It’s easy to understand the logic behind content marketing—that establishing yourself as a thought leader will build your brand and generate leads. But it’s one thing to appreciate the idea; it’s another to actually create a content marketing culture in a company to enable successful execution of the strategy.

The Content Challenge

Content marketing can take many forms—blogs, white papers, email newsletters, social media postings, You Tube videos, personal appearances, self-published print magazines, and so on. But where does all this content come from? According to a recent survey, this is clearly the biggest problem with implementation—with respondents saying that their greatest content marketing challenges are producing engaging content (36%), producing enough content (21%), and budget to produce content (20%).

Making It Work

The most important aspect of content marketing success is making it a fundamental part of your company’s operations. It can’t be an afterthought if it’s going to pay off. - Mashable.com reports on three success stories here.

The following steps can help you generate content and successfully implement a content marketing strategy:

Have strong upper management support. Management-driven support (e.g., job descriptions, financial incentives, awards, visible enthusiasm) is essential.

Convince employees of the value. Tying content marketing to the personal benefit of all stakeholders is the surest way to get participation.

Provide adequate collaboration support. Most of the content experts in your company are probably not skilled in writing, editing, video production, printing, social media, etc. You need to have employees, resources, and processes that content experts can use to turn their knowledge into useful, publishable material.

Keep control of your brand. You don’t want people producing content that’s not consistent with your branding. Provide editorial guidelines and practical brand-building suggestions.

Develop meaningful metrics to track success. Nothing encourages buy-in more than demonstrable results. Measurement also helps to justify content marketing costs and indicate necessary adjustments.

Include mechanisms for customer input. Content marketing works best when it’s interactive—drawing potential customers into a relationship with your company.

Reuse existing content. You can alleviate the content-supply problem by putting existing material to new uses. Often, it only takes a little modification.

Stay informed. The Web is full of information on content marketing, such as The Institute for Content Marketing’s 10 essential content marketing templates and frequent articles on sites such as techcrunch.com. Executives and marketers should stay on top of content marketing trends and strategies.

As stated extremely well in “Content Rules” you need to speak to your customers and prospects in a way that makes them appreciate your expertise and tells them about the benefits of your products/services not simply the features.

“The inherent tension in marketing is that companies always want to talk about themselves and what their products or services can do. Everyone else meanwhile, only wants to know what those products or services can do for them.”

Good content does not just appear, rather you need to work at it and make it part of the culture of your organization.  So start small but ramp up quickly because content based marketing will not only be a key part of your inbound strategy but should be key to generating leads and sales opportunities.

]]> http://www.michaelgcohen.com/2012/01/creating-a-content-marketing-culture/feed/ 0 http://www.michaelgcohen.com/2011/06/creating-trust-with-facebook-connect/ http://www.michaelgcohen.com/2011/06/creating-trust-with-facebook-connect/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:05 +0000 Michael http://www.michaelgcohen.com/?p=1163

I recently wrote about the amount of information that one can gather about users who register for or become members of your website using Facebook Connect. In continuing to read and contemplate writing on the subject I came across a nice article by Augie Ray in CRM magazine. Augie’s article points out that the majority of companies who are using Facebook Connect to allow consumers to connect to their website are doing so without telling the customer what information they are sharing or how the company will use it.

Customers are becoming wary and savvy about the fact that while …

I recently wrote about the amount of information that one can gather about users who register for or become members of your website using Facebook Connect. In continuing to read and contemplate writing on the subject I came across a nice article by Augie Ray in CRM magazine. Augie’s article points out that the majority of companies who are using Facebook Connect to allow consumers to connect to their website are doing so without telling the customer what information they are sharing or how the company will use it.

