LinkedIn Leader Shares How to Build a High-Performance Content Marketing Team

The content marketing industry is flooded with “rock stars,” and this has led many to think a content marketing strategy is about individual prowess. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Peek behind great content marketing efforts and you’ll nearly always find a driven, well-organized team.

Jolie Miller, content strategy and acquisitions leader at LinkedIn, has spent much of her career leading the quiet, disciplined work of high-performance content teams. Here are her practical tips for what it takes to build, manage, and drive them.

CCO: Can you paint a picture of your personal content journey? When did you first take the creation of content seriously, and what about the process did you find (and do you still find) interesting?

Miller: I started in the content business over 10 years ago in the publishing world, where our product was educational content. One of the things I was most excited about then and have only grown more passionate about now at LinkedIn is the idea of over-delivering on value with the content you share. It’s content that truly exceeds users’ expectations that creates those moments of delight with a brand.

What I love about content is it has the power to change people’s lives for a second or for a day or forever. Great content creates space for people to pause and reflect, and that space is where transformation happens.

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Great #content creates space to pause & reflect, & that is where transformation happens. @joliemiller
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CCO: Not all teams are high-performance teams. In your mind, what’s the difference?

Miller: A high-performance team has members that show up for each other because everyone wants to work together to deliver value. People do the small, little extra thing and the big, hard, amazing thing, and obsess about the details because they’re creating relationships and outcomes they’re willing to own. I’ve been fortunate to be on many teams like this.

In my experience, a team that’s not high-performing is a team that’s in it for the transaction – one project or one piece of content or one interaction, not the longer play of strong, healthy relationships, open communication, trust, and creating a better company together. It’s more about how quickly can I cross this off my list or get through that conversation and back into my day; it’s not about building something together with and for people. Needless to say, these teams quickly get toxic for people and can benefit from a fresh start and some turnaround leadership.

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CCO: You’ve built high-performance content teams at all stages of a company’s growth. Can you walk us through the crucial first steps a leader of any company size should take to begin building a world-class content team?

Miller: It really starts with knowing what markets you want to win and what kind of content, delivered in the right way, will help you win those markets. What the business is aiming to do and do well is at the heart of starting your team. Then you’ve got to find people who want to join the cause with you. I often tell candidates that this isn’t a job, it’s a calling, and we’re looking for people who want to own and share that vision with us – people for whom it’s not going to feel like work. Creating good content is about passion.

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Creating good content is about passion, says @joliemiller.
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I also often tell candidates that it comes through in the content you make if you had fun making it – the company’s culture bleeds through, and it has to be solid. So you’ve got to find folks who want to have fun growing a business with you.

Look for the people who you know will challenge what exists and what could be, and always seek out folks who will want your job. They’ll drive hard toward company wins with you.

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CCO: Once the core team is in place, what are some simple project management strategies that will help the team keep driving forward?

Miller: The first project management strategy for any team is communication. Notice people. Notice things that are going right. Say something about those things, often. Have the tough conversations with candor and empathy, and have them earlier than you think you need to.

I’m also a big fan of documentation and detail to stay on top of projects – over-document if you need to get in the habit. You don’t need a fancy CMS or tool to do this; it can be done in Google Sheets if that’s what you’ve got. But keep track of all the little niggling things.

Next, it matters what you measure – so keep detailed records and monitor performance. I like to monitor the daily stuff: engagement and viewership, but also hunt for wild-card information that might start with a random question, take you down a rabbit hole, and then kick you back out with some new insights.

Finally, have review meetings or postmortems on a frequency that works for you. Stop to ask yourself: What’s going well? What have we learned? What do we want to do next? This is key.

CCO: Where do you see most content marketing strategies faltering?

Miller: Content that misses the mark usually does so first by failing to know its audience, and second by failing to connect meaningfully with that audience, either with the wrong tone or wrong type of content or a combination. The miss often occurs long before the content is made.

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Content that misses the mark is usually done so by failing to connect meaningfully w/ audience. @joliemiller
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The other mistake I see is applying a one-size-fits-all approach to all of your content without stopping to consider audience differences, such as: “This two-minute clip worked well over here for this audience so we should obviously only do this for everyone going forward.” Not so!

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CCO: When do you know it’s the right time to hire, and can you give us a glimpse into how you recruit the best-fit talent?

Miller: In my experience, the right time to hire is when you’re in over your head with too much on your plate but still have the energy and passion to do it all – it’s still early enough that you’re not burned out but it’s late enough that you hopefully have traction and cash flow to attract the kind of people to help you get to the next level.

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Hire when you have too much on your plate but still have energy and passion to do it all, says @joliemiller.
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Then, and this is the key thing, you have to fire yourself from your old job of doing it all. Hire someone who’s amazing, train them really well and thoroughly, and then let them run, coach them, and remove all the roadblocks they need cleared out of their way.

If you give me $100 to spend on hiring, I’m going to spend half of it finding the right person and the other half making sure my training documentation is compelling and setting the person up for success. Without both of these, neither one will work.

Practical hiring advice

Jolie explains why these five steps are essential to creating a high-performance team.

1. Seek out passive job candidates

I’m a big fan of passive candidate recruiting – going out and finding the voices that should be shaping the content of tomorrow. See what’s new and fresh on social and who’s doing unique and game-changing things, the people who are thought highly of. Talk to those people. Network. Find the best and go to them, even if they’re not looking and wouldn’t consider leaving where they are. Start talking to these people before you have roles open so you can quickly hire when it’s time.

2. Let interviewees lead the conversation

I’ve often interviewed people by letting them ask me questions rather than throwing a bunch of questions at them. This lets me see how their mind works, how curious they are, if they’re prepared, and the way they’d think about working with me and the team.

Their approach also lets me observe their analytical and emotional-intelligence skills up close and personal – how are they reading what I’m asking, and are they catching how I’m responding to their answers and adjusting on the fly? It also ensures that candidates are getting the full scoop on the job – they have ample opportunities to learn everything they want to know, and in the best circumstances, and also sell me on their big ideas that would let them hit the ground running.

