#excited to explore other content this way in about 2500 years

[darpok]

Thank you to the Reddit girlies who suggested watching Polin scenes on .75 speed…my heart is bursting with sweetness 😭

[jessica-harrison]

Skills

Cover photo: https://www.ipr.edu/blogs/audio-production/what-can-i-do-with-an-audio-production-degree/

As mentioned in the 'Industry Research' section of this blog, it isn't just the technical skills future employers will want to see. They want to see how your passion and art is fuelled also!! Sound design is more than just a series of sticking sounds together in a DAW. It's all about creating the other half of the story!

Core values & necessary skills

In my blog's branding section, I spoke about core values and those I deem to be top of my list. Core values make us who we are. It's what drives ambition and our creative thought process.

Accountability is high on my list of values/skills. Being accountable for the amount and quality of work we do is crucial. Often we dismiss our failures because we won't hold ourselves responsible. Though, at the other end of the spectrum, we more often than not, sing our praises. So holding yourself accountable as an individual or team unit, is just as crucial during the failures as it is during the success.

Whilst, teamwork is a very cliché term used with regards to employability, it remains a massive part of my core skill set. Being surrounded by team members is an excellent way to find a creative place in a project. I can then take those ideas and present for peer review. Having people to work with not only makes producing a big project easier. Still, it gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction that like-minded creatives have come together to create something incredible.

Passion is a big part of what drives me. Music and composing is such a wonderful expression of artistry for me. Not just the music side of things, but I then took my love for music (and audio in general) regarding sound design. I began exploring the more intricate realms of audio. Each day my passions grow, but I NEVER wonder why I love what I do, not even on my worst days.

Respect is a skill I'm continually re-evaluating. I think it is undeniably essential to respect other people and their creative differences.

Continuous improvement is about always finding new and exciting ways to work. Technology changes exceptionally fast these days, and in audio production, the skillsets also have to change. Keeping up to date on industry techniques, skills, and methods will ensure I stay relevant to the expected work output. There are some general skills required to be a sound designer composer within the creative industries. However, some more specific skills are necessary if specialising in TV & film or games.

Basic skills: 

Creating, maintaining and backing of own original sound libraries.

Digital signal processing

Producing sound maps/ storyboards from scripts.

Mixing inside Digital Audio Workstations

Work along with side other members of the audio post-production team

Sector-specific skills

TV/Film and Game skills:

Compose and engineer music

improving sound quality

Spot, arrange and edit audio into video, or other mediums.

Use visual logic systems such as Max MSP.

Use of game implementation systems, i.e. Unity, Unreal, Fmod and Wwise.

Layering sounds to have a desired/or specific effect.

I have begun creating and collating my sound libraries last year. At first, I had incredibly long titles for samples and one-shots but started finding it hard to achieve all of the sounds (both RAW and edited). That was until I came across the word 'metadata'. Having a logical and easily navigable database of sounds is crucial to making my workflow more efficiently. I'm starting my journey into audio metadata with a free app called Soundly. Soundly offers a free-plan with up to 2500 local file storage and access to free cloud-based sound effects. To start, this will be ideal, but I would like to look at other plans that will include Cloud storage backup in the future. Currently I backup all of my libraries onto an 8TB desktop drive, another external HDD and my google drive. 

What is digital sound processing or DSP, you may ask? Digital sound processing is where audio converts from analogue to digital signal. A series of mathematical calculations are then applied before the signal returns to analogue before final output. As a producer/composer/sound designer, I use various plugins to manipulate the sounds inside my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Plugins come in many forms. VST is the most common form of an audio plugin and is Microsoft's Virtual Studio Technology. Avid uses its plugin file system called AAX (Avid Audio Extension), and Apple uses its own AU system (Audio Unit).

Below is a small list of plugins that I utilise during my time working on projects in the studio:

Fabfilter Pro-Q 3

Waves H delay

iZotope RX8 - Music Rebalance

Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation AAX plugin (Pro Tools)

I use Logic Pro X as my music production/composition DAW of choice. I believe this offers a great deal of flexibility to music composers alike. 

In contrast, I use Pro Tools as my post-production tool. Here, I produce final mixes of songs before proceeding onto the mastering process, which I also use Pro Tools. Pro Tools is also my DAW of choice for sound design work, purely because of its sheer power in dealing with raw audio.

During a mix-down phase of a musical composition, you should hear each instrument with clarity. Musical instruments all operate at different frequencies within the frequency spectrum. By respecting the base frequencies at which a particular instrument's audio outputs, I can make the final asset as audibly clear as possible, for maximum viewing pleasure. 

When working on sound design projects, I will often improve the sound of my source audio captured when out in the field inside iZotope RX8. Here I will remove clicks, hissing, background hum, de-verb, and even isolate parts of dialogue to ensure that audio is optimal for project usage.

I do love writing music and producing sound effects! I like to create work for TV & film, animations, interactive media, audiobooks and more. I import video assets into my DAW (Logic Pro X or Pro Tools depending on projects final output). 

This way, I have a visual in front of me from which to work. You can then lock the audio event in position with the video using SMTPE time code. This way, it keeps my music and sound effects in the exact place they need to be, without fear of being moved or adjusted in any way. Just don't forget to lock the positions!!

Max MSP is a powerful visual logic system for generating sound design and producing electronic music. I am new to this software and am learning new and exciting ways to integrate MAX MSP into my DAW workflow. I decided to explore the unique and intricate methods of composing music and designing sound for various media forms.

Examples of work

The best way to showcase both technical and artistic skill is quite obviously through social media platforms. Instagram has become a staple platform where businesses and creatives promote themselves and their craft. There are other platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook (and don't forget LinkedIn!) to name but a few. With all of these beautiful places to promote me and work, I must consider the type of content I post to maintain maximum engagement with audiences and potential employers.

After many years of making and producing music at home, my interest in exploring the world of all thing's audio continued to grow. I purchased myself a simple, cheap portable recorder, some dirt-cheap microphones, and just went out and explored the world around me. At first, I made some novice mistakes in just aimlessly pointing and pressing the record button. Still, I soon learned that I merely heard things playback after recording. I never stopped to listen before I hit that big red button!

Slowly I got better (still, a long way to go), but most importantly I absolutely loved the process, and still am! I took great inspiration from reading the sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers (https://www.ricviers.com/sound-effects-bible) and Field Recording from Research To Wrap by Paul Virostek (https://www.creativefieldrecording.com/downloads/field-recording-from-research-to-wrap/). Both explain in great detail about how to get set up, get a recording and start collating my sound libraries.

With that said here's one of my first sound design projects. By this time, I had upgraded my audio recorder and had a few new microphone additions. Jez Riley French's D-Series Hydrophone, C – Series Contact mic, and his electromagnetic coil mic. Again, it was a learning curve starting with these new bits of kit, but I am genuinely pleased with how much this project turned out.

Without further ado, I present to you a lovely piece of animation by Polynoid, titled Mem. I create a gorgeous stereo cacophony of delicate sounds with Sci-Fi and electronic elements that lend itself well to the animation's energy.

ENJOY (with headphones is best!))

[kognozconsulting]

Three ways practicing Mindfulness supports the future of work

The Idea Of Mindfulness

The emergence of the concept of mindfulness is often traced as far as 2500 years back. However, despite its old origins, it is finding widespread application is all spheres of life now more than ever. Mindfulness is generally understood as a form of sustained present-moment awareness of oneself, others and the environment. Kabat-Zinn, one of the foremost scholars of mindfulness and the person who introduced the concept to organisational science describes it as a ‘way of paying attention: on purpose, in the present moment and non – judgementally.’

By ‘on purpose’, he meant that when one pays attention to the present moment, one is always aware of doing it. One is also aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. This capacity to be aware of one’s cognitive processes is referred to as the ‘metacognitive’ dimension of mindfulness. This metacognitive dimension is what separates and accentuates the experience of mindfulness, and leads individuals to make better choices. The insistence on the present-moment is equally important as it breaks us out of our fixation on the past or the future, as well as on mindless day dreaming or going through tasks on autopilot. By being fully aware on the present moment, one is able to experience life better and react better to stimulus. Lastly, when Kabat-Zinn gives ‘non-judgmental’ as one of the key attributes of mindfulness. He means that a mindful person is someone who has rid herself of the tendency to constantly judge herself for not doing enough in life. Instead of constantly feeling dissatisfied with our lives, mindfulness allows us to experience all aspects of life with warmth and uncensored curiosity.

Mindfulness At Workplace

           The work environment has become highly disintegrated over the last two years with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing employees globally to work from home. As both work and family life now coexist in the same physical space of one’s home, it has become harder to keep boundaries between the two intact. This sudden shift is causing a higher than usual degree of stress for employees, as they find themselves struggling to strike a balance between work and personal lives. Constant distractions and inability to connect with co-workers are some of the other negative by-products of working in a post-pandemic world. It would be interesting to explore if a solution to some of these problems can be found in mindfulness-based practices.

Reduced levels of stress and anxiety

Already significant research work has been done to apply the benefits of mindfulness practices to work environment in order to reduce stress and anxiety experienced by employees. One of the foremost and most popular organisational mindfulness intervention programmes called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was introduced by Kabat-Zinn himself. Several Research works to test the efficacy of this programme have proven that it leads to a significant reduction in stress levels and other measurable parameters, including those related to the potential for depression, anxiety and rumination. In addition, the programme was also was found to enhance interpersonal sensitivity, adaption of coping strategies and an increased level of self-compassion.

Higher emotional intelligence and good work relationships

Research suggests that people who are stronger in self-management competencies on an average add 78% more profits than those who lack in these. Studies conducted in some of the large firms suggest that partners with a high amount of emotional intelligence contributed 110% more than those who don’t. Mindfulness research suggests that those who practice mindfulness are shown to have higher levels of self-regulation and emotional intelligence. The more mindful a person is, the better she is able to experience her own thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. This experience is important as it allows one to accurately perceive the thoughts, feelings and sensations of others. This is highly significant to develop high emotional intelligence, as the capacity to give someone our full attention is vital for building a good relationship at work.

Higher attention span and work productivity

One of the most exciting benefits of mindfulness is better attention span and reduced mental distractions. How many times in a day do we find ourselves thinking of the past or the future or day dreaming about something? This phenomenon of constantly losing attention is neither new nor uncommon for people. The response towards these mental distractions is mostly of guilt and judgment experienced by people on account of not being focussed enough. Mindfulness practice trains one to retain attention for longer. It also teaches one to approach distractions from a neutral, non-judgmental perspective and focus instead on training oneself to be attentive. This is highly significant in a work environment as if the focus on the work at hand is higher, it would lead to better productivity, as proven through research.

Future of work

The future of work will come with many challenges, some of which we are already beginning to experience. From a highly disintegrated workspace, to high amount of digitization to the need for constant skilling, deskilling and reskilling, it is important now more than ever that individuals become self-aware and are capable of managing their physical, mental and emotional well-being.

We are experiencing multiple distractions while balancing personal and professional commitments. In such a scenario, it’s very common to see employees putting up to long hours or work and end up experiencing stress, anxiety, and mental exhaustion. Integrating mindfulness practices in workspace is one of the ways in which a more stable work environment can be fostered where every employee experience well-being and contentment with respect to their work.

At Kognoz, we are working on integrating mindful practices at workplace and researching the impact of such practices on the quality of decision making. To know more about our work in this area, please click here

[nerdydoll-sims4]

Till Your Last Breath - Chapter 1

Summary: The countdown plastered to one's skin showed how much time the other's soulmate had left to live. For Felicity Smoak, that meant she had 3 months to find and warn her soulmate before he would die. When she met him though, she got more than what she signed herself up for. Especially when his secret identity was revealed to her... Soulmate, Bratva AU mixed with Olicity Fic-A-Thon Prompts. Prompt: Eye Contact Word Count: 1662 Rating: M Tagging: @thebookjumper, @olicityhiatusficathon  Notes: Heyyaaa people :) I'm very excited to be back with this small prologue. This fanfiction will be updated weekly, depends on how much the prompt fits the storyline I have in mind, and of course the response will determine how many chapters this story should get. While this prologue is very quick, I will try to aim for a word count between 2500 and 5000+. The chapters will focus heavily on that week's prompt, except for this one, because this is the chapter that gets the story going. I hope you enjoy this little ficlet and follow the characters' journey to the end. :) Let me know what you think at the end by dropping a message. Comments and kudos feed the soul of my Muse. :P Enjoy! :)

Read on AO3

The worlds of Soulmates were a cruel one. For instance, not everyone had a soulmate while some people had more than one. The appellation "cruel" did not come from that reason though. It came from the marred skin on a person's body that hid a countdown. The countdown itself showed the years, months, days and minutes that were left until their own soulmate died, spraying an invisible shadow of death and clock over people's heads as a reminder. Those who carried the different looking countdowns were much more tensed, depressed and led a life only the strongest could. But even so, from the connections soulmates shared, people called it a blessing.

