writing

Choosing your content marketing media

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I’m a baaaaad example of content marketing media.  I have a face for radio and a voice for print, so you’ll notice there aren’t videos, Webinars or podcasts here yet.  I have less than no artistic talent, so infographics are well beyond me (for now; one can always learn).  Don’t believe me?  Here’s the cover I designed for my book:

 

underling

I suppose I could do slideshows, but since I started this blog in part to improve my writing, I’ve been a strictly one medium guy.

But you can’t be.  There are a whole work of ways to reach an audience today and depending on your mission, some, many, or all of them may work well for you.  However, each one takes a toll of time and effort.  It is better to be the master of one medium than a jack of all of them.

Blog posts

Advantages:

  • I would argue that this is the easiest entry point.  You need to write a story.  That’s it.
  • A great way of (as I mentioned yesterday) figuring out what your audience(s) is/are interested in.
  • Can serve as a host and/or a marketing platform for your other content marketing.

Disadvantages:

  • Difficult to capture an audience.  Sure, you can have an awesome weekly newsletter than anyone can sign up for here, but no matter how blatantly you name check it in the middle of a blog post, most people read blog posts individually rather in binge reading.
  • Need to do it regularly enough that people can expect new content from you.
  • Need it do it often enough to be successful.  Hubspot has some great data here that show that posting 16+ times per month gets you the most traffic:

blog_monthly_traffic

 

Furthermore, having 400+ blog posts significantly increases your traffic as well:

 

blog_total_leads

Podcasting

Advantages:

  • Good for when you have two personalities that can play off of each other.
  • Excellent way to incorporate guest contributors.
  • A very popular medium right now.

Disadvantages:

  • Take whatever time you think it will take to edit the audio for your first podcast and multiply it by ten.
  • Very production-value-dependent.  It used to be that people will put up with poor audio quality to get good content.  This is less and less true.
  • Needs to be even more regular than blogging.
  • Difficult to capture an audience, as you don’t have a record of who subscribes to your podcast.

Video

Advantages:

  • Great for people with compelling visuals.
  • You can repurpose existing assets with a little bit of editing and voice over.
  • Guest appearances become a bit easier; there’s something about a video camera that makes everyone want to be on TV.
  • YouTube is a valuable quasi-social network that allows you to be discovered by people who might not come to your site.

Disadvantages:

  • It requires some editing skill and expertise (compared with blogs, which any idiot can write)
  • A talking head looking into the camera is the most common and most boring possible video.  Sometimes it’s necessary, but hopefully you can surpass that.
  • You may do 100 videos that have almost no views; it may be that 101st that gets an audience.

Infographics

Advantages:

  • Great way to communicate complex concepts.
  • Very shareable.
  • Good adjunct to other content (e.g., if you have a complex white paper and are trying to pitch media, an infographic can help with the pitch to explain to people whose journalism majors did not cover microbiology or environmental sciences or whatever (of course, neither did my poli sci degree, so I can’t talk))
  • Who doesn’t love a picture?

Disadvantages:

  • Some infographics are now just numbers with a circle around them or some other gussying up.  Steer clear of the infographic if the pictures aren’t going to add value to the story.  Sometimes a pie chart is just a pie chart.
  • Requires graphic design knowledge.
  • Lacks interactivity and, usually, emotional content.  All of the other media can bring you to tears or to donate.  Infographics are good for the brain, but usually not good for the heart.  And the heart is what donates most of the time.

Quizzes

Advantages:

  • Fun for the whole family
  • Very shareable, especially if you make it so that people can be competitive.
  • Who knows?  Someone might learn something.
  • Can pique interest and encourage someone to learn more.

Disadvantages:

  • A bit fluffy for content — can’t get deep into an issue (which is probably OK; that’s not why someone takes a quiz)
  • Doesn’t convert particularly well.

Whitepapers:

Advantages

  • As mentioned yesterday, they are easy to create from existing content.
  • Excellent for lead generation, because you can email gate them.
  • Demonstrates subject mastery, whether justified or not.

Disadvantages:

  • Can be a bit dry when done poorly
  • More difficult to incorporate emotional content.

Print:

Advantages:

  • Not dead
  • Less competition, because people don’t believe the first bullet
  • More engaging than online content
  • Can engage in conversations, rather than dialogues
  • Can effectively get donations

Disadvantages:

  • Have to explain to people print isn’t dead
  • Cost
  • Less ability to track and capture interactions

And here are a couple I recommend against.

Slideshows:  A lot of folks do these.  I have to admit, I don’t get it.  It’s certainly easy to do, as you have the slideshow in the can already.  It’s good for a business audience, who is used to the format, and gets a lot of data out quickly.

However, it requires someone to want to sit through a PowerPoint presentation without the entertaining audio.  There’s not usually a good conversion mechanism.  And, as you know, the worst live presentations are the ones where people have all of their words on a slide and have to read them off.  These are, ironically, the only decent slideshows, because if someone relied on funny images for their original presentation, it won’t read without audio.