Of course, I do throw in some questions of my own, but the goal is to get to know the candidates – are they nervous to fill the time with questions and their own thoughts, or are they eager to take charge? Do they use the time to try to get ideas for how to answer the next interviewer’s questions or do they use the time as a blank canvas to brand themselves?

3. Don’t hide from the tough stuff

Explain the job in real talk, the good and the bad. Remember, you want people for whom this is a calling and a purpose, not just a paycheck. Let them know the obstacles and the upside. For example, I’ll say things like, “This is a very intra-preneurial role where you’re going to be able to write the rules, but with that comes a lot of question marks you’re going to have to be comfortable playing with. If you see question marks as a challenge and like figuring out what they’ll turn into, you’ll love it; if they frustrate you, it’s going to frustrate you.”

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Explain a job in real talk, the good & bad, to get people who want more than a paycheck. @joliemiller
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4. Hire people who delight you

Whether it’s their humor, their brilliance, their grasp of numbers, or whatever it might be, you want a delight factor that they can bring to the team and the business. This is a daily relationship you’re committing to, and it needs to work well and be able to drive results.

5. Document the hiring process

Set up clear onboarding plans for the first 60 days, including goals for the quarter or the year, and documentation on how to do what. No one remembers what they do in their first week, so have a document they can peruse at their leisure any time to refresh their memory.

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A version of this article originally appeared in the April issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly, print magazine.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post LinkedIn Leader Shares How to Build a High-Performance Content Marketing Team appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

8 Things Any Good Marketer Should Know About Email

Email is the most valuable tool for any content marketer – and our research proves it. 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content, and of those, 91% consider email to be critical.

Email can do so much to help you build better relationships with your audience, understand individuals’ behaviors, and even maximize the reach of your paid social content.

That was the wisdom from Mathew Sweezey, principal of marketing insights at Salesforce and author of Marketing Automation for Dummies, in his Content Marketing World 2016 presentation, How to Improve the Value of Your Email Through Marketing Automation.

His tips on how to leverage email in today’s world for better content marketing range from subject lines to email “plays” and why it’s more important than ever to obtain people’s email addresses.

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Customize first impression by buyer’s stage

Think about how you peruse your inbox in the morning. Do you open the first email, decide if it’s good content, and move on to the next? Or do you delete all the worthless emails and read what remains?

Chances are it’s the latter. That’s why your subject line and sender “are the only pieces of information to determine if email is credible,” Mathew says.

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Subject line & sender are the only pieces of information to determine if #email is credible. @msweezey.
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As such, you should use that email real estate differently depending on the recipient’s stage in the buying process. Here are the guidelines by stage:

• Stage one: This audience is asking generic questions. They may not even know the keywords in that space. If they see a vendor’s name in the prime email real estate, they know the email is from a marketer. In the prime email real estate, don’t include keywords or brand names.

• Stage two: This audience is looking for social proof to support their research. Use the subject line to give them ammunition to get support from others. In the prime email real estate, use a keyword or brand name, but not both.

• Stage three: This audience wants to know they have researched all their options before they make a decision. In the prime real estate, use a keyword and brand name.

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Quickly create emails

One-third of marketers take seven weeks to create a piece of content; 42% take two to five weeks.

You can’t craft emails the same way. Identify brief content already created that can be shared through email.

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Identify brief #content already created that can be shared through #email, says @anngynn.
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Mathew shares what he learned working with MIT’s Sloan School of Management to identify the behavior of people signing up for MBA programs. The research showed MBA candidates evaluating which schools to apply to value things outside of the actual degree, such as the connection with professors.

MIT now knew promoting their professors as individuals could make a difference. In their email marketing, they linked to the professors’ LinkedIn profiles. The prospective student then was only a click away from learning more personally about and connecting with an MIT professor. (And MIT could track their behavior by tracking the LinkedIn URL.)

Mathew offers a generic visual example based on second stage of the buying process. If someone is seeking social proof in their research for a product or service, a simple email including a link to content from a third party talking about your product, service, or related proof-type research could work, such as this:

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Don’t send the prettiest email

While the example above demonstrates the ability to quickly create an email with value, it also exemplifies the real value in communicating the same way a person would email a friend or colleague. It’s authentic and personal.

“Our job is not to be pretty. It’s to be effective,” Mathew says. He explains that HTML-pretty emails are holdovers from the world of direct mail – they aren’t a marker of legitimacy but a marker of marketing.

Rich text is how humans write emails.

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HTML-format emails are pretty but pretty isn’t our job. Rich text is how humans communicate, says @MSweezey.
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A large U.S. bank that Mathew works with tested the difference between HTML and rich text. It sent the same email using the two formats. Engagement, as measured in open rates, was four times greater for the rich-text format emails.

Get them to ask the next question

Mathew offers a scenario familiar to many in business. You go into the boss’ office to share an idea. The boss says no. A few weeks later, the boss comes back with a “new” idea – the same one you suggested a few weeks earlier. Your boss now trusts the idea because it is his or hers.

Your prospects are like that boss. You can’t just send them a series of six emails after they download a white paper and expect them to buy. You have to let them come to the answers on their own.

Your job is to nurture them to ask the next question. Companies using lead nurturing the right way find they close deals 34% faster, according to Salesforce research.

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Companies using lead nurturing the right way find they close deals 34% faster, says @salesforce via @anngynn.
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So how do you do that in an email?

Include a secondary call to action in your email. Then the recipients select what content they prefer – and that tells you if they are still in the second stage, for example, or if they’ve moved onto the third stage. But, Mathew cautions, that only works if your content is tailored to the buyer stages.

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Put your email in play

A PGA golfer has 14 clubs in his or her bag. The professional golfer must pick the best tool based on the setting of each ball and the situation of the overall game.

Like a golfer, marketers also have a limited number of tools to use to accomplish infinite scenarios at high efficiency. That’s why your email nurturing plays should be limited and able to be recombined to accomplish different scenarios.

