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5 Strategies for Unified Content Marketing Operation

Organizations–specifically massive, enterprise-level ones–have serious process problems, especially when it comes to creating enough useful and relevant content to fuel their marketing initiatives.

Why? Each step of the buyer’s journey from awareness to advocacy requires persona-based, stage-specific, targeted content. In an effort to fill this growing demand, many organizations have allowed business units or departments to establish their own unique content operations, responsible for creating the content needed to fuel the ever-growing number of distribution channels including blog, social media, marketing automation, customer communities, and more.

This might sound like a brilliant solution, but a siloed approach to content marketing leads to redundant efforts, inefficient processes, a lack of quality control, and a whole lot of time and resources spent producing un-useable, un-shareable content. In fact, SiriusDecisions reports that 60-70% of B2B marketing content goes unused! This is the sad result of a broken operation, or rather, lots of broken mini-operations.

So how can you avoid these challenges?

By building one unified and collaborative content operation across departments.

With that in mind, below are five tips to help you to plan your content marketing initiatives, unify your team, and ensure your efforts drive results.

1. Get buy-in.

To experience the harmony of content collaboration, you must first understand how content marketing helps your organization reach larger business objectives. Then, explain this to your organization. Getting buy-in, especially from roles or departments with a lot of sway, will help your organization make important structural and communication changes that will transform the efficiency of your content operation.

Content Marketing Institute has a great article on preparing your case for content marketing, and to help you out, here’s an ever-evolving list of content marketing facts that show just how powerful content is for reaching the goals of the marketing department, as well as the organization as a whole.

2. Align content to your goals and overarching initiatives.

Make sure that each content asset is clearly tied to at least one of your overarching themes or initiatives for the year or quarter. For example, if your marketing and sales organization is focused on closing financial services firms in the upcoming quarter, then focus content on the concerns and needs of financial service companies. Do you have annual themes? If so, make sure every piece of content relates to at least one. By aligning content to the goals of your company, you’ll be able to deliver cohesive, impactful assets that can be used across departments to drive results.

3. Form an Editorial Board, and meet on a quarterly basis.

An Editorial Board is made up of key stakeholders in your organization from different departments or business units. They represent the thought leaders and the beneficiaries of the content that your organization will be producing. For example, sales can be both a thought leader and beneficiary. They speak to prospects every day, and are tuned into the wants and needs of potential customers. This makes them great idea generators for content assets which, once created, they can then use to close deals. Other departments commonly represented in the Editorial Board include product marketing, marcom, web/social teams, marketing ops, and customer success.

This approach is important because it (literally) gives everyone a seat at the table, breaking down the lack of communication between silos. Schedule a quarterly meeting, and make sure each department representative comes with their content ideas, needs, and goals. This will help prioritize content creation, as well as help you recognize common themes and topics. By identifying and agreeing upon content initiatives, you’ll be able to minimize redundancies and inefficiencies. For example, say three departments need content around the same issue facing buyers. You can organize the production of a single eBook instead of having each silo creating three unique and department-specific eBooks. You just saved your company from wasting a lot of time and resources.

4. Share an updated calendar.

The members of your Editorial Board and the people using content to nurture relationships or close deals need to know what content they can expect, when they can expect it, and how to use it effectively. Keep everyone up to date with a single, shared calendar complete with the timelines and information they need to use content assets to their full advantage.

5. Get some help.

You don’t need to do it alone. Bring your team or Editorial Board together to map out the goals, tactics, and execution strategy for content marketing success. As Abe Lincoln once said (and modern marketers should take this to heart), “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Take the time to “sharpen the axe,” so to speak. Define goals, get to know your personas and what each one cares about at every stage of their journey, organize your team, and prepare your execution strategy. Check out the worksheets below for inspiration.

Creating a unified content operation in your organization will ultimately help to align the needs and goals of siloed departments or business units, create higher quality content that’s effective for each stage of the funnel, and reduce current inefficiencies and redundancies. So what are you waiting for? Sharpen that content marketing axe, and get chopping.

