Content is an incredibly powerful integrated marketing tool. Among other things, content can:
cultivate relationships
increase brand trust and credibility
build links and domain authority
build your audience and your reach
grow your community
convert the right customers
If you're using content to accomplish these types of goals for your business, you're on the right track. But keep in mind that everything you write should serve a higher purpose. It's not about creating content just to check it off your list of things to do for your marketing. It's about using content to make a difference for your business.
Stepping into big content
Until recently, all of the content we had created for our brand at Mack Web Solutions had been blog posts, infographics, and slide decks. A few weeks ago we released the biggest piece of content we'd ever written: a 147 page guide on how to build online communities.
What follows is an account of the five major steps we took to release this sucker, what we learned, and the higher purpose this big content has served in our company.
My intention with this post is not to promote our guide. Rather, it's to document the strategic stages we executed on our first path to big content in hopes of inspiring and informing your own similar journeys.
To date, we've had nearly 1,900 downloads and many other indicators of success. It has been quite the effort to pull all of this together. Here's the strategic tips I'd like to share and a little about how the story goes.
Strategic big content step #1: Figure out the who

If you're thinking about investing in big content, definitely figure out the why, but also the who. We wanted our guide to be an accurate representation of the effort required to actually build a community.
We knew that at 147 pages not everyone was going to be willing to put in the work to read it. And that's OK. We built it for the people who are. They're the ones who we knew would put it to use.
And so it began
When I was at MozCon 2012, I had breakfast with Jon Henshaw, the co-founder of Raven Tools. I told Jon I was interested in speaking at conferences and wondered how I would begin to build a name for myself and my company in the industry. Jon's advice was to build a tool and give it away for free.
It took several months before I had any even remotely clever idea that could be developed into a useful tool. I heard the word "tool" and started thinking way too literally. I was trying to come up with an SEO-type tool. Something that would need to be programmed and developed like an app or a plugin. Although that may come in another stage in our company, that just wasn't going to work with our existing resources. Our tool needed to be something that naturally resonated with what we did, and it also needed to be something we were really passionate about, because we would be spending the next eight months working on it.
Once I thought about it that way, it was kind of a lightbulb moment. The one thing we both do and love the most is building online communities. What better way to help other people and businesses than to develop a "tool" that would help them build their communities?
As I discussed the idea with the team, we knew that if we wanted this tool to really work, that we had to follow the advice we had been giving businesses all along: It couldn't be about us and what we wanted; it needed to be about our community and what they needed.
Going for it

We decided to redefine "tool" as "guide" and write one as our first piece of big content because:
We wanted to fill a need
 Before we decided to create a community building guide, we did some research and discovered there wasn't another resource like it. What we were planning on building would add unique value to the community building knowledge that was already out there. Plus, with the pace at which the SEO industry evolves, we knew it would be something that would serve SEOs, marketers, agencies, and businesses who were trying to keep up with the evolution and think beyond keywords and Google's algorithms.
We wanted to drive a movement
 Not only did we want to begin establishing our company as a leader in the industry, but we wanted to begin changing the way companies look at and value marketing. 
Our philosophy is that marketing efforts most certainly can accomplish company-wide goals and bring in revenue. But they can also change the way you run your business and engage with and cultivate a community of lifelong customers. We thought this guide would be a baby step in that direction.
We wanted to provide an experience 
Not only did we want to have a strong resource that would assist us in moving potential clients further down the funnel, but we also wanted this resource to be something that indirectly told the story of what it's like to work with us. We wanted this guide to make a statement about our expertise, personality, quality of product, drive, level of service, and commitment to helping businesses reach their goals.
So who is your who? If you're thinking about big content, whom do you really want to get your message in front of? Whom do you really want to connect with? What are your values and philosophies and how can you communicate that in your big content so that you're attracting the right audience with your efforts?
Strategic big content step #2: Focus on relationships
I'd definitely recommend using LaunchRock in your pre-planning efforts for big content, but even more important would be to build relationships. Not just for the sake of getting more people engaged with your big content, but to make some valuable friends.
I didn't realize the power of this until the guide had launched.
The whole time we were building the guide, we were focusing on growing the email list via LaunchRock. Every blog post we wrote, every conference I spoke at, every chance we had we were asking people to go sign up for our guide. And in the end, we had 343 people who chose to be on that list. That's really great for our first go at this, and for the size of our community, but we certainly were hoping for a bigger splash.
What made the most difference in the reach of the guide wasn't necessarily the people on the email list. It was the people we had built relationships with during the 8 months leading up to its launch. So, instead of 343 people downloading the guide in the first week of the launch, we had more than 1,200.
It was really humbling to watch the effect of relationships on social media. The amplification of your efforts can be pretty remarkable if you've made the effort to actually care about people and be genuinely interested in what they're doing (rather than always working on furthering your own cause). There's no scientific way we can quantify this, but I know it's made an enormous difference in the guide's success.
Yes or no

So when we had decided on a guide, we took Distilled's lead on their pre-outreach efforts with DistilledU and built a LaunchRock page. Essentially, the purpose of LaunchRock is to gauge interest, but also to build an email list that becomes your first marketing audience once your product is finished. For this project, the team decided that if we received 100 signups it would be worth building.
