JetBlue Pays It Forward Through a Social Storytelling Campaign With No End in Sight

November 13th, 2014

At any given time there is a story in the local news of people “paying it forward.” Some instances are organic, like the “kindness chain” at a Starbucks in Florida. Others, like an initiative to provide holiday cards to military men and women overseas, take some coordination. Always the efforts are built on the philosophy of helping others in a selfless way. So what happens when a brand tries to use this social phenomenon as the basis of a social marketing campaign?

Last week JetBlue introduced its latest promotional effort, a campaign called “Fly It Forward” that provides consumers worthy of admiration with a free flight and gives them the chance to do the same for others.

The project, devised by marketing agency Mullen, based in Boston, kicked off with a Chicago community worker-turned-United Nations delegate who received a ticket to New York City. She, in turn, awarded one to a woman who was in rehab after losing both her legs in an accident, and the trend continued. JetBlue launched the campaign with four profiles selected by JetBlue crew members and a planning team that “scoured the social web for deserving stories.” Then it turned the job over to the people of Twitter, asking them to nominate “Fly It Forward” candidates.

“These aren’t intended to be marketing stories or JetBlue stories,” Marty St. George, JetBlue’s senior vice president of commercial, says. “These are customer stories that illustrate the impact that travel can have to make dreams come true.” With its continuous stream of compassionate video content and serialized storytelling, #FlyItForward has generated 1,192 posts and nominations to date. Twitter users are calling it “a beautiful idea,” and an “awesome way of awarding humanitarian efforts to those who deserve it.” According to the company, there’s no campaign end date in sight.

It’s common practice for airlines, with their deep need to inspire customer trust, to show their benevolent side. This can range from sweeping corporate social responsibility efforts to improving individual customers’ lives. At Delta, the Force for Global Good program ensures that its employees give their time and energy to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity and the United Way. Southwest Airlines’ Project LUV Seat upcycles its leather seat covers to create new products, including much-needed shoes for children in Kenya. British Airways, meanwhile, is giving tickets to expatriates who miss their families abroad. The sentimental “Welcome of Home” campaign went live this month and will award select Twitter users with a free round trip.

Paying it forward can also happen close to home. Last year, Canadian airline WestJet staged a Christmas miracle for some of its passengers, generating over 36 million YouTube views and plenty of emotion online. Now it’s back with a new campaign called “Above & Beyond” that profiles Canadians “who make a difference in the lives of everyone they meet.”

One video in the series features a high school teacher who asked his students to write letters to their future selves, held on to them for twenty years, then mailed them back. “It’s like this little gift of somebody that I’d forgotten years ago,” a former student said.

Here too the airline is inviting consumers to nominate inspiring people while displaying its “caring culture” through storytelling. “The cause strategy of asking someone to nominate a recipient is powerful,” says Angela Hill, founder and chief brand strategist of global branding agency Incitrio and a video marketing instructor at the University of San Diego. She adds that such campaigns are “more like PSAs than traditional advertising.”

Now that 94 percent of global consumers “expect companies to do more than play a limited role in communities or simply donate time and money,” showcasing a brand’s investment in social good has become an important part of brand marketing. One study found that 73 percent of millennials are willing to try a new and unfamiliar product if the brand supports a good cause.

What’s more, research shows that when consumers feel happiness and other positive emotions they are more likely to share content online. Coupling positive consumer stories with the social media needed to spread them to potential customers can go a long way toward humanizing airlines and eliciting trust.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics of travel and overlook the reasons why people do it,” St. George says. “It’s the stories, those connections with individuals, that inspire us all.”

And if they can boost consumer sentiment toward airlines in the process, all the better.

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IF YOU’RE GONNA DO BRANDED CONTENT, DO IT RIGHT

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Marriott International Launches Creative and Content Marketing Studio

POSTED BY
COLLEEN JONES

OCT 09 2014

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To paraphrase the wise words of Wham!, if you’re “gonna” venture into branded content now, you really should be prepared to do it right. Marriott International has upped the ante in the travel space by announcing a new studio devoted to creative and content marketing.