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10 Strategies for Automation and Inbound from Marketo and Moz

Still struggling with the how-tos of marketing automation and inbound marketing? You’re not alone and Jon Miller, VP of Marketing and Co-found of Marketo, and Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz broke down 10 simple strategies to keep on your radar moving forward.

1. The way buyers buy has changed forever due to Digital Abundance

The way you market and sell must change as well. Digital buyers today have more access to information today than they have ever had before. They can get instant access to details, comparisons, and pricing. Social is a way to share and compare.

2. The right content > more content

For many sites, just a few very high value pieces a year is enough to achieve remarkable results. One of Moz.com’s single resources, The Algo Change, has earned more traffic than the 50+ surround posts combined.

3. Data yields smarter social sharing

Analyze when your followers are online and engaging with you most (Suggested Moz tool: followerwonk) Sharing your resources more than once may feel inauthentic, but you need to hit your readers when they are actually reading.

4. If you’re going to do video, do it right

Just like any written content, your videos should be targeted to the keywords and topics your customers are searching for most. Learn their pain points and deliver the solutions with high quality video that has an interesting cover photo. Transcripts of your videos are also a gold mine for SEO and accessibility.

5. Google+ is like cheating at SEO

Did you know that Google features posts from your Google+ circles on the first page of your search results? Growing your Google+ network may be even easier than traditional SEO methods for getting on the first page of results.

6. Use different tactics for different stages

Your customer doesn’t always want a free white paper. Or a webinar. Or a free trial. They want those things when they are in different stages of buying readiness along your funnel. Early stage buyers will be more interested in social media posts and YouTube videos where those closer to buying will be more interested in tools and free trials.

7. Be like a stock picker – don’t put all your marketing into one program

It’s not all about buying the hottest Pay-Per-Click ads any more. Sponsored emails, webinars, trade shows (even virtual trade shows!), content syndication, sponsorship, display ads, and blog articles all pull in their own targets. Analyze what works best for you, but keep your resources spread out.

8. Sales people don’t want names, they want “win ready” leads

If your sales team just wanted millions of leads every month, they could just look them up in the white pages. Lead nurturing and scoring your leads to qualify them into different stages of readiness will make you the hero of your sales team.

9. The key to relevance is behavioral targeting

If someone downloads your white paper on social media, don’t send them a load of emails on google analytics. Send your emails in smaller, more targeted content chunks to increase engagement.

10. Use analytics to turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver

Use your metrics to set and justify budgets for each level of the funnel. If you know your conversion percentages, you should know how much each lead cost to acquire, and therefore, how much you should spend to create X number of leads to start with.

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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Announces Salesforce1 at DF13

Leading with a strong focus on philanthropy, larger-than-life Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff kicked off his DF13 keynote with an enthusiastic message to business leaders – give.

“The best drug I ever took was philanthropy,” Benioff said, striding through the audience as leader of the #1 CRM company in the world and fresh off word that his company did $1 billion in business in a single quarter.

This year’s Dreamforce conference boasts more than 135,000 registrants; 1,200 sessions; and 350 exhibitors. But the most important number turned out to be “1”

Salesforce1, that is. Benioff and co-founder Parker Harris used a “Back to the Future” skit to introduce the CRM giant’s newest initiative – taking Salesforce to the mobile web.

Benioff explained the thinking behind the move – the concept of the “Internet of things” has transitioned to the “Internet of customers” and behind every interconnected device is a person.

“We need to reassess how we connect with our customers,” Benioff said. “At Salesforce.com we pivot to our customers.”

And, he added, he wants his customers to pivot to their own customers.

Thus the impetus for a new, mobile Salesforce – in order for Salesforce to pivot towards its own users, it needs to ensure CRM users can reach and respond to customers in a fully mobile manner.

After all, Benioff noted, the mobile experience is an inextricable aspect of the full customer journey. And to keep your customers and gain new ones, a business must know thy customer.