Within the first few weeks, we hit our mark, so it was a go. We then had eight months to build the guide and continue building that list. During the first six months we didn't do a whole lot to build our list other than referring to the guide indirectly in blog posts, talking about it on social media, and telling people about it at conferences.
What really gave us the boost was our efforts in the final two months leading up to the launch and then once the guide was actually here.
It takes a village
Initially we had set a soft deadline for completion of the guide for the end of summer or early fall. After we put the LaunchRock page up, we created an outline and general schedule for completion, but then let it sit untouched for a couple months. It became pretty clear in the beginning that if we never set a hard deadline, this thing would never see the light of day. 

So in June when we were working through strategic operations and setting company-wide goals, we created a Mack Web Branding initiative and set a hard date for launch on October 15. Setting this goal helped us to get a big picture strategy down, since there was a lot more to do than simply write the guide.
We had a team of six to put this whole thing together, but we also had client work to take care of and a company to grow. So we assigned chunks of the project to each person on the team in order to start making some progress.
The writing chunk

We knew that Courtney (the voice of our brand and our lead content strategist) would do the majority of the writing and compile the first draft of the guide. But we also knew that I had to supply her with the actual bones. So Courtney and I worked together on an outline and agreed to a collaboration schedule.
Courtney lives in Chicago so we made arrangements to have our meetings and communication via email, chat, and G+ hangouts. For the first six months, Courtney and I would check in every few weeks on progress. It really wasn't until the last 60 days that we would be meeting daily in order to ensure we were going to make our deadline.
(Sounds silly, but we also gave the guide a nickname. You'll have to read it to get the full story, but when the project started, we didn't have a title and we all kept calling it different things. So Courtney came up with the pet name, deemed him a llama, and from then on we affectionately referred to the guide as Arthur).
The design chunk
Natalie, our designer, would take on the design portion of the guide. Because Nat wouldn't be able to design the actual meat of the guide until it was written, she worked on cover pages, section dividers, and promotional art for LaunchRock, social, email marketing, and the website.
The (pre and post) promotion chunk
The rest of the team was assigned to pre- and post-launch promotional stuff, including the re-messaging and re-designing of our website. Things like blog posts, social, video, and email marketing were scheduled and assigned to the team.
There's no way that any of our big content efforts would have come together if we didn't have the entire team working together to make it happen. We also never would have made as much of an impact, so soon after its launch, had we not built credibility with friends in the industry. In the end, it's the latter that means more and will help carry a company further than one piece of big content.
Strategic big content step #3: Get to that tiny little resting place between done and perfect
I won't deny that I'm a bit of an over-achieving perfectionist and I certainly drive hard. I really have to work on exercising the just ship it mentality that many companies embrace. That said, there definitely is something to be said about putting in the extra effort to do what's right for the customer.
We certainly could have left the guide in its original, first-draft, narrative form. And I'm sure people would have loved it all the same. But there would have been a lot more people who didn't bother to read it.
The extra time we spent on structure, formatting, and design really helped us to improve the user experience and show our readers that they mattered to us. We didn't want the guide to be stuck on a hard drive and forgotten. We wanted it to be used, applied, iterated, and re-worked. And we knew that wasn't going to happen in its original state.
This was definitely one of those times where I'm glad we didn't just ship it. I'm proud of the team for thinking about what would make it better for our readers and making the decision to put in the extra work to make it a better experience.
Addressing hurdles
After we had all the pieces assigned to the team, I worked with Courtney to get her all the bones of the guide. Because I had already written and spoken a great deal about building community on the Moz blog and at conferences, Courtney was able to take those bits and match it to the outline. After she wrote each chapter, I would review and provide feedback. Sounds like a brilliant plan, but as we got closer to our deadline, we ran into some problems.
Stuff was evolving
As Courtney was putting together the first draft of the guide, we were learning a lot as a company. So even though we were technically on schedule with the parts that Courtney had written, by the time I had reviewed the most important part of the guide (the how), it was missing some pretty important pieces that I hadn't yet written or spoken about. Things that we had discovered to be integral to community building and had learned from experimentation with our company and with our clients.
We didn't want to release a guide that was outdated as soon as it hit the streets, so just one month before the guide was to launch, we went back to the drawing board in a couple places and did what it took to get those more current pieces incorporated into the guide.
We figured this was going to set us back a bit, but not as much as the structural issues we discovered just weeks before launch.
The first draft was a narrative, not a guide
As Courtney and I worked back and forth with the first draft of the guide, we were really focused on getting the pieces in place which meant we hadn't paid much attention to the actual shape of the guide and how it would read.
When the team finally read the finished first draft, we all agreed that Courtney had done an amazing job of putting the Mack Web voice to the information in the guide. The problem was that the whole thing read as a narrative instead of a guide. All of the knowledge and pieces were there, but it lacked the actual structure that makes the "how-to" of a guide. Essentially there was no consistent format that would make it easy for the reader to digest and actually apply the information.
