenge you every step of the way, and everything they produce should exceed your expectations. Look for writers who listen to what you want, but are capable of surpassing it — those who can deliver the “wow” factor. The key skill your writer must demonstrate is an understanding of both your company’s goals and what is important to the prospects the information is intended for; a “yes” person will only see your company’s goals. How do you find them? Look for writers who have relevant experience and credibility behind them. They may be a little more expensive, but they will be worth every cent. However, don’t overlook talented and eager new writers — both offer great skills in the content mix.

A great content creator is a valuable partner that can reap big rewards for your business. As long as you choose the right one, you’ll get compelling content and experience a natural synergy that is sure to lead to great results.

I hope this helps. If you have any additional ideas for finding the right content partner, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

For any good newsletter, the key is to quickly find and deliver useful content that your audience will love. The days of boring newsletters with regurgitated business information are over. Now, it’s all about engaging your audience in a meaningful way beyond traditional advertising.  Newsletters provide a perfect opportunity for content marketers to get their message out.  

Wait, I thought social sites were the best for content campaigns?

We’re not here to pick a fight with the socials, but it’s important to note some of the amazing advantages of email:

• Email is here to stay. Facebook’s rise has been well documented, but so has the fabulous crash into obscurity of other “sure things,” such as AOL, Friendster, and MySpace. Email has consistently been the primary form of communication for most internet users since it all started, and it’s not going anywhere. 
• Email lets you play by your own rules. Social networks are filled with distractions; newsletters give you the chance to create a unique environment where you control the conversation.

So, how do I write a great newsletter?

Every business is different and has unique content demands, but there are some basic guidelines you should follow to help ensure a successful campaign.

• It shouldn’t take too long to develop. Newsletters should take minutes, not hours, to
  create. It’s a waste of your time to spend an afternoon fiddling around trying to create a perfect newsletter — it will never happen. Choose a topic or a problem that your audience is interested in, and get going. Remember, the collective attention span of internet users is always declining, so you don’t need to prepare a novel. Get in, get out, and get on with your other work.  
• Don’t write all the content yourself. 2012 is officially the year of curation, and content marketers should be incorporating this in their efforts. We’ve reached a point where there is an excess of quality content that is available for free on pretty much any topic imaginable.  Provide value to your audience by helping them sort through the clutter and delivering best-of-breed content they will find useful. 

  Some of my favorite sources for information are Google Reader, AllTop, Google News and Digg. Save yourself some time and leverage these resources. Not only does this cut down on your workload, it will supplement your newsletter’s message and enrich the overall user experience. 

  Excerpting a few sentences and linking to the original article is considered fair use so you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement. Here is an example of how this works: 

      If you plan to re-publish an entire article, then you will need permission from the
      author/publisher. It’s also never a bad idea to let the original author/publisher know they
      are being featured in your newsletter, even if you’re only using an excerpt. 

• Don’t waste time formatting.  A common problem with newsletters is that they often don’t come out like they should. You spend a bunch of time customizing a template, choosing the perfect fonts and colors, adding pictures, and still have it look like a jumbled mess when it hits the inbox.  This usually means that your newsletter template is broken due to a coding error (a common occurrence), your email provider’s software is damaged or there could be an issue with the recipient’s email client (less likely). 

A final thought

Don’t get hung up on what to write or think that you don’t have time to do this. Try curating. You probably have more knowledge in your area of expertise than you realize. Put your knowledge into action by directing your audience to good content; it’s good for your brand and the bottom line.   

It’s something that also has value from a content marketing perspective. Opinion-oriented content can be fun to read, as well as informative, so it collects eyeballs. It can be a tremendously valuable source of information for anyone in decision-making mode — such as someone deciding on a new car, trying to find a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, or looking for guidance on how to vote.

It positions the author as a thought leader; someone who is invested enough in the topic to have a viewpoint and take a stand. It’s most useful if it’s a skilled individual who’s the “product” being marketed, making it ideal for marketing professional services.

Even better: Opinion content can be in written form, or in video, a podcast, or any other medium.

Take, for example, a mining engineer client I’ll call Hussein, who believes that mining companies must do more to manage the environmental effects of their mines after they’re closed. Water leaching through the mine waste and through the mine itself can pick up contaminants such as acids and metals, causing huge issues for ecosystems downstream.

Let’s look at ways opinion content can help Hussein show his expertise to members of the mining industry — potential clients for his skills in managing the water impacts of mining.

Stand-alone opinions

In working with Hussein, the first form of content I created was an article for a mining industry trade magazine. I interviewed Hussein about the issues he wanted to speak about, and studied the text of a keynote speech he had recently given at a conference on mine closure to gather enough information to (ghost) write an article for his byline.

This is an example of what I call stand-alone content in that this article wasn’t based on a previous development (as would be the case with “Review” or “Comment” content, described below).

Also, it was stand-alone in that there wasn’t a specific news hook or other event to hang the article on — like a mine whose tailings dam had burst recently, flooding contaminants downstream, for example. So, I had to put in some words up front, explaining why the issue is important to the industry’s financial and legal future.

For stand-alone content, it’s always best if you can find a news hook, so that when you include the right keywords and phrases, your content will get a ride on that event. For example, if your company offers solutions for cruise ship safety issues, now might be a good time to generate some opinion content on that, given recent news stories on cruise ship problems.

How to structure stand-alone content:

• Explain the issue you’re commenting on, and why it’s important to the content user.
• Give your viewpoint.
• Explain the reasons you support that viewpoint, acknowledging and dealing with counter-arguments.
• Along the way, you must state why your opinion matters — offer information on your relevant experience, your qualifications, or what your familiarity with the issues is based on.