Check out the nuts and bolts of Salesforce1 here.

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Best Sessions at Dreamforce 2013

With well over 100,000 people in attendance at DreamForce, it’s easy to get lost in the hustle and/or bustle. Even more difficult is to keep your focus on why you came here in the first place – to learn new ways to drive business growth and efficiency.

The eCornell team has one goal during our time at DreamForce – to tune out all of the DF13 noise and focus in on the best information for business leaders and decision makers.

DF13 Sessions To Watch For

We’ll be posting throughout the conference from a selection of sessions we’ve identified as key for

  • business growth;
  • sharpening leadership skills;
  • inspiring your workforce, and;
  • leveraging that entrepreneurial edge, no matter how established your organization.

Marc, Marissa and Deepak will have some great insight to impart, for sure. But the hundreds of sessions spread across San Francisco that comprise each day of DreamForce 2013 are where the real gems are found.

Armies of experts and innovators are presenting invaluable knowledge for the duration of the 4-day conference. The trick is sorting through the glut of sessions for the messages that really hit home for the decision-making crowd.

That’s where eCornell will help. Consider us your guide for the executive crowd for DreamForce 2013

From keynotes to key themes, we will write and report with your business growth in mind.

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Use the (Visual Content) Force Wisely

Humans are social and visual creatures. We’re also hunter-gatherers. So it’s not surprising that we created the Internet in our image: bending and evolving it to meet our information hunting and gathering needs. Evolutionarily, it makes sense that images popping into our Facebook News or Twitter feeds get hunter-gatherers like us clicking, watching, and sharing.Facebook and LinkedIn are betting on it, while the popularity of Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr seem to prove it. But creating visual content for its own sake is pointless; like all marketing communications, visuals need to support your strategy and be created in the context of meeting customer needs.

I want to see what you think…

Consumers are increasingly using social networks to “see” what other people like them are doing, what decisions they’re making, and what the results are. Instead of knocking on doors or having impromptu coffee shop chats, consumers are posting their problems or needs on Facebook and asking for recommendations.

How did that vegan BBQ recipe turn out? Your friend Sharon just posted a picture to her feed and even her non-vegan friends are gushing. How valuable was the online certificate program John took earlier this year? Check out John’s updated LinkedIn profile with a new, official headshot for his new official promotion.

“Seeing is believing.”

One big reason visual cues are so persuasive (and attractive) is that they fire up a large chunk of our brains at once. Apparently, the neurons in our brain that handle visual processing take up a whopping 30 percent of the cortex: Compare this to 8 percent for touch and 3 percent for hearing.

As marketers, we’ve all been told “Show, don’t tell,” or “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Why? Because humans are drawn to visual imagery, we process it easily, and because of this, visuals do a great job helping consumers cut through information clutter, especially in today’s uber-cluttered online world.

Online, consumers still desire some kind of “visual proof” of what people and organizations are posting, reviewing, using, or listing on their resumes. We may be glued to our iPad miles away, but seeing is still believing.

Use the (visual) force wisely

Social networks are primarily ways to connect with like-minded people, and to some degree, reinforce our preferences. We assume people we know are similar to us in some way. This means we have a higher level of confidence that the information coming from our social networks is relevant to us and our decisions.

Keeping this in mind, your content strategy should use visuals wisely. Yes—photos, videos, and infographics grab eyeballs online and engage your customers. More importantly, brain research also shows that images can improve the quality and speed of learning, information retention and better convey meaning—as long as those images are relevant to your topic or audience, and help clarify or add context.

Hit the mark and your visual content can stand in for a friend’s opinion on Facebook, or an online review. Your videos and photos can speak directly to the right customers, offering the “visual proof” that’s most beneficial for the way each customer segment makes buying decisions.