At this point, we were 13 days away from launch. I talked with the team and we all agreed that we needed to make the necessary changes to provide a better UX. But in order to not completely re-write the entire guide, we decided that I would provide Courtney with a framework that she could apply in retrospect.
Because time was scarce and we were on such a tight turn around, Courtney and I would piggy-back. For days, as soon as she finished a section, I would go in and do any final edits and get the approved draft over to Natalie to style. We'd communicate all of this through chat:
Courtney, Nat, and I didn't sleep much in the weeks prior to launch. Re-structuring the guide for UX was a huge feat at that stage in the game. I'm really glad we pulled it off and I'm really glad we put in the extra effort. Based on the feedback, I think our readers appreciated it as well.
Taking the extra time to improve your big content (or anything for that matter) so that your user will have a better experience isn't about perfection. It's about going the extra step because you know you should. That's a reflection on how much you care and who you are as a company. And for us, investing that time was really important.
Strategic big content step #4
Know when to take a break
Big content alone takes so much effort. Then you add all the pre and post promotion to it and you have quite the project. Creating this guide has been incredibly rewarding, but it also has put a tremendous amount of stress on our team and our company.
During the final weeks of getting the guide ready, we pushed incredibly hard. Many of us weren't sleeping or resting as much as we should have. We were working nights and weekends. And although we were all reminded to take breaks, none of us wanted to because we really just wanted to get the thing done.
So once we finally reached the finish line, the team scheduled a day to take a collective break and celebrate. We left the office and hit the trails. It was a well earned and much needed day.
This day was actually kind of a double victory for me personally. It's really difficult for me not to drive forward all the time. It takes a concerted effort for me to slow down and bask in our accomplishments. I've asked the team to be aware of this and they remind me when it's time to walk away for a bit.
Getting stuff done
We did all kinds of promotional stuff both leading up to and once the guide launched. Clearly our goal with all of our efforts was to build awareness and increase signups (and eventually downloads) to the guide. This is what we accomplished:
We redesigned our website 
I know, we're nuts. We were hoping the guide would drive a whole bunch of traffic to our website and our existing website didn't really say what we actually did. So, we hunkered down and re-designed and re-messaged all at the same time (and barely lived to tell the tale). 

We also redesigned the site so that we could effectively optimize a page on the website for the guide. We took Moz's lead on how they structured their Beginner's Guide to SEO so that it would be easy to access and build links to.
The day the guide launched, we had nearly 1,200 visits to our site.
And we also had the same amount of traffic driven the day the guide made the Moz Top 10 (at #8).
Based on the traffic we received, it was well worth our effort to redesign the site alongside the launch of our big content. Just as we built the guide to be a reflection of what our company was all about, we needed the website to mirror our priorities and personality. A disconnect between the product and the shop wouldn't have left a very good impression. Having our website, blog, social, and the guide completely aligned with design and messaging seems to have made a big difference in its success.
We created some videos and held a hangout
 For the final weeks leading up to launch, we used our blog to release weekly videos that communicated some key community building takeaways.
It was our first time with this medium, so lucky for us Tyler had some video background, and we also had Wistia guiding us through a great deal of the pre-planning process.
The videos were quite successful. We got some great engagement for all five of them. They were really fun to make and it really helped to give our audience a new look at who we were.
In addition to the videos, we also held a Google+ hangout with some of the best community managers in the search marketing industry. 

The video of the recorded hangout received over 3,300 views. G+ alone brought 36 new guide signups. But more than that, we established new relationships with some pretty great innovators in social and community.
Our pre-launch efforts with videos and the hangout really helped to boost LaunchRock signups. Prior to those efforts we had 245 signups. At launch we had 343.
We told our clients 
A few days before the launch, we told our existing clients what was going on (both with the website and the guide). It's easy to forget about the people who are already in the funnel. They might not care so much about the reading the guide itself since they've got us doing that work for them, but an accomplishment and milestone like this builds a whole lot of trust.


In addition to spreading the news with our existing clients, I also reached out to potential clients that we had been talking with. Sending personal emails sharing the guide actually helped to get meetings scheduled and move some of those leads further down the funnel.
We got into our community
 The day of the launch the entire team worked to answer tweets, emails, and questions. We made a little breakfast party out of it and it was actually kind of fun. We were all extremely happy to have the guide finally finished and in our readers' hands.
Throughout the weeks following the launch of the guide, Ayelet (our community manager) would look for people who had completed the guide and sent them a personal note from Arthur.
As you work on your big content, if at all possible, make sure you leave some padding and schedule in some breaks. Look for places where you can lighten your regular work load (I know I spent less time on social media during the month leading up to launch). Look for parts of the project that you can outsource and bring in some outside help. You certainly don't want to drive your company into the ground just to launch big content. So be thoughtful of the stress it may cause and do what you can to alleviate the pressure.
Strategic big content step #5
Leverage
There are a ton of ways to squeeze more out of the big content you've built. Think of it as a product that you can evolve into blog posts, case studies, or maybe even new tools. Asking your audience is the first step in determining the pieces of value that can spin out of your original creation.
