How to Explain Content Marketing to Anyone

How to Explain Content Marketing to Anyone

How to explain content marketing to yourself, your boss, or your relatives – Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketer’s Guide to Story Structure

Original article posted on contentmarketinginstitute.com by Pratik Dholakiya on July 21st 2017

Content is everywhere, most of it free and most of it utterly buried by other content. As content marketers, we struggle and fight to be heard.

Meanwhile, author James Patterson earned $95 million in 2016.

Let that sink in. James Patterson is getting paid $95 million a year to produce content. People are paying to read his content. Content that right inside the cover notes, “This is a work of fiction.”

If you haven’t thought about that concept before – that people will pay a lot of money for great storytelling – then I hope you do now.

Best-selling fiction authors know something. It’s something you ought to know too if you want to be heard.

We talk a lot about storytelling in this industry. But how much do we really know about it?

You probably have heard “human brains are hardwired” to remember stories; storytelling is an “ancient art;” and “brand narratives” resonate with audiences.

And that’s all true. But is it enough?

If you’ve studied this, you probably learned something a bit more fundamental about stories – they convey meaning through change.

And you know what? That understanding is still not enough.

Humans may be hardwired to tell, pass on, and remember stories. But we’re not all hardwired to tell the kinds of stories that people can’t put down.

We’re not all hardwired to tell the kinds of stories that people can’t put down, says @DholakiyaPratik

That’s why I think every content marketer needs to learn how authors structure their stories. People pay money to spend hours to read their books. Let’s find out why.

The 3-act structure

Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is basic stuff. It’s not the secret sauce, which I’ll talk about later. Still, it’s not just any beginning, middle, and end that will hold somebody’s interest or make an impact. And, to understand the secret sauce, you need to understand the main course.

Let’s pick apart this three-part structure.

Beginning

Do you know where many content marketers fail in their storytelling? Right at the beginning. To be blunt, most content marketers hardly write a beginning.

Of course, I don’t mean their stories don’t start. What I mean is the stories don’t start with a complete beginning – a beginning that lays the groundwork for the story.

In the beginning of a fiction work, readers expect the author to:

• Establish the way things are
• Establish what the character wants
• Establish what the character needs

If you don’t establish the way things are, you are not able to see how things change.

Now for the piece everybody misses. What the character wants and what the character needs are two different things.

If characters don’t want anything, nothing will pull them to the end of the story. They will walk away at the first sign of conflict. Want is what drives the plot.

Need is what the character requires to make it to the end. Need is what drives the theme.

A content marketer’s story is broken from the start if the writer doesn’t understand that what the customer wants is not what the customer needs. The customers don’t want your product. They need your product to get what they want.

Customers don’t want your products. They need your product to get what they want, says @DholakiyaPratik

Don’t waste time trying to make readers want your product.

Show them their beginning. Show them how things are for them now. Show them you understand what they want, and lay the groundwork to show them what they will need.

Middle

The marketer’s story seems to break down at this stage even more often than with a poor beginning.

While most marketers don’t develop a strong beginning, they at least start. When it comes to the middle, many marketers fail to include one at all.

In the middle of a work of fiction, readers expect that the character will:

• Develop a reasonable plan to get what he or she wants
• Try to execute the plan (but the problem is more complex than expected and fails)
• Rinse and repeat the try-and-fail process

This process must happen at least once for anybody to feel like a story is being told. Thematically, the middle of the story serves a clear, essential purpose. It illustrates what happens when characters try to get what they want without having what they need.

Without a strong middle, readers do not believe the theme of the story. They are not sold on what the character needs. They have no reason to believe that the character can’t get what he or she wants without it.

The middle is where readers learn the true scope of the problem. It seemed small in the beginning. As readers learn more about it, they learn it is not so simple. It becomes increasingly complicated. The more the characters try to get what they want, the more insurmountable readers realize the problem is.

Without a strong middle, readers aren’t sold on what the character needs, says @DholakiyaPratik

A weak middle revolves around a weak problem. Develop your problem and you will have a strong middle and a strong story.