Mathew shares the scenario of marketing at a trade show. When you get back to the office you have a lot of email addresses but don’t know where each contact is in the sales cycle. He urges you to follow the 3-2-1 process:

• Assume all recipients are in stage three. Because anyone actually in this stage is closest to a sale, it’s important deliver to this group first.
• If recipients don’t respond, presume them to be in stage two. Email stage two relevant content.
• If they don’t respond to stage two, assume they’re in stage one. Email stage one relevant content.

Repeat this cycle three times – when you send an email the recipient finds useful, she or he will select the content, letting you know where that person is in the buying cycle.

Mathew worked with eCornell on a 3-2-1 email campaign based on paid search leads. The close rate was 50% and engagement was 16 times higher than non-nurtured prospects.

Onboard your subscribers

Your company likely has a process to onboard new employees. Do you have one to onboard new subscribers? Or do you just email them the next blog post that you send everybody else?

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Don’t just send the next email to new subscribers. Onboard them with your best content, say @MSweezey.
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Remember, your next blog post likely isn’t your best one. Instead, the first five emails your new subscribers should receive are the five best blog posts you’ve written. Then, you can start sending them the standard email.

Salesforce research reveals 50% of high-performing marketers use email onboarding, while less than 1% of underperforming marketers do.

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High-performing marketers use #email onboarding. Less than 1% of underperforming marketers do, says @MSweezey.
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It’s the halo effect. “First impressions matter. Every interaction is shaded by that initial impression,” Mathew says.

Connect on social

With an email address, you can truly unlock the value of social media, particularly its highly valued hyper-targeted paid promotion (especially important given the organic reach of social media posts is less than 2%.)

Consider the case of Volvo Construction, which Mathew shares. Its dealers sold $100 million worth of new and used equipment in a year through Facebook. The social media platform is its number one lead driver.

Now how can a big B2B company use Facebook to make those sales? Email addresses. It uploads its email lists to Facebook and Facebook can match the ads directly to those individuals. So the Volvo database can see the content by email and by social. Plus, Facebook can target people who “look” just like the profiles of those direct-match users.

Volvo saw overall engagement increase by 22% when recipients received an email from Volvo and saw a Facebook ad from the company – far better than any single communication.

“You’re not just sending an email but you can target that person on any channel,” Mathew says.

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Forget cookies

Mathew also says the future of omnichannel marketing is the email address. Hashing technology now enables you to track the behavior of an email address online across multiple devices. Cookie technology can’t do that.

You can learn when the last time the person visited your website, the point at which they stopped watching a video, etc., and all those behaviors can be assessed in your marketing automation platform to deliver the next email with the most relevant content.

By getting more behavioral data – beyond the open and click rate – you gain the context necessary to create better content for communication and more targeted content to drive a conversion.

Conclusion

As you strengthen your commitment to your email strategy, Mathew offers these reminders:

• Email is best when it’s human – we want relationships with people, not machines
• HTML is not a best-in-class email format anymore – rich text emails receive better engagement rates
• Email + social media = content marketing powerhouse

Remember, growing your subscriber base is not about boosting your numbers for the next e-blast. It’s about using that email address to deliver more relevant content when the recipient wants it.

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Want to learn first hand from great experts in content marketing? Make plans today to attend Content Marketing World 2017, Sept. 5-8, in Cleveland, Ohio. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 8 Things Any Good Marketer Should Know About Email appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

The 3 Behaviors Driving the Most Creative Content Marketers

Editor’s note: You may have missed this article when CMI published it last year. We’re sharing it now because it’s the time of the year when we like to talk cold sweets (and remind you about the qualities needed for creative content marketers.)

Before we get into all that delicious content marketing stuff, let’s talk about eating ice cream for a second. (Stay with me, folks. It’s gonna get weirder before it gets normal again.)

When you eat a bowl of ice cream, is your goal to get to an end result as fast as possible? Do you turn to a friend or maybe a professional ice-cream-eating freelancer and say, “Hey, can you finish this bowl of ice cream for me? I just really want a messy bowl.”

That’d be insane, right? The best part of eating ice cream is the process of eating the ice cream. And since we’re so infatuated with the process itself, some interesting behaviors unfold – namely, we tinker. We make the ice cream better. We add toppings. We put it into things, onto things, and next to things.

Because of our focus on the process – not our obsession with the end itself – we innovate.

What does this have to do with content marketing? Nothing. I just wanted to talk about my favorite dessert.

Kidding – of course the answer is “everything!”

If you study the most creative content marketers, it turns out that they approach their work much like most of us approach a bowl of ice cream: They make the process the point, not the end results. And as a result, they get better end results.

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Too much #contentmarketing goes through the motions. The best find joy in the process, says @JayAcunzo.
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There’s a psychological benefit to that behavior too. (That’s right – science is at play here, not just one man’s ramblings on frozen treats.)

And that science is just one of three key behaviors driving the most creative among us.

1. Truly creative content marketers make work intrinsic, not ‘telic’

Here’s the science behind the ice cream metaphor: When you eat ice cream, you’re intrinsically motivated to eat it. You do it for its own sake regardless of the end result.

The opposite of something intrinsic is “telic.” When an action is telic, it is done for the final results – created for a definite end. When you focus too much on that end result, i.e., when an activity is entirely telic, it becomes something nobody wants to complete and few people do with gusto: a chore.

Here’s the rub, my friend: Marketers have turned content marketing into a telic activity. We want the formula. We want the best practice. We want to skip to the end result as quickly, cheaply, and repeatably as humanly possible.

Another way of saying this: Too much content marketing goes through the motions. But the very best among us find joy in the process. They LOVE creating the stuff, tinkering on their framework for doing so, and testing their process and workflow — just because, just for enjoyment. And this actually yields better end results.

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Example: Julie Kim, director of content marketing at Slack

Slack is now the fastest-growing business app EVER. Its internal communication and chat tool has reached near ubiquity, especially among tech-savvy companies. And its content focuses on the content itself, not the results generated from it – and Slack gets better results in the end.