Customers are becoming wary and savvy about the fact that while connecting to a site using their Facebook ID may be high on the convenience side, they may also be unwittingly sharing more personal information and access to their data with that particular company than they would have if they would have signed up in a traditional manner. In a time where Social CRM is about as hot as any area of social software and where companies are beginning to want to capture and utilize the information available about customers and prospects on social networks it is amazing to me that so many companies would rely on Facebook to communicate what information is being shared through Facebook Connect. Let me explain…

Facebook Connect is a wonderful way to lower the barriers and gate to having people become a member of your website. With well over 600 Million members there is little chance someone who wishes to use your website will not have a Facebook ID. In using Facebook Connect as a signup/signon method for your site by default you get access to a bevy of user information (see the image below) but will actually not have requested permission to contact the user or post to their wall etc…For each of those you will need to request special permission.

While the majority of web users used to just click the “Allow” button and were instantly connected to your site, the amount of privacy concerns specifically surrounding Facebook has made more and more users take a close look at just what personal information they are now allowing the website/company access to by using Facebook as their sign-up/sign-on method.

It is at this extremely critical stage – the point at which you the company are asking the user to trust you and give up their personal information – that I feel companies are really falling down on. In the vast majority of Facebook Connect examples that I’ve seen or used the website/company has just used the default “Request for Permission” dialogue box that Facebook has provided without realizing that at this critical stage of creating trust the company itself could create that feeling and sense of security with just a little transparency.

Yes Facebook’s “Request for Permission” dialogue box is familiar looking to all by now and yes it does give the user details about what personal information and privileges are being shared with the company, but in reality it is nothing more than a blanket statement of information that the company now has access to without any indication as to how or why they will use that information.

In an era where customers want to purchase from and deal with companies that they trust and believe are transparent, replacing the default Facebook “Request for Permission” dialogue with one that actually speaks to the information your company is gathering and how you plan on using it is a tremendous way to create a sense of security, transparency and ultimately trust between the consumer and your brand. Are you gathering the information about a customer’s likes and dislikes from their profile? If so, why are you harvesting the information? What is in it for the consumer? Will you ever sell the customer’s data? Can they revoke access at any time?

While not every customer will care to have all these questions answered each time they sign up for a website, more and more consumers are becoming tuned into the fact that are allowing companies unfettered access to information that may really offer them no discernable benefit when using the website. When you combine this ever growing awareness with the fact that so few companies are actually taking the time to be transparent in the “Request for Permission” stage there exists a real opportunity for your company/brand to set itself apart and be seen as a brand that sits high on the trust/transparency scale for consumers.

The shining example of a company that continues to dominate when it comes to customer loyalty and trust is Amazon and their Facebook Connect Request for Permission dialogue box is no different. Rather than simply rely on Facebook to communicate to consumers what information they were sharing and how Amazon would use it, Amazon has created their own “Connect Amazon and Facebook” page that pops up before (yes an extra pop-up but a worthwhile one) the Facebook Request for Permission and gives a complete rundown not only on what how Amazon will use the user information (while spinning the benefits to the user) but also how they explicitly will not use the information supplied. While there is already a high trust factor for a brand like Amazon, that was certainly not always the case and it is in taking the extra steps for transparency and trust (like this one) that have built the trusted company reputation that Amazon has. Whether your company is a 2 man start-up or has offices around the globe you can take a page from trust leader Amazon’s playbook and instantly create a feeling of trust/transparency when asking people to share their personal information with your brand via Facebook Connect.

What are you doing to create trust with your customers? What other brands can be held up as examples of how to create transparency/trust? What brands should be examples of how to lose that trust?

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A friend working on a very cool stealth start-up approached me the other day to talk about sign up forms and the type of questions he should be asking people when they join his soon to be popular site. In a world of Facebook Connect, I first questioned what percentage of his audience would even create their own login on his site but as we discussed further it became apparent to me that whether people signed up directly on his site or they used FB Connect he needed to collect certain pieces of information that would not be readily available through FB but were vital for the marketing of his business. So again, in a world where it is anticipated that most users will log on to the site using FB, how could he capture the three or four (note that it is important to narrow down to at most 3/4 additional questions) pieces of information that would be vital to personalize marketing communications?