Finally, it’s important that the character really gives it their all here. The plan is the best the character could reasonably put together. It should seem foolproof. Otherwise the writers have an idiot plot, where the problem could have been solved by a smarter character, which makes it difficult to identify with the character.

If you don’t know what I mean, think of “as seen on TV” product ads featuring solutions to non-problems or idiot-only problems. These stories identify the wrong problem or a weak problem, and they have weak protagonists because of it.

End

Since the end is where the most important things happen, a lot of marketers just skip to the end in their storytelling. But, a strong ending isn’t strong without a good beginning and middle.

At the end of a fiction work, readers expect that:

• The problem has grown to the point where another misstep would be a complete failure
• The characters overcome the barriers that kept them from understanding what they needed
• The characters now understand their needs, which allows them to solve the problem and get what they want
• A new world is created because the change has occurred
• 
  

Some Caveats

Now, I can’t in good conscience move forward without some qualifiers. A story can make the same point by making it clear what the character needs, then allowing the character to fail to get what’s needed and to fail to solve the problem, and to not get what he or she wants. This storytelling is a tragedy genre.

Likewise, there are powerful stories where the characters learn that what they’ve been wanting has been preventing them from getting what they need, and it turns out that the want wasn’t that important after all. These alternative story structures can have a strong emotional impact, but in the context of marketing they might be harder to pull off.

Now, I won’t elaborate much on how the characters overcome barriers or demonstrate how they solve their problem once they get what they need. Marketers understand these things well. Instead, I focus on two things.

First, is the finality of the problem – a ticking clock, a point of no return, an unavoidable sense of urgency. I’m not talking about imposing a limited time offer on the customer. I’m talking about the point at which the problem has grown out of control. I’m talking about establishing the dread of actual and complete failure.

Second, it is crucial to explore how things have changed now that the problem is solved. The writer should contrast where things ended up with where things started. The resolution should clarify what was missing and offer closure. If the writer doesn’t have a strong contrast between the beginning and the end, there isn’t a story.

That’s all there is to great storytelling, right?

No.

I still haven’t talked about the secret sauce, the stuff that keeps readers hungry for more pages as they turn through a book, the stuff that makes people pay for content.

Secret sauce

Ready for it?

The secret sauce is suspense.

Suspense makes the reader wonder what is going to happen next.

Suspense makes the reader wonder what is going to happen next, says @DholakiyaPratik

It seems almost tautological to say that what keeps somebody reading is wondering what they’re going to read next. And yet, did you know the secret sauce before I said it?

If the value of suspense was obvious, more people would use it.

Of course, understanding that suspense is what you need doesn’t necessarily help you know how to build it.

Predictability is the enemy of suspense. But unpredictability alone isn’t nearly enough. For suspense to work, you need both uncertainty and anticipation.

The first way to build suspense is to do it directly. You blatantly state that something is coming, but you are vague about what it is. I did it in this very blog post.

How do you best implement suspense in the context of content marketing?

Well, for one, suspense should not be the only thing you use to keep somebody reading. Imagine if the section on three-act structure above was mere filler. My promise of a secret sauce wouldn’t have kept you reading, would it?

Second, turn your format on its head. You’re used to thinking that you should state the problem and solution in the beginning, then list your supporting arguments. That’s not always the way to go.

People read fiction in large part because they quickly learn the problem, but don’t know what the solution will be until the end. That’s why we have spoiler alerts.

An alternative structure is to state the problem, present the supporting arguments as answers to smaller related questions, then piece them together at the end in a massive climax where it suddenly all makes sense.

Is this always the best way to do it? No. But it clearly keeps people engaged on a different level. And this is essentially the logic of the page turner.

There is a second form of suspense. This is how famed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock described it:

“There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise,’ and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.

“We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence.

“Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at 1 o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to 1. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!’”

This form of suspense is based on “superior position.” The audience knows something that the characters don’t.