Three things I like about this strategic move:

1. This Space Has Big Opportunity

Hotels especially have largely ignored content outside of booking, even though travel is ripe with content possibilities. If you think of content marketing in travel as pioneering, there is some wide open land ready to be claimed here. The big competition will not be other brands but other media properties. I like that Marriott is thinking big impact here. David Beebe, Marriott’s vp of creative, content marketing, and global marketing said:

We view this as the opportunity to be the world’s largest producer of travel-related content.

2. They’re Bringing the Effort Largely In-House

It’s clear Marriott is committed, and they have to be to pull off something this big. They’re putting time, resources, and effort into creating a robust team and system of content marketing. They’re not trying to simply outsource the work to agencies. The effort is too important to their business strategy, and I couldn’t agree more. As AdWeek notes,

The in-house division will have three parts: content development, which will be the personal creative agency; production, or the entertainment division responsible for video content ranging from Web clips to TV shows; and distribution, a real-time marketing group that will monitor social media to ensure immediate interaction with trending topics. Marriott will continue to work with external agencies and other production companies as needed.

3. Travelers Are Open to Content from Brands

As our Content + Credibility Study found more than a year ago, travelers are pretty receptive to the idea of travel brands being credible sources of content. That’s not necessarily the case in other industries. And, as branded content in general has become more commonplace and improved, I anticipate travelers will be more open to it now than ever before.

The big question, of course, is will this strategy work? Well, a strategy is only as good as its execution. But I’d say this move looks promising to pay off with more awareness of Marriott, increased trust of Marriott, and eventually a boost in reputation and results such as bookings.

How to Build a Better Content Marketing Strategy

By MICHELE LINN published OCTOBER 10, 2014

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I would argue that a lot of marketers don’t understand what [a content marketing strategy] means. They think culling together a bunch of tactics is actually a strategy, but it’s not.—Ardath Albee

Unless you have a focus on what it is you are trying to achieve with your content or your digital marketing in general, you will get distracted.
—Nick Panayi

These quotes are just two key points made in a recent roundtable discussion CMI developed around our B2B content marketing research. This series of conversations explores the “whys” behind our findings and provides expert advice on ways that content marketers can make their efforts more efficient and successful.

A big thanks to Ardath Albee, CEO and Marketing Strategist at Marketing Interactions; Carla Johnson, Principal at Type A Communications and Vice President-Thought Leadership at the Business Marketing Association; Nick Panayi, Head of Global Brand and Digital Marketing at CSC; Gary Van Prooyen, Senior Director, North America Demand Center, at Motorola; and Steve Rotter, Vice President, Digital Marketing Solutions at Brightcove for participating in this conversation.

The first topic the team discussed was the importance of a content marketing strategy. As Joe Pulizzi recently asserted, documenting your content marketing strategy and following it closely are the two things that separate great content marketers from their less effective peers.

The 16-page guide Content Marketing Institute published on documenting your strategy can certainly help you get started. But, once you’ve gone through the initial documentation process, you’ll need to know how to implement that strategy — and keep it updated on an ongoing basis.

While you will want to follow your strategy closely in order to keep your content marketing focused on your organization’s goals, it should also be flexible enough to account for new insights and information you receive as time goes on. There is no specific template you can use to build a strategy; but below, we share some guidelines you can use to determine what elements should stay consistent and what will likely evolve:

Your goals and mission should be sticky

The first two things you need to identify when building your strategy are the goals and mission of your content marketing program. Coincidentally, these are the same two that should change very little.

In case you aren’t as familiar with these two concepts as you would like to be, here are some high-level details:

Goals: It’s never a good idea to create content just for the sake of having content. Rather, you need to understand what business outcome you want to impact through your content creation. For instance:

• Do you need to raise awareness for your brand?
• Do you need to build your email list?
• Do you need to nurture prospects along their buyer’s journey?
• Do you need to convert your audience to paying customers?
• Do you need to retain customers and/or increase their purchases (up-sell/ cross-sell)?
• Do you need to convert customers to evangelists?