Guest Post on the Trip Advisor for Business

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Use the (Visual Content) Force Wisely

Humans are social and visual creatures. We’re also hunter-gatherers. So it’s not surprising that we created the Internet in our image: bending and evolving it to meet our information hunting and gathering needs. Evolutionarily, it makes sense that images popping into our Facebook News or Twitter feeds get hunter-gatherers like us clicking, watching, and sharing. Facebook and LinkedIn are betting on it, while the popularity of Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr seem to prove it. But creating visual content for its own sake is pointless; like all marketing communications, visuals need to support your strategy and be created in the context of meeting customer needs.

I want to see what you think…

Consumers are increasingly using social networks to “see” what other people like them are doing, what decisions they’re making, and what the results are. Instead of knocking on doors or having impromptu coffee shop chats, consumers are posting their problems or needs on Facebook and asking for recommendations.

How did that vegan BBQ recipe turn out? Your friend Sharon just posted a picture to her feed and even her non-vegan friends are gushing. How valuable was the online certificate program John took earlier this year? Check out John’s updated LinkedIn profile with a new, official headshot for his new official promotion.

“Seeing is believing.”

One big reason visual cues are so persuasive (and attractive) is that they fire up a large chunk of our brains at once. Apparently, the neurons in our brain that handle visual processing take up a whopping 30 percent of the cortex: Compare this to 8 percent for touch and 3 percent for hearing.

As marketers, we’ve all been told “Show, don’t tell,” or “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Why? Because humans are drawn to visual imagery, we process it easily, and because of this, visuals do a great job helping consumers cut through information clutter, especially in today’s uber-cluttered online world.

Online, consumers still desire some kind of “visual proof” of what people and organizations are posting, reviewing, using, or listing on their resumes. We may be glued to our iPad miles away, but seeing is still believing.

Use the (visual) force wisely

Social networks are primarily ways to connect with like-minded people, and to some degree, reinforce our preferences. We assume people we know are similar to us in some way. This means we have a higher level of confidence that the information coming from our social networks is relevant to us and our decisions.

Keeping this in mind, your content strategy should use visuals wisely. Yes—photos, videos, and infographics grab eyeballs online and engage your customers. More importantly, brain research also shows that images can improve the quality and speed of learning, information retention and better convey meaning—as long as those images are relevant to your topic or audience, and help clarify or add context.

Hit the mark and your visual content can stand in for a friend’s opinion on Facebook, or an online review. Your videos and photos can speak directly to the right customers, offering the “visual proof” that’s most beneficial for the way each customer segment makes buying decisions.

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When it comes to social media, personal responses make a difference

Recent social media debacles from Domino’s Pizza and Bank of America made me think about the best approach for engaging with your social media audience. We frequently discuss the importance of paying careful attention to customer feedback and responding in real-time, as remaining silent makes your business seem divested from the social space, but the responses from Domino’s and Bank of America drive home the importance of well-considered and personalized responses.

In both cases, these enterprise-level companies relied on an automated system to respond to fan comments due to the sheer volume of comments each brand receives. While this solution does cut down on staffing and maintains social activity levels, both companies were subject to the pitfalls of using a robot for social media interaction. In each case, the auto-response completely misunderstood the fans’ sentiment. As a result, both brands were damaged and, ironically, looked less engaged to their fan bases than if they had just selectively chosen to respond to fans’ posts and tweets.

Many big box hotels and resorts are faced with the same conundrum: which comments should be responded to, which should be left alone, and how to go about it? Moreover, the challenge of staffing for social media response, without any guarantee of hard ROI, is an unwelcome prospect for many hoteliers. However, the mistakes from these big brands show that the cost of hiring a few community managers to manage day-to-day engagement outweighs the damage you will do to your brand when robots fail to respond intelligently.

The same approach should apply for online reviews. TripAdvisor’s recent Trip Barometer report indicated that 68% of travelers who see a management response below a hotel review are more likely to book with that hotel versus a hotel without a response. A 2012 Forrester-TripAdvisor study similarly reported that 78% of users agree that seeing a hotel management response to reviews “makes me believe that it cares more about its guests.” While it’s clear that hotels should be actively responding to reviews, the same damage can be done when a hotel favors an automated system or copy-and-paste template over a human-generated reply. When a response is not personalized – whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter or a travel review site – it negates any perception that the hotel cares about its consumers.

