While You Were Out

Tuesday, 1:59 PM...

From: Rush Newsjack

To: Chuck Manners
Subject: Please approve Tweet

Please approve the attached Tweet before I send it. Thanks.

Rush Newsjack

Social Media Director
Cinnabon

Tuesday, 2 PM...

From: Chuck Manners
To: Rush Newsjack
Subject: Automatic reply: Please approve Tweet

I am away on a well-deserved vacation through next Tuesday, and not checking emails or accepting phone calls. If you need to send a Tweet while I'm away, use your best judgement. Thank you and may the force be with you.

Chuck Manners

Vice President, Good Taste
Cinnabon

Tuesday, 3 PM...

Tuesday, 4 PM...

From: Kat Cole
To: Chuck Manners
Subject: Today's Tweet

Chuck, don't bother coming back. May the reduction in force be with you.

Kat Cole
President & COO
Cinnabon

The Content Marketer's Dilemma

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

— Henry Ford

What's a content marketer to do?

Scrape the web for feedback to create content customers search for? Or create content based on your vision of a better future?

We all know the merits of creating content based on web feedback.

Study upon study shows customers begin their "buying journey" by Googling familiar keywords... prefer those brands whose content they find... and find that content because it's stuffed with those keywords and conforms to their notions of a "buyer's guide."

And we all know the pitfalls of creating content based on a vision.

That kind of content isn't stuffed with all the keywords customers know and doesn't otherwise meet their expectations of a "buyer's guide." So they never find it; or, if they do, don't click on it. Like the tree that falls in the empty forest, content based on a vision makes no sound.

How do you create content?

5 How To’s in a [Blog Post] w/Photo. For Who? Content Marketers!

You've just encountered a viral headline. That's if you buy marketing maven Arnie Kuenn's tips in Chief Content Officer.

And it took a mere 30 seconds to write!

You can write a viral headline, too, Kuenn says. Simply:

• Imply the post is a list
• Include "who,” "photo," and "how to"
• Make the headline no longer than 65 characters
• Include your audience's favorite keyword(s), and
• Describe the content that follows in a bracket ([slideshow], [blog post], [infographic], etc.)

Got it? Groovy! Now, I have a bridge that might interest you...

Crap Content Portends Crap Customer Care

A friend once told me he paid a call on a prospect while battling a sudden-onset flu. My friend was ushered into the executive's office and promptly threw up on the man's desk. Not surprisingly, he didn't close the sale.

When you publish crap content—ungrammatical, tortuous and jargon-heavy—you kill sales, just as surely as my friend did.

Crap content portends crap customer care.

Need proof? Then consider the following, courtesy of the crap-content creators behind United Airlines' blog, Hub:

Top 5 things to know about the United Polaris experience

We're very excited about our brand new international premium cabin service—United Polaris first and business class—which offers comfort and relaxation for restful sleep in the sky. To make sure you know what to expect with United Polaris travel, see below for a few key reminders. You can learn more at united.com/Polaris.

1. Service


2. Lounge


3. Seat


4. Amenities


5. Cabin names


What makes this crap content?

• Prolixity. Why does the blogger use superlatives to excess? He's not "excited," but "very excited." The service isn't "new," but "brand new." It doesn't provide "comfort," but "comfort and relaxation." The blogger doesn't offer "reminders," but "key reminders."
  
  
• Jargon. The blogger packs the 180-word post with jargon like "long haul," "roll out" and "soft-launched."
  
  
• Nonsense. Planes fly, but since when do "seats take flight?" What the hell are "sleep-focused amenities?" And who really cares that United has renamed its first-class cabins?

Crap-content creators like United's will say: Who cares? It's only marketing content: here today, gone tomorrow. Their indifference reflects the brand's values to a T.

They'd be well served to take the advice of critic Alexander Woolcott:

I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

B2B Marketers: Should You be Festive this Holiday Season?

This December, should your content go all-in on the normal holly-jolly? Or should you just skip the festive look and feel?

Bear in mind, more than half your customers are despondent. Should your company pretend otherwise?

I have six suggestions:

Dial back the ho-ho-ho. Would you wear a sequin cocktail dress to your brother's funeral? Leave the snowmen and candy canes in storage this year; they'll be an eye-sore to many. Stick instead with your year-round branding.

Step up your social outreach. B2B social media users spend more time sharing in December, so beef up your posting, social advertising and social selling. But avoid syrupy stuff. Provide value.