It all started with a focus on tone of voice. Slack is hell-bent on being “clear, concise, and human.” Most organizations in their shoes would focus on the leads or subscribers they wish to generate, or perhaps a self-aggrandizing statement like, “Our aim is to be the industry-leading source for jargon in the jargon-jargon space.”

In other words, Slack knows the right order for this work we do to succeed: Content. Then marketing. (Seriously, it’s called “content marketing,” not “marketing of content.” Sometimes I think we all need a sign in the morning over our beds: “Pants first. Then shoes.”)

One shining example of Slack’s amazing tone of voice is its podcast, Work in Progress, created in partnership with the branded podcast agency Pacific Content. Work in Progress is so good it’s syndicated to satellite radio. Listeners spend 20 or more minutes a week with Slack’s stories. (Remind me again how much we spend to get a few seconds from people’s day with most ads?)

Top to bottom, Slack’s organization knows why they do content: to produce great content. To be clear, concise, and human. To make work meaningful for others. Those are the first principles, the fundamental truths, behind the results they wish to deliver. Syndication to radio and millions of downloads for the show are just signals of success – signs that they’re doing great, INTRINSICALLY motivated work, not telic.

As Apple CEO Tim Cook once said, “We aren’t focused on the numbers. We’re focused on the things that produce the numbers.”

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We aren’t focused on the numbers. We’re focused on the things that produce the numbers via @tim_cook.
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Slack is. Are you?

2. Truly creative content marketers view the “quality or quantity” debate as a false, misleading choice – a debate not worth having

At Content Marketing World in 2015, I remember asking about 10 people before my speech whether they preferred to produce high-volume work or high-quality work. Everyone said, “High-quality, of course!”

But one intrepid content marketer named Colin paused. He looked at me and replied simply, “Why not both?”

I swear I almost hugged him. (I’m Italian. That’s my default greeting for other humans …)

I want you to imagine that one content producer – marketer or otherwise – who WOWs you with his or her ability to make a TON of things, all incredibly well. Aren’t you downright jealous?

For us to even have a chance at being that good, we need to start in a much different place than asking, “quality or quantity?” As soon as we see those two things as juxtaposing ideas – or, worse, a choice we actually make – we’ve lost.

To the rest of the marketing world, on behalf of us create-first content marketers, allow me to clarify something: Our audiences want a lot of quality content. They don’t want a few things done well. They want EVERYTHING done well, all the time.

Audiences crave things they love. And when they get them, they want more. And more. And more.

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Audiences crave things they love. And when they get them, they want more. @JayAcunzo
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I asked a journalist friend once, “Do you write for quality or quantity?” He laughed in my face. “Both,” he said, “or I’m fired.” And the reason he can say that isn’t because he has some kind of superpower. It’s because he has a plan. He knows how to write an article. He knows terminology like lede, hook, and out. As a podcaster, I’ve learned about cold opens and episode rundowns.

In other words, the path toward doing more work at higher quality is the framework of HOW you do your work. You don’t need more budget, time, or team. You need a plan. In the same way that you can describe marketing to someone in terms of funnels and traffic patterns you should be able to describe HOW you write your blog posts. You should be able to teach HOW you create that podcast episode. When structuring your 800 words or 25 minutes, what are the component parts?

You need “content IP” where the “IP” does not stand for “I Produce.” If you can’t teach the creation part, you can’t scale without dumping increasing levels of crap onto the world.

Example: Andrew Davis, keynote speaker

Andrew is one of the most prolific speakers in marketing. Every year, he speaks everywhere from San Francisco to Sweden, to audiences ranging from fire chiefs to chief marketing officers. Andrew is a guy who absolutely has to deliver high-quality speeches and stories every single time he speaks, and he is speaking more and more times each year.

Quality. Quantity. Colliding. Feeling sick yet? Not our friend Mr. Davis, because he has some IP behind his speeches.

Andrew uses something called a “donut,” a term he pulled from his days producing television. A donut, as Andrew once explained to me, is a missing piece of content surrounded by repeatable or predictable content. Drawn as a circle, it resembles a donut – a spot you must fill to fill in that circle.

If you’re delivering a speech, you might know the major problem you speak about, but you might have a hole for an illustrative story that you need to customize depending on your audience. After all, the same story that resonates with a group of content marketers might fall flat when presented to HR managers. Your story represents a donut.

Throughout Andrew’s 45-minute keynote talks, he has a handful of these donut holes, which he identifies for a given talk. He can curate stories or interview subjects in various industries. These stories, too, have a series of “beats” (yet another TV term – the moments that make up a good story, or the story style you’d like to tell). A “beat” might be something like, “Introduce me to the person by name and profession,” or, “Show me or tell me where they work and live.” These are the component parts to the story in the way that donut holes are component parts to the overall speech, which contains stories and other moments, like teachable lessons, data, and questions.

With every speech he delivers, Andrew fills in his donut holes with relevant stories.

With every story he researches, Andrew documents the appropriate beats to tell an Andrew-style story.

From a handful of speeches a few years ago, to 50-plus keynote talks last year, plus books, podcasts, blog posts, videos, and more – Andrew is scaling his output like crazy, maintaining quality all the while.

Your problem isn’t the tension between quality and quantity – it’s the lack of preparation ahead of time so you never even feel it.

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Your problem isn’t the tension between quality & quantity. It’s lack of preparation, says @JayAcunzo.
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3. Truly creative content marketers are voracious consumers of their own material

We talk about “empathy” a lot in marketing. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. (This is not the same as sympathy, which we also need to feel – but only when our audience encounters our competitors! HEYOOO!)

Ahem. As I was saying: empathy! We need it. But it’s not like we’ve taken empathy courses. Nor is our boss sending us an analytics report in a panic because the data shows we’re not empathetic enough.

So how do we actually execute this idea of empathy? How can we understand what our audience will feel and therefore improve our ability to trigger a response?

We need to be our own biggest fans.