While he could certainly use the Facebook profiles of his members to get some amazing social data on their likes, favorite sports teams etc, the information available would vary too much from member to member and further would take a long time to mine given the current Social CRM tools available. So without scrapping Facebook as a login option, what could he do? For me the answer was simple, use a couple of triggered welcome email messages and a clearly discernible incentive. Upon signup with Facebook Connect, a triggered email campaign would begin where the goal was to welcome the member to the site, but the ultimate goal was to get the same three or four pieces of information that would have been captured had the signup occured completely onsite.

With four pieces of information to gather and an on-site credit to offer users who gave all four pieces of information (whether they did so all at once or over the three emails the incentive was the same) a welcome campaign was designed so that three emails would be sent to the user from the trigger moment of a signup with Facebook Connect (those who signed up directly received a different campaign) and the other two sent 24 and 48 hours after respectively. The three emails were designed to both welcome and aclimatize the user with the site but also were to be excercises in info gathering and pushing the user to make thier first site transaction. A complex set of requirements.

So what did it look like in practice? A triggered mini-campaign of three emails to both welcome the user and capture four key pieces of information was launched where the information gathering exercise was tied directly to the incentive offered. While I can’t share the emails themselves, I will give you a bit more detail.

In each email a key piece of the site served as the functionality to be described but rather than use text, it was done using an embedded video. The use of the video engaged people in the email right away and the simplicity of playing the video allowed for the real estate that would have been taken up by that text to then move up the graphics and text about profile completion (answering questions) and the incentive that went along with it.

Another key part of the email design went to the database behind it and using one of 5 possible dynamic questions/phrases (i.e. not asking the user something that you already had the answer to, questions dynamically appear based on the customer profile) in each email so as to gather new information each time and not present the user with anything non relevant or already known. The email was designed in such a way that the last thing the user saw was a dynamic question that got to one of the four pieces of information that was desired. The question was always graphically rich and tied directly to the incentive available for reaching a 100% profile.

While it was expected that it would take two or more emails to get most people to complete their profile, by tying it into the incentive and making the site information part of the email be a video rather than using that real estate for text there was a tremendous amount of users who completed thier profile after just the first triggered email and nearly everyone was done after email #2.

The timelyness of a triggered campaign combined with great design and a smart database have now allowed this stealth company to have 4 tremendously key pieces of profile information about their customers that would have remained unavailable had they simple accepted the information they received through Facebook Connect as the best they could get.

What about you, any great ways to incent your users to share more info with you?

The most used triggered email message stream generally surrounds abandoned shopping carts or website signups where you give your email but do not complete a profile. If you are not using triggered messages around abandoned shopping carts and signups, you should begin to do so (see a good article on how to get going form MarketingSherpa), the emails are effective and can help you address a customer’s (or potential customer) real issue in abandoning their purchase. The problem in my mind is that the very nature of these being triggered messages pulls the real personalization and chance to connect with the consumer out of the equation. These messages generally consist of a generic message indicating that you are receiving the message because you did not complete an action on the site sending you the email. If that action was a purchase, the site might use some dynamic information about what was in your shopping cart and if above a certain dollar threshold trigger a message that offers free shipping if you complete the purchase. Sites often will offer you other ways to get in touch with them including their social media profiles and will wrap with some generic information about how you are a valued customer (maybe even telling you when you first became a customer). For sites that need to scale to large volumes of abandoned carts or signups there is perhaps no other way, however for the businesses where each purchase still matters tremendously and where you are just building your customer base I think you can do better.