Right now, we're listening to the reception. We're talking to people and asking them what they really thought. We're working on getting tangible feedback and real stories of application. These will be the seeds of what we do next.
Finally on the downhill
The week of the launch was the easy part. Of course there was a lot of excitement. It's in the weeks and months following the launch of big content that really count. Now that we made the effort, how can we squeeze the most value out of what we've already done?
So we've got some stuff planned. We're thinking it would be great to put together an HTML version that we would then update (just like Moz updates their SEO beginner's guide). That's a whole beast in itself, but we kind of knew that going into it. Generating the HTML version will also allow us to do any further structural work that we want to do for UX but didn't have time for in the PDF.
We're also thinking about doing some additional videos that will allow readers to work along with the guide itself. We can then address questions and challenges our readers have and create additional resources that would supplement the guide (and perhaps embed into the HTML version).
We'd also like to get some testimonials and further develop the landing page of the guide itself. We're hoping that we'll continue to build all kinds of links to that page, and if we do, it would most certainly be worth updating and adding more value through social proof and other community building resources.
We just want to make sure we get the most out of the investment we've made in big content. And that's what's so great about it. If you put in the strategic effort, it becomes an asset. It lives as evergreen content that will organically work for you for years to come.
Totally worth the ride
There are a lot of ways in which our big content continues to pay dividends. Hands down it has given us momentum to move forward and has provided quite the learning experience for our company. Our mistakes this time will lessen the pain next time (and perhaps our story will help you avoid the bruises altogether when it's your turn).
Big content has also been a source of pride for the whole team and in the whole team. Not to mention all the things we've already pointed out: brand awareness, reach, trust, credibility, relationships, authority, and links.
But while we're certainly not complaining about all of these benefits, they're just side effects.
The real reason we built the guideâ€"the real reason to put the work into big contentâ€"is that we wanted to further the mission of our company, which, in our case, is to help companies build better businesses by building their own communities. Lucky for us, our journey through big content has also made a really big difference in our own company
I'm hoping our story will inspire yours. What big content could you build to serve your company's higher purpose?
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Holy wow! Over the past two and half weeks we've gathered more than 2,500 responses from marketers across the globe for this year's Moz Industry Survey. We'd like to send a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's participated so far.
The thing is, we'd love to get at least 3,000 responses to insure we have a good set of data. We're planning on closing the survey next week though, so if you haven't taken it yet, please jump in there now (also, you don't want to miss out on the killer prizes do you?).
#ShareYourVoice
Yes, while it's super important for you to take the survey, it's also essential for you to help us get the word out as well. We'd love to get your help by tweeting, plussing, facebooking, and even vineing (yea, I'm just making stuff up now), to remind folks to get in there.
The other day, I had the crazy idea that I would make a vine of me singing, aka "Sharing my voice" and tweet it out with a link to the Industry Survey. I asked a few other folks to jump in as well, and what happened next was pretty amazing!
Pssst! And if you make one, use the #ShareYourVoice hashtag, and I'll add it to the page:
We'd love your help spreading the word as well. Would you create a video, image, or even just a tweet and get the word out?
Now, you didn't think we'd ask you to help out without showing a bit of data now would you? I thought it was interesting to see the salary range of folks who've taken the survey so far. Remember though that people across the globe have taken this and this isn't taking into account that someone making $30-40k in the US is different to someone making the same thing in another country.
Prizes
Don't forget we're giving away some great prizes as well! Cyrus laid it all out in the initial post, but here's the rundown again:
Grand Prize: Attend MozCon 2014 in Seattle Including flight, hotel, and lunch with an industry expert.
Two First Prizes: iPad 2
Ten Second Prizes: $100 Amazon.com gift cards
Well, what are you waiting for?
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On Friday, we travelled over from Oxford to London for the Content Marketing Show at Logan Hall. As always, Kelvin and the team did a great job putting on the event, which was host to an array of top content marketers and strategists. Below is a summary of the talks along with our own favourite takeaways from each of them, so even those naughty people that left before the end can catch up on what they missed!
Hannah Smith (@hannah_bo_banna) – Throwing S*** Against the Wall & Analysing What Sticks
Content with a purpose – All content you create needs to have a purpose: to entertain, educate, persuade or convert.
Blow people's minds – The content that you do create needs to aim to blow people's minds (for a brief internet-attention-span moment) enough for them to love it and want to share it.
Earn attention – You need to earn attention with every piece of content that you publish. People need to love your content, if they don't they won't share it. Even with permission, the user may not even see your content when you expect them to, for example, due to Gmail's new 'tabbed inbox' your user may not even be shown the content you've sent.). Your content needs to be shared by others, not just you.
Make goals -Each piece of content you produce needs a goal – what you create depends on what you specifically want to achieve.
Don't make it all about your brand - Your brand is not what you sell, it is how you sell it, meaning your content does not have to be about what you sell. Instead, focus on what your user loves/needs/wants.
Know your audience - You need to build a clear picture of your audience, ask questions and make your target users more real. Doing this can reveal the points of interest your content could approach in the entertain and educate categories, introducing people to your brand and earning that vital attention.