Now, a quick disclaimer: I don’t mean you should go home and pin your content marketing to your fridge, although that’s a nice little treat for the kids to stop daydreaming about being a firefighter and set their sights on our noble profession instead.

No, I mean simply this: We have to constantly consume our own work. Not edit it. Not audit it. Consume it.

As a senior in college, I used to mentor younger students who were also English majors. My favorite trick to make others better writers was to ask that they read a section out loud, either to me or softly to themselves. Instantly, you begin to uncover all the flaws or the areas you’d like to improve.

Sure, you’re not the customer. But that shouldn’t stop you from viewing your content through their eyes.

Example: Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why

Tim Urban is a great writer. He’s built a blog audience of millions by publishing witty, stick-figure-ridden articles about complex topics like the unhappiness caused by using Facebook or the tricky concept of what “you” are. (Your brain? Your body? What IS the self?) Tim has given a TED talk about procrastination and was asked by Elon Musk to write about topics like colonizing Mars or the memory functionality of the human brain.

Tim is an amazing thinker and content creator, that much is clear. And while it’s unclear whether he consumes his own work, my guess is that he eats it up. I think he picks over the bones of an article like a hyena on a gazelle carcass, sucking and gnawing and clawing at every little scrap of the idea. How else would he use the tiniest of details to trigger the biggest of emotions in his readers?

For instance, rather than say, “We’re about to enter a period of rapid technological advancement,” he might draw this:

Additionally, if Tim is trying to make you feel something or react a certain way, he uses subtle details in his drawing to trigger that reaction, which he can do because, again, he’s seeing his work through your eyes. For example, when he writes about why people procrastinate, he introduces the concept of the rational decision-maker in your brain and the procrastination monkey like this:

Note the person first. He appears self-assured and reasonable, smiling and staring straight ahead. The copy reinforces this simple-yet-confident persona.

But then there’s the monkey. He’s saying something negative (“Nope!”), but Tim draws him with a big smile and raised arms. Those little effects ensure that the joke lands. The monkey is positively giddy in telling your brain, “Get something done today? No chance!” In a small drawing with little copy, you instantly get the tone of this little creature – he’s troublesome and he relishes that fact.

Tim’s blog is read by millions, and yet he’s known for publishing less than once per week. And the secret behind it all is Tim’s ability to empathize with his audience and what they’d react to, from initial topic all the way through the tiniest detail of his writing and cartooning.

Want to wield empathy like a weapon? Want your audience responding with passion to your work? Don’t just ship your stuff into the abyss. Consume your own work. Act as your biggest critic. Be your biggest fan.

Content first. Then marketing.

As content marketers, we complain about the noise. But noise is not your problem. Sameness is. And while creativity can free you from making more commodity junk, you misinterpret what it means to be creative. So here’s the truth:

Creating something great doesn’t require a moment of genius. It demands a thoughtful, repeatable process.

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Creating something great demands a thoughtful, repeatable process, says @JayAcunzo. #contentmarketing
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Standing out isn’t about being bigger, better, or louder. It’s about being different.

And creativity isn’t a gift you’re given. It’s a work ethic.

So get to work.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Go All In With Content Marketing or Do Nothing: #CMWorld

As the highest-rated breakout speaker at Content Marketing World 2016, Jay has earned a spot on the main stage and will present a keynote  presentation at Content Marketing World 2017. Make plans today to hear him at CMWorld, September 5-8, in Cleveland, Ohio. Use the code BLOG100 to save an additional $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post The 3 Behaviors Driving the Most Creative Content Marketers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

How to Persuade the Naysayers to Embrace New Marketing Technology

The world of technology solutions for marketers just keeps getting bigger. For proof, take a peek at the evolution of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic.

When Scott Brinker created this graphic in 2011, it featured around 150 solutions. By 2016, the graphic had exploded to include more than 3,874 solutions in 49 categories. That’s a staggering 25-fold increase in five years.

I’m not trying to put you in panic mode; I’m just trying to point out that you and your content team probably rely on more software solutions than you’re consciously aware of – and chances are high you’ll onboard new tools in the near future.

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Adoption problem

I recently ran across an article in Harvard Business Review from 1985, which stated that “… there often remains a persistent and troubling gap between the inherent value of the technology … and (the) ability to put it to work effectively” and that “the distance between technical promise and genuine achievement is a matter of especially grave concern.” The goal of the article was to “describe some of the challenges managers must overcome if companies are to absorb new technologies efficiently.” These sentiments could easily have been written today.

In fact, 32 years later, Harvard Business Review is still talking about the same problem, convincing employees to use new technology:

Even among digital natives, adoption of things like enterprise digital tools often doesn’t live up to lofty expectations. ‘We’ve spent an awful lot of money on technology, but I still see people working in the old way,’ complained the CFO of a large hospitality company. The result is often widely deployed internal applications that no one actually uses effectively.

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32 years later @HarvardBiz is still talking about challenge to convince employees to use new tech. @hehurst
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Why is this still a challenge? I believe much of it comes down to our natural resistance to change. Luckily, there are proven strategies that will immensely increase your chances of software-adoption success.

Once you’ve waded through the software bog and selected one that has the potential to make a real difference in your organization, here’s how to get your team to actually use it.

1. Address culture first

Anthony Imgrund is a project manager at FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding), a global advertising organization with more than 8,000 people in over 120 offices throughout 80 countries. He has guided 12 internal business units consisting of more than 1,100 people through the implementation of a third-party project management solution. And sometimes when a team approaches him to ask if their team can adopt the solution too, he tells them no.

Why? Because “the culture was such that they weren’t willing to do the work or make the changes that were necessary to make it successful,” Anthony says. “Why spend all that time trying to launch something if you don’t have the culture, the policy, or the process in place?”

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Companies need a willing culture & a process in place before adopting new technology. @tonyimgrund
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No software, no matter the category, will be a plug-and-play miracle solution. If you have endemic problems with culture or personnel, those must be addressed either before or during the software adoption process. For example, if some individuals have a tendency to hoard or withhold information, but you’re trying to onboard a tool that will increase access and transparency, you’ll have to address their unproductive behavior. If you’re not willing to do that, your implementation will be doomed from the start.