If someone takes the time to come to your website and is on the verge of purchase (or sign-up) only to abandon that action you need to do two things. First you should have software that helps you evaluate when people abandon, on what step, on what page etc. Second, you should try to lend a helping hand and get them to complete their purchase. It is this second piece that I think small businesses can do better and create both a triggered email stream but also a social media reach out campaign. There is ample evidence that you want to get the email about the abandoned purchase/signup and offering to help to the customer immediately after they leave your site with the purchase unmade, and then again within 24 hours, beyond that is up to you. It is the time in-between the initial email you send and the one 23 hours later that I think as a small company you can and should be nimble enough to out maneuver your competitors by using social media to not only reach out directly to these customers but to do so in a much more personal way than the mail merge personalized triggered emails. So what can you do in those hours?

First build a list of all the consumers who abandoned during the last 24 hours (if you need to, prioritize by potential purchase size) and determine who you and your team will reach out to. The number of people will depend on the value of the purchase they abandoned and your own cost/benefit of time spent on the next steps, but if you want to grow your business as one that thinks customer service first and is socially adept then I recommend this for at least a few of the top abandoned purchases.

If you are not already using a CRM system and specifically one that allows you to import social media profiles that’s your first stop but for the sake of this article let’s assume you are using CRM and can integrate data from social networks on your customers and prospects.

My first piece of advice is to begin asking your customers for their social media profiles as part of the checkout process, if they are willing to give you their email addresses the probably will not hesitate to save you the trouble of finding them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Just make the appropriate choice for your business – I recommend LinkedIn & Twitter for B2B and Twitter for B2C, they’ll find you on Facebook, it’s creepy to ask for friendship as a company. This one little change will save you having to take the next step of finding the consumer on the social network appropriate for you.

When a potential customer or site user abandons their cart/signup but gives you their email address (and any other details that are relevant) you have enough to use a service like Rapportive, Xobni, Gist to try to connect that email address and data to social media profiles across a variety of networks. None of these services gets it perfect, but if the email address you have (for the customer) is the one they use on social sites your chance of a match is high.

Once you have the potential consumer’s social media profile it is time to mine it for any information that you can find about the particular purchase they were about to make with you. Did they ask about your product on Twitter? Have they written on the wall on your Facebook page? Asked for recommendations on your products via LinkedIn? Depending on your market you might find exactly how they researched the product and may be able to leverage that information to supply them with anything you think is missing that would make their decision easier. Even more telling, you might just find out exactly why they abandoned their purchase at your site. Did they Tweet about your exhorbinant shipping costs? Great! A perfect opportunity to connect with them in a transparent way and either explain the need for the cost or find a way to lower the cost (be wary about what you make policy in an open forum) and help them become a customer.

You would be shocked at the number of reasons people abandon purchases. Last night I did so because the hockey game went into overtime and you know who could have known that? Anyone company who was looking for why I abandoned my purchase in the late evening because I Tweeted I had to sign off the computer because hockey was getting too intense. Now if the company I was purchasing from wanted to really let me know they cared about winning my business and that I was not just an order number they could easily have keyed off my Tweet and sent me something cleaver and invited me back to the site post game. So what that I was only buying $75 worth golf balls (don’t ask about my short game)? I am obviously a customer who purchases online regularly and as the purchase was my first with the site I could easily have been swayed to complete it by a coupon or really even a personal touch. If the company wanted to blow my mind they would include something related to hockey (even a Go Canucks Go on the invoice would suffice) when they shipped to me.

Gary Vanerchuck calls this the “Thank You Economy” and has his own amazing example of how he used social to reward a loyal wine buyer with Chicago Bears gear rather than a traditional thank you. While Gary did his giving post-purchase, there is no reason you cannot use the same strategy on a smaller scale pre-purchase for those who have recently abandoned a cart.

It may seem like what I am suggesting is daunting when you read it, but these are people who want to buy from you, they’ve already proven that. All you need to do is show them that you’re willing to go the extra mile to make them feel like they are purchasing from a friend and not just a company that seems to send them coupons each time leave a shopping cart mid -purchase.