At first, this seems like it contradicts my definition of suspense. Why would the audience be wondering what is going to happen next if they’ve been told something the characters haven’t, like the fact that a bomb is going to go off?

If you reflect on this a little, though, it becomes clear. The audience may know a bomb is going to go off, are shouting, hoping the characters get up and walk away, but they don’t know if the characters will escape.

With that understanding of suspense, I’ll leave you with a final question.

How would you feel if you could tell a story that had your audience shouting at your character, hoping he or she will use your product before it’s too late?

Source article

8 Steps To Better Social Media Marketing

8 Steps To Better Social Media Marketing

Original article published on prdaily.com by Robby Brumberg on July 20th, 2017

It’s one thing to be on social media; it’s quite another to be good at it.

Here to help in this confusing cyber quest are the people of Digital Marketing Philippines, who’ve created an infographic to improve your online messaging. 

They offer eight tips to keep your footing in the shifting sands of social media marketing.

The infographic’s first bit of advice is to “go deep, not broad” by focusing your efforts on no more than three platforms at a time. 

As you cultivate an audience, you’ll see where your message resonates and where you get crickets.

Don’t forget to explore niche sites as well (the graphic mentions Wayn to reach travel and tourism people and Etsy to find more artistic types)—you might find your most avid fans there.

As for rising above the competitive din, the graphic recommends using influencers and video to amplify your message. 

The infographic cites a survey that found “84 percent of consumers said they were convinced to make a purchase after viewing a brand’s video.” 

You’d be hard pressed to find a social media platform not banking on video as the future of content marketing.

Digital Marketing Philippines also advises optimizing Facebook ads to reach your most likely prospects, taking bold steps to expand your audience and varying content formats to avoid becoming white noise.

They conclude with a call to build genuine relationships with your audience, along with a reminder to stay patient. 

Social media success is primarily about consistency and perseverance.

Take a gander at the graphic below to ensure your social media strategy is on point.

Source article

364 SECONDS OF GROWTH HACKING BUSINESS | DAILYVEE 266

6 Tricks To Be A Social Media Pro

Top 10 - Most Epic Inspirational Speeches

Some Do's and Don'ts of Social Media

How to Build a Sustainable Social Marketing Strategy [Infographic]

How to Build a Sustainable Social Marketing Strategy [Infographic]

By the time you figure out what works, it doesn’t.

That’s social media for you – a constantly changing frontier where “best practices” are best because they’re unique and interesting, standing out from the crowd. They challenge the status quo, suggesting a new and better way of engaging with an audience.

And then a bunch of other people figure out how to do the same thing.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re able to learn some core best practices, you can apply your skills to whatever social trend-of-the-day may come along. Some things, like authenticity and responsiveness, will never go out of style.

BUILD A BETTER SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY

A new infographic from Yeager Marketing shares some timeless advice for building a better social marketing strategy. (Which – by the way – is worth it.)  Did you know, for example…

• 6 hours of social media management per week = 66% increase in lead generation and 61% improvement in search engine rankings.

That’s less than a fifth of a full-time employee, yet those are results that many businesses would gladly hire someone to do for 15 hours a week if it drove the same results.

MAXIMIZE YOUR EFFORTS ON SOCIAL

If you’re looking to maximize your efforts, squeezing the most from those six hours a week, here’s what you need to know:

• 80% of your audience will read your title - But only 20% will read your content. There are two ways of approaching this statistic. Glass half-empty: “That’s really disappointing.” Glass half-full: “Oh, so I only have to come up with an awesome title?” The optimistic – and strategic – approach may be writing great titles and getting wide distribution. Of course, you still need solid content to back it. But by putting extra effort into the title, you can widen your reach significantly.

• 43% of people want more video content from marketers - Not a videographer? You don’t have to be. 92% of marketers are making videos with the assets they already have. (Also, 90 seconds is the optimum length time for video engagement on Facebook; you don’t have to be Hitchcock.)