Here are a few question themes to ask your team, perhaps in survey form, so you know what you’re dealing with before you begin:

• How comfortable are you with the status quo?
• How much do you want to enact change in this particular area?
• What is your level of pain with what the new solution will solve?

Follow up with additional questions specifically related to the solution itself.

2. Build a business case for the solution

No matter what software type you’re considering, Anthony recommends establishing metrics for success up front, including defining “success.” Consider all the aspects of this software adoption that you could measure:

• How quickly it’s up and running, measured in weeks or months
• Percentage of target users on the team who adopt the tool
• Hours saved performing a certain set of tasks
• Money saved by reducing manual work with an automated process
• Money saved by replacing an old tool (or several tools) with the new one
• Revenue generated as a direct result of the tool

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No matter what software type you’re considering, establish metrics for success up front, says @tonyimgrund ‏
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Whether you’re advocating for the solution alone or you’re a part of a team, it’s your job as the subject matter expert (the content marketer) to make sure the solution truly addresses your personal pain points. Ask your peers for their input as well.

But you also have to convince those who control the purse strings. A solid business case that speaks to your own needs, as well as the metrics upper management cares about, will help you gain support from peers, direct reports, and executives alike. If you have genuine buy-in before you start onboarding the solution, you’ll avoid much of the internal resistance that derails so many software implementations.

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To make a solid business case for new tech, speak to own pain points & metrics execs care about. @hehurst
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3. Create internal advocates

In a blog post for Capterra.com, Chris Savoie suggests “Find one or more internal employees who seem to be catching the vision of the new system early on. Involve these people throughout the process, and empower them to help evangelize the tool, helping with pitching and training as needed.”

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Create internal advocates when onboarding new technology to help throughout the process via @aerosavoie.
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I’ve witnessed the results of this strategy. At a software user group I attended recently, I heard from a major retailer how they deliberately planned for a software rollout by leveraging a group of internal influencers. The team consisted of influential people in the organization, along with the people who can find something wrong with everything (let’s call them the naysayers). The team leaders invited this group to share their hopes as well as their concerns, had them sit in on demos, took them to a user conference, and involved them all along the way.

Because the retailer brought the right individuals into the business case early, they had people singing the tool’s praises before the solution even launched, which can go a long way toward inspiring more widespread adoption. As Chris says, “The average employee who will be using the new solution is going to weigh a co-worker’s opinions over a vendor’s promises every time.”

4. Find an executive sponsor

The importance of having an engaged and supportive advocate at the top of the organization can’t be overestimated. According to the Harvard Business Review:

Coca-Cola faced huge challenges when it deployed its internal social collaboration platform. Only when Coca-Cola’s senior executives became engaged on the platform did the community become active. As the implementation leader put it, ‘With executive engagement, you don’t have to mandate activity.’

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The importance of having a supportive & engaged advocate at top of org can’t be overestimated. @HarvardBiz
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When a team comes to him asking to be trained on a project management software solution, Anthony says, “We do require an executive sponsor, and the executive sponsor is not just there to sign the checks. They have to help set the policies, like when is the transition date. They’re the ones that do the communications. They’re the ones that have to get buy-in from other people in the agency.”

Without upper management on your side, you may find yourself defending your software choice again and again – or dealing with resistance from peers or direct reports. Given these realities, sometimes it is important to make adoption mandatory, which Chris says is “the only way to know if your new software can deliver on what it promises” – and that’s something only an executive can do.

5. Don’t try to eat an elephant

What’s the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course. The same is true for training your team on a new content marketing tool.

According to business strategist Jay Baer, “Teaching the team how to use many features in a software package all at once can be incredibly disruptive, cause uncertainty and ennui, and often waste a ton of time. Instead, roll out new software in phases.”

Make a list of the features this tool offers that will benefit your team. Rank them in order of importance. Then, Jay says, “Start with the third most important feature. You don’t want to roll out the killer feature first because the entire tool will be new to the team and they’ll end up focusing too much on interface and process and not enough on usefulness of the feature.”

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Roll out new software in phases so it’s not as disruptive, says @jaybaer. #contentmarketing
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Then roll out the second most important feature, followed by the first, before tackling items four, five, and beyond.

Out with the old, in with the new

Once you’ve checked off each of these steps and your shiny new tool is up and running, it’s important to let go of the old solution it replaced. If you keep the previous system hanging around, some people will secretly (or overtly) keep using it, and you’re never going to get to 100% adoption. Allow a certain amount of time to transition – Jay recommends at least 60 days – before you pull the plug on the old software. Then focus on the future and don’t look back. After all, you’ll probably have a couple thousand new solutions to consider next year.

Want to adopt an easy-to-use content marketing tool today? Subscribe to CMI’s daily or weekly digest newsletter.

Custom cover by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Persuade the Naysayers to Embrace New Marketing Technology appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

This Week in Content Marketing: Don’t Just Publish Content; Monetize the Audience

PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can be found on both iTunes and Stitcher. If you enjoy our show, we would love it if you would rate it or post a review on iTunes.

Editor’s note: We’ve made a few updates to our PNR podcast show notes. We hope you feel this new companion piece enhances the value of listening to our show. Enjoy!   

In this week’s episode

Robert ponders the nature of insights – and how to tell which ones are worth paying attention to. On the news front, we discuss whether the golden era of corporate storytelling is behind us – and, if so, what we should be doing about it. In a related story, we also explore the critical position of the publisher, and share our thoughts on Condé Nast’s launch of eCommerce boxes. Our rants and raves cover McDonald’s and daddy-driven hair care; then we close the show with an example of the week on Jan van der Heyden.

Download this week’s PNR: This Old Marketing podcast

(38:25) Content Love From Our Sponsor: Brightcove

Brightcove – The Science of Social Video: With eight in 10 consumers engaging with brands on social media, and three in four consumers linking social video viewing to purchasing decisions, we examine how brands can make the most of this opportunity. Download your copy of The Science of Social Video to learn how to turn social video views into value.

