Tag Archives: peter applebaum

An open letter to Julia Gillard: Content is Queen-maker

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Content marketing: great for brands with no clear, rational point of differentiation. And there may be no more obvious example of that than the current state of Australian federal politics, so Peter Applebaum writes to Brand Julia to let her know that although things may look grim, all hope is not yet lost.

 

Dear Julia,

You don’t need me to tell you things aren’t looking good. The opinion polls have the ALP trailing the Coalition by around 17 percent, 61 percent of people are dissatisfied with your performance as Prime Minister (with only 27 percent satisfied) and most think Tony Abbott would make a better PM.

Of course, opinion polls can get it hopelessly wrong. Seven months before the 2001 election, the Coalition trailed the ALP by 20 percent, but He Who Must Not Be Named (aka John Howard) kept the keys to The Lodge. It was a similar story in 1998. Just three months out from the election, the ALP held a 12 percent lead, but You Know Who did it again.

And in 1993, the ALP, 16 percent behind, was expected to be trounced. As Peter Munro put it in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Paul Keating was the politician you couldn’t give away in a raffle.” And we all know what happened next… My point, Julia, is that your Cinderella story (complete with its famously lost shoe) is far from over. A week is, as they say, a long time in politics. Which means the 15 months until the next election must be held is an eternity.

Thinking differently

But – and, as buts go, this is a big one – you have to start thinking differently in order to have any hope of turning things around by next November.

The way I see it, you have three options. You could:

  • keep on with the same old strategy of hoping the furore over the Carbon Tax dies down, hoping the Coalition slips up, and using traditional media and the odd TVC to spruik a rather muddled message,
  • hire an actor to dress up as James Bond, and skydive together out of a helicopter (it has done wonders for another high profile female leader), or
  • do content marketing.

I suspect the thought of the third option fills you with dread. After all, you said at the recent New South Wales ALP Conference: “Other parties come and go – often promising more, always delivering less. But we endure – not a brand, a cause.”

The rhetoric is great and it doubtless stirred the party faithful. But it is wrong. Like it or not, the ALP is a brand and you are its chief salesperson. Politics, like business, is about selling something. In your case, it is an idea – an ideal, even. And, like business, politics is measured by a bottom line: votes.

To get the most votes, Brand Julia and Brand ALP need to think like a brand – which is where content marketing comes in.

The importance of content

Consistency is a luxury rarely afforded to politicians. There is always a fire to put out, or a mistake that threatens to hijack the agenda. But content marketing allows you to circumvent that. It lets you find and use your voice in a consistent manner (leaving your traditional doorstep interviews for fire-fighting).

You may argue you are already doing that through your website, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, your YouTube channel and various other social media platforms. But there is a world of difference between having an engaging platform and actually engaging people through it.

A few months ago, we conducted an Australia-wide survey into how people interact with brands and businesses. The results showed that Australians specifically follow and buy from (or vote for) brands based on their content.

So let’s look at your content offering in that context. Your website is probably the pick of the bunch, with the blog section particularly strong because it genuinely seems to be speaking in your voice. But beyond that visitors are faced with media release after impersonal media release – which is hardly the way to create the sense of personal engagement people respond to.

Social media is tailor-made for personal engagement and, while your Facebook page seems to be doing a reasonable job at first glance (you have 130,570 likes and 4088 people talking about you), closer inspection reveals that many people posting or commenting are actually involved in private arguments. In other words, there is no real engagement.

And how could there be? I am writing this on 2 August. Your most recent Facebook post was a picture of you and Hugh Jackman on 24 July. That’s almost 10 days without a word.

I could point out similar issues with your other social media sites, but I’m sure you get the point. Content marketing depends on the quality of its content (although regularity is also important). That is what people respond to, and having people respond to you is the best way of turning around your poll ratings.

Content marketing is for the long term

We know social media is important during an election campaign – President Obama proved that in 2008. But encouraging people to vote, getting volunteers and securing donations in a limited time-frame is one thing. Establishing a voice and spreading a message over the long-term is quite another.

Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree by asking a politician – who almost by necessity thinks in three-year electoral cycles – to turn her back on short-termism. But solely using social media and online content as a campaign device (as both the ALP and Coalition are currently doing) is a mistake.

Rather than using digital communication for targeted advertising and unpaid campaigns or as a means of disseminating a quick message to the already engaged, use it to truly connect with people. Most Australians are capable of digesting more than just a sound bite and can consider complicated, emotive issues. Done well, content marketing will allow you to use any number of platforms to get your message across and show the voters who you really are and what you really stand for.

I have argued you are a brand, you have claimed you are a cause. But the beauty of content marketing is that it works for both.