While many enterprise-level brands favor an automated response system over human staffing, it comes with risk to your online reputation. After all, the main purpose of social media is to humanize your brand and show personal attention. If your property is going to invest in social media, it’s better to train savvy social media managers who show good judgment, carefully respond to comments that are highly negative or positive, and preserve your reputation as an engaged, caring brand.

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If Content is King, Segmentation is Queen

 

It’s 1996. You’re Bill Gates. What’s on your mind? Interactive multimedia content, the kind made possible by the Internet. Revolutionary content that would transform the Internet into “a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products—a marketplace of content.”

A place where “content is king.”

Fast forward to 2013 and new content is being created, curated, and shared worldwide at record speed. But many organizations using content creation as marketing strategy still ignore one of Gates’ other nuggets of wisdom:

“If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will.”

This is a content strategy: rewarding customers with deep, up-to-date content that’s relevant to their interests. How to get there? If content is king, then old-fashioned market segmentation is queen.

Customer, know thyself

Rewarding customers—their needs, their desires, their concerns—with what’s on the screen starts with segmentation.

Consumers already self-segment online. They’re increasingly using social networks to “see” what other people like them are doing, what decisions they’re making, and what the results are, posting on Facebook to ask for recommendations.

Why? Do we really believe our hundreds of Facebook “friends” are experts on everything from glass baby bottles to buying a new car?

The truth is that we don’t care. It’s tough making decisions, and even tougher when decisions get bigger or more expensive. In a world of information overload, the more we can block out unnecessary or irrelevant input, the easier decisions become. One way to do this is to use familiarity, or social closeness, as a gauge. We implicitly trust someone we know—even though we met her once at a party 10 years ago—and attach greater weight to her opinions.

This doesn’t seem like a great tool for making important decisions. But it makes sense in a way marketers can understand: We assume the people we know are similar to us in some way. That means we have a higher level of confidence that the information coming from our social networks is relevant to us and our decisions.

Marketer, know thy customer

By segmenting your customers, you are increasing the odds that the information you’re generating for target customers will make the cut. A useful market segment is one that hits the sweet spot, where customers receive maximum value from your product and the company makes maximum profit from sales to that segment.

Ideally, segments should be made up of customers that respond in a very similar way to your marketing efforts, and who respond differently than other customers (in other segments). These differences form the basis for your content marketing strategy.

What’s your persona?

Different customers respond to your marketing efforts differently based on a broad range of variables: demographic, geographic, and psychographic. Somewhere within each segment, there’s an ideal customer for whom your product, service, or specialty is the ideal solution. To execute your content strategy, bring these ideal customers to life by creating buyer personas.

Buyer personas flesh out the key factors that differentiate segments from each other. Think of creating buyer personas like you’d describe the conversation you had last night with “the most interesting man in the world.”:

  • Who are they? — What’s their age, gender, personal quirks? Where do they live? Add as much real-life color as possible.
  • What do they do? — What are their daily activities and responsibilities? Think beyond work or school to hobbies, moonlighting gigs or volunteer work.
  • What are the biggest challenges or issues they face this year?
  • What are their long-term aspirations, professionally, personally, or both?

Long live the king

Now that you’ve created the most interesting buyer personas in the world, you can begin to know them better. If you hit the mark, your organization’s content can stand in for a friend’s opinion on Facebook, or an online review. Your videos and photos can speak directly to the right customers, offering the visual proof that’s most beneficial for the way each customer segment makes buying decisions.

The more you know about your target customers — through research, meaningful segmentation and vibrant buyer personas — the more you can reward them with content that fits their needs, solves their problems, and positions your organization as a trusted member of their social network.

