How to Create Content with Subject Matter Experts

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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

by: Ahava Liebtag

After graduate school, I worked for the Federal government, writing and editing digital content. I'll never forget the first time I had to interview a pipeline engineer about what American citizens needed to know if a pipeline was going to be built on their property.

I was so nervous to ask any stupid questions, I forgot to ask the questions I'd prepared!

Luckily, the engineer was a nice guy and very understanding. But I learned an important lesson: when working with subject matter experts, it's not the writer's job to know everything.  It's the writer's job to know what to ask.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) hold the keys to the valuable content kingdom. They possess the building blocks of information you need to create juicy content that provides your customers with textured, relevant information.

It can be demanding to work with SMEs. So often, they think they know more about the web then you do. And they also may demand that you write in a certain style. How can you make it easier to work with SMEs and create content that converts your users into customers?

5 Tips for Writing Content with SMEs

1.   Explain that content is a conversation: SMEs are typically not writers and marketers. They don’t understand that content is a conversation between the brand/organization and your target audiences. When you frame content as a conversation, SMEs will help you craft and edit knockout content for customers.  Watch this video to learn more about content as a conversation.

2.   Be prepared: When working with SMEs, you will have more success if you are prepared for the interview. Familiarize yourself with their subject matter, as well as their professional profiles. Use Google or LinkedIn to prepare.  You will have a smoother conversation—and the SME will appreciate that you took the time to prepare.

3.   Explain your goals at the outset: If you’re creating content with SMEs, chances are you have strategic goals you need to reach. Articulate those goals to the SME and share how creating this content will help you reach them.

4.   Send an outline before you write: Everyone likes to be included in the process. Take the time to draft an outline before you begin writing, to organize your thoughts. More importantly, it prepares the SME for the first draft of content.

5.   Set limits on the editing process: When you send the draft copy for review, make it clear that you are only asking for a “factual” review. If you are writing digital content, there are certain technical limitations on edits because of SEO and web writing best practices. On every copy deck Aha Media sends, we explain the editing process with big red letters across the top, “PLEASE READ THIS PAGE BEFORE EDITING.” It helps to keep the editing process smoother.

Make Friends with the Expert

Working well with SMEs takes practice and confidence in the subject matter. Establish a rapport and connection before you jump into the interview. You will create an environment of sharing and exchange, which will result in a fabulous conversation that you can turn into content that converts.

Need help writing content with your subject matter experts? It's our expertise at Aha Media.  Email Ahava today.

via Content Marketing Institute http://ift.tt/T4SYKu
By JAMES SCHERER published JUNE 24, 2014

3 Strategies to Stand Out From the Content Creation Crowd

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I wish I could say that standing out from thecontent creation crowd is something that I excel at, but I can’t.

I like to think I write intelligently, quickly, and well, but all that does is make me a pretty good content marketer. It doesn’t make me a content marketer who stands out from the crowd.

So perhaps I need a special something. Perhaps we all do.

Your competitors are creating content. They’re competing with you for the top of the search results and they’re doing it at an ever-increasing rate.

It’s no longer enough to simply write content. Everybody’s doing that. Your local spa is blogging. Fashionistas, coffee shops, photographers, law firms, warehouses, outdoor stores, salons, and haberdasheries (okay, I’m not 100 percent sure about that last one, but you get the point) are all leveraging content creation to market their products and services.

What’s the question your business answers? Type it into Google. Is your website or content at the top? If not, then this article might be worth a read.

Let me give you an analogy:

Let’s pretend you are in a fast-flowing river with about 100 other people, standing in waders up to the thigh with white water pushing against you, trying to knock you over.

A rescue helicopter comes over the ridge, with room for four or five people in its cabin.

What do you do?

Now, you could wave your arms and scream until you’re hoarse. The problem with this tactic is that about 90 of your fellow rescuees are doing the same thing. With their screaming and the roaring of the rapids, the helicopter wouldn’t be able to hear a thing you’re saying.

Or, you could find a nearby rock with its tip just above the water. You could climb on top and get a bit closer to the helicopter, standing out from the crowd by finding a place that seems a bit less dangerous (finding your “content” niche). This would be a good call.

But there are a dozen other people who have managed to climb onto your rock as well. You’re pushing and shoving as there’s not quite enough room, and the helicopter is getting closer. It’s sweeping over the frothing water, coming fast and low.

What else you can do to get its attention? The helicopter only fits four or five people and there’s a dozen of you on this wet and slippery rock.

Here’s what I suggest: Raise a flag. Start singing. Start stomping your feet and clapping your hands. Take your shirt off. Take your pants off. Throw a shoe. Throw your pants.