Failure is natural - Failure is a necessary part of the process. You need to throw content out there and see what sticks, learn what makes it (and similar content) stick, and what your brand's audience will latch on to.
Lauren Pope (@la_pope) – Why Content Marketing Needs Content Strategy
Know the difference – Content Marketing is creating valuable content with the aim of attracting and engaging a defined audience. Content Strategy is planning for the creation and governance of your useful and usable content.
Use them both - Content strategy gives you a formula for creating your excellent content time and time again; if you want to do content marketing, a content strategy gives you a framework for the process of its creation and promotion that will make it work
Patience - Implementing Content Strategy is hard; take it one step at a time until you get it right.
Jon Norris (@Jn_Norris) – A 1950s Approach To Content Strategy
Silos – Many software solutions work well in isolation but have limited interconnectivity.
Do what's best – If your software solutions aren't working for you, scrap them. In some cases a whiteboard may work best! It will also save you money!
Simon Banouby (@Banouby) – Twitter Tips from OptaJoe
Consistency – Consistency is key, especially if you have more than one account. Being consistent in your content, approach and tone helps to develop trust between you and your followers.
Be human – Be approachable, get involved in discussions, mention people in your tweets. This can be a good way to amplify your tweets and your twitter account, especially if you're being amplified by people who are active and well-known on social media channels.
Don't channel hop – Find what works best for your brand, and test and analyse what doesn't. While a channel may be very popular, if it isn't going to work for your brand there is no point using it.
Play the long game – Social media takes time; be patient.
Tom Elgar – Success, Failure and Making Content Work in the Long Term
Blog – 80% of businesses do not have an active blog (out of 525). 35% of the remaining 20% hadn't been updated for a long time. 18% did not know what Content Marketing was.
Use the community – If content is what you focus on, work closely with your client and try to create exceptional and specific content for the industry. If done correctly, your community will do your work for you.
Simon Kaplan – The GOV.UK Approach to Content
Needs – Consider that a user's needs may differ to your company's needs and produce your content appropriately.
Be Relevant – Only produce relevant content "Government should only do what Government can do".
No room for waffle – Using plain English isn't 'dumbing down', it's opening up Government info to everyone. Using jargon can lose users' trust.
Stick to guidelines – Creating a style guide and sticking to it can help to keep your content consistent; it can also be a good way of showing users how you've changed to benefit them.
Fergus Parker (@fergus_parker) – Trend Watch: 2014 and Beyond
Resonate – Connection will be king, as long as you can resonate. The fresher your ideas are, the better and more memorable they will be.
Context – Considering both audience context (where your user has come from and the environment they're in when viewing your content) and content context (timing and placement) will be vital.
Visual – 65% of the population are visual learners, so expect visual content to become more prominent.
Get mobile – 91% of mobile activity is social, utilise it!
Kieran Flanagan (@searchbrat) – Inbound Marketing; The Art of Not Sucking
Bad Reputation – Marketers have a bed reputation, why? Some of us create bad user experiences that frustrate people. We fail to personalise emails, send them generic copy, interrupt people in their normal activity and stop them from getting on with what they are doing.
Avoid it –
Understand – Understand your audience by creating personas each with their own reasons for coming to your site. You won't reach the right audience if you don't know what they want.
Be remarkable – Being remarkable is a mind-set; you need to create content that solves a pain point, adds value or simply entertains.
Promote – If you spend 10 hours creating a piece of content, spend 10 hours promoting it. Get the content to the right people and leverage a large audience: Optimise it for easy sharing, emailing etc. to increase your potential, audience and your reach – get your audience to do some work for you. Take the time to understand your audience and promote the value you create.
Sam Orams (@SamOrams) – An Idiot's Guide to Getting Content on the Telly
Prestige – There is still exclusivity about TV, which is why it's hard to get on it 0This is also why it is so valuable.
Content goes round – A lot of content will start online, go into print, then appear on TV. TV is now adapting to audiences and how they're viewing and consuming their content.
Use the news –Companies like Reuters have started spending time outreaching for new stories, if news = content then content =news.
Use a VNR – A Video News Release can be an excellent way to get to a broadcaster, but make sure it is done properly! Include video footage, images, sound bites, and interviews. Do not edit your footage though, the editor will pick and choose what they want. If your video is pre-edited they may reject it.
Kester Ford – Amplify or Die
Merging silos – There are three types of media: paid, earned and owned. However, these three silos are starting to merge. The results mean that you are competing against everyone.
Amplify – Social media is the best way to start amplifying; build relationships with tweeters, journalists, bloggers etc. as they can help to promote your content.
Pay for it – Paid content is always a good way to get your content out. Native advertising is effective because it serves relevant content to a site and it fits in with the site.
Title – Keep your titles between 60-110 characters. Any longer and it risks being cut off, any shorter and it may be too vague.
Target – What procedures and framework do you have to create content that targets the 'zero moment of truth'? Start with a Google search to see what the lay of the land is.