Make it personal. Personalized messages will help you stand out from the automatons deaf to the nation's mood.

Re-gift your best content. Republish the year's best content. Package a blog-post series as an e-book; an article as a year-end checklist; customer research as a white paper. 'Tis the giving season.

Align with sales. Alignment with sales is critical every December; maybe more so, this year. Create content sales can use to close deals—data sheets, testimonials and case studies.

Ask for wisdom. Don't just eschew frivolity; promote serenity. In 1963, when LBJ lit the National Christmas Tree a month after JFK's murder, he urged Americans to turn from "things false and small" to "things true and profound." He went on to say:

We have our faults and we have our failings, as any mortal society must. But when sorrow befell us, we learned anew how great is the trust and how close is the kinship that mankind feels for us, and most of all, that we feel for each other. We must remember, and we must never forget, that the hopes and the fears of all the years rest with us, as with no other people in all history. We shall keep that trust working, as always we have worked, for peace on earth and good will among men.

NOTE: Opinions at my own.

Brits Battle to Conquer Black Friday

Until recently in the UK, Black Friday referred exclusively to the Friday before Christmas, when everyone boozed until blacking out.

That changed in 2016, when a UK-based subsidiary of Walmart tried to import the Yanks' version of Black Friday.

It didn't quite take.

Brits' brick-and-mortar shopping on Black Friday has proven so tepid traditional retailers like John Lewis, Primark, Oasis, and Argos have downplayed the yearly shop-a-thon, or bagged it altogether (ASDA since 2016 went out of business).

The winners of the UK's version Black Friday?

Amazon and Alibaba.

To compete with these online giants, UK retailers need to get serious about web selling, says digital marketer Simon Williams. He urges them to:

• Prepare their websites for a bevy of shoppers
• Identify the most profitable social platforms and use them to promote discounts
• Make videos a key part of social content
• Create a dedicated hashtag, and
• Simplify the online buying process

Lack of preparedness is costly, Williams notes. Last year, John Lewis lost £75,000 in online sales when its website crashed for 60 seconds.

BLACK FRIDAY BONUS: Check out Simon Williams' extraordinary infographic, The Winners and Losers in the Battle of Black Friday.

Artful Dodgers

Open secret: B2B prospects are dodging salespeople.

It now takes 18 or more dials to connect with a B2B prospect over the phone, according to TOPO. Call-back rates are below 1%. And only 24% of sales' emails are ever opened.

The reason: reps put their own agenda above that of prospects, so prospects turn to peers for advice.

It's why 1 million B2B reps will lose their jobs to self-service e-com by 2020.

Two professors, Laurence Minsky and Keith Quesenberry, urge B2B reps to try "social selling."

"With social selling, salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing educational content and answering questions," they say in Harvard Business Review.

"As a result, they’re able to build relationships until prospects are ready to buy.

Social selling makes sense, because three of four B2B buyers rely on it to reach buying decisions.

A survey by Hubspot shows 72% of B2B reps who use social media outperform their peers, and more than half have closed deals as a direct result of social selling.

Reps can be sell effectively with social media by spending no more than 10% of their time with it, the professors say; but they need to be trained.

Marketers can provide that training, but often they don't want to.

The solution? Wrest social media from marketers and hand it to sales.

By providing a self-guided portal where reps can find marketers' content and share it with prospects on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, B2B companies can win over artful dodgers, the professors say.

"After all, social media is too important to be left to marketing."

Your Blog is Like Your 401(k)

Trust is built with consistency.

— Lincoln Chafee

Trend-watching corporate blogs like The Allstate Blog, GE Reports and CMO.com can lure you into mistaking your own blog for a newspaper.

But it's more like one of those ancient People magazines in mom's bathroom. Sure, the articles may be dated, but they're still worth your time.

More accurately, a corporate blog is like a 401(k). Each post is like a dollar invested. And regular posting is like the familiar investment strategy called dollar-cost averaging.

When you dollar-cost average, you stash a fixed dollar amount in your 401(k) every month. That money buys you shares at the then-current prices. When share prices decline, the money buys more of them; when prices increase, it buys fewer. But things average out—and you never need worry about "buying low and selling high." You end up with a ton of equity.

Key to dollar-cost averaging is consistency—your pledge to invest on a regular basis. You should make that same pledge to blogging. Publish consistently. Don't worry about "timing the market." In time, things will average out. And you'll earn a ton of trust.