For my money, these are better done as a white paper if you have a dry topic (because you can get email addresses) or a video if you have a lively one.

Social media: By this, I mean posting on Facebook or LinkedIn or what-have-you, so that they own your content.  Don’t do this.  It’s all fine and dandy until someone changes the algorithm or your rules for sharing or your organic reach and your so-called strategy is lost.

Actually, it’s not fine and dandy, because even when things are going well, you are building an audience for that social network, not for yourself or your organization.  Social media is a fine place to link, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

So those are the basic media.  But once you build it, they won’t necessarily come, so you will need some good marketing strategies for your content marketing.  We’ll cover that tomorrow.

Choosing your content marketing media

Selecting your content marketing topics

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The enemy of any writer or content marketer is the empty sheet of paper.  It taunts you with its blankness, telling you that your last idea was, in fact, your last idea: you have nothing more to give.

Or you have ideas, but have no idea whether anyone will want to read/interact with/donate to them.  Here are some tips to get your focus.

Check what people are searching for in your market.  Yes, keyword research: it’s not just for search engine marketing any more.  Check out what people are looking for around your issues and see if you have content to match (that has calls to action around the content.  You aren’t just doing content for charity.  Actually, you are.  But you know what I mean).  

Also, search for some of these terms yourself. You will likely see some search terms where the person who searched for that item probably didn’t find what they were looking for.  You can be what they were looking for.

Conversely, you’ll find that some of the content is pretty darn good.  If you can’t improve on it, don’t tackle it in the same format.  But if you see that the blog posts are good, but there are no videos on the topic, then a video it is.  We’ll talk a bit more about media tomorrow.

Check what people are searching for to find you.  In your Google Analytics or equivalent, you can see how people came to your site and what they searched for.  This can be illuminating.  I worked with one nonprofit that went through this analysis and found that most people that found them through search were looking for one of their tertiary services — one that they rarely talked about or promoted.  What’s more, their content on it was scattered incoherently throughout their site.

Working together, we centralized their content into one coherent page that then linked out to the various locations where this service could be found, making it much easier to find.  We also increased the fee for this fee-for-service part of their mission, figuring that good marketing could increase participation.  That was, in fact, the case and that part of their mission now accounts for a more substantial part of their revenues.

Look at what content has worked in the past.  A peek behind the Direct to Donor curtain for a moment.  Since starting this, I’ve written over one hundred blog posts.  Yet two of these blog posts, The Science of Ask Strings and Anchoring, Ask Strings, and the Psychology of First Impressions are responsible for more than 10% of the traffic to the site.  In my world of topics, ask strings are Gladys Knight and each other topic I write on is a Pip.

pips

So while I continue to write on various topics to diversify, I will likely be returning to the topic of ask strings sooner and regularly.  In fact, I’m looking to collect enough content on the topic to do my first white paper.  And what better topic than one that I know readers will appreciate?

Likewise, look at what people are clicking on in your newsletters and in social media.  While this won’t get you outside of the types of posts you’ve already been doing, it will help you find some guaranteed crowd pleasers.

Embrace content fractals.  If you really have a serious case of empty-page-itis, try rereading some of your previous strong efforts.

My theory is that every paragraph in a blog post could be its own blog post.  Take the “Now, start up your email newsletter” post I mentioned yesterday.  Obviously, starting up an email newsletter could be its own post (and will at some point).  One of the points in starting your e-newsletter will be choosing who your newsletter is from.  This idea of an online persona can make for its own post (in fact, I’ve talked about it in my post on liking as an influence point).  In it, I refer to the success of the Obama campaign in using different people for different ask.  Hey, that would make for a great topic about the success of the Obama campaigns and the lessons we can draw from that!  One of those lessons would be selling goods associated with your organization as a list building strategy.

And so on.  When you think you “don’t have any good ideas,” look at your previous content and dive deeper into one of your important points.  My post tomorrow is on the best type of content for each media type.  In writing it, I realized there’s a place for a whole post on each content type and what works there.  If these content marketing posts prove popular, expect that to be coming down the pipe.

Repurpose your content.

  • Three blog posts = an enewsletter.
  • Nine blog posts = white paper.
  • One white paper = one slideshow
  • One slideshow slide + verbiosity = blog post.
  • Your boss who loves to talk about her favorite program your nonprofit does + camera = video.
  • Your enewsletter + editing = donor newsletter

And so on.  People mind if you rip other people off.  People don’t mind if you rip yourself off.

Ask.  There’s a reason I’m writing about my process for writing, even though I feel I have a long way to go: people asked me.  There’s also a reason why I ask people to email me at nick@directtodonor.com or hit me up on Twitter at @nickellinger: I want more ideas for content.  There’s a rule for complaints that for every one person who complains, there’s nine more who didn’t.  I think suggesting content is the same way: if someone wants it, ten people probably want it.