• Put an emphasis on visual content - We want your content – not you – to do the heavy lifting. So, instead of sinking tremendous effort into writing, put it into a visual instead. After all, visual content is shared 40x more than text alone.

• In B2B? Use infographics - Infographics are shared 3x more often on social than any other B2B content. 

• Avoid clickbait titles - Lastly, remember that you’re working hard to earn trust, so, avoid clickbait titles that overpromise and under-deliver. You don’t want to lose your hard-earned credibility with a false title or two.

Check out the infographic below to learn more.

Source article originally published on June 29th 2017 by Bob Hutchins on buzzplant.com

Generations Throughout History

Seven steps to plan & manage your affiliate marketing campaigns

Wow. With affiliate marketing I can get more than 12x return for every cent I pay a publisher? Now that’s what I call ROI. Show me where I sign. 

Stop. Breathe. If you just rush off and join any old affiliate network without due preparation chances are you’re going to be disappointed.

The stat above is from the IAB OPM study (April 2017), which is one of several highlighted in my introduction to affiliate marketing, a tactic that not only delivers good ROI, but can be considerably better at driving ecommerce sales, subscriptions and other conversions than display ads.

But not every affiliate marketing program will deliver the same return on investment and not all those sales will be incremental.

A survey by Viglink (May 2017) of US affiliate marketers found that 27% of merchants said their affiliate marketing revenue did not meet expectations and 64% of publishers said the same. 

The survey didn’t explore why affiliate marketing failed to deliver on expectations, but it’s worth a wager that the merchants are partly to blame, both for their own disappointment and that of their affiliates.

Like anything in digital, a successful affiliate marketing program is based on careful planning, research, strategy and management. 

Whether the mission is to improve ecommerce sales, customer registrations, trials or downloads, for immediate or long-term impact, the affiliate advertiser must:

1. Establish the goals of the program.
2. Decide on the right profile of affiliate to deliver the program.
3. Decide how you will reward different types of affiliate.
4. Make sure the most deserving affiliates get paid accordingly.
5. Create content suitable for each affiliate.
6. Put someone in charge of approaching affiliates and reviewing applications and managing relationships.
7. Optimize your website to convert the new traffic when it arrives.

1. Establish affiliate marketing program goals

An affiliate marketing program is made up from a balanced mix of affiliate partners. Setting clear goals for what the program will achieve will help you identify the particular affiliates and types of affiliate you wish to recruit.

Short-term or long-term?

Is there an immediate short-term goal, such as creating hype and momentum for a new product or shifting some slow-moving stock as the end of the quarter or season approaches? Then maybe a big-bang incentive campaign is the right choice.

Or is this a long-term play to gradually recruit affiliates that will help you launch into a new geography or gradually expand your customer base and revenues over years? Then you need to partner with the sites to which shoppers continually return to for advice, reviews and ideas.

Jules Bazley, vice president, commercial development (EU), CJ Affiliate explains:

There are specific types of affiliate publishers that retailers find work best for them, usually this comes down to specific business interests and strategy. If a retail brand is looking for a high volume and a quick turn-around, then the obvious choice are vouchers and cashback sites. That’s a meaningful way of generating sales.

However those looking to create more long-term value from affiliate may be better off looking at mid-tier partnerships such as content publishers. Typically, CJ’s retail advertisers work with a broad mix of publishers to give them a custom ratio of affiliate publisher types, generating both fast turn-around and long-term gain.

Who is the target customer?

Are you recruiting new ones or retaining and selling more to existing ones? Are you aiming to win a financial, energy, telecoms etc. customer from a competitor?

Think about how they shop, what sites they read and emails they subscribe to. Pick affiliates that specialise in your business niche and those that attract your target customer. 

What problem are you trying to solve?

Are too few visitors coming to your site or are you failing to convert the visitors into customers? Would retargeting via affiliates help reduce the worrying number of abandoned carts?

Is this an investment for future sales and loyalty?