For Felicity Smoak, it was more of a curse.

The curved numbers changing from day to day did not show a high number like in the case of most children at her age. Instead, when Felicity turned 13 and the mark appeared, it displayed the following combination of numbers: "12:03:20:05." Which meant she had a little over 12 years until her soulmate died.

From the moment people saw the number on her wrist, they started whispering behind her back, pitying her, mocking her. Some were kind, some were not. Some offered condolences to her, while some told her it was because no one wanted her. Overall, Felicity received a load of varying reactions that pushed her into a dark place. She did not want a simple number to rule her life, especially when it did not necessarily mean anything. Sometimes, the dates were wrong.

So, Felicity bought a bracelet with the help of her mother to conceal the countdown and focused on making a bright future for her. That helped her in more ways than she thought it would at first. The pity looks ceased then vanished altogether after a while and her classmates stopped making fun of her. And while it solved many problems, she couldn't ignore the rising nervousness and later panic at the low number.

She wasn't into soulmates, but if the numbers were true, it meant an innocent person was going to die and she knew exactly when.

Felicity was 22 when she decided to find her soulmate and warn him. For years, she sat back and focused on her life, waiting for the countdown to switch to a higher number. But since she only had three more years, she decided it was up to her to make sure the man she was destined to be with wouldn't die so early. She wasn't sure she would actually start a relationship with him once found, as she was still too young to settle for "her forever," but she couldn't do nothing any longer.

Unbeknownst to him, he needed her help.

At the age of 25, after 3 years of hopeless searching, Felicity was tired both physically and mentally. She listened to what her guts told her and moved from Las Vegas to Starling City and yet, she caught no sign of him. It was believed that when you met your soulmate, the countdown's color would change from black to a lighter, colorful one, indicating someone's status. The mark would only turn back to black once the mate died. Felicity checked her wrist a lot per day, but whenever she looked down, she had to swallow back a disappointed sigh at the sight of dark ink.

She had four months left and Felicity had visited each club, hospital, social place, plaza, hotel and so on the city had to offer for people. No matter what though, the mark stay unchanged with only the numbers growing smaller.

And after years of searching, she was losing her optimism.

It took her two hours of standing in line to get into the new club, called "Verdant." It was kind of her last hope. She had three months left, if she didn't find her soulmate there, she didn't know where to check next. She moved to Starling City 3 years ago and while her heart told her he was in that city, she couldn't help but question the accurateness of her instincts. He could be in a different city, unaware of his upcoming death whilst she wasted time here. Felicity had no idea what she would do if he died and she couldn't even try preventing his death. If it could be preventable of course, like a car crash or a wrongly gone mugging - not that mugging could be good. If it couldn't be prevented because it was a sickness, Felicity had no idea what she would do next. She had gifted the last few years of her life to finding her soulmate.

She knew people managed to live a content and happy life without their mate, but truth be told, Felicity was unsure. A bigger part of her wouldn't be able to move on from his death, while another part of her would like to explore her other chances. It wasn't like she had never been with anyone, but fate existed for a reason. They were soulmates for a reason.

Not every soulmate relationship worked out the way people hoped, like in the case of her parents, but there were ones people could only dream of, like in the case of her grandparents. The love and connection they shared... It was what drove Felicity to at least try. She didn't want to live her life in a bubble of what ifs and maybes. She had to try and if she failed, she at least failed knowing she did what she could. Although, she wasn't sure anymore if she was talking about saving him or having a relationship with him. For all she knew, he could be a drug addict or a serial killer. Or a seventy-year-old beer-bellied man. That would explain low the numbers. Not that Felicity wanted to think about that option.

Back to the present though.

Felicity made her way through the crowd on the dance floor toward the bar, ignoring the eager hands that touched the red material of her dress and naked flesh they found, knowing the alcohol would help soothe her over-stretched and tensed nerves. She couldn't focus on her task if she was only paying attention to her own body's emotions. Hopping down an empty seat that looked inviting, she ordered her favorite cocktail and placed her palms flat on the cold glass, breathing in and out deeply.

He had to be there, she refused to leave without knowing who her soulmate was.

Swirling in her seat, Felicity took in the place, gazing from faces to faces in the rows of grinding dancers, praying she would feel some kind of pull toward him if she managed to lay her eyes on him. Nothing. She felt absolutely nothing. She scanned the crowd again, only stopping the search to get her drink, the loud music the DJ played, resonating in her chest. The sensation was both unwelcome and unsurprising. Starling City had more than 100 nightclubs and she had been to all.

When she restarted her search for the third time, Felicity felt a set of eyes on her face from the left she hadn't felt before, drawing her attention from the crowd to the shadowed corner upstairs. There, her eyes collided with the gaze of another person, the pull she hoped to feel flaring to life like those flames had been woken suddenly from a light sleep.

She couldn't see his face fully, she couldn't even see his body in full glory, but she didn't have to. Her eyes were strictly stuck on his. From the changing brightness in the dimly lit place, Felicity couldn't see the color of his eyes, but the intimacy it held still got to her. A shiver ran down the path of her spine and her grip on the glass tightened, as his stare kept calling for her.

His eyes showcased power and yet, he didn't even try to use it on her. The muscles in her stomach tangled and Felicity slowly slipped her lower lip between her teeth, the small, almost invisible action drawing his attention from her eyes down to her dark red lips. Her body pulsed with the rhythm of her pounding heart, her breathing that had been mostly normal mere minutes ago quickening.  

A face appeared in her vision out of the blue, covering the mysterious man's gaze and Felicity shook her head a tad to sweep away the magic of the jiffy, blinking rapidly at the stranger ahead while her insides screamed at her to follow the man who held her stare.

"Hey, babe. What you doin' here alone?" he asked a tad unsure about himself, and Felicity almost laughed at his attempt to form a normal, coherent sentence. He most definitely wasn't thirsty anymore.

Before she could reply though, the man was gone, in his place standing a different yet familiar stranger, his piercing bluest of blue eyes making her breath hitch. He was the guy from upstairs. Her eyes roamed over his features and she took in the stubble that littered his jaw, the lips that were drawn in a tight line and the mole his skin wore proudly. Felicity's gaze moved upward and once more, she was struck by his silent look, her lips parting at the sight. He held her captive in that trice, closing out the outsiders from the bartenders to the people surrounding them on the dance parquette. The music that had been bothering her ears before quieted as she got a read on him through his eyes, her heart beating furiously under her breast.

Longing. Surprise. Wariness. Fierceness. Lust.

She didn't need a mirror to be certain her eyes unmasked the same emotions for him. The temperature of her body rose, her skin under the bracelet burning a tad as they stayed unmoving in the spur of the moment.

Felicity didn't have to look down at her mark. She knew it changed colors.

It was him.

Finally.

[vickeyeppunitarj42insurance-blog]

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Joris de Ruiter of ConvertCalculator, a brand that sells calculator form builder.Some stats:Product: Calculator form builder.Revenue/mo: $5,000Started: January 2017Location: RotterdamFounders: 1Employees: 1Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi all! My name is Joris de Ruiter and I’m the founder of ConvertCalculator, a SaaS business that helps small businesses automate their sales processes and grow their business.I started coding the project in September 2017 and launched the MVP in one week. One week later, I onboarded my first paying customer.Since then 3500 businesses signed up which resulted in over 1 million calculator page views. Right now, the business makes $5000,- in monthly recurring revenue with 150 customers.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I started my first business together with my roommate when I was at university; a creative agency. We started out doing social media and online marketing campaigns. We pivoted to web design when we were one year in. We mostly build simple marketing websites for small businesses, also doing SEO and online marketing.Besides client projects, I started over 10 projects to get out of the “money for hour” trap. All of them failed.After building websites for a couple of years, I realized my talent lay mostly in coding more complex web applications. I quit the agency to do web development contract work, all alongside my search for that one project which would take off.In September 2017 a client approached me and asked if I could build a “calculator” for their website. I thought about all those times entrepreneurs approached me wanting a “price quote calculator” for their website. In nine out of ten cases it was just too expensive to build.So instead of quoting my client, I suggested they pay $30,- per month for it. They said yes. This was my first validation for the product.I just listened to Tyler Tringas’ podcast on Indiehackers, which suggested to check Upwork for the demand of a potential product. I did that by searching for “price quote calculator”, and yes, I found several requests for developers to build custom price quote calculators. This was the second validation for the product.This was enough for me to get an MVP out. I created it in one week, launched my marketing website and showed the calculator to my client. They loved it, but the project was put on hold, so no paying customer yet. You can imagine that this really bummed me out.I decided to promote ConvertCalculator on Quora and Help forums for website builders.imageAn example of a Quora comment. Check it out here.One week later I got my first user ready to start paying. The problem was I didn’t offer a way to upgrade yet. I remember I was at the airport and getting a third email from that customer “complaining” that he couldn’t checkout yet.I was going on a surf trip and didn’t want to keep him waiting, so I started coding in the plane, pushing the update out when I arrived in Portugal. When I came back from my first surf, I got my first payment confirmation email from Stripe.That was the validation I needed to keep going!Take us through the process of building the product.So I got my first paying customer in the door, followed by a second one a couple of days later, but the product was still very early-stage.I knew I needed months of coding to get to real product-market fit. I learned from previous projects that the worst thing you can do is develop behind closed doors, so I started improving the product incrementally, with a lot of input from customers. In fact, I scheduled 2-3 calls a week to get more and more insights on my customer's real challenges.Two of my core values are freedom and independence, so you can imagine I am really big on bootstrapping. This meant that 2018 was a hectic year; building and growing ConvertCalculator and doing contract work to pay the bills.End of 2018 I was on $2500,- MRR, and I decided to go full-time; hoping I had enough runway (with my limited savings). That proved to be successful and I haven’t looked back ever since.Until today I do everything myself, development, design, marketing, and customer support. The only help I got (big help I must say) was from a startup advisor. He helped me prioritize, make better decisions and focus more on the customer. He is now a dear friend, and we created a side-project together called ContactBubble; a floating contact form for your website.Describe the process of launching the business.There is not a lot to say about my product launch. I don’t really believe in those “great moments that change everything”. In my view, it’s all about showing up every single day, making progress in small steps.I didn’t really have a smart launching strategy, I just pushed my website and app to production and started talking about it online. I initially didn’t launch on websites like ProductHunt or HackerNews. I never felt my product was good enough. I did get a lot of customers via Google, product forums, Quora. A year into it I decided to launch on ProductHunt and HackerNews. My product performed reasonably well there, but I didn’t get a lot of actual customers via these channels.When I “launched” I just picked a price that felt right and went with it. I had three plans (Hobby: €9, Pro: €20, and Premium: €60), but I hadn’t had time to build actual Premium features, so you can scratch the last one.Over time the product became more valuable, so I decided to increase pricing. That’s the best thing I could have done! Not only did revenue increase, but conversion rates did go up as well. My advice to anybody is to “raise your prices”.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?The single most important thing related to growth to date is SEO.In my opinion, It’s the only truly sustainable way of growing a SaaS business that you can control directly. Another one is word-of-mouth, but that’s something you earn with creating a solid product and doing good customer service.imageMy main strategy for SEO was creating landing pages for every single use case of the product, such as lead generation, quote building, and order forms. This way I could focus every page on a small set of keywords, that all flow to the homepage, which is optimized for, the more general, term calculator form.Although this strategy worked, I realize I need to focus more on creating blog posts to cover niche subjects and provide my customers with valuable information on how to run their business online. Another opportunity is link building, on which I didn’t focus at all.I haven’t explored a lot of other growth areas yet (besides launching on ProductHunt and Hackernews). The reason being that I do customer support myself and I want to remain sane and grow calmly.Actually, The second part of 2019 will be the perfect time to explore other growth channels, especially advertising and content marketing. So exciting times ahead.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?I can’t complain! ConvertCalculator is profitable and growing at a steady (but small) pace. The down-the-line conversion rate is 1.1% (from visitor to paying customer), which is ok and the customer lifetime value averages around $700,-. I would say that I’m ready for the next phase: growing the business.I have two goals for 2019. The first one is growing too $ 8000,- MRR. As I mentioned earlier I can achieve this by experimenting with other growth channels and spending more time on marketing in general.The second goal is to phase myself out of the day-to-day operations, meaning that I can spend all my time on product development and strategy. To make that possible, I will need to (1) improve documentation and UX and (2) hire customer support and marketing specialist.I have a long-term goal as well, although not directly related to ConvertCalculator; I want to live a more balanced life. That means that I want to spend 3-4 hours a day on work, and leave enough time to spend on things and people that bring me true happiness.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Yes definitely! I’m a person with a lot of imagination and I’m always thinking and dreaming about big and crazy things. This is great for creativity, but you can imagine I have had real difficulty with productivity / sitting down and getting things done.Starting a business means you’ve got to carry your own weight. This pressure kept me in work mode and learned me to stay grounded. From the success of ConvertCalculator in particular, I learned that grit is the number one derivative for success.What platform/tools do you use for your business?For customer support, I used to use a chat app, but I didn’t like to be in “support mode” all the time, so I created my own tool called ContactBubble, making it easy for people to reach us and easy for me to answer questions. Because customer requests are just sent to email, I need a good email client/customer support platform to follow up. I use Front and I love it!For hosting, I use Heroku and MongoDB Cloud. The dev stack is based on MeteorJS, with React and TailwindCSS (love this!).For email marketing, I’m using MailterLite, but I’m going to try out EmailOctopus. I haven't found any good (and reasonably priced) tool for email automation, so this is all hard-coded in the platform.For productivity I use Trello.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?The IndieHackers podcast helped me a lot! I remember countless times when I was in my car to go surfing and listening to another podcast and thinking: Yes I need to do this!Regarding books, I got a lot of guidance from Essentialism; this especially helped me to not do things, in order to focus on more essential things. I also get a lot of inspiration from reading books about eastern philosophy, especially Zen.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?The absolute number one is “do fewer things”. Focus on the truly essential stuff, and do this right. Don’t put all that other stuff on a todo list either, maybe write it down somewhere if that helps, but I don’t do that either.Another important lesson I learned is that “done is better than perfect”. So let go of your inner perfectionist and get the work of the door.The last one, and I think that’s the major reason why all my other projects failed, is ** to talk to customers**. You don’t have to do everything (or anything) they say, but you will learn a ton. I scheduled 2-3 calls per week for a full year now, and I still get valuable insights from customers sometimes.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?I’m about to fill the first position, so no. I want to be careful with hiring; I want to hire when it really hurts.Where can we go to learn more?You can learn more about ConvertCalculator via our website. If you are interested in ContactBubble, you can find it here.You can find more about me and the other projects I’m doing, you can go to Stay Bold.If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