 

Yours sincerely,

Peter Applebaum

 

Off Target: criticisms included, social media can be your brand’s best friend

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Public criticism posted on Facebook and Twitter means companies should get off social media, right? Wrong!

The mainstream media is currently full of it. Full of the news that Target, like Channel Seven, Qantas and others before it, have experienced a social media backlash, that is.

In this instance, it all started with a comment on Target’s Facebook page from a mother and primary school teacher Ana Amini complaining that the retailer is selling clothes that makes young girls ‘look like tramps’. Other people – lots of other people – clearly agree with Amini, with her Facebook page attracting some 60,000 likes and 3000 comments.

All of which demonstrates the reach and power of social media. So why are commentators queuing up to imply companies should exit social media as the benefits of being on it are outweighed by the risks?

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

‘Gabriel McDowell of Res Publica, an adviser to corporations on social media strategy, said recent missteps had been compounded by the wrong people running company Facebook pages.

‘Control should be taken from advertising and marketing agencies, who are used to pushing a message, and handed to public relations people, who are better equipped to deal with fallout. “Even though the social media process can’t be totally controlled, it needs to be managed,” he said.’

Fair point, you may think, until you realise Res Publica just happens to be… a PR agency! So the Herald has used a quote from a self-interested party to support the angle of its story. Talk about disingenuous.

The point of social media

Social media is not about public relations. Social media is about interaction, about engaging with customers. Yes, people may question or even criticise, but someone like Amini clearly felt she had a genuine point to make. And the fact that she made it has given Target a chance to consider her well-made points and address her concerns.

To say this ‘scandal’ is proof that social media has the potential to do far more harm than good to – and for – companies is completely wrong. Social media has empowered consumers, has given them a voice – and a collective voice – at that that demands to be heard.

Companies and marketers should always be listening to their consumers – it’s how you know if you’re doing the right thing by them and providing the products they want. So to get off social media or, worse, to simply view it as a means for scoring some PR points would be the worst thing possible.

Moreover, just because you may no longer be on social media doesn’t mean social media itself no longer exists. Consumers can still criticise you (or praise you, for that matter) on Facebook, Twitter, etc, but your absence from the conversation denies you the right of reply, that ability to say to people, ‘I’m listening, I’m hearing what you say, I understand your concerns and I’m going to do something about it.’

The content solution

Technology may be evolving at an incredible speed, but people aren’t. Our innate human needs remain the same and one of them is that when we deal with people, we want to know that we matter to them, that we are listened to and that our concerns are heard. Social media lets companies do that by monitoring the conversation and engaging with people.

And there is now an extra reason to do that, with the ruling handed down last week that companies are responsible for the comments posted by others on their corporate Facebook page. So if someone has posted something racist, sexist, otherwise offensive or libellous, the company is responsible.

Monitoring social media has therefore become a necessity, so why not see this as an opportunity to engage through it. Accept criticism and ask others if they feel the same way (as they obviously do in the Target case) as a means of improving your offering to customers.

The content you create – in terms of responding to customer comments – can turn social media into your best friend. Running away from it, on the other hand, is a sure-fire way of making it your enemy.

 

Help! My brand is boring! Content marketing’s 6 golden rules

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Why did the chicken cross the road? Because that’s what a deceptively simple, fiendishly clever, wildly popular content marketing campaign programmed it to do.

Cast your minds back to 2004. It was the year Facebook (then called ‘Thefacebook’) was launched, a time before Twitter, an age when nobody could have predicted the reach and influence social media would achieve, and an era when the term ‘content marketing’ had barely been coined.

The company was Burger King, the product was the TenderCrisp chicken sandwich, the website was (the now defunct) www.subservientchicken.com. The concept was dressing a man up in a chicken suit and have ‘it’ obey commands typed in by viewers (kind of like an adult cam site), and the result was 46 million visits in one week.

Forty-six million. In 2004. For a subservient chicken. What else can you say except, ‘pluck me!’

Burger King’s campaign was one of the very first examples of the sort of viral content of which every content marketer dreams. Since then, others have achieved similar success for the most unlikely products, from water to forklift trucks to correction fluid (below).

 

In each case, content marketers have taken a brand or product that, on the face of things, is ‘boring’ and made something engaging, something appealing and, yes, even something sexy. And in each case, they have utilised the following ‘Six Golden Rules of Content Marketing’:

1. Find your voice

Great content is all about creating the perfect message to sell a product or promote a brand. It is the essence of engagement – speaking in a voice that appeals to the target market. That voice can be funny, witty, moving, irreverent, surreal and even ridiculous, but it has to be consistent. There is no point producing an ad that goes viral but completely contradicts your overall brand message – unless, of course, you’re planning to completely reinvent that brand. Short-term gains, by definition, have minimal impact on the long-term bottom line.