Show details

• (00:01): An advertising blast from the past: Ipana’s “Bucky Beaver Space Guard”

• (01:00): Robert muses on this week’s theme: Slow your observation to sharpen your focus on what matters most.

• (05:00): Welcome to episode 184: Recorded live on May 22, 2017 (Running time: 1:05:10)

• (09:40): A note from our hosts: Open enrollment for CMI University’s summer semester starts June 1. PNR listeners can use PNR100 for $100 off, but act fast: enrollment for this session closes on June 30, 2017.

The PNR Perspective on Notable News and Trends

• (11:47): Mega-brands question the effectiveness of corporate storytelling. (Source: Mark Schaefer, on Facebook)

• (12:17): Don’t get rid of the publisher position just yet. (Source: Digiday)

• (31:16): Condé Nast enters e-commerce with branded subscription boxes. (Source: Digiday)

Rants and Raves

• (40:58): Robert’s commentary: McDonald’s pulls controversial ad for lacking sensitivity – but will the fearmongering that ensued lead to blander branded content? (Source: MarketingDive)

• (44:59): Robert’s rant: Recent FCC decisions are painting a bleak picture for proponents of net neutrality – and the democratization of media. (Source: The Washington Post)

• (52:15): Joe’s rave: A single dad parlays his new-found passion for plaiting into a daddy-daughter content phenomenon (Sources: CNN; Facebook; People)

This Old Marketing Example of the Week

• (57:00): Jan van der Heyden: Robert shares a listener tip he received about a strategic content marketing effort harkening all the way back to 1672. Jan van der Heyden’s efforts to promote his patented fire hose included white papers, a print book, visual content, demos, and even a pre-internet iteration of social sharing, making it an excellent This Old Marketing example from the Dutch Golden Age.

For a full list of PNR archives, go to the main This Old Marketing page.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How to Avoid Collaborative Overload Within Your Content Team

Long a staple of highly productive, high velocity teams, collaboration has been the focus of many technology solutions over the years.

Yet, constant interruptions and multitasking affect productivity, as detailed in the studies highlighted in The Collaboration Curse article in The Economist. The distractions of an environment where teams are encouraged to contribute to everything leave little time for the critical thinking that can make a real difference to an organization’s success.

The issue is that many of the so-called collaboration solutions, such as email, Slack, etc., address communication but don’t actually help with the collaborative work.

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Many so-called collaboration tools address communication but don’t help collaboration, says @dholstein ‏
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Could this be why your creative teams are throwing on headphones and saying “just stop collaborating with me”?

Great creative needs collaboration

Most content projects involve three kinds of collaborators:

1. Creatives are inspired by the brief and create multiple versions from the feedback until the assets are approved.
2. Managers provide the creative direction and closely oversee the program to keep it on time, on budget, and focused on delivering the specified business goals.
3. Stakeholders may be additional reviewers or have ultimate approval of the final output. They always need a high-level understanding of how the project fits in with the company’s overall brand and plans.

Each of these collaborators relies on the active engagement of the others in a creative process that rarely follows a linear path. It’s never easy, yet it is a key element in producing great creative work.

But when the review and approval process happens on a plethora of one-size-fits-all business collaboration tools, it can quickly spin out of control. Creatives are assaulted by random bursts of feedback via their inbox and chat rooms. Managers struggle to keep their teams all on the same page or have to run after the approvers. Stakeholders have no visibility into what’s happening across all the content initiatives without demanding a time-consuming email update or sitting through a mind-numbing status meeting.

In that collaboration model, everybody feels overwhelmed and stressed. This leads to lost time, wasted dollars, and, ultimately, lower quality creative output that doesn’t achieve needed business results. As leaders, we need to make nurturing the creativity of our teams a top priority.

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3 tips for stress-free creative collaboration

When collaboration works well, 85% of us say it can be the best part of our days. However, when it’s bad, 56% say it’s the worst .

Great collaboration is all about the people – educating them about what works and using a more thoughtful approach to the tools we adopt – to improve the quality and impact of the content produced. Here are my three tips for more stress-free creative collaboration.

1.   Break bottlenecks

A creative team struggling to deliver enough quality output jams up your marketing and, consequently, your company’s revenue flow. In a recent survey, 48% of businesses said revenue growth was hurt because they could not deliver quality content fast enough.

Just as your nearest airplane exit may be behind you, your bottlenecks may not be in the direction you’re facing. The jams may start with your creative team. Sixty percent of creatives struggle with interpreting feedback from reviewers and more than a quarter say reviews rarely happen. Or does the biggest bottleneck come with distributing approved assets to their channel owners and/or in-market teams. Or does it occur because sales and support teams are not educated on how to best use the new content?

Identifying where the true bottlenecks lie is a key first step to unblocking your flow of content and developing stress-free collaboration.

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Identifying where the true bottlenecks lie is a first step to unblocking flow of #content, says @dholstein.
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2.   Teach people how to give feedback

With over half of businesses seeing an increase in the number of stakeholders reviewing creative projects, the challenge of getting actionable feedback is growing. Sales, support, or other departments who may be requesting content may not have had the opportunity to develop that skill of providing clear, actionable feedback.

I recently read an interesting post by a video producer who said he needed to train his marketing team on how to give feedback. He asked them to be more precise with their comments (“more emotional … but which emotion?”) by understanding that technical terms may mean different things to a layperson than they do to a video editor.

Investing a little time to educate new players in your creative collaboration about how to best give actionable feedback is time well spent.

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Teaching people how to give clear, actionable feedback is time well spent, says @dholstein.
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3.   Collaborate in context

It’s not productive to receive feedback on a creative project alongside miscellaneous topics and distractions found in a typical inbox. It’s worse when the creative receives more comments via Slack and even more by a phone call. Not only does this cacophony create extra work for the creative who has to interpret all this feedback into an actionable revision, it also means there’s no system of record for everyone involved to track changes and progress.

