Content Matters

People are busy, and there’s more great content for consumption than ever before. But how can you entice readers to dig in? Make the content snackable.

This post from the folks at Hubspot offers six tips to creating bite-sized content to satisfy your audience’s appetite:

1. Make your headline short and to the point.
2. Use the introductory paragraph to develop an overarching structure.
3. Structure your text with clear, actionable bullet points.
4. Be aware of content quality beneath the fold.
5. Make sure the content you create is worth the time.
6. Consider how concise the objective your article or post is.

Enjoy the complete meal here.

In a recent LinkedIn Q&A forum, a question was asked about website content creation and strategy. What content creation methods are recommended? What kind of information should be included on About Us and Services Offered pages? What overall strategies should be in place.

When working with my clients on these types of issues, I always advise writing and designing from your audience’s perspective. 

“My recommendation would be to develop your site content around what your customers need and want to know rather than what you want to say about your company/products/services. Look at what your customers’ pain points are and how your products/services solve those problems. Then write content that addresses client needs while showcasing your expertise—without overselling it.”

I continue with tips on developing case histories as a means to showcase experience as well as blogging to educate and inform buyers. To read my complete answer, click here.

I dig infographics. And if you’re like me, you probably do, too. But creating one? How do you even get started?

The folks at Lewis PR have a few recommendations in the post “Visual Story Telling Before The Design.” In it, author Brian Compton says that “every infographics project should start with the same three questions that are as important as the data collection and design phase that follows.”

1. What type of infographic do we want, and why type of data will we be collecting?
2. What parts of the infographic do we know already, and which parts will the designer determine?
3. What basic graphic elements would we like to use and how?

To get all the details—and hopefully get started on your next infographic—click here.

One of the things I’m always stressing to my clients is that the content they publish must be centered around what their audience wants/needs to hear as opposed to what they as a company want to say/market. 

That’s why I love this post from Cloud Marketing Labs, as it takes this message of audience-centric content development into the foundation of website design. “Instead of creating your website around your products, create a site around the people who buy your products.” BRILLIANT! 

Want to make your site people friendly? Follow these steps:

1. Make your website people oriented.
2. Segregate your email marketing lists.
3. Have multiple media outlets.
4. Integrate with a CRM.
5. Specify type of content.

Read the complete post here.

There’s a TON of opinions on social media and how to incorporate it into your comprehensive marketing strategy. Who’s right? What should you do?

Of course, the answer is different for everyone depending on clientele needs and your goals. But having research data and best practices can help steer you in the right direction.

Subscribers, Fans & Followers is a collection of nine social media reports from Exact Target. Not only are the reports rich in data, but they are also designed in an engaging—almost editorial—way. No boring pie charts here. 

And the good news: the reports are free.

Here’s a summary of each. You can download all of them here.

Report 1: Digital Morning
By understanding your customers’ daily digital tendencies, you can deliver marketing messages in the right place—at exactly the right time. 

Report 2: Email X-Factors
When it comes to marketing communications, email still works—if you understand the characteristics that set email apart from any other interactive channel. 

Report 3: The Social Profile
Marketing messages are not one-size-fits-all. It’s essential to understand the 12 distinct consumer personas so you can get to know your audience based on personalities, not just age, gender, or other demographics. 

Report 4: Twitter X-Factors
Twitter users are the most influential online consumers, and using this social media tool correctly can greatly impact your brand’s bottom line. 

Report 5: Facebook X-Factors
Facebook fans look at marketing message much differently than other social media sites. By studying Facebook’s five unique characteristics, you can develop an ROI-boosting strategy specific to this channel. 

Report 6: The Collaborative Future
Despite common assumptions that email, Facebook, and Twitter are in direct competition with one another, consumers communicate freely across these channels—and so should you.

Report 7: Social Mythbusting
Info on the social web changes so quickly. This report revisits the data from our first six installments in order to deny, debunk, and deliver the answers you need to build a strategy based on the truth—not just commonly-held assumptions. 

Report 8: The Social Break-Up
Unfortunately, social relationships don’t always last. By exploring consumers’ motivations and actions as they end their online brand relationships, you can keep the romance alive after the social “honeymoon” is over. 

Report 9: The Executive Summary
This report is the capstone, taking more than 100 pages of social media research and boiling it down into the digestible insights necessary to build integrated, cross-channel campaigns. 

You’ll need a comfy lounge chair and a big cup of coffee to get through all the data, but the insights gained will be worth it. And they didn’t pay me to say that.