Guest Post on the Kapost Content Marketeer

 

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Segment Customers to Increase Leads, Sales, and Satisfaction

Global Hospitality Group Partners with Cornell for Scalable, Ivy League Professional Development

eCornell announced today that it has been selected by the acclaimed Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group (B&BHG), an industry leader in hospitality, to provide an online professional development program for employees working at each of the group’s 26 restaurants . The one-year contract begins July 1, 2013.

“We’re thrilled to partner with B&BHG to help prepare their staff and operations for continued growth and success,” said Chris Proulx, eCornell’s Chief Executive Officer. “The restaurant business isn’t an easy one, but B&BHG’s focus on continuous education and improvement is one way to ensure the group remains innovative and one step ahead.”

B&BHG’s learning and development program will support its business strategy and the eCornell partnership is just one of these initiatives. Selected staff members will be invited to take one course from a hand-picked survey of eCornell courses across multiple disciplines.

“At B&B, our primary focus continues to be growth. We’re rapidly expanding and to move forward, we need a learning and development solution that we can implement quickly and scale up easily. For us, eCornell was the only choice — it combines Cornell’s high-caliber content and industry thought leadership with a flexible, scalable online platform,” said Rajan Lai, Vice President of Human Resources for B&BHG.

To continue to be a leader in the hospitality industry, B&BHG is diversifying its concepts geographically and striving to meet the demand for high quality, affordable, and unique dining experiences. Partnering with B&BHG allows eCornell to assist with improving the group’s operational quality and service.

eCornell’s approach to e-learning combines the experience and insight of Cornell University’s world-class faculty members with the flexibility of a self-paced, instructor-facilitated online learning environment. Classes of 20 to 30 participants per course gain critical knowledge and practice through videos, lectures, case studies, and applied exercises. Students also build their professional networks and collaborative skills using eCornell’s interactive online platform.

Guest Post on Infusionsoft: Big Ideas Blog

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About eCornell

eCornell, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cornell University, provides many of the world’s leading organizations with online professional and executive development in the areas of leadership and management; human resource management; financial management; healthcare; marketing; and hospitality and foodservice management. eCornell’s proven course development model and asynchronous instructor-led course delivery provide students with an engaging, rigorous, and interactive learning experience. eCornell has delivered online courses to more than 50,000 students across more than 200 countries. For more information, visit ecornell.cornell.edu.

 

About the Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group

Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group (B&BHG) is a premier (restaurant) group that owns and operates 26 restaurants in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong. B&BHG is owned in partnership by Mario Batali, chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and television personality; Joe Bastianich, restaurateur, wine maker, and author; and Lidia Bastianich, chef, best-selling cookbook author, restaurateur, and owner of a flourishing food and entertainment business. B&BHG’s restaurants include Babbo Ristorante & Enoteca, Bar Jamón, Becco, Casa Mono, Del Posto, Esca, Felidia, Lupa Osteria Romana, Otto Enoteca & Pizzeria, and Tarry Lodge in New York; Tarry Lodge Enoteca & Pizzeria in Westport, Connecticut; Lidia’s in Pittsburgh and Kansas City; B&B Ristorante, Carnevino, and Otto Enoteca & Pizzeria in Las Vegas; Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza and Mozza2Go in Los Angeles; Pizzeria Mozza in Newport Beach, California; and Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza in collaboration with Nancy Silverton in Singapore and Carnevino and Lupa in Hong Kong. B&BHG is also an industry leader in sustainability, with fourteen certified Green Restaurants and counting. For more information, visit https://bandbhg.com.

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3 Reasons Big-Data Has Big Relevance

To those who challenge the significance of big-data, I say, “Get real.”

Big-data absolutely matters for analytics and related disciplines such as market research and competitive intelligence. Why? Because it offers distinct benefits that can otherwise be hard, or even impossible, to come by.

I’m sure you’ve heard big-data described in terms of size, variety, and velocity, or what I call “real-timeliness.”Read More