Friend and mentor Paul Greenberg is fond of saying that we may be moving from a time of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Customer Managed Relationships (CMR). It’s a statement that every company needs to take to heart. The number of channels with which customers engage with your company and each other obey no geographic boundaries and know no time zones. Where companies once had control of the channels and times with which they would engage customers the pendulum has decidedly swung the other way. While your office and customer support may be open 9-5 on the east coast of North America, your customers are talking to you and about you when they feel like it and on the channel of their choosing. Where companies used to have to facilitate the coming together of customers through user conferences, again at a time and place chosen by the company, today that same user base is spread across social channels, forums and connecting with one another without company involvement. How then should you react to this dramatic shift in consumer empowerment? 

It is easy to be daunted by the fact that your consumers are so empowered but in truth if you have a product or company that you are passionate about, the fact that customers want to connect with you and each other should be empowering. While this is not a how-to article, I will start with some truisms that you can take to heart as you learn to embrace the consumer control of the conversation.

1. Realize you cannot talk to everyone or react to every mention of your company/brand – People are going to mention your company on social networks and while you can and should be monitoring this chatter (go simple with a tool like HootSuite or go pro with Radian6) you cannot and should not react to every mention of your company unless you have someone dedicated to just that job. If your program allows, set up key word alerts when they are related to your brand/company, monitor Twitter and your Facebook Wall and where it seems logical and authentic to engage it most likely is. If you can add something of value to a conversation between two consumers then jump into the fray and add value but don’t just shoehorn your way into every conversation that you are mentioned in.

 

2. Train the people who will engage consumers – This seems really simple but I am amazed at how many companies still think it is ok to let multiple people or even a single person with no training become the voice of their company. I’m not talking about training on how to use Twitter or Facebook, I mean customer engagement training. Whether that means going through the same training as your customer support teams or media training is dependent on your specific company but I can’t stress this enough, train your people. There are far too many stories of companies who have had their reputations tarnished simply because they didn’t realize that when you allow someone to Tweet for your company you have essentially handed them the keys to your company’s store.

 

3. Get the right tools – If you’ve bought into point #2 then you will have well trained people who want to engage customers on your behalf. In order to make these engagements fruitful for both you and the consumer give your now well trained employees the right tools to do their jobs. Whether you require the power of monitoring tools like Radian6 or Sysomos versus what you can put together on a budget is dependent on your business’ needs, but make sure you are monitoring social media in some way with dedicated software. If you are going to have more than one person engage on social media or want to be able to post to several social media profiles at once then use a tool like CoTweet or HootSuite that are set up for just that purpose. Finally, tie it all together by tracking the conversations you are having with an integrated CRM system that allows you to view a complete history of traditional and social conversations before the engagement you are about to have and will archive each subsequent conversation regardless of channels.

 

4. Arm yourself with knowledge, then pay for help – There are more than enough people who like to think of themselves as social media or CRM experts and many of them will sell you their time for nothing in return. On the other hand there are plenty of great people who are really in the know and can help you both understand the shift to social customers and execute against a solid strategy. The difference in knowing which one you are talking to is arming yourself with knowledge before you decide you can tell the difference between the two aforementioned individuals. Read Paul Greenberg’s book, blog and then head to Altimeter and devour their Social CRM paper. Go to Hubspot and MarketingProfs and get yourself up to speed on some of the latest thinking. Also be sure to use the resources offered by Mashable (Facebook and Twitter) as well as the guides published by the social networks themselves (Twitter). Arm yourself with knowledge and then if you need it (and I believe most do) find someone who has a track record of implementation and success, talk to them and make sure that they know more than you do

 

5. Don’t be afraid to admit a mistake or say you are sorry – People make mistakes and companies are full of people. Perhaps the most authentic thing you can do on a social network is admit when you made a mistake or something that happened was not in keeping with how you wish to operate your company/brand. It can be tough to suck it up and say I’m sorry when everyone is watching but that is exactly why if it’s the right thing to do, you should go ahead and do it. Everyone is watching and they along with the aggrieved party will appreciate just how honest and authentic you were.