Do you want people to sign-up for a trial service or receive a free sample? Is the goal to increase sign-ups for your email newsletter or drive downloads of a mobile app?

2. Decide on the right profile of affiliates to deliver the campaign

Affiliate marketing has historically been dominated by so-called incentive affiliates (e.g. cashback sites). They have become popular with value-conscious consumers and with businesses that wish to drive quick results.

The IAB UK Consumer Insights Survey (February 2017) found that in the last six months 

43% of shoppers had visited a comparison shopping site; 

36% entered a competition; 26% had signed up for a newsletter; 

25% visited a voucher code site; 

23% visited a loyalty site; 

20% had consulted a subject expert website; 

17% had visited cashback websites; 

16% had visited an independent blog site.

However, it is unlikely that incentive sites are the only sites that consumers will visit on the path to purchase. 

They may not be the most useful to either the consumer or the advertiser and a program mix that is over-weighted with incentive sites may mask the value of and divert rewards from other affiliates.

So what might a balanced affiliate marketing program look like for an ecommerce merchant? Evan Weber, CEO, Experience Advertising, a Florida based affiliate agency, explains:

1. Relevant websites in the merchant’s niche. These provide a true upside and a source of new customer acquisition.
2. Bloggers offer similar benefits as relevant websites. They can do product reviews and help with product announcements.
3. Conversion affiliates that help websites increase conversions and remarket to departing customers, such as SaleCycle.com or ReachDynamics.com.
4. Content monetization affiliates that insert merchant links on keywords in relevant content on participating blogs and news sites, e.g. VigLink.com or SkimLinks.com.
5. Incentive affiliates, including cashback and loyalty portals, with membership bases that pay or reward their users a cashback percentage of each sale they purchase through the portal’s links. US examples: eBates.com, HooplaDoopla.com. UK examples: Quidco.com.
6. Email Marketing – including the advertiser’s creative within the targeted emails of affiliate partners and dedicated email publishers. Affiliate gets paid on any sales or leads that result.

User research will help identify the publishers that are popular with your customers or potential customers. Web analytics tools are useful, but will only show the sites which the user visited directly before your own.

In addition to the news and blog sites that populate every niche, some sectors have spawned their own specialist affiliates.

The fashion business has a number of so-called shopping discovery engines (SDEs) which allow visitors to search for fashion products by style or colour across number of outlets. 

Shopstyle (recently acquired by eBates) for example, claims to have delivered $1 billion in ecommerce revenues to a network of 1,500 retail partners. 

Other SDEs include Polyvore and Lyst in the US and Snap Fashion in the UK.

In sectors such as finance, insurance, utilities and telecoms, specialist aggregator / comparison sites, such as the UK’s Comparethemarket.com, MoneySuperMarket and uSwitch drive a large share of volume of typical affiliate programs, reports Aftab Aslam, head of client development (UK&I), Tradedoubler.

The portfolio of affiliates is a very important consideration when choosing an affiliate network. Publishers with an established affiliate business are likely to work with particular affiliate networks and may be reluctant to join another to work with you. 

Request a list of affiliate members that are relevant to your business from each network.

A quick way to find out if your target publisher a) uses an affiliate network b) which particular network is to search on a tool such as SimlarTech or BuiltWith. 

It’s not fool proof, but faster than a search for buy-now links, or affiliate advertiser information on the publisher website.

3. Decide how you will reward different types of affiliate.

It is important to determine which sites play the most valuable role in influencing the purchase decision and decide whether they should be offered a higher incentive to reward them or stop them working with a competitor.

Affiliate fees vary incredibly. Evan Weber says it’s common for retailers to pay 5-15% in percentage of sales, but in some industries it’s much more. In web hosting the affiliate may take 100% of the first year’s fee. 

Similarly, cost per lead (CPL) can range from $5 to $100. For example, in the US a health insurer might pay $20-50 per lead.