Develop a single system for collaboration – let the creative work exist alongside the collected comments and approvals. This keeps the entire team – creatives, managers, and stakeholders – on the same page and avoids costly misunderstandings.

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Develop a single system for collaboration to avoid costly misunderstandings, says @dholstein. ‏
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Conclusion

Great collaboration depends on trust. Create a trustworthy process where bottlenecks are eliminated, and collaborators know how to offer usable feedback, while working from the same page.

Addressing the creative collaboration process through education and more specialized tools will create the proper context to deliver better creative and business results.

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Want your content team to collaborate successfully? Help them learn the same language by bringing them to Content Marketing World, Sept. 5-8 in Cleveland, Ohio. Special discounts are available for groups.

Cover image by Startup Stock Photos

The post How to Avoid Collaborative Overload Within Your Content Team appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

3 Steps to Manage Your Content Library Like a Librarian

If there were a fan club for librarians, I’d be a card-carrying member. Over the last few years, librarians have taught me more about content management than any other group of professionals. We marketers are practically drowning in content, and librarians are experts at making content organized and findable.

We’re a perfect match.

I obsess over the challenges of content organization. I’m discovering that librarian methodology is essential to making a content library useful, whether you use a digital asset management system or something else. Let me show you why.

At the Intelligent Content Conference this year, I had the privilege of doing a joint presentation with Jen Hurley, director of marketing operations at Clear Channel Outdoor. Jen has a master’s degree in library and information science. From our talk, I distilled three principles that are essential for managing your content library like a librarian.

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1. Your mission filter determines what’s worth storing

In my opinion, the worst part of taking photos on a smartphone is deleting all the duds. Maybe you take 20 pictures in a row of your baby girl because you don’t know which one will be good. Now, scale that problem up to a company that creates thousands of images per month in dozens of markets. What do you keep? Who’s in charge of the decision?

Librarians like Jen decide what’s worth storing based on a company’s mission. Let’s say your mission is to spread the joy of do-it-yourself home crafts. That’s your mission filter. Which images could help you spread that message? Which wouldn’t?

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Content librarians decide what’s worth storing based on a company mission, says @JakeAthey. #contentstrategy
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While this sounds obvious, most companies store every image without question. If you want to be organized, why waste time tagging and storing content you absolutely, positively will not use? Why plant false positives throughout your content library? Exercising the mission filter is the first step toward understanding what content you have and why you have it.

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2. Standardize your language now to make content findable later

Librarians are trained to create vocabularies and subject taxonomies. Here’s an example from Clear Channel Outdoor:

Click to enlarge

A few things are worth noting. First, check out the overall metadata structure on the left. It ensures that everything goes into the DAM system with a standardized set of attributes. There are metadata fields for how a photo is shot and even the type of audience to indicate if the photo has multicultural value. Tags like that surprise a lot of marketers.

Metadata should mirror the content strategy. If using multicultural shots matters to the marketing team and its audience, then having a multicultural metadata tag saves time in searching for content. Metadata fields reflect how users will decide to use or not use an image.

The keyword chart shows the industry verbiage Jen’s team adds to metadata. In the left column is “category taxonomy” and in the right is “scope notes.” The team works from this list when tagging keywords at Clear Channel Outdoor (per the required metadata fields). Jen does the hard work of grouping words with themes so marketers, salespeople, agencies, etc., can find what they need. The vocabulary is updated at least weekly as Jen’s team uncovers new words and expressions.

Librarians put a ton of up-front effort into vocabulary to spare users from failed searches.

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Librarians put a ton of up-front effort into vocabulary to spare users from failed searches, says @JakeAthey.
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 3.  Plan your content life cycle

Unlike baby pictures I’ll hang onto forever (or at least long enough to embarrass my daughter), brand images have a life cycle. Why toss stuff or throw it in cold storage? Well, at a certain point, you have to stop using some assets because they’re outdated. Stock images, for instance, have rigid expiration dates, and violating them can get you into trouble. Thus, librarians take command of life-cycle policies.

Typically, a librarian institutes expiration dates for each asset class. For example, logos might get five years before they’re due for review. But for infographics with data, the librarian might set an expiration date of three years. Assets created for a launch campaign might expire in less time. Conversely, a picture of a company from 50 years ago may have no expiration date. It’s evergreen and irreplaceable.

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A librarian typically institutes expiration dates for each content asset class. @JakeAthey. #contentstrategy
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The point of retiring content is to ensure that users only find and use relevant, up-to-date assets in accordance with image rights. If bad assets aren’t in your system, no one can misuse them.

ROI of a librarian

Managing your content library like a librarian is intense, but does it pay off? The data says yes.

When we at Widen compared customers with dedicated DAM admins (i.e., those who spend more than 50% of their time on DAM) to companies without (i.e., admins who spend less than 20% of their time on DAM), we found stark differences. In companies with a dedicated admin, users download more than twice as many assets and repurpose active assets more than twice as often on average.

In my experience, all dedicated DAM admins (often librarians) apply the above principles. While the data doesn’t prove users get more ROI in marketing campaigns, it does show that these companies get more use per asset with a dedicated admin. This could mean that assets are better organized or that the DAM admin has time to train users in more depth. Either way, higher use per asset is a desirable outcome for a marketing team with a limited budget.

The librarian way

In the past, I’ve recommended that companies hire a librarian to set up and manage their content library, and I stand by that advice. For many companies, though, that’s not in their budget. If that’s the case, strive to manage your content library like a librarian. If you have a mission filter, a standardized vocabulary, and life-cycle policies, you’re miles ahead of the average marketing team.

Want to improve your structure for content marketing effectiveness? Sign up for our Content Strategy for Marketers weekly newsletter, which features exclusive insights from Robert Rose, chief content adviser. If you’re like many other marketers we meet, you’ll come to look forward to his thoughts every Saturday.

Cover image by Ryan McGuire-Bells Design, Gratisography

The post 3 Steps to Manage Your Content Library Like a Librarian appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.