Take from recent or upcoming events.  I personally try to stay counter-programming, but there is a great deal of content created about things like a new Star Wars movie, the NFL Championship, and Donald Trump to try to stay topical.

Now that you know the topics for your content marketing effort, how will you take advantage of it?  Tomorrow, we’ll talk about media and maximizing your topic advantage.

Selecting your content marketing topics

Creating Content Consistently and Constantly

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The question I’ve gotten most often after starting this blog is how I write a blog post every working day. My answer is “not well.” I mean, have you seen some of my posts? There’s one in here that is a fake-PSA for data hygiene, for goodness sake. In 50 Ways to Thank Your Donors, I tortured rhyme schemes so much, they confessed to smuggling WMDs.

Then people clarify and ask how I find time to write a blog post every day. Ah. That’s something I can help with.

And, since I’m on the record as taking whatever topics you ask of me in the comments section or at nick@directtodonor.com, it looks like we are doing this thing. But let’s broaden it out a bit more to:

How do you create content consistently?

Since that will be of more use to more people. Today, I’ll describe my process, such as it is. Then, this week, I’ll cover topic, medium, marketing, and conversion strategies.

I should mention that an actual specialist on this, Kivi Leroux Miller, has written a full book on content marketing for nonprofits here. I’ve not yet read it, but I’ve read some of her other work and if it is half as good as those things, it’s still worth a read.

So, to the question of how I do whatever it is I’m doing here, here goes:

Write every day. Every single day. Even if it’s just for a few minutes. Jerry Seinfeld talks about how he puts an X on every day when he has done his writing. His goal is not to break the chain of Xs (that probably goes back for years). Since part of my goal for this was to improve my writing quality, this exercise is little different from working out every day to stay in shape.

better-writer

Thanks to Brian Clark and Copyblogger.

I know. Sometimes life gets busy. But we all have some cognitive surplus time.

Ideally, you could get 25 minutes of uninterrupted time to work on it (aka a pomodoro technique). This should be a findable about of time. I cut my video game intake for part of it; I also work between when my daughter gets me up and when I would actually get up in an ideal world.

For you, it may be something different. Property Brothers is a great show, but if you want to get 25 minutes to write, here’s how that episode begins:

  • Brothers take couple to a house.
  • Couple can’t afford it.
  • Somehow, this is the brothers’ fault.
  • But don’t worry; they can make a fixer upper just like this house.
  • Montage of house shopping at worse houses.

See? It’s like you are right there watching it. When in reality, you are writing your content.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be writing to paper, either.

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TOBY: You want to play?

CHARLIE: Aren’t you supposed to be writing?

TOBY: I am writing.

CHARLIE: I don’t see paper.

TOBY: “We can sit back and admit with grave sensitivity that life isn’t fair and the less-advantaged are destined to their lot in life and the problems of those on the other side of the world should stay there, that our leaders are cynical and can never be an instrument to change, but that, my friends, is not worthy of you, it’s not worthy of the President, it’s not worthy of a great nation, it’s not worthy of America!” Paper’s for wimps. Wanna play?  — The West Wing

Even if it is organizing your thoughts for a future blog post while indisposed or showering or what-have-you, this is a conscious effort that you want to build into a habit.

And writing is a fundamental part of any content strategy. Yes, even if it’s for a podcast, infographic, or video: you are going to want a written script or outline. It’s harder to write short than long, so you may find yourself spending more time to come up with the 17 perfect words to go alongside your home page image than a journal article.

My tools of choice:

  • Google Drive for writing. It’s stripped down with few distractions and you can access it wherever.
  • Hemingway to help edit and cut my adverb usage.
  • Grammarly for proofreading.
  • WordPress for posting.

Read every day. There have been a few pieces floating around the Internet of late about how to read a book a week or similar advice. I don’t really get these; for me, an equally useful article would be “Why You Should Try Breathing.” But there are some for whom this isn’t a habit and I don’t know how you would create good content without it. You will get ideas and inspiration and rage-face from the things you read and it will inform your content.

My tools of choice:

  • Feedly for aggregating blog posts.
  • Pocket for saving things that I’ll want to refer back to. Other people like Evernote.
  • Audible for audiobooks. If you are going to be reading every day, you can’t just read books.
  • PodCruncher for podcasts. Ditto

Embrace suck. My first blog post actually contains the line “Now, start up your email newsletter.” Oh, I’ll just spit that out then, shall I? No directions on how to do that?

You are never going to get to the good stuff until you get through this. Write, post, get comments, revise. Suck a tiny bit less next time.

Take breaks. I sometimes have the opportunity to write for hours straight (read: I sometimes am on airplanes and arrive the day before the conference/meeting). Even when this happens, I take short breaks every 25 minutes per the pomodoro method and long breaks after two hours. During long breaks, I find activities like showering and exercising (not in that order) help, because I’m alone and able to edit or outline the next piece in my head.

Ask people to become a part of your family. For me, it’s asking people to sign up for my weekly newsletter. What’s yours?

Creating Content Consistently and Constantly