You need to get off that rock, and sometimes that takes extreme measures.

This article will give you three strategies (and 25-odd specific ideas) on how to stand out, be memorable, and generate a personal brand that people remember.

Before I dive in, I want to warn you that the suggestions I give below are just that: suggestions. Many of them have never been tried before (that’s the whole point). If you like an idea, test it out for a month or two and measure your results. (However, if you get fired for going too far with one of my suggestions, I’m not accepting liability.)

1. Find your “thing”

In person, it’s far easier to have a memorable personal characteristic that people will take away from meeting you. Do you have pink hair or a face tattoo? Do you have a ridiculous laugh or do you sweat profusely when you get nervous?

Online is harder. You need to find the pink hair within your online persona (I’d try to avoid the sweating profusely, if you can). You need to translate your ability to charm people in public into an ability to charm people with your content.

Here are a few suggestions on finding your thing:

• Go current and relevant: Start a weekly write-up of sector news or relevant posts.
• An actual persona: Create a character and write whole articles as that person. Or, create a memorable mascot and have it feature consistently in your content.
• POV: Feature an odd point of view (for instance, you could try to write as the Google algorithm rather than just about it).
• Go super visual: Use images, graphs, screenshots. Make your content visual on a whole new level.
• Find the niche within your niche. Let’s say you’re a Facebook marketer, and within that niche you’re also a Facebook advertising expert. But how about becoming a Facebook targeting expert? Nobody knows Facebook targeting like you. You’ve done it all, seen it all, and are on the very cusp of every development and update. You’re the guy or gal when it comes to Facebook targeting, and everybody knows it. Use this distinction to propel your content above that of your competitors. 

Finding your thing is up to you. Get creative. Are there real-world characteristics about you that could work with an online persona? Brainstorm with your friends and family, colleagues, anybody who knows you. What do they think is your primary characteristic? What stuck in their head the first time they met you?

2. Write differently

Most everybody can write content. It mostly just requires a couple hands and a basic understanding of language. Theoretically content marketing also requires a bit of knowledge about your subject, but that can be faked pretty effectively. Nope, it’s mostly about two hands (hell, even one works) and the ability to string words together and finish off with a period.

However, not everyone can write differently. Not everyone can write content that is memorable a week or a month down the line. It’s the people who can, however, who are encouraging brand recall, social sharing, and commenting and are, thus, boosting their readership.

I’m not saying that each article you write needs to be a diamond ring, carefully polished, honed, and perfectly positioned in its setting. Spending three days on a single article is not good for your content marketing ROI, and it’s likely your boss (even if that boss is you) won’t appreciate it either.

Instead, what I’m saying is to focus on writing differently:

• Write controversially: When Matt Cutts said guest blogging for SEO is dead, I took the opposite point of view. When Veritasium released a YouTube video stating that “advertising your page on Facebook is a waste of money,” I responded quickly and emphatically that they were working with incomplete information and that their conclusions were hasty at best (and downright dangerous at worst).
• Write in color: I don’t actually mean greens and blues and reds (thought that’s not exactly a bad idea either). I mean write with flavor. Cuss. Write a poem. Write an entire article in iambic pentameter. Or, more realistically, write in a fun or anecdotal, sarcastic, or satirical way. Write with skill and talent and engage your reader in more than just subject matter.
• Write something new: Theories and hypotheses go viral (so long as they’re seriously backed up and make sense). They create controversy themselves and increase your reputation as a thought leader.
• Write something old in a new light: Take something that people see as understood or take for granted. Turn that thing on its head. Go against the status quo and write an article about using email marketing for lead generation (prompting your existing clients to tell a friend) or using phone calls for webinar sign-ups.
• Write honestly: Empathy goes a long way. Talk about the struggles you’ve had in the past, and how you overcame them. Play around with talking about your current marketing efforts. Be honest about failed A/B tests, failed marketing campaigns or advertisements. Talk real numbers and show actual shots of your analytics. 

Something else to keep in mind is that not all writers are created equal. I have a degree in English, read constantly, write constantly simply for fun, and was employed as a copy editor before jumping head-first into the world of content creation. If that’s not you, don’t worry about it, but do put some time into mastering your craft as best as you can.

People who blog for business may want to start with a short creative writing or English literature course at a local community college. Focus on persuasive essay writing or short stories (the two combined plus statistics equal 90 percent of blog content). Also consider taking a typing course. I type about 110 words per minute and, I can tell you, it makes my job a whole lot easier.

