Month: March 2017

This is a story I have been wanting to tell for the longest time. It’s an incident that occurred during the early days of starting up. I had just begun my content writing business and had started sinking my teeth into the hurly-burly of business, content deals, client payments, negotiation meetings etc. We were doing fairly well with a small team of five odd writers and me editing most of the lot. The going was good – I was swimming through, getting orders, executing furiously and establishing a platform for Justwords. Then one day, I got a call from a client who called him Mr. Shah from somewhere in Gujarat. He had found us out through the Internet and said he wanted lots of content. He ran 1800 websites he claimed and wanted around 3000 articles written every month. He had his own army of writers, he mentioned, and wanted more and more of quality articles. Then, next 15 minutes he spent describing how he ran his business, how he dealt with clients across the world and how he knew what the in-thing in “content” was. When I turned skeptical, he probably understood and moved the conversation into how much content he could give us to create every week. When I asked him about his website and payment methods, he said he ran his business based on guest blogging and payment would never be a problem. I told him, we would think about it and get back to him. He called back within half an hour to ask me whether I had made a decision and he needed around 50 articles within three days. It was an urgent requirement and the payment would be done, as we wanted it. He was ready to give an advance too – 25% of the total amount and the rest would be done within an hour of getting the work. Knowing our work policies, I knew that this customer didn’t fit our bill. Also, we never started work without agreeing on payment modalities and signing off on official work agreements. I deliberated on what to do – maybe we could get him to sign the work agreement within the three-day deadline and also get him to pay the advance amount. The 1000-article order had stuck on to my head. As a start-up entrepreneur, that’s something you cannot really ignore. I decided to call the client again and ask him if he was ready for the above. Mr. Shah was ready for all of that. He agreed to send us the advance amount and sign the work agreement. With the basic hurdles cleared, I decided to take up the order. The work was sent, the guidelines explained (actually, there were hardly any guidelines). I asked him to send us a work order and confirm the order and pricing through a mail. He said he would be able to send us everything by Wednesday. There was also the request to get work started. Cut to Wednesday morning. I had convinced myself that the work could be taken on without violating the work policies that I had set for my business, spoken to my team members and got them to agree to the deadline. Basically work had started. Since I had received no mail from Mr. Shah or payment, I called him up again to confirm on the payment. I made it very clear that nothing would be delivered until the conditions were met. Mr. Shah agreed to everything, and confirmed that everything would be done. Assured that things were moving at a proper pace, I told my sixth sense to shut up and go for a walk. On Thursday morning, the client called to ask me whether I had already started the project. Yes, I said, and asked him what happened. He said that he was managing to get the whole stuff written at a much lower rate and whether I could manage to give him that rate just for once – only for the first batch. After 30 minutes of negotiation, we finally settled at a one-time rate that would apply for just the first lot. There was something that didn’t feel right. I decided to finish up this order and not deal with this client anymore. The team had already written the content and there was no point in not getting paid at all. My business partner thankfully saw my point. We agreed that the only condition for this job would be – getting the client to pay the advance before we deliver. We both concluded that this was not worth continuing. I made a call again to Mr. Shah, who said he had been unable to make the payment because of some emergency condition, but would definitely make sure that transaction happened before the articles were delivered. Friday morning, I finished my other client follow-ups, and decided to check whether the payment from Mr. Shah had arrived. Nope. Genuine concern had officially started worrying me. My sixth sense had also started bothering me, providing me very mixed signals. When I called the client asking for the advance payment, he said, “Please send me the articles first. Send me atleast a few so that I can see the quality and then I will make the payment. If I make the payment and don’t like the articles, then what?” I now clearly understood that he would not pay us a penny without seeing the articles. I tried to reason with him, but he was in no mood to listen. I suddenly realized I had very nicely stepped into a trap of which there was no way of getting out. Since all the 50 articles had been written, it made no sense to not send him a few. Atleast, that way, I hoped he would pay, and I would atleast make something. This had never happened to me and I was completely and utterly lost as to how to deal with the situation. I decided