We have to be able to tie content to business objectives. What is it we’re really trying to do for the companies we’ve worked for and [want to] move forward? I think it’s the biggest thing that marketers miss. —Carla Johnson

Mission: This addresses key considerations like who you are aiming to help, what you will deliver to them, and how your audience will benefit. The more specific you can be, the better. (I always cringe when I hear marketers tell me that their product/service can help anyone— it’s best to focus on serving the audience that can benefit the most, and then figure out what content they truly need.)

[Use your content marketing strategy] to decide what the purpose is of each piece of content that you are doing. ‘How does it fit into the bigger picture of what we are trying to do?’ Without that strategy, you don’t have purpose-driven content. —Carla Johnson

Your goals and missions should be so core to what you do that you think aboutthem every single day. In fact, they should be the lens through which you evaluateevery piece of content you are creating. For instance, at CMI, we consider every piece of content with these two things in mind:

1. Will this help us advance the practice of content marketing for enterprise brand marketers?
2. Will it help us generate more email subscribers or help our audiences engage with us in more ways.

Other aspects of your strategy should be revisited (and possibly revised) regularly

While it’s useful to hold fast to your “editorial lens,” there are other aspects of your content marketing strategy that will benefit from being reviewed periodically to make sure they are still on target. While the contents of your strategy may vary, here are some examples.

Your channel plan

Your channel plan covers which channels you should create content for and what, specifically, you will share/ do in each of those channels. (It hopefully goes without saying that you need a different strategy for each channel.) The more you learn about what type of content does well in each channel, the more effective your strategy will be.

When to revisit this: While the general type of content you have in each channel may be relatively set (e.g., Facebook works best for interest-based content, whereas LinkedIn users prefer topics that are career-based), there is a lot of room for flexibility in the way you share this information. In addition, if you are using any type of sponsored or paid promotions in your social channels, it’s especially critical to revisit this section of your plan on a frequent basis to make sure you are staying on top of consumer and social media trends.

Topics

The key topics and themes you will cover should be a part of your content marketing strategy. Not only will they serve as “guardrails” for your editorial, but they are also helpful for organizing your content for easier findability (and they are key to your internal curation strategy). Additionally, it’s useful to periodically review all of the content you have created in a given topic to see if it’s still an area that is resonating with your audience (i.e., to make sure you are aware of what’s moving the needle when it comes to your content).

When to revisit this: If you are just starting out with content marketing, I would recommend doing a topic evaluation on a quarterly basis. This gives you time to get some traction on your content that you can use as a benchmark for future efforts. If your content marketing program is more established, I would suggest reviewing your topics every six months to one year.

Process

[If you were to ask] ‘Who owns content in this company?’ you would have a hundred hands raised, because all of [your teams] truly believe that they have some ownership of it. The reality is, they do — but it is not complete ownership, or it’s not the same level of ownership. To be able to articulate what the content roles are that people play is critical. Otherwise, you are going to see people bumping heads. — Gary Van Prooyen

It’s important for your strategy to document who should be responsible for the various aspects of your program. This could be as simple as outlining general roles (Joe’s post on the10 roles needed for content marketing to succeed is a good place to get insight on how to do this,) or it could be a more task-driven list. As Gary mentioned in our roundtable, the goal is to make sure everyone understands what he or she needs to do.

When to revisit this:  Of course, whenever the members of your team change, it’s a good idea to revisit your process. However, even if your team has not changed, I suggest reviewing your process at least twice a year to see where you might be able to gain efficiencies.

How to get the most from your content marketing strategy

In short, just like with most things, you need to find the balance between structure and flexibility:

• Review your strategy and identify what is a constant, and refer to that regularly. Post these things on your wall if you need to (or at least until you internalize them.)
• Identify which sections of your strategy can be improved over time, and make a note in your calendar to review these at set intervals — unless other needs arise that necessitate you reviewing them earlier.

I’d love to get your thoughts: how do you manage your content marketing strategy once it is developed?

Want more expert advice on addressing content marketing’s biggest challenges? Check out all the fantastic CMW sessions that are available through our Video on Demand portal.Cover image by Joe Kalinowski.

The Content Marketing Landscape Infographic

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We have created an infographic to highlight the content marketing landscape in 2013.