2. Know your audience

Understanding the target market has always been a marketing essential, but it’s even more important in the online world. TV ads, billboards and the like throw the message out there knowing that somewhere, in some sitting room or in some car, someone from their target market will see it. The difference with online content is that the consumer is in control – they don’t simply receive the information, they actively go looking for it.  So you need to ensure that you have the content that hooks them once they find you. Which brings us to…

3. Target your content

Your audience has found you, but your content has to be appealing enough to keep them. Essentially, you have to ask, as Men at Work famously did, ‘Do you speaka my language?’, only instead of just smiling and giving them a Vegemite sandwich, you offer content that wows and a product they want. John Deere Forklifts have done just that through content that turns a functional product into a testosterone-fuelled, machismo-laced must-have.

4. Make ’em laugh…

…or make ’em cry, or make ’em intrigued – the key is to move them, to engage them. If you do that successfully, as Evian has done, you’re on a winner. Remember, though, how you engage customers depends on your target market. Think how many mums now drink Evian.

5. Syndicate, syndicate, SYNDICATE

Although internet-savvy consumers like to feel in control and want to believe they found you independently, you can certainly nudge them in the right direction through content syndication. Social media is perfect for this, particularly since people are increasingly preferring to act on friends’ recommendations rather than being overtly ‘sold to’. Tweet about your content and post it on as many platforms as you can. Orabrush has done this brilliantly with a clever YouTube video that has received over 45 million views, supported by its Facebook presence.

6. Use technology

You’ll doubtless have noticed a common theme in all the cases shown in this article. All of them make excellent use of video – visual content, in other words – to engage their target market, establish an appealing voice and get their message across. But that’s not to say you should rely purely on video. Great content can also include music, images, and even (shock! horror!) mere words.

According to The Huffington Post (which itself shows how effective words can be as content), word-centric websites were among the most-visited last year.

Besides, as Professor Dumbledore put it in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, ‘Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic’. And let’s face it, Harry Potter creator JK Rowling knows a thing or two about creating content with an appeal that goes far beyond the reach of even the most viral of viral videos.

SEO and the backlinks buying conundrum

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Content providers, be warned. Backlinks can be bought, but they can end up doing more harm than good for your brand

Stomach tucks, executive office furniture, even – God help us – penile pustule removal… all of them can be found on the backend of many a blog. They are the comments awaiting approval, the scourge of content providers and the most irritating element to not only generating content, but also, crucially, getting that content out there.

So why are they there in the first place, and what should you do about them?

Here’s a scenario content providers large and small are familiar with. You’ve created your blog through WordPress or another format. You’ve invested time and money on it. You’ve worked hard to create content that you think will appeal to your target audience. You’ve made good use of images, you’ve utilised video and yet the engagement you’re after doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, because although you know you’re getting reads, you’re not getting that proof of engagement  in the shape of comments you had been hoping for.

The importance of user-generated content

User-generated content is one of the holy grails of social media and content marketing. It’s a way for companies to spark conversations and then be a part of that conversation, while also allowing customers to have their say. Done well (for example, Coca-Cola on Facebook or über-blog The Huffington Post), it gets people talking – and drinking and reading and buying.

But those sorts of super-success stories are the exception rather than the rule. In most cases, generating user-generated content through posts and comments can seem elusive to the point of being impossible.

There are a number of reasons why. It could be that your content simply isn’t as engaging or as well-presented as you think it is. But chances are, it owes a great deal to the ‘1% Rule’. Put simply, the rule states that for every person actively creating and/or uploading content, there are 99 others who simply receive it, read it and may even act on it, but they don’t add to it.

Which means that while your message may well be getting across, you have no tangible evidence that it is reaching your target audience.

Of course, in this day and age of measurables and an all-consuming need to be able to demonstrate return on investment, that isn’t enough for some organisations. So, almost in desperation, they turn to buying backlinks as a means of spreading the word.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are now more important than ever when it comes to search engine optimisation. As we explain in this Tick Content white paper, Google’s algorithm changes favour links from other sites when it comes to improving the search ranking of your own site. So some companies will happily pay money to ‘backlink farms’ that essentially spam other blogs with links.

The problem is that such an approach will almost always backfire. As every email account holder knows, spam is a massive pain in the proverbial and the chief reason why the ‘delete’ key is the most-overused on the old keyboard. The same is true for blog providers. Although everyone would love to be able to list dozens or even hundreds of comments for every story, do you really want to be promoting stomach tucks in the process?

