It’s often said that content is king. So why then do most businesses online presence fail precisely because they treat their content like the king’s poor idiot cousin?
Here are some thoughts why:
It’s an afterthought
A disproportionate amount of time gets spent on the design and function of a website instead of thinking through content requirements, site structure and navigation. Often it is only after a website/blog/social media profile is setup that creating content even enters into the equation. If design is what gets the audiences attention, it’s the content that makes them stick. Content and the related issues such as information architecture, site structure and functionality all need to be addressed early.
It’s created for marketing (not people)
While websites in and of themselves are a marketing tool, content needs to be aligned to user objectives. In short, stop thinking about content in terms of marketing and promotion but more informing and entertaining. The old saying people use the web to save time or waste time applies here.
It’s not optimised for the web
The web is not like any other environment (it’s save time or waste time, again) and you need to respect that. Think about all the good stuff like SEO, headlines, tags, links and appropriate writing for the web when you start preparing content. Whether you’re outsourcing your copywriting or doing it yourself, make sure you check out some of great resources on the web, such as Website Criteria and SEOmoz.
It’s too brief
While web content shouldn’t be vast, sprawling amounts of text, it also shouldn’t be too short. It seems like the conversational aspect of social media has almost become an excuse for content to be vague. Understanding your audience is key to giving them the information they need quickly and succinctly without having to navigate a plethora of pages.
It can’t be found and shared
Build it and they will come is definitely not how it works. If a wicked funny video gets created and no one watches does it really exist? With so much content floating around the webs, you need to give yours the best chance of not only being found but also being shared by your most loyal customers. Think SEO and SSO (Social Search Optimisation), RSS, platforms and basic sharing/interactive functionality.
No one is responsible
Someone in your organisation whether it’s big or small needs to be responsible for maintaining content whether it’s on your website, Facebook page or blog. Stuff goes out of date really fast on the web and you need to keep feeding it with interesting, relevant content otherwise your audience will simply stop paying attention and go elsewhere. Particularly in social media, there is so much else to do that it’s critical that you give your audience compelling reasons why they should follow you. Besides, nothing looks worse than a long forgotten Facebook page riddled with unanswered questions and spammy comments.
These are just some of my views. What do you think? What other common web content mistakes have you seen?
Increasing media fragmentation has made it harder and harder for marketers to get their messages in font of audiences. Driven by the Internet and the abundance of choice it brings, consumers have the freedom to watch, listen and read what they want, when they want.
With so many potential touch points, you can no longer rely on a single execution to get your message across let alone guarantee that it is going to be heard.
Current research on changing media consumption shows that Australians are preferring to spend our time online than watching TV (which is probably time-shifted anyway), listening to radio or reading a newspaper. Even if we are, a smartphone, iPad or laptop is seldom far away. And online, the list of potential activities is endless whether it’s browsing your favourite sites, checking RSS feeds, instant messaging, paying bills, posting status updates or simply sending an email.
The seeds to drive attention, interest, desire and action can be planted on a multitude of platforms, each with their own unique mechanics and nuances. For instance:
Email must be personalised and timely if it’s to achieve all important clickthroughs.
Similarly, search engine marketing must be targeted and relevant based on the context of the users search.
Social media is about not marketing to your customers (in the traditional sense) but starting a conversation.
The point is it is you can’t treat them all the same. Big ideas tend to work only one way. It is not enough to take a good TV execution and shoehorn it into social media or a ‘viral video’ (with the exception of Old Spice). Ideas need to work across multiple touch points.
Marketing is now less about having the big ideas seen in Mad Men and The Gruen Transfer, and more about having lots of small ideas that can be tested and refined in parallel on multiple channels.
Don’t spend all your time and resources upfront searching for the big idea. Instead start with a touchpoint analysis of where your customers are and then see which ideas will tie them together.
When the Old Spice videos started showing up on social media a couple of weeks ago, I was amongst those who promptly declared it “the best social media campaign ever.”