If you didn’t already know – content marketing involves elements of everything from analytics to content generation and SEO to social. As one of the UK’s leading content marketing companies we wanted to create an informative infographic that highlights how all these important disciplines come together.

You can view the infographic below (click on it to expand) and please get in touch to let us know your thoughts and feedback around it.

We wanted to create something that not only looks great visually but is in fact a very helpful at-a-glance resource for marketers looking to embrace content marketing this year.

Content marketing is set to grow phenomenally, but we recognise that many marketers don’t know where to turn when it comes to the myriad different considerations that need to be taken on board when planning a content marketing campaign.

Obviously at Content Amp we can help marketers with content strategy, content generation and content amplification, but we thought it worthwhile listing some of the invaluable resource tools available.

Oh, and if you love your infographics you might like this one we did when we were Search News Media around the evolution of publishing.

September 22nd, 2014

The Answers to Your 18 Biggest Content Marketing Questions

Here at Contently, we geek out harder on content marketing than a Batman nut at ComicCon. For us, the only thing better than content marketing is talking about content marketing. In that spirit, earlier this month we asked our Twitter followers if they had any pressing questions, and they responded in droves. Here are our answers, with some added context, examples, and love.

1. WHAT IS “NATIVE” AND WHAT IS “OWNED”? WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

2. WHY WOULD WE CREATE OWNED CONTENT RATHER THAN BUY SPONSORED CONTENT?

These two questions are so similar that it makes sense to answer them together.

Let’s start with the basic definitions. Shane Snow, CCO of Contently, covered the definitions in our “State of Content Marketing 2014” report:

It’s hard to say which one (native or owned) is better in an absolute sense; they simply serve different purposes, and in an ideal world, they work in concert. In an article earlier this month, Contently VP of Content Sam Slaughter detailed how brands should use native advertising to build an audience that they own:

One could make (and many have made) the case that brands communicating directly with their own audience is bad news for publishers who depend on being the audience gatekeepers. I don’t buy that.

For one, building an audience is hard. And more importantly, even a brand with their own audience will want to reach other audiences with their message. Whether they use sponsored stories, paid distribution, or social advertising to get there is dependent on the circumstances—but the need to reach additional eyeballs efficiently and effectively is constant.

Case in point: Here at Contently, we have a huge audience for our industry pub, The Content Strategist. And yet we still pay through the nose to place sponsored content on publisher sites like Adweek. Why would we do that when we could put it in front of our own audience for free? Simple: Adweek readers are people we want to reach.

Shane also tackled this question in an article for Ad Age, noting that having direct access to an audience is every brand’s goal, but it takes time, patience, and editorial leadership to make that happen. In the meantime, sponsored content is a way to align a brand with an already recognized and trusted platform.

3. WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A LONG-TERM CONTENT STRATEGY VS. A CAMPAIGN-BY-CAMPAIGN APPROACH?

As we noted last month, the cliché is true: Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You need time to develop an effective editorial strategy through trial and error and to build trust with readers. That’s why some agencies and custom-content studios run by publishers are requiring brands to commit to a content push of at least four months, if not a year or longer. In an ideal world, they’d be signing on for 5-plus-year commitments.

4. WHO SHOULD WE BE TARGETING, I.E., WHO SHOULD OUR AUDIENCE BE?

Determining your target audience is content strategy 101. Who wants your service or product? Who shares similar values? What do they want but aren’t getting enough of? These are easy questions to ask, but difficult questions to answer—and those answers are different for each and every business. If you don’t have someone on your team who has built an audience before, you likely need to find the right help.

5. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT DEVELOPING A BRAND VOICE?

This is a crucial aspect of brand publishing, and it was one of the main topics Shane covered in the first-ever Contently e-book, “The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging and Content Strategy.” Though three years old, the advice still holds strong.

Witty, smart, sarcastic, optimistic, skeptical— whatever the tone, be consistent. Early on, figure out what your brand’s message is and how you want to say it. Choose a tone or angle, and then consistently apply it to your content. If you want to be instructional and serious, stick with that. As Shane writes in “Beginner’s Guide,” it’s not so much what you say—it’s how you say it.