The Marketing of Tomorrow

What's ahead for marketing tomorrow?

Writing for Forbes.com, Kimberly Whitler, a professor at the University of Virginia, asked CMOs for their predictions. 

She discovered:

• "B2B influencer marketing" will become all the rage. CMOs will turn to popular business authors, speakers, podcasters, and executives with large followings and pay them to hawk their products.

• CMOs will also begin to rely more on employees to spread brand messages through social, knowing they can speak more effectively than ads. And, because buyers hang out on many social platforms, CMOs will begin to think "multichannel first."

• B2B CMOs will embrace "account-based marketing," but not without a struggle, because it's hard to influence every decision-maker on every buying committee. To that end, CMOs will begin to use a "recommendation engine" like the one used by Netflix.

• Design will become the key brand differentiator, because big data is now just a "commodity." And educational content will become king. Unfortunately, CMOs will produce too much of it for buyers to absorb.

• CMOs will quit focusing on new martech (although thousands of new martech products will flood the marketplace). CMOs will focus instead on cybersecurity. They're spending up to 25% of their budgets on social, and have made their companies targets for cybercriminals.

• 30% of CMOs will be fired next year, because they lack the ability to drive results. Polish that resume!

Build Social Strength

How often do you post on social media? Are you over- or under-posting?

If you want to build more followers, here's the right frequency, according to social media platform provider Buffer:

• LinkedIn: 1 time a day
• Twitter: 3 times a day
• Facebook: 2 times a day
• Instagram: 1 time a day
• Pinterest: 5 times a day

BONUS TIP: According to Buffer, copy's cool, but visuals boost engagement 40 times.

Social Spend Soars. Results Don't.

What's wrong with this picture?

CMOs are spending more on social media marketing without a proportionate return, according to The CMO Survey.

As a percentage of marketing budgets, social spending has tripled during the past seven years, up to 12% of budgets from 4%.

At the same time, CMOs don't see the ROI.

Nearly half (44%) say they cannot prove the impact of their social spend; and fewer than 5% say social contributes very much to their companies' performance.

Glassdoor: Better Job-Seeker Tool Than LinkedIn?

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

Glassdoor really is coming into its own as a terrific tool for job-seekers of all types—college students looking for internships or full-time jobs and anyone and everyone looking to change jobs or careers.

The platform used to be mainly for checking out what current and former employees anonymously say about their employers, but the site now does double duty big time as a repository of jobs—getting as much monthly job-post traffic as LinkedIn does.

Some interesting things about Glassdoor:

• The average company rating on Glassdoor (on a 1-5 scale) is 3.2. In my experience, any company that’s at 3.6 or above is doing pretty well.
  
  
• Caveat emptor with companies 2.6 or below—and, yes, there are plenty that do that poorly. They probably should be quarantined. But don’t pay too much attention to a company’s rating if it only has a handful of reviews—say 10 or fewer.
  
  
• Companies that have thousands of even tens of thousands of reviews and are at 3.6 or above are doing a pretty good job by their employees. When they’re above 4.0, like Google is, that’s just amazing.
  
  
• Glassdoor tells us their research shows prospective employees going to the site put more stock in reviews and ratings of current vs. former employees. Makes sense.
  
  
• Look at how raters rate the company’s CEO. And whether they would recommend the company to a friend and whether their overall feeling about the company’s future is negative, neutral or positive.
  
  
• You also can learn a lot about prospective employers from their company pages on Glassdoor—usually much more robust than company pages on LinkedIn.

You still need a strong LinkedIn profile more than ever, but consider making Glassdoor your first stop on the way to a first job or a better career.

Foxy Photo Sharing

Cybersecurity pros are clever. It's not easy to outfox them.

But Brian Reed has the animal instinct.

Reed is CMO of the early-stage social media security company ZeroFOX. His firm protects innocents from becoming prey to hackers, spammers and scammers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and dozens of other social media platforms.

Reed has tamed social to romance the cybersecurity pros attending mega events like Black Hat, SecTor and RSA Conference, and transform them into advocates for his scrappy new brand.

"Our participation in security-industry events like Black Hat and RSA represents a substantial business investment," Reed says. "So we have to do interesting things wrapped around those events to achieve the maximum results."

Reed believes social media today is all about pictures.

So before a recent event, he bought a Snapchat Geofilter, branded it, and hired a troupe of actors to pose with attendees for snapshots. Thousands of snapshots.