Now that the dust has settled, I thought it was time to revisit my original assertion (I was wrong) and see what impact, if any, the campaign had and we as marketers can learn from it.
It began with traditional media
LOLing at the hundred or so YouTube videos that were created, it’s easy for international audiences especially to forget that the Old Spice campaign first took shape as a very traditional TV ad. Not just any ad, the spot earned top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Lions Grand Prix and went viral.
For this reason it’s a misnomer to call it a pure social media campaign. Without the mainstream awareness and equity built by traditional media, it’s doubtful that we would have cared as much as we did when Old Spice started creating personalised videos responding to Twitter celebs.
Turns out they were wrong as well with Procter & Gamble (Old Spice’s parent company) recently announcing a 55% increase in sales of Old Spice over the last 3 months and a 107% increase in the last month alone.
The bottom line is the campaign worked and based on the massive growth over the last month, and while we can’t say for sure social media played a role in this.
Extending the brand with social
So if the Old Spice ads as a whole did what they were supposed to and drive sales growth, what did Weiden + Kennedy (the Portland agency behind the campaign) get right with social?
Based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback towards the TV ads and the affinity the public felt towards the Old Spice guy, they identified an opportunity to move the campaign beyond traditional media and bring the character to life with social media.
The idea was deliciously simple and surprisingly low-tech considering the buzz it generated. Essentially, it leveraged on a very simple concept “make a series of 30 sec spots” and used social media to make it relevant to the audience. Read Write Web wrote a terrific piece about how the videos were made.
We should be doing this
Well actually, no.
While it’s a foregone conclusion that client’s will soon be asking their agencies for copycat campaigns (Cisco already tried and failed with Cisco Guy), without spending big bucks to build brand equity and a campaign concept that resonates with customers, it’s doubtful that Old Spice’s success can be replicated.
Even then, for social media marketers, the Old Spice campaign failed to leverage all the good stuff inherent in social media: conversation, community, engagement. As great and as innovative as the campaign is, it remains a brilliant traditional media idea that was very smartly repurposed and repackaged for social media.
Hat-tip to Mitch Joel and Joseph Jaffe who I just found out covered this topic in the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation. I only realised this last night while listening to the podcast and well after this post had been written. If you want to hear their thoughts, you can listen here.
When it comes to hiring digital marketers, it’s a jungle out there.
Even with the number of digital marketing positions on the rise as businesses scramble to avoid being left behind, the growing pool of new digital talent and traditional marketers looking to reposition themselves means that competition in this space is fierce. The emergence of social media, in particular, has altered the landscape yet again making it harder than ever to distinguish genuine talent from the proverbial snake oil salesmen.
With the playing field leveled and everyone now being able to publish and spruik their wares online, what do you need to do to get noticed and ultimately hired?
Over the past few weeks, I have received a number of emails and DMs from people looking for career advice which has prompted me to write this post. However, instead of just hearing from me, I thought it would be even more useful to ask some of the most respected digital marketers in Australia and around the world (including two who have had a profound influence on my career to date),for one piece of advice that they could offer digital job seekers:
Mitch Joel(President, Twist Image; Author, Six Pixels of Separation): Use these channels to become a known voice for whatever it is you’re pursuing. How could someone not hire someone who is regarded in their industry?
Avinash Kaushik (Author, Web Analytics 2.0; Analytics Evangelist, Google): Learn to try new things and play in the real world. There is no better medium in the world for you to try anything you want, all by yourself without the need to rely on your employer to empower you. Tools are free or cheap. Platforms are free or cheap. All you need is a pinch of effort and a dash of desire to learn in the real world. If you do that no one will refuse to hire you because you’ll actually know what the heck you are talking about. If you don’t do that… well…. life will be tougher.
Jason Neave (Managing Director, Via Media): Be visible in the space. If I’m hiring you for a digital marketing role (versus a creative or development one – and even then your online presence plays a huge part), I’ll spend 30 seconds looking at your CV and 30 minutes browsing your social network profiles, blog posts, twitter accounts, flickr galleries, and LinkedIn info. Have an opinion and don’t be afraid to share it. Oh, and if you’re applying, please make the effort to find out who to address your emails/letters to. We get a lot of ‘To Whom it May Concern’ notes. There’s no-one here by that name.