6. HOW MUCH CONTENT SHOULD I BE CREATING?

The short answer: a lot. A brand needs to pump out quality content in order to establish trust in their readership. The perfect mix is different for each brand, but when starting out, look at key engagement metrics (like engaged time, average finish time, shares, and return visits) to see which pieces of content are compelling your audience to come back. Then, double down on what works while constantly testing and iterating new approaches. That’s the approach the brand newsroom of the future will take.

7. HOW DOES A BRAND SET UP A NEWSROOM?

Brand newsrooms are all the rage right now. When TCS sat down with content strategist Neil Chase, he had some key advice for setting up a brand newsroom internally:

The brand newsroom must embrace and follow the company’s culture, but it also needs the ability to change that culture. To make a closed company more open. To make a company that’s nervous about publicity more comfortable with it. To help a company that operates in a regulatory environment able to do more than it thought possible before. To try new things, use new technology and break bad old habits. More here.

Brands have the opportunity to reimagine the traditional newsroom structure to best serve their needs. This means establishing specific responsibilities for each department. And as Shane explains in the talk below, most every decision should be driven by data and the quest for an exponentially increasing return on investment:

And for a visual guide to brand newsrooms, check out our interactive e-book, “The CMO’s Guide to Building a Brand Newsroom.”

8. WHAT’S A GOOD STRATEGY FOR GETTING MORE PEOPLE TO FIND YOUR CONTENT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

One of the most important principles for building an audience is the “superconnector.” This is a person or platform that has an established audience you can borrow. If there are people in your brand’s network with whom you can connect, do it.

But how? You need to offer unique and valuable content. Produce content that their audience is interested in and then give it away. This way you make the superconnector happy, and you get exposed to a broader audience. Offering value leads to trust, and the audience will be more likely to follow you to your own platform.

It’s a similar idea to finding influencers. Connecting to 500 people through one person is much more efficient than trying to reach people individually. In addition, don’t be afraid to pay to jumpstart your traffic. Creating good content is only effective if people read it. Here’s the TCS breakdown of the top distribution platforms.

For more, check out Shane’s webinar, “Superconnecting Massive Audiences,” below:

9. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF OUTSOURCING CONTENT CREATION?

Don’t think outsourcing, think in-sourcing, as jargony as that sounds. (Forgive us.) Bringing in freelancers adds a fresh twist to a brand’s voice. For instance, General Mills brought in outside writers, photographers, and infographic experts to write and design their successful recipe site, Tablespoon. While the perspectives of freelance brand journalists are often at odds with traditional marketers, that’s actually a good thing, breathing fresh life into a content campaign. Their ability to connect with audiences and tell a great story in unorthodox ways can be invaluable.

10. IS IT REALLY WORTH THE INVESTMENT TO HIRE TRAINED JOURNALISTS FOR BRANDED CONTENT OVER CHEAPER WRITERS AND COPYWRITERS?

Definitely. With the saturation of Internet content, brands are not only competing with one another for attention, but also with established media powerhouses. Brands need the talent to compete, and that makes writers who are talented, experienced, and passionate about a brand’s mission invaluable. There is truth to the warning “You get what you pay for,” and when it comes to content, quality is king. Click here for more.

11. WHAT IS A GOOD STRATEGY FOR GETTING PEOPLE TO NOTICE YOUR CONTENT WHEN THEY MAINLY GO TO YOUR SITE TO BUY STUFF?

Depends on what you’re selling, but a smart strategy is to integrate editorial with the products themselves. You want a balance of boosting the appeal of your product with providing value through your content. The story cannot only be about the product. Contently uses the “Content Funnel” as a framework for creating content for varying levels of engagement.

The first step is to attract your audience by offering them stories that speak to their values and are either timely, seasonal, or evergreen—meaning always relevant. The second level of the funnel is for stories about the company and the customer. This gets a bit more personal and moves the audience closer to the product. The third tier is the stories concerning your product. The people who make it to this level of the funnel are the ones who will become patrons of your brand.

A few brands doing an awesome job of weaving amazing content into their commerce platforms are Mr. Porter, Birchbox, and Apple.