"Social media engagement is now largely photo-driven," Reed says. "That's why we make sure to arrange our participation at all large events around photogenic spots, bring backdrops and props, hire and costume an actor as our mascot, and have photographers at the ready."

Reed customized the Snapchat Geofilter with his company's graphics and tagline for the event, "They've weaponized social media." He also embedded hashtags in the filter, and in all his other social media outreach, to drive sharing.

"We leverage social media at all events where the audience is heavily Millennial," Reed says. "Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all allow geotagging and audience engagement."

At past events, he has also deployed video walls on site, to billboard the thousands of posts generated. And when the organizer has its own video walls for social media, Reed's team leverages them heavily, to drive on-screen promotion of his brand.

Reed's antics aren't contained to the convention center. At a Skyfall-themed after-party at Black Hat, he set up photo booths replete with a cast of James Bond characters, who hammed it up while attendees posed with them for shots (photos, not Tequila). The photo booths automatically added hashtags to every photo and printed funny signs that displayed the hashtags. Attendees could pose holding the signs, and further drive sharing and engagement.

"I like using social around events for a number of reasons," Reed says.

"First, it's purely user-generated content, so your investment in creative amounts to buying a filter. The rest comes from team engagement and creativity.

"Second, social extends the value and shelf-life of the events you participate in. A conventioneer actually will engage with your brand and help you grow it.

"Third, while you're aiming to reach non-attendees, attendees feel good about your brand, because you help them make new connections on the floor. 'I saw you with James Bond last night," a total stranger will walk up and say to someone. "That was awesome!"'

Reed has advice for convention center and hotel operators, based on his recent successes.

ZeroFOX's obsession with photo-sharing means the marketers at the company now choose booth locations, popup meetings and activities, and party rooms based on how photogenic the backgrounds are.

"There's no reason a venue's signage, lobby art or building features couldn't be part of that background, even if it's just part of a portable photo backdrop," Reed says.

"When I do site walkthroughs, I'm always looking at the visuals for social photo engagement. I encourage all event professionals to consider this a whole new way to market your space. Venues should become more open to thinking about the cross-promotional opportunities we can bring them."

NOTE: You can find Brian Reed (aka ReedOnTheRun) on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming

I was feelin' sad and kinda' blue,
I didn't know what I was a gonna do.
The Communists was comin' around,
They was in the air,
They was on the ground,

They wouldn't gimme no peace.

                                                                                        — Bob Dylan

Russian trolls have invaded our homeland, according to The Atlantic.

Posing on social media as angry Americans, they're riling our political factions.

"The ultimate intent is not so much victory for a certain side, but a loss for everybody: sapping the credibility of US institutions and tearing open as many wounds as possible," The Atlantic reports.

"After Election Day, we should not be surprised to find a vocal group of internet users with mysterious IP addresses decrying the result as a fraud and driving talk of conspiracy—and even of resistance or secession.

"In time, we may see a multiplying number of homegrown violent extremists (along the lines of the infamous Oregon militiamen), encouraged by the subtle manipulation of a certain rival government."

They have us by the brains.

Our only defense: a little critical thinking.

According to The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, " Much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought."

To improve your critical thinking, the Guide says, you need to:

• Raise and formulate important questions clearly and precisely;
• Gather relevant data and use abstract ideas to interpret that data;
• Come to reasoned conclusions you can test against others' standards;
• Stay open minded and explore alternative systems of thought; and
• Communicate effectively.

Content Marketers: Don't Take It Anymore

Content marketers: Don't be a one-hit wonder.

By repurposing your most popular piece, you can enjoy a string of hits, says Emily King on ContentMarketingInstitute.com.

Copywriters at King's B2B agency transformed "The Seven Types of B2B Copywriter," an article in the firm's newsletter, into 10 additional pieces over two years.

"We realized that this message had legs, after seeing good click-through rates," King says.

"We decided that it would be a shame to limit that message’s audience to the select (read tiny) bunch of discerning B2B marketing professionals who subscribed to our newsletter. We had to take the message wider."

By "atomizing" the article, King's agency stretched the shelf-life of the original piece, and reached audiences who prefer their content delivered through platforms other than an e- newsletter.

As a result, her agency's revenue increased 28%.