3. Create differently

Content marketing isn’t just about writing, it’s about consistent content creation: case studies, white papers, presentations, infographics, videos, podcasts, webinars, eBooks… the list goes on.

Creating one of these that stands out from the fast-flowing river is what’s hard.

How do you make a webinar that doesn’t send people to sleep?

• Host it over coffee with your guest, and (if you know your subject matter), don’t script it at all. Don’t even edit it. This creates an honest interaction with your viewer.
• Answer questions live and prompt people to ask whatever they want.
• Keep doing it even if the first 15 times suck. Webinars take more time to catch on than other pieces of content but provide a high ROI and the greatest influence on your reputation if they do. 

How do you make a podcast that people will actually want to listen to?

• Have a running theme of podcast Fridays where you also provide a recipe for your favorite mixed drink.
• Create a persona you argue against. For example, if you’re a fan of Facebook Ads, create a persona (or bring in a friend) who champions AdWords.
• Bring in a teenage kid to talk about social media and how they relate to it. Make it a bi-weekly or monthly conversation. 

How do you make an infographic without a full-time graphic designer and an original report? 

• Use Google Presentations or Canva and free photo-editing software like GIMP.
• “Borrow” ideas from your competitors, but put your own flavor on them.
• Compile stats from case studies, reports, and other infographics. Copy graphs into your own colors (and remember to source!).
• Create a SlideShare presentation instead (with PowerPoint if you absolutely must, though Google’s presentation tool is better). 

How do you make a YouTube video that gets more than 41 hits?

• Choose a topic that hasn’t been done a thousand times. Consider the content ideas I’ve given above (controversial, opposing views, characters, etc).
• Put time and energy into it. Spend time on the script and speak with more excitement and slower than you think you should.
• Buy or make a green-screen (they’re crazy cheap).
• Include transitions and edit the intro and outro (Premier Pro should come with your Adobe subscription).
• Fashion a prompter so you’re not umming and ahhing constantly. 

Conclusion

This has effectively exhausted my creativity for the day. I hope you can take one of these suggestions and work with it. I hope one of them inspires you to use your own creativity and find your own stomping, clapping, pants-off combination that helps your helicopter seek you out amongst the crowd.

Taking a page from my own book, I’m going to be entirely honest with you, reader. I am still looking for my own “thing” that makes me as a content creator memorable. Excellent writing will only take you so far. I need Stelzner’s casual ability to podcast like a boss, Mari’s omnipresent sunny disposition, Godin’s content prolificacy (and baldness), Kawasaki’s inexplicable ability to make mediocre content go viral and Pulizzi’s… I dunno, vision for starting this whole content marketing shindig in the first place?

I’m open to suggestions — let me hear them in the comments below.

Looking for more inspiration on content creation that helps you stand apart from your competitors? Read CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook: 24 Epic Ideas for Connecting with Your Customers. 

5 Tips for Quality Content Creation That Won’t Bust Your Budget

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By HEIDI COHEN published MARCH 10, 2014

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With more marketers focusing on content creationand more people communicating on social media, every piece of content you distribute has to break through the clutter and grab your audience members in a way that predisposes them to choose your message over one that comes from your competition.

It’s not just about capturing attention — if it were, all you would need to do is consistently post a bunch of cat videos; but that’s not exactly going to help you achieve your key business goals, now is it?

Content quality sets your content marketing apart

While cute cats are great, if your business is serious about attracting more readers — and higher rankings on search engines — you need to focus on content quality.

Research by Disruptive Communications in 2013 revealed that audiences care about the quality of your content. Here are two key findings that underscore that point:

• Forty percent of respondents admitted that poor spelling and grammar reduced their favorable impression of a brand. Yes that’s right. The writing you studied in grade school really does matter to your target audience.
• Twenty-five percent of respondents feel that brands’ social media updates are too salesy. What’s surprising here is that the percentage isn’t higher. Both content marketing and social media communications should be void of any promotional message. In other words, skip the sales talk.

As a marketer with a limited budget, the good news about focusing on quality content creation is that you don’t need to think in terms of producing more content but rather in terms of making each piece of content more effective.

Therefore, it may be time to rethink your organization’s processes to enable higher-quality content creation. For example:

• For larger organizations, this might mean working to bridge your organizational silos. With better team alignment, you can eliminate duplicated efforts and produce content that addresses higher-level marketing goals.
• For smaller organizations, this might mean planning ahead to find opportunities to create multiple pieces of content simultaneously, which will reduce your content creation costs.