We strive to publish our blogs every Tuesday and Thursday of the week. I will admit here right away that sometimes this content scheduling doesn’t work out for us. That is mostly because I am unhappy with either the way a blog has been written, or the way in which the idea has been presented or the way in which the structure has been built. And even though it results in irregular postings, which bothers my digital team immensely, I cannot seem to get myself to publish a blog that does not read interesting or isn’t good. So the question here is – is it okay to publish content that is not so great for the sake of regularity, or should you post less but post really good stuff? Ever since content marketing became the must-do thing for every brand, most marketers have been on a content creation overdrive. While there was a lot more content created in 2016 than before, most of it came in the category of average. They were created not to genuinely share knowledge but to be a “me-too” click bait. Which is why when you look for products, research or answers, you see so many similar content pieces. One person saw the opportunity in writing about the topic and several others simply chose to mimic it. While we are still not sure if all this “content marketing noise” is good or bad, I know that people are now wading through a lot more average content. The good thing is – this also means they will eventually get better at identifying quality content – and so will the search engines. Also, here is an interesting point. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI)- Why is Content Marketing Today’s Marketing? 10 Stats That Prove It, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing and generates more than three times as many leads. The one thing that statement misses out is that not all content generates these results. Its content that differentiates the good from the great. Its content that differentiates the boys from the men. So here is my advice (which you probably already knew) –  If you want to see some real results from your content marketing efforts, never settle for the “good enough”. Always strive for the better and best content. Here’s how you can create really good content. Document your content strategy Did you know that while 88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy. This, by far, is the best way to differentiate the good from the good enough. Defining your content strategy on paper makes it a concrete “living” thing that you can look up anytime you need. Discussing it verbally with your team leaves it open to interpretation and no concrete way to analyze and follow up. At Justwords, we created a neat 2017 resolution list for our team to follow. This is an overarching list that is used as a guideline to keep a check on our quality. But beyond this, we have a definitive strategy document that allows us to keep track of the metrics that matter the most. If you are wondering how to start, here is a great article from CMI- The Essentials of a Documented Content Marketing Strategy: 36 Questions to Answer The Essentials of a Documented Content Marketing Strategy: 36 Questions to Answer. Answer these 36 questions to create your own content strategy document. For those of you who are looking for a template to get started, here is a great Google doc template created by Moz to help you get started. This template runs you through everything that is needed to create your content strategy. Get an in-depth understanding of your target audience Susan Chritton probably defines this the best in her book “Personal Branding for Dummies”, where she underscores the importance of understanding your audience. Defining your brand and your target customer plays a huge role in your content strategy. This isn’t a superficial definition like “25-30-year-old females”. Instead hang out where your target audience does. Find out their likes and dislikes. You can run both online and offline surveys to zero in on their preferences. Once you have this, you’ll be able to use the information to create more targeted content. For example, your target audience will now be defined as 25-year-old females from Thailand with interests in solo travel and fitness. This additional information can now help you put together tailored content that they’ll love to read. You can also see the content that is currently being consumed by your target audience and find a way to connect your product and service to it. In his comprehensive guide to building your personal brand, blogger Neil Patel devotes an entire chapter to “How to Define Your Target Audience”. Even though it’s meant for the personal brand, the lessons are worth reading. Your audience persona should tell you – Who are you creating your content for? What is the pain point you are solving for her? Where is this person located? Why does he want to read this piece of content? If you want to go deeper into this, then you should look into the – Gender Job title Job function Employer Location Needs Pain points Challenges Be a Storyteller With action, drama, romance, tragedy and comedy, a story resonates with us because we identify or empathize with it. This content has the highest recall value. While all the emotions may not be right for you, it is a useful tool to set your voice and tone. Your hero is, of course, your customer. And every hero wants to save the world. This is where your brand comes in. It becomes the best sidekick there is to help your hero succeed in his mission. The AMEX Open Forum is a great example of how effective customer storytelling works. They have created powerful stories with their specific target customer personas and how their