Be aware – You need to know about ZMOT and how content is fundamental to the idea of it. Content is key, but you also need a lot of people to manage it (a team) – PR, Social, Content Writers etc. As a result, it requires ownership.
Know them – Personas are imaginary people we use to form our content, they are often very complex, with very granular detail. People are often negative about personas as they can make your work more complicated.
Simplify – You need to know your target market. Use Google Analytics to look for important clues such as age, location and what devices they are viewing on. You need to understand their goals as well as your own so you can find the right balance between the two.
There are two types – Those dominated by different sides of the brain are different personas and this simplification can really help
Right hand side – Want direct content, imagery, emotion, rewards etc.
Left hand side – Want full content, usable advice, security and reassurance.
Pretend – Consider your product as a product on a shelf, why would a user choose your content over someone else's?
Sarah Howard (@SarahGHoward) – Don't Forget About Long Form Content
Time – Mobile technology means that we have actually have more time to consume content.
Strategy – Writing long form content reflects expertise and creates a bond with your users. Users will share it because it makes them look smarter. Long-form is your friend; it can help your short-form and works as part of a wider content strategy.
Have a reason – Write with a reason and ensure you do your research and that you have enough to say.
It's not all about text – Consider the design, you t need to focus on more than just the text. Create a good user experience.
Use data – When making your decisions, use data you have collected such as trends and bounce rates.
Get it right – Tap into expertise and make sure what you have written is factually correct, as users that you are writing for will see through it and pick up on your errors.
Jo Petty (@joapet) – The Do's and Don'ts of Hiring a Freelancer
Shop around – Finding a freelancer is like shopping, look around to find the best for you. Networking is a great way to find freelancers.
Help them help you – Give the freelancer all the information you have so that they can do a good job, if you withhold information or don't give them enough they will not be able to do the work to a required standard. Ensure you both have a clear plan in place so that you both know what you want to get from the piece.
Give back – Give them feedback and make sure you pay them (obviously!).
James Carson (@mrjamescarson) – Content Strategy Process – from End to End in 15 minutes
Target – Ensure your content is targeted and that you know your audience, or else your effort will be wasted.
Use Layers – Content works better with layers – analytics, site structure, content and distribution. These layers help as a content strategy:
Use analytics to find out where your users go online and what they like. Find all the keyword data you can.
Ensure you have a logical site structure that your content will be going into and make sure your existing content is well-formatted.
Write 'by the book' headlines that are formatted well. Ensure you have a good workflow organisation, it will help track what you are publishing and when.
Build networks! Stop just blogging and start using alternate methods of distribution. Video is an extremely distributable asset and spawns multiple assets (although it can be expensive). However, it can also be reused, a lot!
For James's talk, we would highly recommend looking at his slideshare because, as the title suggests, it was a quick and concise session! You might also want to keep an eye on the Content Marketing Website as they will be posting videos from the event soon!
If you want to know more about the show check out the official website, follow the show on Twitter, @ContentMkgShow, or keep up to date with @kelvinnewman.
Did you go to the show? If so, what were your favourite talks? Let us know in the comments below, tweet us at @whitedotnet or tweet me @robertjmcgill. We’ll be there again for the next one, so if you go along make sure to come and say hi and talk content with us!
There have always been bullies among us, and it's worth taking a moment to see how our culture has built a role for them to be useful heroes. Taught or not, bullying keeps showing up.
We often (for a while) view bullies as powerful or brave or important--as long as they are our bullies. Richie Incognito, Chris Christie, Rob Ford—each has a long list of supporters, people who have defended a particular bully as a passionate man of the people, as doing their job, as the visceral anti-elite, winning a battle that's worth fighting for.
At some level, it makes sense to have a bully on your side. If you're going to war, the thinking goes, who better to represent you than someone intent on belittling and demeaning the other side?
If it's us against them, the bully who represents 'us' is our hero.
Given the millenia that primates (and other species) have thrived on the idea of bullying, where's the problem? As long as our bully is stronger than their bully, it seems as though we're in good shape...
But what happens with the economy changes (and the culture along with it)? The zero-sum game of world domination or even of the gridiron seems to reward the selfish, war-like domination that the bully embraces. But in the connection economy, the world of our future, it's pretty clear that we're not playing a zero sum game, and the hawkish win-at-all-costs behavior of the bully is actually a significant cost, not an asset.
Bumbling Toronto mayor Rob Ford has put on quite a show for his core constituency, but along the way, has alienated the people he needed to work with. Instead of weaving a future based on productivity and innovation, he's created momentary excitement sure to be followed by plenty of downsides as his city works to regain its forward momentum.
The management of the Miami Dolphins initially encouraged Richie Incognito to "toughen up" one of their players, as if bullying serves a productive purpose within an organization. As they've learned, it doesn't work.
The bully might be able to thrill the crowd with some juicy behavior, but the thrill wears off quicker than ever. And the person who just got bullied may never contribute as much as he is capable of.
In your organization, there are no doubt bullies who can win their point, increase their power and defeat their enemies. But are they creating real value for the organization as a whole? In an economy based on trust and connection, how does the inevitable fraying that the bully causes lead to a positive outcome for the long haul?