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Tips on Optimizing Marketing Technology Strategy: An Interview with Jonathan Goldmacher of Valtech

In this hard-hitting and grounded interview, Jonathan Goldmacher, Managing Director, Valtech – NYC, speaks with MarTech Advisor on various crucial aspects of marketing technology, such as Conversion Rate Optimization, Personalization, Customer Experience and more. Read on for expert tips and real-speak to refine your marketing technology strategy. 

The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) of a company is dependent on many elements (website design, brand responsiveness, etc.). What blueprint can CMOs follow to lead their organizations to a higher CRO? Which factors (content, personalization etc.) would be most crucial in this blueprint? I’m not certain that there is a blanket blueprint that any CMO can follow. I believe that blueprints themselves should be customized based on the business that the CMO is representing, the objective of that business and, ultimately, their marketing objectives.

That said, I do think there are several elements that ultimately can lead to better optimization of conversion rates. First and foremost, understanding who your customers or consumers are, and reaching them at the right place, at the right moment, with the right message: contextualization and personalization. Utilizing search to understand what is important to them in their lives is important to know when it comes to the type of content you create.

The easiest place to start, for me, is always in seeing what people are already searching for in your category then developing content directly against that since you know it's something that people in your category are highly interested in. Having that relevant content, at the right place and time is key in driving conversion.

Personalization has gained momentum as an important marketing strategy over the years. How does personalization affect the CRO? What techniques can marketers employ to make their personalization strategies more effective (for both SEO and CRO)?

Personalization affects conversion rate in a positive way when brands and companies, particularly digitally driven ones, understand who their customers are and what relationship their customer may already have with them: the size, shape, frequency of that relationship.

In e-commerce, it means tracking the kinds of purchases customers make and how frequently they’re bought. Then working to be able to model more predictably what their future needs might be while meeting those needs ahead of time. The idea of predictive modeling is, for me, core to the idea of personalization. You are trying to be a bit more proactive in your relationship with your customers and not just reactive. What you understand and know about your consumers, and what is important to them, is critical. The easiest way to do this, for me, is using the customer data that already exists online. An individual’s search history and what people in your category are searching for allow you to create relevant content. Consumers expect brands to serve them only with relevant and up to date content. How can brands utilize content to drive their CRO in the right direction?

**The reason why customers are coming to you should be for the superiority of your product or service and the belief that it is going to help their lives be better.** I’d start there. I’d start around the product before I venture all the way out to the other end of promotional activities and content creation.

Start by being relevant and up to date in your category and product and services, and make sure that stuff is matching up for all the traffic that’s happening in your category as it relates to search. That doesn’t mean it can’t be creative, quite the opposite. **Regardless of the subject matter, content needs to breakthrough and be engaging.** 

So, to me, that is job number one. Once you’ve built your brand and your business, then it is right to be thinking of the dialogue of communications that comes from an engagement or content strategy inclusive of things like social, but I’d much more propose that people start by building a solid foundation based on the customer’s needs.

Marketers are slowly moving from a multi-channel engagement strategy to an omni-channel strategy with a more holistic approach towards customer engagement. What are some significant aspects of omni-channel engagement that are generally overlooked by marketers?

I think customer experience and UX are too often thought of only in an ecosystem of things digital. The physical customer experience, product experience and communication experience are equally critical to building a holistic omnichannel strategy. Putting what the brand stands for at the center, devising with great strategy how we will engage and what is important to consumers, how we talk to them, how we treat them when they’re with us physically and ensuring all of that stuff complements one another and is coming from the same place at the center is, to me, still one of the biggest challenges.

How have you seen the concept of seamless Customer Experience (CX) evolve over the last few years, and where do you see it heading in 2020? **Seamless customer experience is the notion of taking all four dimensions and designing from them with purpose from the outset.** Not many people are doing it well and we’re very much still at the nascent stages of this though some are doing segments better than others.

I hope that by 2020, if not soon afterward, that a fully-baked and complementary user experience across the four dimensions becomes the standard.  I believe that there will be a lot of work to do, but it’s the right thing. The brands deserve it, and they should have a well thought out experience that starts with the core purpose at its center. Designing linear solutions is clearly not the answer but it is difficult to understand how to create and plan these fully-wholistic solutions.

AR-VR are the upcoming immersive technologies which have not yet been explored fully by marketers. What tips would you give marketers on making the most of AR-VR for their campaigns? In your opinion, which areas (retail, auto etc.) will benefit the most from these technologies? Technology is never a silver bullet to solve all of our problems but it is a tool. A tool in the right hands can allow that person to work more efficiently. Otherwise, it’s just a flash in the pan. Again, the most important thing to me is whether this technology is being used to deliver real utility to people and makes their lives better. The utilization of AR/VR against those goals is what I’m looking for.

Travel and hospitality, particularly with hotels, is a fantastic example. One of the things I’m most curious about when traveling with my family is where are we staying and what is it like at this place. Most hotel websites are terrible. I just want to see what the room is going to be like and I usually get three static photos taken ten years ago that don’t give a sense of how big the room is, how it’s arranged, or what it would feel like to stay there.

Think about cruise ships and people who have never taken a cruise – that would be a category that could really benefit from VR. What are the sleeping quarters like? What amenities, activities and food are on the ship? What’s it like to walk around the ship?  Can I learn a bit more about the people and staff that I’ll be sharing the boat with and some unique facts about them? What are the crucial new skills that a CMO needs on their team when it comes to adapting to these new tools and strategies (mobile marketing, omni-channel marketing, AI and machine learning, chatbots, etc.)?

CMO’s must be nimbler than ever today.  I’ve always liked the Mike Tyson quote, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”  **When you go out into the market you’ve got to expect to get punched and not be surprised that your plans will need to pivot.** 

Marketing has, for years, remained the same – to make customers aware of the value that your company provides and drive awareness to future customers. In that regard CMOs must remain steadfast in sharing that story of utility that the brand provides while viewing new technologies as tools that enables you to get from Point A to Point B.

That too is how future CMOs must consider omni-channel marketing. Yes, each individual component or channel is important, but it’s how they all work together to help drive home the experience of your brand. Valtech is a hub of digital transformation tools, services and innovation. Tell us a little about some of the most exciting, upcoming projects at Valtech.

Speaking of VR, I believe that the VR work we’ve done for our client, Decathlon, is second to none. Our implementation of VR provides real value to their business and solves a problem of limited store square footage, while solving the problem for customers who cannot see all the large products in their stores. It’s driven higher profit-per-square-foot for Decathlon.

**It’s easy for people to think that technology alone solves business challenges, but the deployment of technology must be done strategically and really push the needle on business metrics.** VR technology will continue to grow as future generations will be more comfortable with purely digital services and emerging technologies.

MTA: Thank you for that fantastic discussion on such varied aspects of marketing technology, Jonathan. We hope to talk with you again, soon!

About Valtech:

Valtech is one of the largest independent digital marketing and business transformation agencies in the world employing more than 2500 innovators, design thinkers, marketers, creatives and developers in offices across 16 countries.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[samuelpboswell]

CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing

Few things are more inspiring than the before-and-after weight loss photo: two drastically different figures juxtaposed against one another, usually connected by an impossibly short span of time.

It’s not just the physical transformation that is striking in these portrayals. Even more so, it’s the mental transformation. Something clicked in that person’s head, causing them to fully commit and make the difficult changes necessary to turn their goals into reality. Then, they did it.

Branding expert Tamsen Webster saw this dynamic play out, in various forms, time and time again during her many years as a leader in the Weight Watchers organization. And it’s a big part of what drove her to create Red Thread, a messaging framework focused on tapping into those deep, uniquely human motivations that spark action (or, as she puts it, make inaction impossible).

At Content Marketing World in September, Tamsen will speak about How to Make Your Ideas Irresistible. In anticipation of her session, we chatted with her about uncovering shared values with your audience, eliminating “one-size-fits-most” messaging, and aiming to change perspectives rather than beliefs.

What does your role as Founder and Chief Messaging Strategist at Find the Red Thread entail? What are your main areas of focus and key priorities?

Well, the nice thing about being a solo practice is that it means what I need it to mean at the time! My days are spent in a mix of work with clients, business development, and product/content development – I go where my energy, inspiration, and needs take me.

How would you succinctly describe the “Red Thread Method” and why it makes sense for today’s content marketers?

We can’t change what people do until we change how they see. The Red Thread Method helps you uncover that link for a particular audience and business goal so you can build content and messaging around it.

What did your experience as a Weight Watchers leader teach you about the fundamentals of creating irresistible messaging?

Pretty much everything. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Week in, week out at Weight Watchers, I saw what did and didn’t move people to make changes – what kinds of information they needed, and in what combination. When I took those lessons and looked at the marketing around me (including marketing I had helped produce!), I realized how often we focused on what we wanted people to do differently more than what they needed to hear to see the differently. Once I started switching my marketing to match the framework of messaging I built for myself at Weight Watchers, lo and behold, I became a much more effective marketer.

How can marketers stop seeing change as a barrier and start seeing it as an opportunity? What’s required to drive this shift in mindset?

That all depends on why they see change as a barrier in the first place. The only thing that will shift that mindset is understanding how it puts both something marketers want and something they believe is in jeopardy. For example, if a marketer wants to be seen as an expert in social channels, they likely see change in those areas as something to be overcome – the constantly shifting landscape makes it impossible to expert in all things all the time. If they also believe, however, that “the only constant is change,” making inaction impossible: they’ll either need to change their goal, their attitude toward change, or how they go about being seen as an expert. The key is always in finding that combination of wants and beliefs that makes inaction impossible.

Some find it counterintuitive that in order to increase your reach and impact, you need to narrow your message. Why is this important in today’s environment?

It’s all about fit for the message. Think about the last time you bought something that was “one size fits all.” Did it fit? Probably yes – you could get into it. Depending on your size it was cavernous, achingly tight, or in the category of “this’ll do.” But did fit like it was yours? Could you identify it blindfolded? Of course not. Now imagine you’ve had something tailored to fit you – like a jacket or a pair of pants. Done well, it should fit like a glove. If you put it on, you’d know instantly that it belonged to you.