From the article, King's copywriters created:

• A blog post (a simple cut-and-paste job)
• A podcast (featuring an outside journalist)
• A board game (Funnel! The Content Marketing Strategy Game)
• A conference presentation (The 7 Types of B2B Copywriter)
• A second podcast (featuring highlights of the presentation and a slide deck)
• A second blog post (recounting the development of the board game)
• A third podcast (featuring interviews with the game creators)
• A quiz (allowing B2B copywriters to identify their types)
• An infographic (depicting the 7 types of copywriter)
• A third blog post (namely, the King wrote for ContentMarketingInstitute.com)

Chunking the original article worked, King says. "Each new effort not only garnered new interest in our idea and our business, but also brought a new audience to our related content pieces."

Try it yourself.

You don't have to be a one-hit wonder anymore.

Social Selling ≠ Black Hat Selling

A fool with a tool still remains a fool.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

In a fool's hands, "social selling" becomes antisocial.

The reason?

On social networks, you should serve, not sell. (Serving puts customers' goal in the forefront; selling puts yours.)

If you can't grasp the difference, steer clear of social selling.

It will rapidly turn you into a black hat.

"There are no other areas of a seller’s life where the circles in the Venn Diagram of 'apps I use for work' and 'apps I use for fun' overlap," says Peter Ostrow on SiriusDecisions.

The overlap is a dark and dangerous pitfall.

Ostrow offers three rules for side-stepping it:

Social Selling = Listening. "The best way to grow long-term sales effectiveness via social is to develop a keen sense for what is being said in your particular corner of the market—and how influencers are saying it," Ostrow says. Follow subject matter experts on Twitter and connect to them on LinkedIn.

Social Selling = Contributing. Use half your posts to curate the best content the SMEs publish. "Your buyers will respect you far more as a helpful source of knowledge if you actually help them become smarter and do their jobs more effectively—as opposed to just selling your stuff in a disguised, purportedly indirect fashion that everyone sees through anyway."

Social Selling = Collaborating. Don't think, do. Dive into the conversations. Share ideas. Serve.

Road Rage

Travelogues are all the rage among itchy-footed Millennials, so travel marketers are heading there.

Brett Tollman says his company, The Travel Corporation, will turn to travelogues to break from the pack of tour operators.

The company will rely also on social media influencers to tell those tales.

All told, the company hopes to romance 16.2 million Millennials in 2016.

To that end, one of its brands, Contiki Travel, rolled out Roadtrip 2016 on YouTube in May.

Although peers remain the top source of recommendations, Tollman thinks meandering Millennials will start to shop for destinations based on branded mobile channels—provided the storytelling there is good.

The travelogues on those channels, if compelling, will not only pique Millennials' interest, but build loyalty to the sponsoring tour operators.

Websites' New War of Attrition

Adobe reports traffic on 4 in 10 websites has decreased since 2013.

“Traffic increases due to Internet penetration have evaporated in North America," says analyst Becky Tasker. "Websites face a more competitive landscape, where you’re fighting to grow by taking share away from somebody else.”

Winning websites "aren’t resting on the strength of their brands alone to drive traffic,” Tasker says. 

“They have a 360-degree strategy, surrounding people in various channels and platforms to drive traffic to their sites.”

The channels driving the most traffic? Social, email and display.

Winning websites are also providing relevant, nonintrusive content, according to Tasker.

Results are In: Fast-growth B2B Companies Blog

A new study by Mattermark of the 50 fastest growing B2B companies in the country finds 80% blog.

According to The State of Sales & Marketing at the 50 Fastest-Growing B2B Companies in the US, "content has become the cornerstone" of fast-growth companies' marketing—and blogs have become the cornerstone of content.

"Blogging drives top-of-the-funnel traffic to a company’s website," the report says. "From there, calls to action encourage visitors to download content (e.g., ebooks, white papers, and templates) so they can learn more about a particular topic.

"This process can be repeated and scaled by marketing teams to include a wide variety of tactics at every stage of the funnel, but the end goal is always the same: to add value and build relationships that drive revenue for your business."

Does your company blog?

If not, what on earth are you waiting for?

Can Customers Find You?

"Blogging is my front door," says marketing maestro David Meerman Scott.

Replete with posts as much as 12 years old, Scott's blog is the power magnet that attracts him new business.

"I'm always surprised at how effectively this tool helps me accomplish my goals," he says.

"There are many posts I wrote a decade ago, back when George W. Bush was President, that are still indexed highly by the search engines and are still driving people who do not know me into my content."

A new study by Mattermark of the 50 fastest growing B2B companies in the country shows 80% of them blog.

If you're among the B2B marketers who don't, please, check your excuses at the door.