I don't think we can make the bullying impuse disappear. But it's pretty clear we can create organizations that don't tolerate it, creating an environment where the bully is never the hero. We probably ought to try.
It used to be the only consumption that took place on Thanksgiving happened around the dinner table. But retailers are changing the game. Target (TGT) announced Monday that it will open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, Best Buy (BBY) announced Friday that it will open at 6 p.m., and Kmart (SHLD) announced last week that it will open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving and not close until 11 p.m. on Black Friday. They're some of the dozens of other retailers, including Macy's (M) and Walmart (WMT) that over the past few years have chosen to open on Thanksgiving. The message is clear: Turkey Day is now just another shopping day.
According to data from comScore, online spending on Thanksgiving Day increased 32% from 2011 to 2012 (and over the past five years has increased 132%). Meanwhile Black Friday online spending increased just 28% over last year and 96% over the past five years and Cyber Monday spending increased 17% over last year and 100% over five years. "Thanksgiving has become a marquee day for online shopping," says Keith Mercier, associate partner with IBM's Retail Center of Competence.
Cyber Monday
In case you re not familiar with the term Cyber Monday, Wikipedia explains:
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. The term "Cyber Monday" was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".
Cyber Monday has become an international marketing term used by online retailers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Chile, Colombia, and Japan.
Black Friday Becomes Black Thursday
Macy's says the doors will be unlocked "in response to interest from customers who prefer to start their shopping early." Target said the move to open its doors at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving gives its shoppers "easier-than ever access to Black Friday doorbuster deals."
More Temporary Part-Time Jobs
As Black Friday morphs into Black Thursday, one can only wonder where the silliness stops. In the meantime, expanded store hours means more seasonal, low-wage, part-time jobs, inflating the monthly jobs reports.
Hooray!
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
The US post office was contemplating stopping Saturday delivery to reduce costs. Instead, the post office has gone the other way, at least for packages.
Giant online retailer Amazon.com Inc. is turning up the heat on rivals this holiday season and beyond under a new deal with the U.S. Postal Service for delivering packages on Sundays.
Starting this week, the postal service will bring Amazon packages on Sundays to shoppers' doors in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas at no extra charge. Next year, it plans to roll out year-round Sunday delivery to Dallas, New Orleans, Phoenix and other cities.
To pull off Sunday delivery for Amazon, the postal service plans to use its flexible scheduling of employees, Brennan said. It doesn't plan to add employees, she said.
Members of Amazon's Prime program have free two-day shipping and, under the new deal, can order items Friday and receive them Sunday. Customers without Prime will pay the standard shipping costs associated with business day delivery.
As consumers increasingly move online to shop, retailers are finding that their shipping policies can be a bellwether of customer loyalty. Though not necessarily offering Sunday delivery, many are testing same-day service.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is testing same-day delivery service in northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Denver and the San Francisco and San Jose region. Last month, EBay Inc. agreed to acquire Shutl, a London start-up that uses a network of same-day couriers to deliver goods ordered online in hours, even minutes.
In March, Google Inc. said it would test a same-day delivery service called Google Shopping Express for online purchases in the Bay Area. Specialty sporting goods store Sport Chalet Inc. began offering a similar service in April.
But adding Sunday service takes the competition to a new level.
Why Go to the Mall?
Competition favors those with a vast array of merchandise and a way to deliver it quickly. Amazon and Walmart are in that class.
If you know what you want, or find what you want online, why go to the mall?
The answer seems to be tradition, or perhaps just to get out of the house. And for some, the walk in the mall is about the only exercise they get.
If you live in the Bay Area, you might be relaxing at home in your pajamas ordering all sorts of goodies and waiting until Google drops it off within the same day. If you haven't heard, the tech giant is making life all that more instantly gratifying by expanding its same-day delivery service. Google is by no means the only company offering this kind of service, but it's Google, so this makes it kind of a big deal.
For now, people in the Bay Area can order products from businesses like Walgreens, Nob Hill Foods, Staples, Blue Bottle Coffee, Target and Palo Alto Sport Shop and Toy World and have everything shipped by Google for $5. If this works out for Google, expect the following 6 companies to expand their same-day delivery service.
6. Wal-Mart
The behemoth launched its own same-day delivery service just in time to the holiday season in 2012. Costumers can order products from Wal-Mart and have them delivered to their home for between $7 and $10. The service is available in northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Denver and the San Jose-San Francisco-area.
5. Shutl
Shutl was a startup that originated in the UK and is similar to Google's service, meaning you shop online and Shutl handles the delivery. The company claims that they're "the world's fastest, most convenient and best-loved same-day and same-hour delivery service." Shutl is only available in Manhatten, but there are plans to expand to San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, Montreal and Toronto.
4. eBay
The auction giant launched its delivery service, eBay Now, last year and charges $5 per store. What makes eBay's service standout, besides the one-hour delivery time, is that the company focuses on local stores, however, you can still get stuff from major retailers. eBay Now is available in San Francisco and New York.