Messages operate the same way. We way we want customers to feel a part of the brand. We want them to feel like the brand belongs to them. But then too often we send out “one size fits most” messages… and wonder why we don’t get that sense of belonging that’s a hallmark of great brands.

Your brand is not for everyone. It isn’t. It’s for the people who want something you can help them get, who value the same things you do, and who see the world the same way you do. And that’s not everyone. Full stop.

How do the tenets of giving great presentations and speaking sessions apply to the bigger picture of content marketing?

Any truly great presentation doesn’t just inform and inspire… it implants a new way of seeing. It gives you something that you can’t unhear. Something that creates a permanent shift in thinking, and thus in behavior. Most content marketing doesn’t need to inspire (at least not in the go-climb-a-mountain or be-your-best-self sense), but it does need to create that same shift.

I’ll say it again: you can’t change what people do until you change how they see. There’s no better example than TED Talks that a very short piece of content can do just that. (The longest TED Talks are only about 2500 words – not long!) The more content marketers can adopt those lessons from great talks, the more powerful their messages will be, no matter the subject.

But hear me on this: those lessons aren’t just the surface things like “give it an SEO-friendly title” or “tell a personal story.” Both of those techniques can be helpful.

But the lessons marketers really need to learn are around where the greatest levers in messaging are. And here’s what’s counterintuitive: the most powerful levers at our disposal are the ones that don’t move – people’s wants and beliefs. Yet so much of marketing focuses on trying to get people to want something they don’t actively want or believe something they don’t currently believe. The only things we’re likely to change in the short term are perspectives. And that’s what great talks – and great content in any form – do.

Looking back, is there a particular moment or juncture in your career that you view as transformative? What takeaways could other marketers learn and apply?

It started with a mystery. See, I spent the first 15 years or so of my marketing career working in and with nonprofits. Here in Boston, where I live, those nonprofits share a lot of donors. What was fascinating to me: why would one donor give to so many different organizations? And what tied those different organizations together in the donor’s mind? Was there a pattern I could see?

I wanted to know the answer to that question because, at the time, I was in charge of the fundraising communication strategy at Harvard Medical School – and convincing people to give one of the world’s richest institutions even more money was a none-too-simple challenge. I’ll spare you the whole story, but what I discovered was this: while there wasn’t a usable pattern for why people gave money at all (that could range from self-serving to altruistic), there was something I discovered I could use.

There was a pattern to what kinds of things they gave money to – even across very different nonprofits. There was a pattern to what they wanted to accomplish through their gifts. So, for instance, if someone tended to give money at one institution to solve a specific problem (say, to a hospital help cure cancer), they tended to always give to solve a problem (to a museum to improve access for underserved youth). If they gave at one institution to expand the scope of impact, they tended to always give to expand the scope of impact, etc.

Once I figured that out, it became simply a matter of putting what we did at the Medical School into terms that matched what they were looking for. I could, for instance, take the same need we had at the medical school (say, to fund a new type of high-powered microscope) and frame it through multiple lenses. It could help solve a specific problem (age-related hearing loss), it could help expand scope (because it could help us understand the mechanisms that caused hearing loss), it could improve training of medical students (because they could better see the mechanisms in questions).

The lesson for all marketers is this: what people want tells you what they’re looking for out in the world. Our job isn’t to shift their attention to something new. It’s to show people how we fit in that existing line of vision.

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2018?

Tina Fey, of course. The panel on longform content with Ann Handley, Mitch Joel, and Dorie Clark looks amazing. I’d love to see Brian Massey and his talk on behavioral science talk, since I’m such a junkie for that stuff. Ahava Leibtag’s session on lessons from songwriters is sure to be great, too. I wish I could see Kathy Klotz-Guest – she has such amazing content and I’ve yet to see her speak in person (but she and I are speaking at the same time!). I’m also excited to Nichole Kelly coming back on the speaking scene, and with an important perspective – something she calls “conscious marketing.”

Follow the Thread

We really appreciate Tamsen sharing these thoughtful and substantive responses. Make sure to catch her live on September 6th in Cleveland; although she writes eloquently, there really is no substitute for the energy and passion she brings onstage.

She’ll be joined at CMWorld by dozens of other speakers. You find thought-provoking nuggets from her and many others by exploring the slides below.

These insights probably won’t change your fundamental beliefs… but they just might change your perspective.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2018. | CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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[itswomanswork]

CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing

Few things are more inspiring than the before-and-after weight loss photo: two drastically different figures juxtaposed against one another, usually connected by an impossibly short span of time.

It’s not just the physical transformation that is striking in these portrayals. Even more so, it’s the mental transformation. Something clicked in that person’s head, causing them to fully commit and make the difficult changes necessary to turn their goals into reality. Then, they did it.

Branding expert Tamsen Webster saw this dynamic play out, in various forms, time and time again during her many years as a leader in the Weight Watchers organization. And it’s a big part of what drove her to create Red Thread, a messaging framework focused on tapping into those deep, uniquely human motivations that spark action (or, as she puts it, make inaction impossible).

At Content Marketing World in September, Tamsen will speak about How to Make Your Ideas Irresistible. In anticipation of her session, we chatted with her about uncovering shared values with your audience, eliminating “one-size-fits-most” messaging, and aiming to change perspectives rather than beliefs.

What does your role as Founder and Chief Messaging Strategist at Find the Red Thread entail? What are your main areas of focus and key priorities?

Well, the nice thing about being a solo practice is that it means what I need it to mean at the time! My days are spent in a mix of work with clients, business development, and product/content development – I go where my energy, inspiration, and needs take me.

How would you succinctly describe the “Red Thread Method” and why it makes sense for today’s content marketers?

We can’t change what people do until we change how they see. The Red Thread Method helps you uncover that link for a particular audience and business goal so you can build content and messaging around it.

What did your experience as a Weight Watchers leader teach you about the fundamentals of creating irresistible messaging?

Pretty much everything. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Week in, week out at Weight Watchers, I saw what did and didn’t move people to make changes – what kinds of information they needed, and in what combination. When I took those lessons and looked at the marketing around me (including marketing I had helped produce!), I realized how often we focused on what we wanted people to do differently more than what they needed to hear to see the differently. Once I started switching my marketing to match the framework of messaging I built for myself at Weight Watchers, lo and behold, I became a much more effective marketer.

How can marketers stop seeing change as a barrier and start seeing it as an opportunity? What’s required to drive this shift in mindset?

That all depends on why they see change as a barrier in the first place. The only thing that will shift that mindset is understanding how it puts both something marketers want and something they believe is in jeopardy. For example, if a marketer wants to be seen as an expert in social channels, they likely see change in those areas as something to be overcome – the constantly shifting landscape makes it impossible to expert in all things all the time. If they also believe, however, that “the only constant is change,” making inaction impossible: they’ll either need to change their goal, their attitude toward change, or how they go about being seen as an expert. The key is always in finding that combination of wants and beliefs that makes inaction impossible.

Some find it counterintuitive that in order to increase your reach and impact, you need to narrow your message. Why is this important in today’s environment?

It’s all about fit for the message. Think about the last time you bought something that was “one size fits all.” Did it fit? Probably yes – you could get into it. Depending on your size it was cavernous, achingly tight, or in the category of “this’ll do.” But did fit like it was yours? Could you identify it blindfolded? Of course not. Now imagine you’ve had something tailored to fit you – like a jacket or a pair of pants. Done well, it should fit like a glove. If you put it on, you’d know instantly that it belonged to you.

Messages operate the same way. We way we want customers to feel a part of the brand. We want them to feel like the brand belongs to them. But then too often we send out “one size fits most” messages… and wonder why we don’t get that sense of belonging that’s a hallmark of great brands.

Your brand is not for everyone. It isn’t. It’s for the people who want something you can help them get, who value the same things you do, and who see the world the same way you do. And that’s not everyone. Full stop.

How do the tenets of giving great presentations and speaking sessions apply to the bigger picture of content marketing?

Any truly great presentation doesn’t just inform and inspire… it implants a new way of seeing. It gives you something that you can’t unhear. Something that creates a permanent shift in thinking, and thus in behavior. Most content marketing doesn’t need to inspire (at least not in the go-climb-a-mountain or be-your-best-self sense), but it does need to create that same shift.

I’ll say it again: you can’t change what people do until you change how they see. There’s no better example than TED Talks that a very short piece of content can do just that. (The longest TED Talks are only about 2500 words – not long!) The more content marketers can adopt those lessons from great talks, the more powerful their messages will be, no matter the subject.

But hear me on this: those lessons aren’t just the surface things like “give it an SEO-friendly title” or “tell a personal story.” Both of those techniques can be helpful.

But the lessons marketers really need to learn are around where the greatest levers in messaging are. And here’s what’s counterintuitive: the most powerful levers at our disposal are the ones that don’t move – people’s wants and beliefs. Yet so much of marketing focuses on trying to get people to want something they don’t actively want or believe something they don’t currently believe. The only things we’re likely to change in the short term are perspectives. And that’s what great talks – and great content in any form – do.

Looking back, is there a particular moment or juncture in your career that you view as transformative? What takeaways could other marketers learn and apply?

It started with a mystery. See, I spent the first 15 years or so of my marketing career working in and with nonprofits. Here in Boston, where I live, those nonprofits share a lot of donors. What was fascinating to me: why would one donor give to so many different organizations? And what tied those different organizations together in the donor’s mind? Was there a pattern I could see?

I wanted to know the answer to that question because, at the time, I was in charge of the fundraising communication strategy at Harvard Medical School – and convincing people to give one of the world’s richest institutions even more money was a none-too-simple challenge. I’ll spare you the whole story, but what I discovered was this: while there wasn’t a usable pattern for why people gave money at all (that could range from self-serving to altruistic), there was something I discovered I could use.

There was a pattern to what kinds of things they gave money to – even across very different nonprofits. There was a pattern to what they wanted to accomplish through their gifts. So, for instance, if someone tended to give money at one institution to solve a specific problem (say, to a hospital help cure cancer), they tended to always give to solve a problem (to a museum to improve access for underserved youth). If they gave at one institution to expand the scope of impact, they tended to always give to expand the scope of impact, etc.

Once I figured that out, it became simply a matter of putting what we did at the Medical School into terms that matched what they were looking for. I could, for instance, take the same need we had at the medical school (say, to fund a new type of high-powered microscope) and frame it through multiple lenses. It could help solve a specific problem (age-related hearing loss), it could help expand scope (because it could help us understand the mechanisms that caused hearing loss), it could improve training of medical students (because they could better see the mechanisms in questions).

The lesson for all marketers is this: what people want tells you what they’re looking for out in the world. Our job isn’t to shift their attention to something new. It’s to show people how we fit in that existing line of vision.

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2018?

Tina Fey, of course. The panel on longform content with Ann Handley, Mitch Joel, and Dorie Clark looks amazing. I’d love to see Brian Massey and his talk on behavioral science talk, since I’m such a junkie for that stuff. Ahava Leibtag’s session on lessons from songwriters is sure to be great, too. I wish I could see Kathy Klotz-Guest – she has such amazing content and I’ve yet to see her speak in person (but she and I are speaking at the same time!). I’m also excited to Nichole Kelly coming back on the speaking scene, and with an important perspective – something she calls “conscious marketing.”

Follow the Thread

We really appreciate Tamsen sharing these thoughtful and substantive responses. Make sure to catch her live on September 6th in Cleveland; although she writes eloquently, there really is no substitute for the energy and passion she brings onstage.

She’ll be joined at CMWorld by dozens of other speakers. You find thought-provoking nuggets from her and many others by exploring the slides below.

These insights probably won’t change your fundamental beliefs… but they just might change your perspective.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®, 2018. | CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing | https://ift.tt/faSbAI

The post CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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[unixcommerce]

CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing

Few things are more inspiring than the before-and-after weight loss photo: two drastically different figures juxtaposed against one another, usually connected by an impossibly short span of time.

It’s not just the physical transformation that is striking in these portrayals. Even more so, it’s the mental transformation. Something clicked in that person’s head, causing them to fully commit and make the difficult changes necessary to turn their goals into reality. Then, they did it.

Branding expert Tamsen Webster saw this dynamic play out, in various forms, time and time again during her many years as a leader in the Weight Watchers organization. And it’s a big part of what drove her to create Red Thread, a messaging framework focused on tapping into those deep, uniquely human motivations that spark action (or, as she puts it, make inaction impossible).