Reviews

Content that analyzes or reviews recently-released books, movies, music albums, and the like has a long history. Now, we often see reviews of software, information technology, video games, social networking platforms, and other products that are written by traditional journalists, as well as by bloggers. But anyone can write a review, including subject-matter experts like Hussein.

A review draws strength from a content point of view in that it’s “news” (at least while the subject of the review is new). It can get a search engine boost just from being associated with a hot or trending topic (for example, the new iPad, or the first line of OLED television sets that hit the market).

A review positions the writer as being up to date with developments in her or his field.

In Hussein’s case, I might consider writing a review of a new technology for removing contaminants from water flowing out of a closed mine, or maybe a review of new mine closure legislation, such as that in the state of Western Australia.

Review-oriented content needs to cover these points (not necessarily in this order):

• A description of the product
• Comparison with its predecessor, and competing products
• What’s new about it
• Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the product
• Potential applications of the product — as well as where its use should be avoided

Comments

If stand-alone opinion content has its origins in op-ed articles in newspapers, and reviews go back to literary book reviews, comments are rooted in letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines.

A comment is based on content generated by someone else. Like the review, it positions the author as being up to date with current developments — particularly if the comment is posted soon after the original article.

With the tendency for many online news media to have space for comments after each article, there has been a huge outpouring of this kind of content, much of it not worth the pixels and server space. A quick look through some entertainment-oriented sites like “OMG” will find thought-free gems such as “I think J-Lo looks fat in that dress.”

So, where to comment? Choose venues that are:

• Monitored to keep out the spam, name-calling, and personal attacks
• Frequented by the kinds of people you want to reach
• Able to generate content on which you can usefully comment

Of the three types of content, the comment is likely to be the shortest — maybe just a few sentences. So just like composing an effective tweet on Twitter, an effective comment must say a lot, but should do so in as few words as possible. Most importantly, though, is that the comment must include the author’s name (otherwise, what’s the point?) and give her or his credentials. A comment on J-Lo’s fashion choices by someone signing off as “Snooki” would presumably have less weight than that of the editor of “Vogue.” Similarly, mining engineer Hussein might reasonably comment on an article on mine closure in a publication, website, blog, or other medium.

Comments are a quick and easy way to stay top of mind for the people you want to reach. But when contributing this type of content, be sure to protect your brand by posting only thoughtful, informative comments.

What I call “value-added tweeting” falls into the comment category. Rather than just an RT, your tweet should add your comments to the information being passed along — remembering to give credit to the original source of the information you are re-tweeting (using an “@sourcesname” attribution).

Review content needs to include these elements:

• The reviewer’s opinion on the content being reviewed
• Recommendations that the reader might take
• Qualifications of the reviewer (briefly!) indicating why the reviewer’s opinion matters

Opinion content needs to be done with care, in that there is a good chance that someone will disagree with your opinion. Hussein needs to be careful about being too critical of the industry in which he makes his living. He can help protect himself and his reputation by backing up his views with facts, acknowledging opinions different from his own, and creating his comments using a positive tone. This way, he acts as an expert witness of sorts, contributing to the base of knowledge on mine closure. He’s also able to add to the discussion, helping keep the “social” in “social media.”

However, many marketers often put case studies on the back burner while they pursue sexier marketing strategies. Putting off your case study development isn’t a good idea, because you may find yourself with new products or services and not enough proof that they provide ROI.

Here are three ways that you can get your marketing back on track and create compelling case studies that excite and influence your potential customers:

1. Use photos and videos

Multimedia can make your case studies more engaging and give you a way to connect with auditory and visual learners. Here are some ways that you can incorporate multimedia into your case studies:

• Add photos and charts to punch up your written case studies.
• Film video case studies and use them throughout your marketing.
• Create a video and text version of the same case study. Developing content in multiple formats will get your message across to a wider audience.  

2. Don’t write case studies from your own perspective

One of the biggest challenges in developing case studies is getting detailed interviews from your customers. You may get frustrated trying to coordinate interviews, or your customers may tell you to “just write something” and they’ll approve it. However, if your case studies don’t contain quotes from your customers, they won’t be as effective or credible. Plus, your readers will be able to tell when you’ve written a case study from your own perspective.

When you take the time to get a detailed interview from your customer, you may be pleasantly surprised by the great things they say. If you have a hard time scheduling interviews, try using scheduling software that allows your customers to pick the best time. If you have trouble getting compelling quotes, be sure to ask your customers a range of questions that take them through their entire story — from the problems they faced before they started working with you to how they implemented your solution to the ROI that they achieved.  

3. Create dual case studies/“how-to” articles

A great way to turn case studies into content marketing tools that will educate and inform your audience is to sprinkle in “how-to” tips. “How-to” tips can work nicely in the implementation part of a case study. Instead of just explaining how your customer implemented your solution, offer advice on how others can do the same. Here are some questions to ask during your interviews if you want your case studies to also function as “how to” articles:

• What steps should someone take to implement this solution?
• What should someone know before starting this process?
• What top five things should someone consider before purchasing a similar solution?
• What can someone learn from this process?

Also, remember to create case studies for all of your solutions and verticals. When a prospect reads a case study, they often like to envision themselves in the role of your happy customer. To make their visualization process easier, you should develop case studies for as many of your customers and solutions as possible. Go through all of your products, services and verticals and see where you are missing proof points. Then, make a list of customers in each area who may provide you with case studies.

What about you? In your opinion, what makes a case study compelling? Feel free to share your thoughts below.