5 tips to improve content quality without busting your budget

Here are five content marketing tips that will help you raise the quality of your content without significantly increasing your costs:

1. Perform a company-wide content audit: The aim here is to determine what effective content your organization has, what content is outdated or needs freshening up, and what information is missing from your existing offerings. To do this well and keep content costs down, think holistically across your entire organization:

• Catalog all of your content to determine what you have: Include content and communications from outside of the marketing department. You may have useful information in your sales manual, but it’s not going to do your company much good if no one knows it’s there, just waiting to be leveraged.
• Assess each piece of content to determine what to delete, what to revise, and what works well as-is: Examine your existing content assets with a critical eye. Think about low-cost ways you can enhance what you have or make it have greater impact.
• Determine where there are gaps in your current content assets: Are there topics you aren’t covering, or information that you aren’t providing for your readers? Based on what you’ve learned during your audit, make a list of new ideas that you might want to focus your next content efforts on.

2. Develop a company-wide editorial calendar: In many companies, only the marketing department uses an editorial calendar to track its content creation efforts. But to improve content quality cost-effectively, it’s helpful to develop a calendar that tracks your content activities across the entire enterprise. This higher-level view of your company’s content creation efforts will help you identify opportunities to unite the efforts and resources of various teams, eliminate waste from duplicated efforts, and extend the value and impact of the content you do create.

In larger firms, coordinating an enterprise-wide calendar may require a chief content officer — someone who would have first-hand knowledge of company-wide goals — and access to the team members who will be most essential in coordinating everyone’s efforts.

To develop an editorial calendar that functions across the entire organization, start with these three steps:

• Determine what types of content will work best to support your overarching promotion goals
• Examine the content, social media, and other marketing-related assets you have at your disposal.
• Identify all areas of your organization where information needs to be shared, such as sales, customer service, product development, website development, human resources, and investor relations. The object is to turn all communications into effective content marketing pieces, thereby increasing your content production without adding costs.

For example, instead of a traditional annual report, Warby Parker found a great way to turn a dull annual report into an engaging piece of content:

3. Plan your content creation efforts in advance: The goal is to create multiple pieces on related topics all at the same time. Where appropriate, develop marketing and corporate content simultaneously — this reduces costs since you are combining your efforts. You can also break a larger piece of content down into multiple, smaller pieces, thereby further extending your budget.

For example, Kelly Services repurposed one of its white papers into three different SlideShare presentations, each focusing on a different part of the conversation. In total, these three presentations generated 10,000 views, 1,000 new subscribers and 250 sales-accepted leads. Results that you can take to the bank!
4. Develop a plan for distributing content efficiently and effectively: Don’t just publish! Have a plan to ensure that your content will reach the broadest audience possible:

• Make each piece of content contextually relevant to the platform on which it will appear: Also, consider whether the content will render well across most commonly used devices and screen sizes (think smartphone and tablets).
• Include a relevant call-to-action: Remember your goal is to get readers to take the next step in your purchase process.

5. Be prepared to track your content marketing results: Check that your content quality efforts are improving your response and decreasing your costs in other marketing areas. Specifically, consider the number of leads your content is generating, as well as measuring the number of qualified leads and sales against your content marketing expenses.

Streamline your content creation across your organization to ensure that you create top-quality information that your target audience wants and needs, while eliminating duplicate and other wasteful efforts. By doing this you should be able to reduce your content marketing costs considerably.

What has your experience been with streamlining your content creation process across your organization? Has it resulted in lower costs and improved content quality?

For more great tips, ideas, and examples for creating quality content more efficiently, readEpic Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi. 

Cover image via Bigstock 

5 Tactics for Content Creators to Increase Content Consumption

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/11/tactics-content-creators-increase-consumption/

By HEIDI COHEN published NOVEMBER 18, 2013

As a content creator, you can produce the best content in the world, but if it doesn’t break through the clutter and motivate your target audience to want to read it, it holds little value, no matter how well written it was, or how much time and effort you spent on developing, optimizing and distributing it!

Think of your content as a gift you give your readers. Content creators need to include intriguing packaging to entice readers and make sure they will want to “open” it.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point:

For a school holiday gift grab bag, one of my classmates brought in a huge box wrapped in shiny gold paper. The box seemed too big to be worth the small spending limit we were given, so we were all hoping to grab it as our gift. Naturally, the first student to pick chose the box, and inside he found a series of wrapped boxes, each containing a coin. Together, the coins added up to the amount of money we were allowed to spend — thus delivering on the expectation, but in a more enticing way. The box looked like it held something of high value, making it the most desirable choice for potential “users.”