At Content Marketing World in September, Tamsen will speak about How to Make Your Ideas Irresistible. In anticipation of her session, we chatted with her about uncovering shared values with your audience, eliminating “one-size-fits-most” messaging, and aiming to change perspectives rather than beliefs.

What does your role as Founder and Chief Messaging Strategist at Find the Red Thread entail? What are your main areas of focus and key priorities?

Well, the nice thing about being a solo practice is that it means what I need it to mean at the time! My days are spent in a mix of work with clients, business development, and product/content development – I go where my energy, inspiration, and needs take me.

How would you succinctly describe the “Red Thread Method” and why it makes sense for today’s content marketers?

We can’t change what people do until we change how they see. The Red Thread Method helps you uncover that link for a particular audience and business goal so you can build content and messaging around it.

What did your experience as a Weight Watchers leader teach you about the fundamentals of creating irresistible messaging?

Pretty much everything. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Week in, week out at Weight Watchers, I saw what did and didn’t move people to make changes – what kinds of information they needed, and in what combination. When I took those lessons and looked at the marketing around me (including marketing I had helped produce!), I realized how often we focused on what we wanted people to do differently more than what they needed to hear to see the differently. Once I started switching my marketing to match the framework of messaging I built for myself at Weight Watchers, lo and behold, I became a much more effective marketer.

How can marketers stop seeing change as a barrier and start seeing it as an opportunity? What’s required to drive this shift in mindset?

That all depends on why they see change as a barrier in the first place. The only thing that will shift that mindset is understanding how it puts both something marketers want and something they believe is in jeopardy. For example, if a marketer wants to be seen as an expert in social channels, they likely see change in those areas as something to be overcome – the constantly shifting landscape makes it impossible to expert in all things all the time. If they also believe, however, that “the only constant is change,” making inaction impossible: they’ll either need to change their goal, their attitude toward change, or how they go about being seen as an expert. The key is always in finding that combination of wants and beliefs that makes inaction impossible.

Some find it counterintuitive that in order to increase your reach and impact, you need to narrow your message. Why is this important in today’s environment?

It’s all about fit for the message. Think about the last time you bought something that was “one size fits all.” Did it fit? Probably yes – you could get into it. Depending on your size it was cavernous, achingly tight, or in the category of “this’ll do.” But did fit like it was yours? Could you identify it blindfolded? Of course not. Now imagine you’ve had something tailored to fit you – like a jacket or a pair of pants. Done well, it should fit like a glove. If you put it on, you’d know instantly that it belonged to you.

Messages operate the same way. We way we want customers to feel a part of the brand. We want them to feel like the brand belongs to them. But then too often we send out “one size fits most” messages… and wonder why we don’t get that sense of belonging that’s a hallmark of great brands.

Your brand is not for everyone. It isn’t. It’s for the people who want something you can help them get, who value the same things you do, and who see the world the same way you do. And that’s not everyone. Full stop.

How do the tenets of giving great presentations and speaking sessions apply to the bigger picture of content marketing?

Any truly great presentation doesn’t just inform and inspire… it implants a new way of seeing. It gives you something that you can’t unhear. Something that creates a permanent shift in thinking, and thus in behavior. Most content marketing doesn’t need to inspire (at least not in the go-climb-a-mountain or be-your-best-self sense), but it does need to create that same shift.

I’ll say it again: you can’t change what people do until you change how they see. There’s no better example than TED Talks that a very short piece of content can do just that. (The longest TED Talks are only about 2500 words – not long!) The more content marketers can adopt those lessons from great talks, the more powerful their messages will be, no matter the subject.

But hear me on this: those lessons aren’t just the surface things like “give it an SEO-friendly title” or “tell a personal story.” Both of those techniques can be helpful.

But the lessons marketers really need to learn are around where the greatest levers in messaging are. And here’s what’s counterintuitive: the most powerful levers at our disposal are the ones that don’t move – people’s wants and beliefs. Yet so much of marketing focuses on trying to get people to want something they don’t actively want or believe something they don’t currently believe. The only things we’re likely to change in the short term are perspectives. And that’s what great talks – and great content in any form – do.

Looking back, is there a particular moment or juncture in your career that you view as transformative? What takeaways could other marketers learn and apply?

It started with a mystery. See, I spent the first 15 years or so of my marketing career working in and with nonprofits. Here in Boston, where I live, those nonprofits share a lot of donors. What was fascinating to me: why would one donor give to so many different organizations? And what tied those different organizations together in the donor’s mind? Was there a pattern I could see?

I wanted to know the answer to that question because, at the time, I was in charge of the fundraising communication strategy at Harvard Medical School – and convincing people to give one of the world’s richest institutions even more money was a none-too-simple challenge. I’ll spare you the whole story, but what I discovered was this: while there wasn’t a usable pattern for why people gave money at all (that could range from self-serving to altruistic), there was something I discovered I could use.

There was a pattern to what kinds of things they gave money to – even across very different nonprofits. There was a pattern to what they wanted to accomplish through their gifts. So, for instance, if someone tended to give money at one institution to solve a specific problem (say, to a hospital help cure cancer), they tended to always give to solve a problem (to a museum to improve access for underserved youth). If they gave at one institution to expand the scope of impact, they tended to always give to expand the scope of impact, etc.

Once I figured that out, it became simply a matter of putting what we did at the Medical School into terms that matched what they were looking for. I could, for instance, take the same need we had at the medical school (say, to fund a new type of high-powered microscope) and frame it through multiple lenses. It could help solve a specific problem (age-related hearing loss), it could help expand scope (because it could help us understand the mechanisms that caused hearing loss), it could improve training of medical students (because they could better see the mechanisms in questions).

The lesson for all marketers is this: what people want tells you what they’re looking for out in the world. Our job isn’t to shift their attention to something new. It’s to show people how we fit in that existing line of vision.

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2018?

Tina Fey, of course. The panel on longform content with Ann Handley, Mitch Joel, and Dorie Clark looks amazing. I’d love to see Brian Massey and his talk on behavioral science talk, since I’m such a junkie for that stuff. Ahava Leibtag’s session on lessons from songwriters is sure to be great, too. I wish I could see Kathy Klotz-Guest – she has such amazing content and I’ve yet to see her speak in person (but she and I are speaking at the same time!). I’m also excited to Nichole Kelly coming back on the speaking scene, and with an important perspective – something she calls “conscious marketing.”

Follow the Thread

We really appreciate Tamsen sharing these thoughtful and substantive responses. Make sure to catch her live on September 6th in Cleveland; although she writes eloquently, there really is no substitute for the energy and passion she brings onstage.

She’ll be joined at CMWorld by dozens of other speakers. You find thought-provoking nuggets from her and many others by exploring the slides below.

These insights probably won’t change your fundamental beliefs… but they just might change your perspective.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®, 2018. | CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing | https://ift.tt/faSbAI

The post CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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[groovyturtlepeach]

#CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare

Each year, Content Marketing World receives hundreds of nominations for the coveted Content Marketer of the Year award. Past winners include Vishal Khanna of Wake Forest Innovations (2015), Bryan Rhoads, Intel Digital Media Labs (2014) and Julie Fleischer of Kraft Foods Group (2013).

In 2016, this award went to another truly deserving content marketer, Amanda Todorovich Director of Content Marketing, Cleveland Clinic. Amanda and her team at the Cleveland Clinic have proven that content marketing really works for healthcare organizations. In fact, their blog has been named as the most visited hospital blog in the entire country!

If you’re like me, you likely wondered “How does she do it?”. Fortunately for you (and myself), I was able to steal away some of Amanda’s valuable time to gain insights into everything from how her team has managed to develop such a successful content strategy to what an average day looks like in her world.

So buckle up and get ready for liftoff as Amanda tells us more about her approach in her own words.

What does your role as Director of Content Marketing at Cleveland Clinic entail? What does your day look like? What do you like best?

I lead a team of 25 amazing people! We create and distribute content in support of enterprise goals and priorities. We manage our consumer and physician blogs as well as social media, email marketing, print publications, and branding. We publish 3-5 articles on both blogs every day and do about 2500+ additional projects per year. Every day is different, but I make a point of touching base with each work group every week in a quick stand-up meeting, and then I also do a full staff meeting every week. I spend a lot of time representing our team in meetings with key stakeholders and leaders from across the enterprise.

Frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

My team teases me because they can hear me coming because I tend to walk pretty fast from cube to cube… I tend to run around our office a lot and talk to team members about projects or ideas throughout the day. This frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. The result of this close collaboration is an incredibly engaged team that is delivering amazingly creative high quality content day-in and day-out.

How do you believe your communications and media relations experience has impacted your approach to marketing?

My background in communications and media relations is exactly what I think has made me a successful content marketer. Content marketing is about communicating with your customers in a compelling and engaging way, and it’s about great storytelling. And, that is really the heart of PR, too. I built my “nose for news” and understanding of what makes a great story/piece of content very early in my career. The biggest difference between doing traditional media relations and what I do now is that I’m focused on telling our own stories and growing our own audiences for our brand vs. working with media outlets to tell our story for us to their audiences.

How does your team go about developing a content strategy that balances the needs of the brand and the target audience (patients)?

It starts and ends with identifying the goals of the content marketing program. For us, the big overarching goal of our work is to increase national brand awareness for Cleveland Clinic. So, with that in mind, our content strategy is really driven by the desire to be useful, helpful and relevant to people all over the country (and even the world). We always filter requests and content needs with that lense – would someone in California who’s never heard of Cleveland Clinic find value in this story? If yes, we do it. If not, we will likely recommend a different path. We are an extremely data-driven team, so we have the insights to know what our audiences like and engage with most heavily. That drives our daily decisions around what content to publish and when. We talk about the numbers every day.

When only 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy and only 28% say that their content is very effective, why do you think having a defined content marketing strategy is essential for success?

Having a documented content strategy is truly like having a road map or GPS system with a clear destination identified. What are you trying to do and how are you going to get there? It’s crucial. As a content marketer, you are faced with tons of decisions every day – what to write about, when to publish, where to distribute, visuals, etc. – and if you don’t have that strategy in place, you are making it up as you go. That’s dangerous and an irresponsible use of the resources you are utilizing to do this work. Without a strategy, how do you know what success looks like? What are you working towards? Who are writing for?

A content strategy is like a road map or GPS system w/ a clear destination identified. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

The documented strategy drives you forward and keeps the team focused moving in the same direction.

What are the 3 most important things marketers need to do to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy?

      Know what success looks like. What’s the goal? Write it down.

      Identify your personas. Who are you creating for? Personify them. Make them your universe.

      Bring data to the table. What data do you have that can inform your approach? Don’t just guess.

What do you see as the biggest content marketing opportunity that many marketers aren’t taking full advantage of?

Content personalization and marketing automation. I think there is so much more we can be doing in these areas. Most of us produce so much content, and we’ve been focused on content creation for so many years that we haven’t even realized the value of the arsenal we’ve been building. There are so many ways to serve up content to people in very personal and hyper-relevant ways along their buyer journey, and I don’t think enough of us are doing this very well.

Has there been a defining moment in your career that you credit for your success and if so, what was it?

In 2009, I made the transition from traditional PR to exploring digital publishing and content marketing. I took a big leap and joined an infant start-up company, MedCity News, as VP of business development. 99% of my job were things I had never done before. I had no choice but to figure it out and learn from others. It completely changed the course of my career. I had the opportunity to build a company from scratch, and nearly everything I did in my time there has helped me become the content marketer that I have at Cleveland Clinic. The constant drive to do more, be better, and think bigger absolutely comes from those crazy start-up days. The experience completely changed me.

Do you have any advice for other marketers who are making the transition from content creation and strategy to a marketing leadership role like yours?

Become an incredible listener – listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. Understand your business and help your team understand. Let creators create. Let thinkers and strategists think. My job as a leader is to share a vision and set the tone for the team – not to tell them HOW to do their jobs all day. Stay on top of trends and industry best practices – they change all the time, and you need to be the one to keep your team on their toes. Ask questions, especially “what if?”

Listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

In your presentation at Content Marketing World you’ll be sharing the inside story of how your organization consistently drives web traffic and builds an audience. Without giving it all away, what are 3 things attendees will learn from your session? Also, can you share some information about the Cleveland Clinic Health Summit that will be taking place as part of CMWorld 2017?

      How to step up your content distribution strategies. We now have 2 million Facebook likes (more than any other hospital) – hear how and why that matters to us.

      How you can scale your content marketing team/efforts. We went from 3 people to 25 in two years.

      Yes, you can monetize your content marketing efforts! I’ll share how we are and how we got to that point.