Michelle Prak (Digital Communications Expert, Hughes PR): In whatever you say about yourself online, use keywords. If you’re looking for a job in the digital industry, say so. Don’t just mention the fact that you like cheesecakes and you have a pet dog. Consider how a stranger (and potential employer) would read your profile.
Nic Hodges (Head of Innovation and Technology, Mediacom): Where I see the challenge with talent now is in social and data. Most agencies are still grappling with how they execute and resource social, and that throws up the obvious issue of assessing skillsets and leveraging experience. Add in the plethora of ‘social media gurus’ crowding up the talent pool and there’s a lot of chaff to sort through to get to the wheat. People who can talk social media in real world terms, deliver real business results, and integrate with an overall communications strategy will be highly sought after in the coming years. And whether they go to media, PR, or creative agencies is still up for grabs.
Sarah Thomas (Owner, Carve Consulting): Whilst it is imperative you demonstrate your digital skills and knowledge online, don’t forget about the importance of the real world too. Take your online contacts offline; attend tweetups, industry events, catch up with people for a coffee.
Damien Mair (Principal, Fusion): Be open and willing to try and fail, so you can learn, as following what someone else has done will not provide innovation. There isn’t rules, the people failing will be the ones who leave a path of rules for the followers…to well follow…while you keep evolving….and that is what will make you valuable to whoever you are applying you mind, talents and focus to at the time.
And lastly, my advice: Don’t rely on Twitter to build your reputation. There’s a limit to how insightful you can be in 140 characters. Make the commitment to blog and demonstrate that you not only know your stuff and have some smart things to say but are also up-to-date with emerging trends and have an opinion about the way things are headed.
Did you find this advice useful? What did you think? Is there any other advice you would give to digital job seekers?
Thanks to Mitch Joel, Avinash Kaushik, Jason Neave, Michelle Prak, Nic Hodges, Sarah Thomas and Damien Mair for their generous contributions. If you like what you read, please take the time to check out their blogs/websites, most of which are in my blogroll.
The different ways in which we access media has changed the relative importance that we place on different types of news. The news that we find through traditional delivery mechanisms is no longer as relevant as the news that we actively seek out or that finds us on social media.
Traditional media is losing relevance
In the dark ages pre-internet, there was only really one way to consume news – passively. You either read it (in hard copy), watched it or heard it, and were (generally) at the mercy of your local publisher.
I remember staying up late most nights just to catch a glimpse of the NBA highlights on Sports Tonight which – if you remember Ten’s programming in the late 90s – meant that I had a better chance of finding a chupacabra.
Thankfully, that is no longer the case and we are surrounded by more media and information than we could ever hope to consume. We can now find endless amounts of information about the things that interest us no matter how esoteric our tastes.
We are no longer passive but active consumers of news.
It matters where it’s from
With so much news content already vying for our attention and our interest, what this means is that where we heard it determines if we are really paying attention to it.
Search, RSS and email, in particular, have flipped news on it’s head. Instead of going to a single or a few sources and hoping to find something of interest, we simply subscribe to the blogs, podcasts, etc. that interest us. That we actively and deliberately subscribe means that we assign it a higher value than something we happen to see in the paper.
This gets taken a little further when social media gets thrown into the mix. The ability to share and recommend means that we are now also exposed to what others in our network think is interesting. Assuming you actually like and respect that person, you are more likely to click on a link that they are sharing than if it were put to you by an anonymous corporation.
In summary, we are gradually paying less and less attention to news that comes to us pre-packaged. While the morning paper or the 6 o’clock news will still be part of our media consumption, it is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of more relevant sources such as social media and RSS feeds that directly interest us.
Have new technologies changed the way you find out news? Do you still rely on traditional sources or is the bulk of the news you consume now found online?