If you would like to deliver your content value in a similarly desirable way, here are five actionable content marketing tips for maximizing content consumption that the experts don’t talk about.

1. Hook readers in with a great headline

Take it from one of the original “Mad Men,” David Ogilvy: Only one out of five readers gets beyond the headline. Therefore, take the time to ensure that your headlines pack a maximum punch. I advise content creators to start with these tips:

1. Spend time at your local magazine stand: Dead tree (i.e., print) magazines perform based on the power of their headlines. Study what makes them tick, particularly high-circulation publications, like Cosmopolitan.
2. Read Jon Morrow’s 52 Headline Hacks: Jon has cracked the code on headlines and shares his knowledge for free. (BTW, you can check out his Problogger article to understand how he does it.)
3. Give your headlines one last tweak before content goes live: While it can be useful to have a working headline to start off your writing process, it’s a good idea to go back and take a second look at it at the end of your process to make sure it’s the best it can be.

2. Include eye candy

Humans are visual beings — it’s one of the traits that has kept our species going. Thus, it should come as no surprise that 90 percent of the information we take in is visual, and that we process images 60,000 times faster than text. Even more important for global audiences is that visual content often spans multiple languages, where text-based content may not.

Some considerations here:

1. Add at least one image to your content: Use a picture related to your topic near the top of your text. Think of it as an advertisement for your content.
2. Incorporate photography: To make your images more memorable, select one that includes a person, since people are programmed to look at pictures of other humans.
3. Consider adding visuals other than just images: Instead of writing a bunch of text, content creators should think about producing a video, designing an infographic, or developing a presentation to convey their desired messages.

3. Format your content for optimal reader appeal 

Avoid “THDR” (“too hard, didn’t read”) or no one will consume your content, no matter how good or relevant it is. Make your content quick and easy to consume and absorb by following these tips:

1. “Chunk” the information you present: Use short paragraphs that don’t look intimidating, and use outlining or highlighting to facilitate easier reading.
2. Add bolding to guide readers through your content: Presenting hunks of seemingly endless text turns readers away, but bold text helps guide the eye and break up long content passages into more digestible bites.
3. Use easy-to-read fonts: While you may think typefaces with curlicues and script add a touch of fun to your content, these enhancements may not be legible for the average reader — particularly if they are viewing your content on a tablet or smartphone screen. Use “fancy” fonts sparingly, if at all.
4. Avoid microscopic type: Too-small type practically screams that you don’t want people to actually be able to read your content. Take pity on your readers, many of whom might need reading glasses (i.e., are over the age of 40), and use at least a size 11-point type in your content.
5. Check for color contrast: Ensure that there’s sufficient contrast between your text and the background it appears against. Also skip neon colors, like acid yellow, which can distort the text.

4. Optimize content for search

 Make sure your content is findable on search engines, by following these suggestions:

1. Focus each piece of content around one keyword phrase: The more focused you are, the better.
2. Incorporate relevant links: Provide links to the original source of information. Specifically, add links to reputable third parties, as well as to other pieces of content you have created for your business.
3. Add text to non-text content: Understand that search engines can only read text, so make sure you add meta-data to your images, videos, and other image-based content, so that search engines can index them.
4. Use Google+ authorship: This helps protect your content, and make sure it is associated with you and your business.

5. Encourage social engagement

Maximize social interaction by removing obstacles and fears that hinder sharing. Often this relates to writing text. Bear in mind that your readers have a “Don’t make me think!” attitude, so make sure each share takes as little effort on their part as possible:

1. Add social sharing icons at the top and bottom of your content:  Alternatively, consider using a persistent sharing option. In either case, make sure that it’s easy for visitors to share your content.
2. Incorporate other forms of sharing in the body of your content: Use tools such as ClickToTweet to enable sharing without the need for readers to think about how they can do so.
3. Encourage comments by asking a question at the end of your content: Post a comment policy to provide guidelines for commenters. And to ensure valid comments don’t get lost, employ a commenting tool. While this helps minimize comment spam, don’t forget that you will still need to monitor your content forums to clear out any inappropriate comments that may have slipped through the filters.
4. Respond to the comments you receive: Reply to people who take the time to comment on your content. It is just good manners, and it increases the social proof. Further, ask guest authors to monitor their posts and add responses for at least two days after you have posted their content on your blog or other outlets.

Packaging your content well will maximize your content consumption. To further improve your results, test out which of these five tactics work best for your target audience. Remember it’s not a matter of getting the largest number of readers but, rather, attracting the readers who represent the greatest potential for you to meet your content marketing objectives.

What tips have you found to be the most effective for improving content consumption and why did they work best? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.