The Content Marketing World Cleveland Clinic Health Summit is something I am SUPER PUMPED about! We have partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to offer a full-day program for healthcare content marketers instead of the traditional hospitals industry lab on the Friday of Content Marketing World (September 8th). This event will feature several Cleveland Clinic speakers, and a keynote from Google and presentations from Verywell, Staywell and others. There will be break-out sessions focused on SEO, content engineering, the latest trends in healthcare digital marketing, and more. I’ll also be presenting specifically on scaling your content marketing efforts. We’re offering a cocktail reception and tours of Cleveland Clinic’s main campus on Thursday, September 7th as well. For more details and to register, go here:

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2017?

This is so hard! I have so many friends presenting this year. I’m very excited for Jay Acunzo’s keynote. Jay is awesome and his messages always really resonate with me, and he was last year’s highest rated breakout speaker last year. I love his Unthinkable podcast, and I always learn something from him. I’m excited to hear Margaret Magnarelli. I met her last year when we were both finalists for Content Marketer of the Year, and her work at Monster is incredible. I’m also very happy to see the new writing track – Ann Handley and Ahava Leibtag are always awesome to hear.

Want More?

Thank you Amanda for sharing all of your great marketing insights!

Feel free to also check out our first interview in this CMWorld series featuring Buyer Persona Institute CEO, Adele Revella.

If you’re looking for even more from Amanda, Adele and other amazing CMWorld speakers, be sure to check out the first eBook in our series, The In-Flight Content Guide: Prepping for Your Content Marketing Expedition.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Ashley Zeckman http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/uploads/CMWorld-Interview-Amanda-Todorovich.jpg

[williamgreen533]

#CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare

Each year, Content Marketing World receives hundreds of nominations for the coveted Content Marketer of the Year award. Past winners include Vishal Khanna of Wake Forest Innovations (2015), Bryan Rhoads, Intel Digital Media Labs (2014) and Julie Fleischer of Kraft Foods Group (2013).

In 2016, this award went to another truly deserving content marketer, Amanda Todorovich Director of Content Marketing, Cleveland Clinic. Amanda and her team at the Cleveland Clinic have proven that content marketing really works for healthcare organizations. In fact, their blog has been named as the most visited hospital blog in the entire country!

If you’re like me, you likely wondered “How does she do it?”. Fortunately for you (and myself), I was able to steal away some of Amanda’s valuable time to gain insights into everything from how her team has managed to develop such a successful content strategy to what an average day looks like in her world.

So buckle up and get ready for liftoff as Amanda tells us more about her approach in her own words.

What does your role as Director of Content Marketing at Cleveland Clinic entail? What does your day look like? What do you like best?

I lead a team of 25 amazing people! We create and distribute content in support of enterprise goals and priorities. We manage our consumer and physician blogs as well as social media, email marketing, print publications, and branding. We publish 3-5 articles on both blogs every day and do about 2500+ additional projects per year. Every day is different, but I make a point of touching base with each work group every week in a quick stand-up meeting, and then I also do a full staff meeting every week. I spend a lot of time representing our team in meetings with key stakeholders and leaders from across the enterprise.

Frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

My team teases me because they can hear me coming because I tend to walk pretty fast from cube to cube… I tend to run around our office a lot and talk to team members about projects or ideas throughout the day. This frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. The result of this close collaboration is an incredibly engaged team that is delivering amazingly creative high quality content day-in and day-out.

How do you believe your communications and media relations experience has impacted your approach to marketing?

My background in communications and media relations is exactly what I think has made me a successful content marketer. Content marketing is about communicating with your customers in a compelling and engaging way, and it’s about great storytelling. And, that is really the heart of PR, too. I built my “nose for news” and understanding of what makes a great story/piece of content very early in my career. The biggest difference between doing traditional media relations and what I do now is that I’m focused on telling our own stories and growing our own audiences for our brand vs. working with media outlets to tell our story for us to their audiences.

How does your team go about developing a content strategy that balances the needs of the brand and the target audience (patients)?

It starts and ends with identifying the goals of the content marketing program. For us, the big overarching goal of our work is to increase national brand awareness for Cleveland Clinic. So, with that in mind, our content strategy is really driven by the desire to be useful, helpful and relevant to people all over the country (and even the world). We always filter requests and content needs with that lense – would someone in California who’s never heard of Cleveland Clinic find value in this story? If yes, we do it. If not, we will likely recommend a different path. We are an extremely data-driven team, so we have the insights to know what our audiences like and engage with most heavily. That drives our daily decisions around what content to publish and when. We talk about the numbers every day.

When only 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy and only 28% say that their content is very effective, why do you think having a defined content marketing strategy is essential for success?

Having a documented content strategy is truly like having a road map or GPS system with a clear destination identified. What are you trying to do and how are you going to get there? It’s crucial. As a content marketer, you are faced with tons of decisions every day – what to write about, when to publish, where to distribute, visuals, etc. – and if you don’t have that strategy in place, you are making it up as you go. That’s dangerous and an irresponsible use of the resources you are utilizing to do this work. Without a strategy, how do you know what success looks like? What are you working towards? Who are writing for?

A content strategy is like a road map or GPS system w/ a clear destination identified. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

The documented strategy drives you forward and keeps the team focused moving in the same direction.

What are the 3 most important things marketers need to do to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy?

      Know what success looks like. What’s the goal? Write it down.

      Identify your personas. Who are you creating for? Personify them. Make them your universe.

      Bring data to the table. What data do you have that can inform your approach? Don’t just guess.

What do you see as the biggest content marketing opportunity that many marketers aren’t taking full advantage of?

Content personalization and marketing automation. I think there is so much more we can be doing in these areas. Most of us produce so much content, and we’ve been focused on content creation for so many years that we haven’t even realized the value of the arsenal we’ve been building. There are so many ways to serve up content to people in very personal and hyper-relevant ways along their buyer journey, and I don’t think enough of us are doing this very well.

Has there been a defining moment in your career that you credit for your success and if so, what was it?

In 2009, I made the transition from traditional PR to exploring digital publishing and content marketing. I took a big leap and joined an infant start-up company, MedCity News, as VP of business development. 99% of my job were things I had never done before. I had no choice but to figure it out and learn from others. It completely changed the course of my career. I had the opportunity to build a company from scratch, and nearly everything I did in my time there has helped me become the content marketer that I have at Cleveland Clinic. The constant drive to do more, be better, and think bigger absolutely comes from those crazy start-up days. The experience completely changed me.

Do you have any advice for other marketers who are making the transition from content creation and strategy to a marketing leadership role like yours?

Become an incredible listener – listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. Understand your business and help your team understand. Let creators create. Let thinkers and strategists think. My job as a leader is to share a vision and set the tone for the team – not to tell them HOW to do their jobs all day. Stay on top of trends and industry best practices – they change all the time, and you need to be the one to keep your team on their toes. Ask questions, especially “what if?”

Listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

In your presentation at Content Marketing World you’ll be sharing the inside story of how your organization consistently drives web traffic and builds an audience. Without giving it all away, what are 3 things attendees will learn from your session? Also, can you share some information about the Cleveland Clinic Health Summit that will be taking place as part of CMWorld 2017?

      How to step up your content distribution strategies. We now have 2 million Facebook likes (more than any other hospital) – hear how and why that matters to us.

      How you can scale your content marketing team/efforts. We went from 3 people to 25 in two years.

      Yes, you can monetize your content marketing efforts! I’ll share how we are and how we got to that point.

The Content Marketing World Cleveland Clinic Health Summit is something I am SUPER PUMPED about! We have partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to offer a full-day program for healthcare content marketers instead of the traditional hospitals industry lab on the Friday of Content Marketing World (September 8th). This event will feature several Cleveland Clinic speakers, and a keynote from Google and presentations from Verywell, Staywell and others. There will be break-out sessions focused on SEO, content engineering, the latest trends in healthcare digital marketing, and more. I’ll also be presenting specifically on scaling your content marketing efforts. We’re offering a cocktail reception and tours of Cleveland Clinic’s main campus on Thursday, September 7th as well. For more details and to register, go here:

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2017?

This is so hard! I have so many friends presenting this year. I’m very excited for Jay Acunzo’s keynote. Jay is awesome and his messages always really resonate with me, and he was last year’s highest rated breakout speaker last year. I love his Unthinkable podcast, and I always learn something from him. I’m excited to hear Margaret Magnarelli. I met her last year when we were both finalists for Content Marketer of the Year, and her work at Monster is incredible. I’m also very happy to see the new writing track – Ann Handley and Ahava Leibtag are always awesome to hear.

Want More?

Thank you Amanda for sharing all of your great marketing insights!

Feel free to also check out our first interview in this CMWorld series featuring Buyer Persona Institute CEO, Adele Revella.

If you’re looking for even more from Amanda, Adele and other amazing CMWorld speakers, be sure to check out the first eBook in our series, The In-Flight Content Guide: Prepping for Your Content Marketing Expedition.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Ashley Zeckman http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/uploads/CMWorld-Interview-Amanda-Todorovich.jpg

[befoundonlinemarketing]

#CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare

Each year, Content Marketing World receives hundreds of nominations for the coveted Content Marketer of the Year award. Past winners include Vishal Khanna of Wake Forest Innovations (2015), Bryan Rhoads, Intel Digital Media Labs (2014) and Julie Fleischer of Kraft Foods Group (2013).

In 2016, this award went to another truly deserving content marketer, Amanda Todorovich Director of Content Marketing, Cleveland Clinic. Amanda and her team at the Cleveland Clinic have proven that content marketing really works for healthcare organizations. In fact, their blog has been named as the most visited hospital blog in the entire country!

If you’re like me, you likely wondered “How does she do it?”. Fortunately for you (and myself), I was able to steal away some of Amanda’s valuable time to gain insights into everything from how her team has managed to develop such a successful content strategy to what an average day looks like in her world.

So buckle up and get ready for liftoff as Amanda tells us more about her approach in her own words.

What does your role as Director of Content Marketing at Cleveland Clinic entail? What does your day look like? What do you like best?

I lead a team of 25 amazing people! We create and distribute content in support of enterprise goals and priorities. We manage our consumer and physician blogs as well as social media, email marketing, print publications, and branding. We publish 3-5 articles on both blogs every day and do about 2500+ additional projects per year. Every day is different, but I make a point of touching base with each work group every week in a quick stand-up meeting, and then I also do a full staff meeting every week. I spend a lot of time representing our team in meetings with key stakeholders and leaders from across the enterprise.

Frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

My team teases me because they can hear me coming because I tend to walk pretty fast from cube to cube… I tend to run around our office a lot and talk to team members about projects or ideas throughout the day. This frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. The result of this close collaboration is an incredibly engaged team that is delivering amazingly creative high quality content day-in and day-out.

How do you believe your communications and media relations experience has impacted your approach to marketing?

My background in communications and media relations is exactly what I think has made me a successful content marketer. Content marketing is about communicating with your customers in a compelling and engaging way, and it’s about great storytelling. And, that is really the heart of PR, too. I built my “nose for news” and understanding of what makes a great story/piece of content very early in my career. The biggest difference between doing traditional media relations and what I do now is that I’m focused on telling our own stories and growing our own audiences for our brand vs. working with media outlets to tell our story for us to their audiences.

How does your team go about developing a content strategy that balances the needs of the brand and the target audience (patients)?

It starts and ends with identifying the goals of the content marketing program. For us, the big overarching goal of our work is to increase national brand awareness for Cleveland Clinic. So, with that in mind, our content strategy is really driven by the desire to be useful, helpful and relevant to people all over the country (and even the world). We always filter requests and content needs with that lense – would someone in California who’s never heard of Cleveland Clinic find value in this story? If yes, we do it. If not, we will likely recommend a different path. We are an extremely data-driven team, so we have the insights to know what our audiences like and engage with most heavily. That drives our daily decisions around what content to publish and when. We talk about the numbers every day.

When only 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy and only 28% say that their content is very effective, why do you think having a defined content marketing strategy is essential for success?

Having a documented content strategy is truly like having a road map or GPS system with a clear destination identified. What are you trying to do and how are you going to get there? It’s crucial. As a content marketer, you are faced with tons of decisions every day – what to write about, when to publish, where to distribute, visuals, etc. – and if you don’t have that strategy in place, you are making it up as you go. That’s dangerous and an irresponsible use of the resources you are utilizing to do this work. Without a strategy, how do you know what success looks like? What are you working towards? Who are writing for?

A content strategy is like a road map or GPS system w/ a clear destination identified. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

The documented strategy drives you forward and keeps the team focused moving in the same direction.