Didn’t think so. So what do you do?

Create a targeted backlink strategy

The answer is to spend the time (and associated monetary costs) creating strategically targeted backlinks. Do your research to find blogs that operate in a similar field to yours (competitors exception, of course!) and write thoughtful, intelligent comments that have a legitimate purpose and reason for being there. In time, chances are those blogs will return the favour – and your search ranking will be boosted as a result.

At the same time, use social media to syndicate, syndicate, syndicate! Tweet about your latest story (you can do it two or three times without annoying your followers), use Facebook to drive traffic to it and adopt new social media platforms like Instagram to spread the word.

It may take a little longer, but such an approach will pay dividends. And, thankfully, there won’t be a penile pustule in sight!

Content marketing and the ‘1% Rule’

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Why companies should be looking back to the future to get their message across 

The ‘1% Rule’ is simple. It states that when it comes to content creation – particularly online content creation – 1% of the people create the content, 9% of the people edit, modify, share or somehow contribute to that content, while 90% of the people simply view the content but don’t add to it in any way.

Another way of looking at it is that for every person who posts something online or creates online content, there are 99 other people viewing that content but not posting anything themselves.

Either way, it’s a statistic that makes for sobering reading for content creators – especially those who look to use that content as a means of marketing to an audience and, hopefully, to sell something as a result.

The 1% Rule is not a new concept. Information science has long recognised the Pareto Principle (sometimes known as the ‘80:20 Rule’), which states that 20% of the group will produce 80% of the activity, however that activity may be defined. Management consultants have grown rich on proving that principle to corporations, and devising ways of ensuring a more equal distribution of effort in the name of increased productivity.

Paintball, anyone…?

 

The 1% Rule in the social media age

What is interesting, though, is that the 1% Rule has only really gained traction since 2006, placing it firmly in this current golden age of social media. The beauty of social media – and the key reason for its appeal in a marketing context – is that much of the content is user-generated.

All those Facebook posts, tweets and YouTube uploads are being created by individual users, yet still the vast majority prefer to simply ‘lurk’ – which is the creepy-sounding term given to simply viewing content rather than do anything with it.

If that sounds inconceivable, just consider how the rule applies to social media. One person tweets, several others retweet, but the vast majority simply receive, read and move on. It’s the same with Facebook. Someone has news, others share it – but again, most recipients let it die with them.

And if you want to get really extreme, look at YouTube. Even rarely seen clips invariably have views numbering in excess of 100, while something like the gun-totin’, laptop-shootin’ dad has become a social media/online-content legend. He’s still the individual who created (and shared) the content, others spread the word (including, helpfully in his case, the mainstream media), but 25,973,592 and counting have simply watched it.

In this case, we can forget about the 1% Rule and focus instead on the ‘0.000000038 % Rule’!

 

How content marketing should work today

So what does all this mean for content providers and, particularly, content marketers? Should we all simply shut up shop because the numbers are clearly telling us that, if we’re lucky, only nine percent of people are actually going to engage with the brand we’re spruiking? As for the other 90 percent, they may get to hear about it, but then it seems they’re ready to move on to the next web page.

Actually, it means quite the opposite. Because thanks to social media, you can be both the one percent who creates the content and the nine percent who shares it, promotes it, tweaks it and uses it for your purposes. Which means your chances of hitting the sweet spot with the 90% of ‘lurkers’ just got a whole lot better.

In the glory days of newspapers and magazines, and even television and radio, publishers were both the one percent and the nine percent. They created the content and they distributed it – to newsagents and newsstands, via broadcasting towers etc. Then, the end result was simply readers and viewers. Engagement didn’t come into it. The TV stations couldn’t care less if people were making mad, passionate love with the telly on in the background – as long as it was on their channel.

Although the game has changed now due to the internet and social media creating the possibility for greater engagement, the 1% Rule demonstrates that the majority of people still do not require engagement; that they remain content to simply receive the information. This is great news for companies and content marketers alike.

As with traditional media less than two decades ago, we can both create the content and distribute it – only the channels are different. Instead of newsagents, we can do it ourselves on Facebook. Instead of street vendors shouting ‘Extra! Extra! Read all about it!’, we have Twitter that serves the exact same purpose, only with the potential to reach far more people. And rather than needing a TV channel, we can broadcast ourselves – and our company message – on our own website and YouTube.

Which means we’ve instantly gone from being 1% to 10%, speaking to the 90%. And if we create the content properly and channel it appropriately, we can ensure that it engages those who want to be engaged while still reaching those who simply want to receive it and not necessarily interact with it.

The 1% Rule isn’t a problem for content marketers – it’s a win-win situation.