3. TaskRabbit
TaskRabbit was designed specifically for people who don't have the time, or capability, to do their shopping. But, this service offers so much more than just having your groceries brought home. Businesses can use TaskRabbit to order and have supplies delivered to the office. There's also the ability to find house-cleaners or handymen to do those things around the house that you just can't get to.
2. Amazon
Amazon are no strangers to same-day delivery service. The online shopping titan has offered Local Express Delivery Option since 2009 and can be found in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Bernardino Area, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The service costs $8.99 plus plus 99 cents an item.
1. Postmates
This startup takes the same-day delivery service to a whole new level. For example, after placing an order, you're sent a photo and bio of your delivery person, aka you 'Postmate'. Postmates also will inform you if a product is right around the corner, because that would be pointless for everyone, and they'll also hook you up with all kinds of stores and restaurants in your neighborhood via Foursquare.
Is Same-Day Delivery What People Want?
In most cases it's not same-day delivery that people want, but rather, free-delivery and lower prices.
According to a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, only 9% of the 1,500 U.S. consumers surveyed "cited same-day delivery as a top factor that would improve their online shopping experience, while 74% cited free delivery and 50% cited lower prices." With the exception of some city dwellers with a little extra cash, same-day service isn't a priority.
Who Is the Winner?
Competition is here, on multiple levels. Companies that offer the fastest deliveries at the lowest cost will have a huge advantage over their competition.
The winner is the consumer who gets faster service at cheaper prices. The loser is big-box retailers with huge shopping areas with little traffic.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
The share of Japanese households with no financial assets rose to a record as falling incomes forced people to dig into their savings, highlighting the potential for widening disparities under Abenomics.
The proportion reached 31 percent, according to a Bank of Japan survey released in Tokyo yesterday, up from 26 percent a year earlier and the highest since the poll began in 1963.
Already facing declines in wages, households will be hit in April by a consumption-tax increase intended to shore up Japan's finances.
"It's critical that Abe succeed in convincing corporates to raise wages," said Izumi Devalier, a Hong Kong-based economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. "Lower-income households may come to feel they're getting the short end of the stick from Abenomics."
Japan's salaries extended the longest slide since 2010 in September, with regular wages excluding overtime and bonuses falling 0.3 percent from a year earlier, a 16th straight drop.
When Japan last hiked the sales tax from 3 percent to 5 percent in 1997, consumer spending tumbled by 13 percent in the quarter after the higher tax went into effect. That was followed by a recession.
In October, Abe got his tax hike. It's the first tax increase since 1997. Sales taxes will rise from 5% to 8%, a tax rate increase of 60%.
To ease the blow of the tax hikes, Abe will announce a fiscal stimulus package in December.
The deal is not a good one for the average Japanese citizen: Tax rates will go up 3 percentage points, but Abe will announce a spending package in December to waste some of the increased collection on useless projects.
Consumers would have been far better off with no tax hike, falling prices, and stable (-0.3%) wages.
Japan's Sexless Youth
In case you missed it, please consider my October 22, 2013 report on Japan's Sexless Youth
Here are some stats according to the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA)
45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.
Population of 126 million has been shrinking for the past decade
Population projected to plunge additional one-third by 2060
Survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship
Fewer babies were born in 2012 than any year on record.
Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.
Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives".
Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".
This is what I wrote in response ...
Fighting Demographics
Those wondering why prime minister Abe is having such a hard time stimulating inflation can now stop wondering.
Until Japanese attitudes towards child-bearing, jobs, and relationships change, Abe will continue to struggle.
Abe seeks to stimulate inflation, but that is likely to encourage more saving, not more spending. With the bulk of Japanese pensions tied up in bonds yielding next to nothing, higher taxes and higher cost of goods and services will decrease demand from aging retirees.
That headline is correct. Abe wants companies to spend money whether or not they have customers. I asked a very simple question in response "What happens to prices when more products are produced in the face of falling or static demand?"
The Abenomics story goes on and on.
"Virtuous Circle" of Inflation
In November, Abe was promoting the "virtuous circle" of inflation while simultaneously whining that wages did not keep up.
Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe managed to get prices to rise. He did that with his policy to destroy the Yen even though Japan is heavily dependent on foreign oil and food imports.
Interestingly, Abe is not quite pleased with the results. Abe now complains that wages are not keeping up with prices. He wants a wage-price spiral on top of it all.
Wages declining .3% annually is hardly a problem if prices are falling as much. Instead, enter Abenomics. Abe wants 2% inflation, more fiscal stimulus, higher taxes, rising wages.
He also wants the impossible: Inflation to bail out the government and savers alike, while interest rates remain near 0%.
Crisis Awaits
Expect the percentage of households with no savings to soar.
Hiking taxes is about the silliest thing a country hoping to escape deflation can possibly do. Telling businesses to produce goods that no one wants to buy is perhaps even sillier.
Economic illiterates sing the praises of Abenomics because the stock market and prices are rising.
But attitudes, "sexless youth", increasing households with zero percent savings, rising debt levels, and falling real wages tell a far different story.
Without a doubt, a currency crisis awaits Japan.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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