Groupon is one more great example of combining content and commerce. It made stories an integral part of each deal, and rode unprecedented conversion rates all the way to an IPO. People could connect with the company on multiple levels and kept coming back for more.

12. WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO DEFINE YOUR CONTENT?

The best content is mission-driven: For us, that mission is building a better media world. That’s why we cover the media and marketing world here on The Content Strategist, give freelancers the tools and knowledge they need to succeed on The Freelancer, and fund independent investigative journalism over at Contently.org. If you want a definition, start with a question: What’s my mission?

13. WHAT METRICS CAN HELP YOU IMPROVE YOUR WRITING AND PERFORMANCE?

14. HOW DOES A BRAND CALCULATE THEIR ROI? NOT JUST A FORMULA BUT THE PROCESS AND TOOLS?

Most metrics focus on developing the brand, not the creator. The natural progression in smart content strategy is Stories > Engagement > Relationships > ROI. Each level of the brand newsroom should focus on one or more of those pieces. For creative people, the story metrics are the most important. For editors, engagement and relationships should take priority.

Story metrics that matter most: engaged time, finish percentage, and return engagement. These three metrics lead to relationships, which then directly translate to ROI when the conversion pathway is tracked correctly. For more, check out our “4 Keys to Calculating ROI for Content Marketers” (process) and our e-book, “The New World of Content Measurement” (tools).

15. WHICH SOCIAL PLATFORM SHOULD I USE TO BUILD A FOLLOWING OF WEALTHY INVESTORS USING LONGFORM CONTENT?

As we detailed in our “Banking on Content” e-book, LinkedIn is a finance content marketer’s best friend. LinkedIn has the audience you want, and their targeting capabilities are unmatched. If you’re publishing directly on LinkedIn, they have great engagement metrics built into the platform, and they also recently rolled out a redesign of their longform pages. If you can build an audience on LinkedIn, you can attract a following that will transfer over to your owned media platform.

For more finance content marketing tips, check out our “State of Finance Content Marketing” e-book.

16. AS FAR AS FORMATTING AND PLACEMENT ARE CONCERNED, WHAT IS THE SWEET SPOT FOR LINKING TO EXTERNAL RESOURCES IN ARTICLES?

If you’re giving a load of resources, do so at the end of the story, not as a distraction midway through. If links to external resources are important for context, definitely include them in-text (like in this piece). If you’re not concerned about content engagement, then split test it the same way you’d split test a landing page.

Also, whenever you reference a brand name in your article—yours or otherwise —always link it within the text. This can amp up your SEO ranking.

17. WHAT IS “THOUGHT LEADERSHIP” AND IS THERE VALUE TO BEING CONSIDERED A THOUGHT LEADER?

A brand that is a thought leader assumes expertise in a field. People rely on them as a resource. Thought leadership is the number one goal Contently clients list. Really, thought leadership is about branding. If your brand is intelligent, that’s exactly how you want to self-style. If your brand sells Doritos-shell tacos, who cares about thought leadership? You might care about entertaining teens and twenty-somethings.

And yes, thought leadership has become a buzz phrase, but it’s here to stay. Here are some tips to make it work for you.

18. WHAT TRENDS WILL BE IMPACTING CONTENT CREATION IN THE NEAR FUTURE?

What if Coca-Cola took you inside of a can or Corona could actually find you your beach? Immersive virtual reality is going to hit marketers by surprise. Strapping on goggles and transporting instantly to a virtual hangout will be a huge opportunity for bigger and better storytelling.

The main answer is that we’ll see more players: media companies, media agencies, creative agencies, PR firms, small shops—everyone’s selling content right now. We’ll also see an explosion in multimedia and branded web series, leveraging YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and other emerging platforms and talent to reach millennials.

There will also be a greater merging between digital and social media, and traditional media. HP’s recent commercial featuring a montage of Vines is a great example. Finally, a select few brands will finally figure out how to structure their organizations like a media company.

THERE YOU HAVE IT.

Thank you to everyone who submitted your questions. As always, when others pop up, feel free to reach out @Contently.