Somewhere between 2014-15 brands started recognizing the value of quality content. It not only helped brands put forward their messages subtly but eventually turned out as a tool to generating engaged customers. In 2016 brands are feverishly working with the knowledge that content is a great tool to reach out to their audience and churning out quite a bit of it too. But few have found success that can be directly mapped to their content marketing strategy. The key term in the above sentence is ‘strategy’. Brands that create content aligning with their strategic campaigns are the ones that eventually see success. Others well…content creation. Here are some great examples from around the world on how good content has created measurable results for top brands:   Go Pro When we think of content marketing, it is natural that we first think of text content. Considering some estimates that online video will account for 74% of internet traffic, GoPro is in a perfect position to take advantage of the medium. But Go Pro didn’t want to become a company allowing you to capture action video footage – it wanted to become THE company. To do this, GoPro partnered with high-end producers and action protégé to produce content that highlights the fun part of using the gadget. It then asked its customers to share their own footage of having fun with GoPro. The brand continues to receive thousands of videos every month from its customers. This User Generated Content (UGC) were further edited by other users into non-sponsored GoPro compilations. Results and Insights GoPro’s revenue reached $1.6 in 2015. It has 10263539 followers on Facebook, 2.04M followers on Twitter and similar numbers on other social channels. Your Takeaway The best company is actually a customer-funded company. There is nothing like word of mouth that makes a brand/product go viral. GoPro is a classic example of using UGC and save hundreds if not thousands of marketing money. Results and insights Pepsi saw an 89% increase in its monthly page views after the platform launch which kept growing at a rate of 38% after launch. Pepsi’s social traffic grew 22x post-launch and each visit duration grew by 10% – that meant not only new visitors but also highly engaged ones. Your takeaway Pepsi never sold its main product from this platform. The idea of creating a curated content platform was to create a central place to directly connect with its target audience and help create a brand association between pop culture and Pepsi. If you give your audience what they truly crave for, they are bound to like you and eventually buy from you too.     Visa Europe Visa Europe started with a campaign goal – It wanted to position itself as a leader in the payment conversation space. The target audience was specifically senior professionals in the payments technology industry within continental Europe. That’s a tough audience to reach if you choose conventional forms of advertising. So instead, Visa chooses to create a content platform that exclusively caters to what its target audience would like. It used a third party’s content management system to host curated, licensed content that was exclusively about payment trends in Europe. Stop right here and read that sentence again. The CMS  allowed sharing news from leading publications like The Daily Telegraph, VentureBeat and The Economist. But all the content actually worked to establish Visa as a thought leader in the space who is one step ahead of the game in the payment technology space. Cleverly, they further engaged these readers with a call to action like social follow or newsletter sign up that ensured they become a repeat reader. Results and insights Within the first 3 months, the microsite received 34000 page views Due to their targeted call to action mechanisms, the site received 36% repeat visitors The site saw a 21% MOM growth rate of which an average user spent over a minute on the site Your takeaway Quality content is readily available on the web to be licensed and used. All Visa did was to pick and choose and create a platform where its target audience could consume this content. As a brand, you need to identify what your target audience likes to read and bring it together cohesively to create an ambience for your brand.     AMEX Open Forum   Often cited as the poster child for content marketing, the Open Forum campaign is effectively what all content marketing campaigns aspire to be. Since its start in 2007, it has single-handedly proven the business value of brands by providing useful content to its customers. So much so that it continues to remain the #1 source of leads for new AMEX cardholders. So what’s the secret sauce for their success? It isn’t too complex – it is ensuring that your customer comes first, doing the right thing for them and doing it well. AMEX started by putting itself in the shoes of its customers. What are your customers reading most often? What is resonating with them? They used the answers to these questions to map their content strategy. They then created content stories around impactful small businesses like a cafe whose husband-wife owners are active civic leaders or a hip men’s apparel brand that has a bulldog as a mascot. By weaving a beautiful story around their lives and the lives they impact, they created an engaging audience who were drawn in with top notch imagery and videos. The stories allowed the audience to relate themselves are AMEX customers as the brand did not sell itself but actually sought out to help them. The forum moved on to creating a platform where the small business owners could share advice, post questions even rate each other’s helpfulness – all of which is now extended to social connectivity. Results and insights This campaign considered one of the best content marketing done by a brand. While visits and even repeat visits increased manifold, each visitor spent