What are the 3 most important things marketers need to do to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy?

      Know what success looks like. What’s the goal? Write it down.

      Identify your personas. Who are you creating for? Personify them. Make them your universe.

      Bring data to the table. What data do you have that can inform your approach? Don’t just guess.

What do you see as the biggest content marketing opportunity that many marketers aren’t taking full advantage of?

Content personalization and marketing automation. I think there is so much more we can be doing in these areas. Most of us produce so much content, and we’ve been focused on content creation for so many years that we haven’t even realized the value of the arsenal we’ve been building. There are so many ways to serve up content to people in very personal and hyper-relevant ways along their buyer journey, and I don’t think enough of us are doing this very well.

Has there been a defining moment in your career that you credit for your success and if so, what was it?

In 2009, I made the transition from traditional PR to exploring digital publishing and content marketing. I took a big leap and joined an infant start-up company, MedCity News, as VP of business development. 99% of my job were things I had never done before. I had no choice but to figure it out and learn from others. It completely changed the course of my career. I had the opportunity to build a company from scratch, and nearly everything I did in my time there has helped me become the content marketer that I have at Cleveland Clinic. The constant drive to do more, be better, and think bigger absolutely comes from those crazy start-up days. The experience completely changed me.

Do you have any advice for other marketers who are making the transition from content creation and strategy to a marketing leadership role like yours?

Become an incredible listener – listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. Understand your business and help your team understand. Let creators create. Let thinkers and strategists think. My job as a leader is to share a vision and set the tone for the team – not to tell them HOW to do their jobs all day. Stay on top of trends and industry best practices – they change all the time, and you need to be the one to keep your team on their toes. Ask questions, especially “what if?”

Listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

In your presentation at Content Marketing World you’ll be sharing the inside story of how your organization consistently drives web traffic and builds an audience. Without giving it all away, what are 3 things attendees will learn from your session? Also, can you share some information about the Cleveland Clinic Health Summit that will be taking place as part of CMWorld 2017?

      How to step up your content distribution strategies. We now have 2 million Facebook likes (more than any other hospital) – hear how and why that matters to us.

      How you can scale your content marketing team/efforts. We went from 3 people to 25 in two years.

      Yes, you can monetize your content marketing efforts! I’ll share how we are and how we got to that point.

The Content Marketing World Cleveland Clinic Health Summit is something I am SUPER PUMPED about! We have partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to offer a full-day program for healthcare content marketers instead of the traditional hospitals industry lab on the Friday of Content Marketing World (September 8th). This event will feature several Cleveland Clinic speakers, and a keynote from Google and presentations from Verywell, Staywell and others. There will be break-out sessions focused on SEO, content engineering, the latest trends in healthcare digital marketing, and more. I’ll also be presenting specifically on scaling your content marketing efforts. We’re offering a cocktail reception and tours of Cleveland Clinic’s main campus on Thursday, September 7th as well. For more details and to register, go here:

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2017?

This is so hard! I have so many friends presenting this year. I’m very excited for Jay Acunzo’s keynote. Jay is awesome and his messages always really resonate with me, and he was last year’s highest rated breakout speaker last year. I love his Unthinkable podcast, and I always learn something from him. I’m excited to hear Margaret Magnarelli. I met her last year when we were both finalists for Content Marketer of the Year, and her work at Monster is incredible. I’m also very happy to see the new writing track – Ann Handley and Ahava Leibtag are always awesome to hear.

Want More?

Thank you Amanda for sharing all of your great marketing insights!

Feel free to also check out our first interview in this CMWorld series featuring Buyer Persona Institute CEO, Adele Revella.

If you’re looking for even more from Amanda, Adele and other amazing CMWorld speakers, be sure to check out the first eBook in our series, The In-Flight Content Guide: Prepping for Your Content Marketing Expedition.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare | http://ift.tt/faSbAI

The post #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

#CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare posted first on http://ift.tt/faSbAI

[christopheruearle]

#CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare

Each year, Content Marketing World receives hundreds of nominations for the coveted Content Marketer of the Year award. Past winners include Vishal Khanna of Wake Forest Innovations (2015), Bryan Rhoads, Intel Digital Media Labs (2014) and Julie Fleischer of Kraft Foods Group (2013).

In 2016, this award went to another truly deserving content marketer, Amanda Todorovich Director of Content Marketing, Cleveland Clinic. Amanda and her team at the Cleveland Clinic have proven that content marketing really works for healthcare organizations. In fact, their blog has been named as the most visited hospital blog in the entire country!

If you’re like me, you likely wondered “How does she do it?”. Fortunately for you (and myself), I was able to steal away some of Amanda’s valuable time to gain insights into everything from how her team has managed to develop such a successful content strategy to what an average day looks like in her world.

So buckle up and get ready for liftoff as Amanda tells us more about her approach in her own words.

What does your role as Director of Content Marketing at Cleveland Clinic entail? What does your day look like? What do you like best?

I lead a team of 25 amazing people! We create and distribute content in support of enterprise goals and priorities. We manage our consumer and physician blogs as well as social media, email marketing, print publications, and branding. We publish 3-5 articles on both blogs every day and do about 2500+ additional projects per year. Every day is different, but I make a point of touching base with each work group every week in a quick stand-up meeting, and then I also do a full staff meeting every week. I spend a lot of time representing our team in meetings with key stakeholders and leaders from across the enterprise.

Frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

My team teases me because they can hear me coming because I tend to walk pretty fast from cube to cube… I tend to run around our office a lot and talk to team members about projects or ideas throughout the day. This frequent interaction with various team members is my favorite part of the job. The result of this close collaboration is an incredibly engaged team that is delivering amazingly creative high quality content day-in and day-out.

How do you believe your communications and media relations experience has impacted your approach to marketing?

My background in communications and media relations is exactly what I think has made me a successful content marketer. Content marketing is about communicating with your customers in a compelling and engaging way, and it’s about great storytelling. And, that is really the heart of PR, too. I built my “nose for news” and understanding of what makes a great story/piece of content very early in my career. The biggest difference between doing traditional media relations and what I do now is that I’m focused on telling our own stories and growing our own audiences for our brand vs. working with media outlets to tell our story for us to their audiences.

How does your team go about developing a content strategy that balances the needs of the brand and the target audience (patients)?

It starts and ends with identifying the goals of the content marketing program. For us, the big overarching goal of our work is to increase national brand awareness for Cleveland Clinic. So, with that in mind, our content strategy is really driven by the desire to be useful, helpful and relevant to people all over the country (and even the world). We always filter requests and content needs with that lense – would someone in California who’s never heard of Cleveland Clinic find value in this story? If yes, we do it. If not, we will likely recommend a different path. We are an extremely data-driven team, so we have the insights to know what our audiences like and engage with most heavily. That drives our daily decisions around what content to publish and when. We talk about the numbers every day.

When only 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy and only 28% say that their content is very effective, why do you think having a defined content marketing strategy is essential for success?

Having a documented content strategy is truly like having a road map or GPS system with a clear destination identified. What are you trying to do and how are you going to get there? It’s crucial. As a content marketer, you are faced with tons of decisions every day – what to write about, when to publish, where to distribute, visuals, etc. – and if you don’t have that strategy in place, you are making it up as you go. That’s dangerous and an irresponsible use of the resources you are utilizing to do this work. Without a strategy, how do you know what success looks like? What are you working towards? Who are writing for?

A content strategy is like a road map or GPS system w/ a clear destination identified. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

The documented strategy drives you forward and keeps the team focused moving in the same direction.

What are the 3 most important things marketers need to do to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy?

      Know what success looks like. What’s the goal? Write it down.

      Identify your personas. Who are you creating for? Personify them. Make them your universe.

      Bring data to the table. What data do you have that can inform your approach? Don’t just guess.

What do you see as the biggest content marketing opportunity that many marketers aren’t taking full advantage of?

Content personalization and marketing automation. I think there is so much more we can be doing in these areas. Most of us produce so much content, and we’ve been focused on content creation for so many years that we haven’t even realized the value of the arsenal we’ve been building. There are so many ways to serve up content to people in very personal and hyper-relevant ways along their buyer journey, and I don’t think enough of us are doing this very well.

Has there been a defining moment in your career that you credit for your success and if so, what was it?

In 2009, I made the transition from traditional PR to exploring digital publishing and content marketing. I took a big leap and joined an infant start-up company, MedCity News, as VP of business development. 99% of my job were things I had never done before. I had no choice but to figure it out and learn from others. It completely changed the course of my career. I had the opportunity to build a company from scratch, and nearly everything I did in my time there has helped me become the content marketer that I have at Cleveland Clinic. The constant drive to do more, be better, and think bigger absolutely comes from those crazy start-up days. The experience completely changed me.

Do you have any advice for other marketers who are making the transition from content creation and strategy to a marketing leadership role like yours?

Become an incredible listener – listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. Understand your business and help your team understand. Let creators create. Let thinkers and strategists think. My job as a leader is to share a vision and set the tone for the team – not to tell them HOW to do their jobs all day. Stay on top of trends and industry best practices – they change all the time, and you need to be the one to keep your team on their toes. Ask questions, especially “what if?”

Listen to your team members, listen to the data, listen to your leadership. @amandatodo Click To Tweet

In your presentation at Content Marketing World you’ll be sharing the inside story of how your organization consistently drives web traffic and builds an audience. Without giving it all away, what are 3 things attendees will learn from your session? Also, can you share some information about the Cleveland Clinic Health Summit that will be taking place as part of CMWorld 2017?

      How to step up your content distribution strategies. We now have 2 million Facebook likes (more than any other hospital) – hear how and why that matters to us.

      How you can scale your content marketing team/efforts. We went from 3 people to 25 in two years.

      Yes, you can monetize your content marketing efforts! I’ll share how we are and how we got to that point.

The Content Marketing World Cleveland Clinic Health Summit is something I am SUPER PUMPED about! We have partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to offer a full-day program for healthcare content marketers instead of the traditional hospitals industry lab on the Friday of Content Marketing World (September 8th). This event will feature several Cleveland Clinic speakers, and a keynote from Google and presentations from Verywell, Staywell and others. There will be break-out sessions focused on SEO, content engineering, the latest trends in healthcare digital marketing, and more. I’ll also be presenting specifically on scaling your content marketing efforts. We’re offering a cocktail reception and tours of Cleveland Clinic’s main campus on Thursday, September 7th as well. For more details and to register, go here:

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2017?

This is so hard! I have so many friends presenting this year. I’m very excited for Jay Acunzo’s keynote. Jay is awesome and his messages always really resonate with me, and he was last year’s highest rated breakout speaker last year. I love his Unthinkable podcast, and I always learn something from him. I’m excited to hear Margaret Magnarelli. I met her last year when we were both finalists for Content Marketer of the Year, and her work at Monster is incredible. I’m also very happy to see the new writing track – Ann Handley and Ahava Leibtag are always awesome to hear.

Want More?

Thank you Amanda for sharing all of your great marketing insights!

Feel free to also check out our first interview in this CMWorld series featuring Buyer Persona Institute CEO, Adele Revella.

If you’re looking for even more from Amanda, Adele and other amazing CMWorld speakers, be sure to check out the first eBook in our series, The In-Flight Content Guide: Prepping for Your Content Marketing Expedition.

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post #CMWorld Interview: Amanda Todorovich Dishes on Creating Impactful Content for Healthcare appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

[martechadvisor-blog]

Tips on Optimizing Marketing Technology Strategy: An Interview with Jonathan Goldmacher of Valtech

In this hard-hitting and grounded interview, Jonathan Goldmacher, Managing Director, Valtech – NYC, speaks with MarTech Advisor on various crucial aspects of marketing technology, such as Conversion Rate Optimization, Personalization, Customer Experience and more. Read on for expert tips and real-speak to refine your marketing technology strategy. 

The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) of a company is dependent on many elements (website design, brand responsiveness, etc.). What blueprint can CMOs follow to lead their organizations to a higher CRO? Which factors (content, personalization etc.) would be most crucial in this blueprint? I’m not certain that there is a blanket blueprint that any CMO can follow. I believe that blueprints themselves should be customized based on the business that the CMO is representing, the objective of that business and, ultimately, their marketing objectives.

That said, I do think there are several elements that ultimately can lead to better optimization of conversion rates. First and foremost, understanding who your customers or consumers are, and reaching them at the right place, at the right moment, with the right message: contextualization and personalization. Utilizing search to understand what is important to them in their lives is important to know when it comes to the type of content you create.