Retailers commonly reward affiliates differently. Some retailers have varied rates for distinct product types. Amazon, for example, which operates the largest affiliate network in the world, pays 0% for wine, 3% for toys or 8% for Amazon Kindle devices, as can be seen on its Amazon rate card pictured below. Until March 2017 Amazon paid affiliates more if they sold more product.

Other retailers have varied rates for different types of affiliate. The ASOS UK affiliate program (AWIN affiliate network) pays up to 5% commission, but pays cashback and loyalty partners “0% commission for existing customers and 10% for new customers” and pays voucher-code partners 3%.

4. Make sure the most deserving affiliates get paid

Traditionally, affiliates are paid on a last click basis, which means the last site visited receives the commission. 

So if the customer’s last port of call was to check an offer on a cashback site, then any previously visited affiliate, no matter how influential to the customer, will receive nothing.

This may help to explain why Viglink finds that 64% of publishers are dissatisfied with the results of affiliate marketing.

Discuss with your affiliate network if it is possible to a) track all customer interactions with affiliates and b) if it is possible to reward different partners on a shared revenue model.

Karl Wood, senior manager, network development, Rakuten Marketing Affiliate Network:

The latest trend is to split out commission based on the affiliates’ contribution to a sale using attribution. Our insights and attribution platform helps retailers re-evaluate the significance of upper funnel contributors such as bloggers and influencers and redefining at what stage of the consumer journey an acquisition is entitled to a commission and ensure this is identified and rewarded.

5. Create and provide content suitable for each affiliate

Hopefully the message is getting through that balanced affiliate programs should use a variety of publisher types.

The problem is different publishers will have distinctive content requirements. 

Merchants may need to produce logos, buttons, images, banner ads in appropriates sizes and formats, and make available product descriptions, and text in different lengths and styles, up-to-date pricing and offers and multimedia content, such as videos.

Depending on the publisher requirements these will be provided through product feeds, APIs or via download from the merchant or affiliate network.

This means merchants must have the creative capability in-house or outsource to an agency.

Tradedoubler's Aftab Aslam:

Content requirements depend on the environment. An incentive site is restrictive, but the text needs to be offer led, or compelling to cater for that audience. Where content restrictions aren’t at play, then the text needs to be informative, highlight benefits or amplify any offer-led messaging.

Having an up-to-date, robust product feed is a must for any multi-product advertiser. Compliance and accuracy of content is a big consideration, both affiliates and brands need to ensure information is both relevant and updated for the end consumer.

It’s important to move away from a one-size fits all messaging approach, and tailor content for the affiliate site in question. This requires methodical planning, but ultimately the rewards are greater.

6. Put someone in charge of managing relationships

Affiliate programs do not run themselves. Simply joining a network with an attractive portfolio of publishers does not guarantee that many (or any) will instantly start promoting your products and services.

Finding, recruiting and managing publishers requires careful research, often some wooing and deal making. Some companies have a dedicated affiliate manager(s), others will work with an affiliate agency, or use the in-house agency at the network.

Jules Bazley says "Advertisers work in different ways, but most networks provide both ‘self-service’ and ‘managed’ programmes. The industry is very much relationship driven, so having someone with good contacts and experience working with affiliates is key to success."

An application form to partner with the fashion shopping discovery engine ShopStyle.

7. Make sure the website is optimized for conversion

Lack of traffic and on-site conversions should be helped by recruiting affiliates, but not if the fault lies with the website itself. 

It doesn’t matter how many prospects the affiliate sends if there are problems with usability, e.g. customers can’t find what they are looking for or links don’t work; or the user experience is poor, e.g. they need to fill our lengthy forms.

Evan Weber:

Retailers need to take their site through a process called conversion rate optimization before launching their affiliate program. This is a series of website tweaks, improvements, and tools that help to improve the overall click to sale rate on the website.

Affiliates need to earn conversions from the traffic they are driving to the merchant’s website. If they don’t make what they expect, they may become frustrated that you invited them to promote your products and their efforts didn’t create income

Source article published on 4th July 2017 by Andy Favell on econsultancy.com