Gone are the days when good marketing and advertising plan was enough to see your business sail through even the most trying times.  Today, you cannot bank solely on a mere marketing strategy and a reasonable advertising budget to work as effectively or as easily as they would earlier do. Businesses, for sure, must serve up new, unique content to clients and consumers to remain relevant in the stiff competitive market scenarios across verticals. And these days, the commonest and the most popular way to make your product or service known is to have a resounding online presence and make sure that your target audience finds you there easily.  And for that to happen, you need a specialist – who, along with your advertising and marketing strategies, will pull your business’ socks up, digitally. So, what does a digital marketing specialist need to do? In short, he or she must work alongside your marketing team to zero in on the market targeted by your business, develop an image that will go side by side with the brand you have created, and then craft and sustain a campaign that will market and advertise your business online – be it for the Internet or for any other digital platform that the marketing of your business will be deemed fit for. Now, there are many areas in which digital marketing professionals specialise in. While some of them can have a general area of expertise regarding everything to do with marketing products or services online, there are others who specialise in one particular aspect within the digital marketing field. This could be anything from the commonest of them all – search engine optimization (SEO), to something a little more technical like Pay Per Click (PPC), or from social media marketing to work the shopping feeds and on to anything that can work as display media. . The Responsibilities of a Digital Marketing Specialist Before we embark upon a few core specialisation areas for a digital marketing professional, let us talk in brief about the role’s general responsibilities. The aim of a digital marketing specialist is to improve awareness of the company’s brand through encouragement and promotion of the services or products the company sells and to convert interested audiences into paying customers. In these ways, the role is very much akin to that of a marketing professional in the traditional sense. However, the only difference between a conventional marketing specialist and a digital one, lies in the channels the latter uses – technology or digital platforms, as opposed to the more conventional ones that a non-digital marketer uses. One of the most important jobs of specialists working the digital marketing field is to strive to kick-start campaigns on the Internet – the space where they have to work their magic to drive interest, poke curiosity, and finally trigger a sale. A careful weighing in of the requirements of the market of the consumer gives a digital marketing specialist a good idea about the ways in which to and the places where they need to garner more information about demands and trends in the consumer market. So, how does a digital marketing specialist use that knowledge of consumer trends and requirements to drive sales? These professionals create marketing strategies or plans that would be fine-tuned to address the company’s needs and align it with the consumers’ needs online. To get the word out online, these professionals need to conduct research on the best ways to reach out to their potential customers on the Internet and then collate promotional content and emails campaigns and such and place them in the most appropriate of channels. Basic Skills Needed for the Job So, in a gist, what are the basic skills that a digital marketing specialist might need to perform his or her job well? First, the specialist needs to know the long and short of traditional marketing basics. Only by understanding core marketing issues will the digital marketing specialist be able to use the same tenets and tweak them to get the job done online. They need to be able to innovate about ways in which to create a social buzz about the product or service they are marketing and use effective tools to promote them in a result-driven manner. Developing, managing, and executing a strategy online lie at the very heart of their roles. Additionally, a digital marketing specialist needs to have a good grasp on the working of the tools needed to measure performance with, as well. While in-depth knowledge in the fields of SEO, content and email marketing, social media, SEM, and pay per click is considered must-haves, digital marketing specialists have another key function, which they need to lay a lot of stress on. And that is, staying abreast of the recent trends in marketing and digital technology usages in the field. These may be in the form of updates from Google or some important alteration that comes about in the way the search engine algorithms work. So, now let us delve deeper into the skills you need to perform some specific digital marketing functions Skills for Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimisation, commonly known by the acronym SEO, might have started back in the day with the aim of getting your website being found quickly online. But with advances in technology and the use of associated platforms, SEO today extends its influence much farther than helping websites to be found fast on search engines. Merely stuffing your page with keywords is not enough these days. Optimisation, commonly known by the acronym SEO, might have started back in the day with the aim of getting your website being found quickly online. But with advances in technology and the use of associated platforms, SEO today extends its influence much farther than helping websites to be found fast on search engines. Merely stuffing your page with keywords is not enough these days. Google is known for altering its search algorithm occasionally, making it more