The easiest place to start, for me, is always in seeing what people are already searching for in your category then developing content directly against that since you know it's something that people in your category are highly interested in. Having that relevant content, at the right place and time is key in driving conversion.

Personalization has gained momentum as an important marketing strategy over the years. How does personalization affect the CRO? What techniques can marketers employ to make their personalization strategies more effective (for both SEO and CRO)?

Personalization affects conversion rate in a positive way when brands and companies, particularly digitally driven ones, understand who their customers are and what relationship their customer may already have with them: the size, shape, frequency of that relationship.

In e-commerce, it means tracking the kinds of purchases customers make and how frequently they’re bought. Then working to be able to model more predictably what their future needs might be while meeting those needs ahead of time. The idea of predictive modeling is, for me, core to the idea of personalization. You are trying to be a bit more proactive in your relationship with your customers and not just reactive. What you understand and know about your consumers, and what is important to them, is critical. The easiest way to do this, for me, is using the customer data that already exists online. An individual’s search history and what people in your category are searching for allow you to create relevant content. Consumers expect brands to serve them only with relevant and up to date content. How can brands utilize content to drive their CRO in the right direction?

**The reason why customers are coming to you should be for the superiority of your product or service and the belief that it is going to help their lives be better.** I’d start there. I’d start around the product before I venture all the way out to the other end of promotional activities and content creation.

Start by being relevant and up to date in your category and product and services, and make sure that stuff is matching up for all the traffic that’s happening in your category as it relates to search. That doesn’t mean it can’t be creative, quite the opposite. **Regardless of the subject matter, content needs to breakthrough and be engaging.** 

So, to me, that is job number one. Once you’ve built your brand and your business, then it is right to be thinking of the dialogue of communications that comes from an engagement or content strategy inclusive of things like social, but I’d much more propose that people start by building a solid foundation based on the customer’s needs.

Marketers are slowly moving from a multi-channel engagement strategy to an omni-channel strategy with a more holistic approach towards customer engagement. What are some significant aspects of omni-channel engagement that are generally overlooked by marketers?

I think customer experience and UX are too often thought of only in an ecosystem of things digital. The physical customer experience, product experience and communication experience are equally critical to building a holistic omnichannel strategy. Putting what the brand stands for at the center, devising with great strategy how we will engage and what is important to consumers, how we talk to them, how we treat them when they’re with us physically and ensuring all of that stuff complements one another and is coming from the same place at the center is, to me, still one of the biggest challenges.

How have you seen the concept of seamless Customer Experience (CX) evolve over the last few years, and where do you see it heading in 2020? **Seamless customer experience is the notion of taking all four dimensions and designing from them with purpose from the outset.** Not many people are doing it well and we’re very much still at the nascent stages of this though some are doing segments better than others.

I hope that by 2020, if not soon afterward, that a fully-baked and complementary user experience across the four dimensions becomes the standard.  I believe that there will be a lot of work to do, but it’s the right thing. The brands deserve it, and they should have a well thought out experience that starts with the core purpose at its center. Designing linear solutions is clearly not the answer but it is difficult to understand how to create and plan these fully-wholistic solutions.

AR-VR are the upcoming immersive technologies which have not yet been explored fully by marketers. What tips would you give marketers on making the most of AR-VR for their campaigns? In your opinion, which areas (retail, auto etc.) will benefit the most from these technologies? Technology is never a silver bullet to solve all of our problems but it is a tool. A tool in the right hands can allow that person to work more efficiently. Otherwise, it’s just a flash in the pan. Again, the most important thing to me is whether this technology is being used to deliver real utility to people and makes their lives better. The utilization of AR/VR against those goals is what I’m looking for.

Travel and hospitality, particularly with hotels, is a fantastic example. One of the things I’m most curious about when traveling with my family is where are we staying and what is it like at this place. Most hotel websites are terrible. I just want to see what the room is going to be like and I usually get three static photos taken ten years ago that don’t give a sense of how big the room is, how it’s arranged, or what it would feel like to stay there.

Think about cruise ships and people who have never taken a cruise – that would be a category that could really benefit from VR. What are the sleeping quarters like? What amenities, activities and food are on the ship? What’s it like to walk around the ship?  Can I learn a bit more about the people and staff that I’ll be sharing the boat with and some unique facts about them? What are the crucial new skills that a CMO needs on their team when it comes to adapting to these new tools and strategies (mobile marketing, omni-channel marketing, AI and machine learning, chatbots, etc.)?

CMO’s must be nimbler than ever today.  I’ve always liked the Mike Tyson quote, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”  **When you go out into the market you’ve got to expect to get punched and not be surprised that your plans will need to pivot.** 

Marketing has, for years, remained the same – to make customers aware of the value that your company provides and drive awareness to future customers. In that regard CMOs must remain steadfast in sharing that story of utility that the brand provides while viewing new technologies as tools that enables you to get from Point A to Point B.

That too is how future CMOs must consider omni-channel marketing. Yes, each individual component or channel is important, but it’s how they all work together to help drive home the experience of your brand. Valtech is a hub of digital transformation tools, services and innovation. Tell us a little about some of the most exciting, upcoming projects at Valtech.

Speaking of VR, I believe that the VR work we’ve done for our client, Decathlon, is second to none. Our implementation of VR provides real value to their business and solves a problem of limited store square footage, while solving the problem for customers who cannot see all the large products in their stores. It’s driven higher profit-per-square-foot for Decathlon.

**It’s easy for people to think that technology alone solves business challenges, but the deployment of technology must be done strategically and really push the needle on business metrics.** VR technology will continue to grow as future generations will be more comfortable with purely digital services and emerging technologies.

MTA: Thank you for that fantastic discussion on such varied aspects of marketing technology, Jonathan. We hope to talk with you again, soon!

About Valtech:

Valtech is one of the largest independent digital marketing and business transformation agencies in the world employing more than 2500 innovators, design thinkers, marketers, creatives and developers in offices across 16 countries.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[martechadvisor-blog]

How B2Bs can make the most of Long Form Content

Content has been said to be king for a couple of years now, ever since Bill Gates declared so over two decades ago.  But the truth is, in the digital marketing sphere, it pays to look at things like as though every fragment were part of a game of chess. Every player, from the pawn to the King is important to the game and more important to get to check mate. 

B2B and Long-form content Understanding the consumer is key to marketing your product or business well. Understanding how your consumers want their content delivered to them, or interpreting what works best or creates a definite pull act as a stable pointer. Consumers now want informative and exciting content that can entertain and compel them to read more. If not, they’ll simply close the link to your page and move on. 

In an online world where there are literally no caps to the copious amounts of content being generated, how can B2Bs stay ahead of the race?

Why B2Bs need to have long-form content  Try this out at work itself. Run a quick assessment of the home page your employees use on their computers.

Google is the home page for millions globally.

Most SEO dos and don’ts were put in place as a direct result of Google’s search algorithms and changes to search parameters.

The thing is, Google prefers content-rich sites and long form over short form. 

While long form content itself can’t secure number one rankings for your brand, a smart marketer can extract the true value of long form content by adhering to a few basic rules.

Is long-form content really worth the extra effort for B2Bs? Keyword research tool SERPIQ had run an analysis a few years ago on the top 10 search results for more than 20,000 keywords. And one of the key consequences of the study was that the length of content of the page had a direct correlation to the placement of search results. 

To add to that Sometime in 2011, Moz found that there seemed to be a direct correlation between the number of back links (links to their blog post from other websites) and the overall length of the content itself.

Famous advertising tycoon David Ogilvy, and founder of Ogilvy & Mather had once said: “All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short… Advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.”

Some more benefits, because a few are never enough 

Long form content increases the likelihood of both engagement and sharing besides having the great potential of improving your search engine results page (SERP) ranking. 

Well written content that includes key industry insights by industry experts can contribute towards increasing your audience base besides having your brand viewed as an ‘authority’ on a particular subject. 

Furthermore, long form content written by thought-leaders or senior managers within an organization can lead to a lot more conversions, the key here being that informative content is what consumers want more of. 

Long format content gives you more authentic opportunities to link back to other content you have created and drive more traffic to your digital assets

All of this together can create an enriching brand experience and brand awareness that at the end of the day is an important end-goal for every B2B marketer. 

Highlighting the SEO benefit While you may not be able to precisely identify the tech behind Google’s search algorithm functions and what are the exact parameters that send your page to the top in search rankings, curious marketers can experiment with the information and data they have through trackers to gain some interesting insights. 

This is where real-time analytics and measurement or trackers come into play and this is why they are largely used by B2B marketers. Google Analytics does help in this regard to a large extent. 

The fact is, long-form content ranks very well!

In 2012, when SERPIQ conducted a study involving over 20,000 keywords, results showed that the average content length of each of the top 10 results was more than 2000 words. 

The average number of words for content in the number 1 spot was 2416. And for the 10th spot, the average number was 2032.

So then, since every B2B marketer wants their articles and content to rank well, shouldn’t they all be using long-form content?

According to a 2015 HubSpot study, articles with a word count between 2250 and 2500 receive most organic traffic.

BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million articles and found that long-form content gets more social shares as compared to its counterpart.

According to Quick Sprout, blog posts longer than 1500 words receive 68% more tweets and 22% more Facebook likes.

According to Curata, Long-form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short-form blog posts.

Blog content is getting longer and more visual. The average blog post is up about 19%, coming in at about 1,050 words in length. -Orbit Media Studios

Top three B2B goals of content marketing: Lead Generation (85%); Sales (84%); Lead Nurturing (78%).-Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

45% of marketers say blogging is their #1 most important content strategy. -Social Media Examiner

80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. -Stratabeat

78% of organization use website traffic to determine how well its content marketing is producing results.

The most-used B2B content marketing tactics are social media content (83%), blogs (80%), and email newsletters (77%).

A few cautions and tips

Use of long form content cannot give you guaranteed results. However, it can increase your odds of success. 

There is usually no set standard when it comes to word count limits. Long form content in the past could be anything that was up to 2000 words long. Nowadays, marketers peg the limit from 3000 words to even those that are 4000 or more. 

Long form content takes the shape of articles on websites, blogs. But by only including textual matter, your readers could be tempted to bounce off the page. It is imperative to hold a reader’s attention by enriching your long form content with useful infographics, videos, designs and other interesting elements to break the monotony of text. 

Understanding how one can incorporate various types of visual elements can ensure that long form pieces are informative and exciting to read till the end. Break up the content monotony with engaging visuals, Gifs and memes. These give you the option of injecting some lightness into the heavy proceedings.

Eighty-eight percent of B2B companies use content marketing in some form. So, ensuring that your content stands out and adds value to the reader base is as important. 

A thorough balance between long form content creation and content marketing is needed to ensure that all the efforts that go into writing a rich informative piece is optimized and reaches the right audience. 

Paying attention to the kind of topics that your reader base is most likely to click on and consume can help B2Bs breakdown their content strategy and create content plans that are aligned to reader interests. Most content tracking tools like Priceonomics, Buzzsumo offer a deep breakdown of topics, social shares and even trending categories.

Readers may prefer longer format content at specific stages of their buyer’s journey, and short formats at others. It is important for every marketer to understand their readers buyers journey and align content to that instead of using any blanket thumb rules.  

A classic study Renowned digital marketer Neil Patel once conducted an experiment with some of his own content on Quick Sprout, a blog that offers tips for digital marketers. He found that out of 327 blog posts he wrote, the posts under 1,500 words received an average of 174 tweets and 59 Facebook likes. 

The content that was over 1,500 words, on the other hand, received an average of 293 tweets and 75 likes.

This is just one example, but it was enough to convince Patel himself that there’s social media value in long-form content.

Then, in another case, Moz’s free Beginner’s Guide To SEO has been visited over 1 million times, and according to Majestic SEO has been linked to more than 36,000 times. It is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of long form content marketing ever created.

The final takeaway for B2Bs Long form content is fast becoming a norm, in some places it already is. It is harder to pack a punch when it comes to educational or informative content via shorter formats. Do the math yourself: Multiple pieces of content that don’t say much versus 1 rich piece that comprises everything. What adds more value to your reader? 

As a B2B marketer, if you had to draw out a wholesome content strategy, understanding where the value in Social Media Marketing lies and ensuring your brand content is created to suit social engagement activities while also adding relevance and value to your reader base, can together up your content consumption values and brand image online. By constantly exploring new ways to generate and market B2B content, you can easily unlock the true power of your B2B content.  Content is a valuable and desired form of marketing. By understanding what form benefits your company and readers most with consistent real-time tracking and tweaking, its quite safe to say that you’ll experience some great ROIs. 

So get cracking and start writing! 

  This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor