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Category: Digital & Content Marketing

Our blog on content marketing and digital marketing

  • 4 steps to outsource your blog

    After Monday’s post outlining some of the benefits of outsourcing your content marketing, I received several surprised reactions and comments, mainly they didn’t even know they could outsource their blog.  Here’s where we are:

    Now here’s how to outsource your blog.  The first thing to remember is that outsourcing your content creation is just like outsourcing anything else. At the end of the day, it’s going to have your name on it, so there is no “set it and forget it”, and it requires a plan. Here are the 4 steps towards outsourcing your blog.

    1. Create and agree on a plan and create a content publishing calendar, keeping in mind any seasonal events. Here’s a thorough write up of how & why to maintain a content marketing calendar.
      • Topics – create “buckets” of types of content, for example events, team, product, support, etc.
      • Frequency – every day, 2-3/week, once a week, once a month? Choose, and stick to it.
      • Length – For SEO purposes, at least 300-500 words per post. Measure and see if your audience prefers short (300-350 words) vs. long form posts, and adjust accordingly.
      • Images – photos, infographics, marketing images? Who will create them?
    2. Determine an editing / publishing process, meaning who will review each post prior to publication, and the iteration process for each post. Remember: nothing is perfect the first time around. Everything needs edits. Google Docs makes a great collaboration tool, and it’s safe: nobody can accidentally hit “Publish”!
    3. Tell your story, while we listen, ask questions, record, and take notes, for 1 hour once a week. Yes, you could go on for days because this story is your dream and vision, but this is your time, and the purpose of outsourcing is to save your time. 
    4. Begin publishing, according to your agreed-upon content calendar.

    There it is, your simple 4-step process to outsourcing the creation of your most powerful and reusable marketing content. After a few weeks (every case is different), you should be able to trim down to 30-45 minutes per week. Make this time part of your weekly rhythm. You should work towards having at least your first 30 days of content ready to publish, because life happens.

  • Social Media Strategy Class Recap

    I’ve written before about how we learn more when we teach something.  Last night’s Social Media Strategy Mapping class at General Assembly was no exception for me.  I always learn from those whom I am supposedly teaching, and that is a very good thing.

    Thanks to everyone who attended.  I counted 35 in the audience, which was far more than I had expected, but it shows clearly that, while it’s easy to jump into social media, it’s a bit more complicated to (a) market using social media (b) for your company, and (c) to get it right every time.

    One of the topics that came up was the recent #fail by BestBuy, among others by various airline brands.  The bigger the brand, the harder the social media fail. That’s why you need a strategy and a plan when you engage in social media marketing for your brand.  We went pretty deep last night into how to create your own social media strategy, but here are the highlights.

    1. Define your brand. Atlanta Tech Village is a solid example of how to be intentional about your culture, values, and, hence, your brand. When in doubt, remember the core values of your brand.
    2. Define your audience. You have to know who you’re talking to, who you want to talk to, and where they are engaging in social media.
    3. Evaluate your competition. It’s easier than ever to follow and keep tabs on your competitors these days. Do it. Find out what they’re doing that’s working/not working.
    4. Set realistic goals. You’re not going to get a million followers in the first 12 months, if ever, so set some goals by which you can measure progress.
    5. Map out your approach. That means write it down, and follow it, like a map. There are no shortcuts.
    6. Define success. How will you know if you’ve succeeded? That’s what setting goals is all about.
    7. Measure everything. You cannot change what you do not measure. Measure everything at the start, then you’ll slowly learn the metrics that you need to live by.

    It was a great class, and I look forward to digging deeper into Digital Marketing for the next 10 weeks. Will you join me?

  • Learning Instagram

    When I learned that Instagram had overtaken Twitter with more than 300M users, I though it might be time to try it out. I was in the early majority on Facebook and Twitter, but obviously I’m way behind the laggard curve on Instagram.  Here’s what I’ve learned since joining and participating on Instagram since January 1, 2015.

    • The UI is great. I’ve read a lot of other people’s opinions on the Instagram user experience, and they’re right. It’s simple, and very intuitive. Capture, edit, add text, share.
    • Not friendly with Twitter. But don’t share directly on Twitter. Obviously, the higher ups on one side or the other have decided they don’t want to play nice. When you share an image from the Instagram app to Twitter, you get a link and not an image. Bad form, and I’m guessing it’s on the Twitter side. Anyone know for sure?
    • Integration with Facebook is complete. Instagram is a startup unicorn success story (<2 years old, 10 employees, sold for $1Billion to Facebook), and Facebook has done well in integrating the service into its main UI. When you share an image to Facebook from the Instagram app, it looks great; however…
    • The image in Instagram has to be square, or else it’ll get cut off like mine did yesterday, when I shared an image and quote from MLK. The quote got cut off, as you can see below, on both Instagram and Facebook.
    • “Take and share pictures that nobody else would see otherwise” is the main calling of Instagram, so it’s not (or at least no longer) about selfies (thank. you. God!).  That’s a great mantra, and I hope they continue to preach it.
    • Instagram breaks their own “Best Practices”. I teach classes on Digital Marketing for General Assembly’s Atlanta location (in fact I’m leading “Social Media Strategy” tonight!). Instagram is now a big part of the Digital Marketing strategy for any business. One of the best practices is to use less than 200 characters of text with any image.  Follow Instagram on Instagram, and you’ll quickly find out that they don’t abide by that rule.
    • You can’t share links. This one was the biggest surprise for me, but now I get it. Instagram wants the image to be the destination, not the bright shiny object that takes you someplace else. You can tag users (like @kevinrsandlin) and use Twitter-like hashtags, but not URLs to other sites.

    I avoided Instagram for a long time because I figured it was just selfie-central, but that’s not the case (or maybe I just don’t follow any selfie-kings).  It may have been like that early on, but because the crew at Instagram has done a really good job eating their own dog food and teaching their users how to use the medium very well. It’s a great place to share and see great images of life.

  • 6 benefits of outsourcing your content marketing

    Lots of people who are way smarter than me have written about why you must blog in this age of digital communication and social sharing.  I aggregated hundreds of reasons that you should blog in this post.  So you know you should blog, and you know why you should blog, but you still are not able to get it done.

    Here are the main reasons that startups and small businesses alike don’t blog, in no particular order:

    • Not enough time
    • You’re not good at writing
    • “We don’t have enough content“
    • No resources
    • Not worth a dedicated resource
    • Budget

    OK, all of those are legit.  It’s very easy to push the idea of maintaining an active blog down the priority list, but you really don’t have to.  You, as a (or the) leader in your startup or small business, are the best at telling your story, so it really is on you to find a way to get it done.  Because of all the reasons noted above (which ones are yours?), it may be that your best bet is to outsource your blog. Here are six benefits of outsourcing your content marketing.

    • Focused resource – it’s our job to create and maintain your blog on your schedule. You’re our customer, and we’re focused on you.
    • Excellent writing – we write for a living!
    • Good use of time – You don’t have time to blog, but you know you really need to, so this 30 minutes each week is a very good use of your time.
    • Dedicated PT resource – No, you can’t hire a full time resource to maintain your marketing content, but you can hire a part time resource that is dedicated to and focused on creating the best content your audience can consume.
    • Helps you tell, hear, and see your story – As I mentioned above, you’re the best at telling your story. That’s what we’ll do each week: you’ll tell a different part of your story, and we’ll create fresh new reusable content from that time together.
    • Gets it done – We’ll set a calendar, and get it done, period.  It’s off your plate.
    Johnson Cook recommends that you outsource everything possible.  An active, goal-oriented blog that serves your business needs is one of the most important parts of your digital marketing strategy, and it’s also one of the things you can outsource.

  • Now they blog for their brand!

    At last week’s “Blogging for your Brand” class at General Assembly, I challenged the 50+ attendees to write a blog post during the 2-hour class and publish it immediately afterwards, or at least real soon after the class ended.  Guess what? They were up to the challenge!  Check out these newly educated, inspired, and (most importantly) equipped bloggers!

    There is no greater feeling than “moving the needle” in anything that you do. If you dig ditches, you get to see your progress. If you blog, you have a sense of fulfillment (if not relief) when you hit “Publish”.  When I teach a class, there is no greater reward than to see the proverbial light bulb go off when someone gets it. But then to see these people immediately put into action what they just soaked up? Priceless!

    Thank you for attending the class, listening, engaging, soaking it up, and then acting on it! Well done. Well done.

  • Don’t go to college

    Following on yesterday’s topic, “Your college degree is worthless“, I’m tacking in a different direction today. What I learned in college is serving me very well today. However, when I was in college (get ready), we didn’t have smart phones, email, laptops, or social media. The world has changed – completely – and the mindset around a college education has to change along with it.

    Even before my time, if you had a college degree, you really set yourself above the fray. If you got an MBA (which I did), then you were head and shoulders above everyone else. There are still a set of very specific areas in which a college degree (not “the equivalent”) is required, including (but certainly not limited to):

    • Medicine
    • Engineering
    • Accounting
    • Law
    If you are going to pursue a career in these or similar fields, you must get a college degree, and then some. No getting around it, and all of those are very respectable and much in demand careers that pay well, enabling you to pay back all the loans you’ll probably need to get through all that schooling.



    However, if your bent is toward technology, either software development or networking technologies or any sort of digital skills, you do not need to go to college. I’ll say that again: to work in the fastest growing sector of jobs in today’s economy, you do not need to go to college. You do not need to spend 52 months pursuing a college degree just to say you got a college degree. You do not need to spent a ridiculous amount of money over those 4+ years when you could be working and earning money.



    College ain't cheap!



    Instead, you can engage in shorter, more specific, more valuable, and more employable education, like any one of the following:

    • learn to write software in 3 months for less than $15k. Software developers are experiencing negative unemployment today, especially in Atlanta. There are many choices:
    • attend a series of computer networking (Cisco, Microsoft, RedHat, etc.) bootcamps and earn the highest level networking certifications in less than one year.
    • attend a series of part time digital classes in UX design, Analytics, Business Fundamentals & Tactics, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Product Management, User Experience Design, Visual Design (just to name a few) while you’re working and earning money and learning to be the most valuable digital master in your company. 

    Not one of the careers that result from these skills requires a college degree. None.



    Or you can spend $100k to live with little or no responsibility for 4-5 years, learn how to drink beer, and then try to get a job in the digital age. Seriously, though, if you’re not going to pursue a career that absolutely requires a college degree, spending 52 months and well over $100k just to say you have a degree is not a wise investment of anyone’s time or money.



    If you’re inclined towards working in technology, you don’t need to go to college.

  • Your college degree is worthless!

    That’s what retired talk show host Neal Boortz told me this morning (on the radio). Specifically, he said my degree in English is equivalent to one of those “BlahBlahBlah Studies” degrees. Ouch. But it made me think of two things, the first of which is the subject of this post. Follow up tomorrow.

    What learning is important in today’s digital economy?  Hint on tomorrow’s post: it’s digital expertise, in various forms.  But for today, my English degree has never served me better than it does right now.  Think about it. You can communicate like this:

    sum ppl thnk they cn alwys use txt 2 tlk 2 any1 lol

    Or you can communicate in language that anyone – not just my 13 year old daughter – can understand. There’s nothing wrong with texting, so please don’t get me wrong. I’m so very much in agreement with Jeff Hilimire that voice mail should die a rapid death. However, whether you’re a back end Java developer or a social marketer or the leader of your company, the one thing that everyone has to be able to do is communicate in writing.

    • How many emails do you send every day?
    • How many times do you tweet each day?
    • How many times do you update a project status in Google Docs, MS Project, or Basecamp?
    • How often do you update your startup’s investors and advisors?
    • What do you write on your Instagram posts?
    • Do you run your company’s blog?
    • Do you respond to and engage with your customers on social media?

    Every one of these – and this is just scratching the surface – instances requires good communication skills.  I majored in English because I intended to go to law school. Didn’t work out that way (I went to B-School instead), but my ability to write is even more valuable today than it was when I was writing and editing the first edition of the CWNA Study Guide.

    What did you learn in college that you’re actually still using today?

  • Top 3 Tech Skills to Get Hired in the Digital Age

    Cross posted from the General Assembly blog.

    When you graduate from college, you have a degree in some specific subject(s). But it is becoming increasingly important that you have practical skills when you enter the workplace, in addition to the specific knowledge you gained during your college career. When you enter the workforce, no matter who you work for, there will be some learning curve as you learn how they do business, what tools they use, and their processes and procedures. But wouldn’t it be great if on day one when you arrived at that sweet new job, you were teaching them new tricks?

    If you learn these three digital age skills, there’s a good chance that you will blow their doors off when you start work on Monday.

    1. Front end website development

    HTML5, CSS, Javascript, WordPress. For the non-developer, these terms are very intimidating, but a qualified instructor can make them music to your ears. When you enroll in one of these classes, it’s generally understood that you’ve never written software code before, and that’s where it’ll start. Then, 3-4 months later, you won’t recognize yourself as you crank out beautiful web pages and awesome functionality from your keyboard. Just think, the next time you have a great idea, you can just build it!  These classes are usually…

    • 3-4 months long
    • $3,500 – $10,000; financing is available
    • available in-person, online (on demand)
    • part time or full time “immersive”

    Why you should learn front end web development: so you can build your own websites any time you want to try a new idea.

    2. Digital Marketing

    SEO, site optimization, content strategy, social networking, paid traffic, analytics. Also might sound a little intimidating, but you already blog and use social media, right? Then you’re halfway there. Learn digital marketing, and you’ll understand that it’s not dumb luck that gets a website millions of page views, downloads, likes, and retweets. It’s a process, and anyone can learn how to make that process sing. The basics of marketing are the same as they always have been, but just that great word – digital – makes it move a whole lot faster and gives you instant data that old school marketers never dreamed of. To learn digital marketing, you’ll need…

    • A computer and Internet access
    • Free tools like Google Analytics
    • A spreadsheet software like Google Sheets
    • about 60 hours of class time (10 weeks part time)
    • approximately $3,000 if you take a formal class

    Why you should learn digital marketing: so you can market-test anything you build, gain traction and capture leads for your business.

    3. Ecommerce

    Shopping cart software, ecommerce gateways, merchant processing. When you want to find a product, you look on the Internet. When you find that product, and want to buy it, more often than not, you purchase it over the Internet. That’s ecommerce. It’s much more sophisticated than it used to be, but basic ecommerce is very much available to anyone who has the skills and knowledge to set it up on their website. With today’s plethora of shopping cart software packages, simple Internet gateways, and banks (finally) becoming very accepting of a “Mom & Pop” ecommerce shop, selling something on the Internet is something anyone can do. A very simple example is setting up your personal site with SquareSpace, which is already integrated with Stripe. All you do is tell Stripe where to deposit the funds.

    Why you should learn ecommerce: so you can easily setup an online store and sell just about anything you have or build or create.

    Combining these three skills makes you a triple threat, since you’ll be able to build it, market it, and sell it. Not many people can do that, but you can. You’ll be prepared to be the entrepreneur you’ve always wanted to be, setting up your own website and selling your widgets. Better yet, when anyone else you meet wants to do the same thing, you’ll be prepared to do it for them. That’s called being instantly employable.

    On average, it takes 52 months to earn a bachelor’s degree. Compare than to approximately 4 months it would take to learn to build your own website, create a strong following, and sell products from that website to actually make money. Not to mention the drastic difference in the cost of these two very different programs.

    Am I advocating that young people today not attend college?  Maybe. Maybe not. But in this day of $100k+ for a college degree when you can learn very marketable skills for less than 20% of that number in 1/10th of the time, everyone should at least give it some serious consideration.

    This post originally appeared on the General Assembly blog.

  • Blog or Newsletter or both?

    The more I write and speak about writing, the more I get asked this question: should I use a blog or a regular newsletter?  I have my opinion, based on experience, but here are a few arguments for each.

    Newsletter

    • Push instead of pull – when you publish an email newsletter, that email hits your subscribers’ email instantly, and they know it’s there.
    • Instant audience – you already know who your potential readers are, because they’ve subscribed via double opt-in, and they are expecting your newsletter.
    • Simple reach measurement – you can measure within a few hours exactly how many people got the email, opened the email, clicked on the email, and much more.

    Blog

    • Easier to share – the power of social media has changed completely who can and will read your content. When was the last time you shared something via social media? 
    • Indexed by search engines – Google loves fresh new content, and when Google loves your content, your site rankings improve, and more people can find your content faster and easier.
    • Reusable – when you blog, you can then reuse that same content via social media and in a regular newsletter.
    So what do I recommend?  A planned mix. Blog, share, email, repeat.  I do this to an extreme with Atlanta Tech Blogs. Every post is reblogged on atlantatechblogs.com. Every post is shared to Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and now I’m experimenting with Instagram (nothing there yet). Every morning at 9am, Mailchimp’s RSS newsletter function pulls every post that was published since the previous daily digest and emailed out to all our subscribers.  I don’t consider the Daily Digest a “newsletter” per se, because we’re not pushing out “news” and engaging our readers in a conversation. It’s a summary of everything we published the previous day.
    Like I said, this example is to the extreme. What I recommend for organizations that produce great content is the same formula, with a couple of tweaks.
    1. Blog.  Every organization should be constantly telling its story – history, events, vision, successes, failures, new products, new features, new team members, news, product training, industry teaching, support – because no organization’s story is static. You don’t have to blog every day, but you should set a pace (daily, 2-3x/week, weekly, monthly) and stick to it, thereby setting and fulfilling the expectations of your audience.
    2. Share. Every person on the team – whether you’re a 1 man show or dozens or hundreds of team members – should be engaged in sharing the organization’s content. The smaller the team, the more important it is for everyone to share. This tactic requires planning and boundaries around who shares what to where and how it’s shared, because every social media channel is different.
    3. Newsletter. All that content that’s created for your blog is now content for your newsletter, because while your blog has loyal and dedicated readers, not everyone will follow a blog or even know there’s a new post available. When you engage in an email newsletter campaign, you engage those readers who are most comfortable consuming information in their email.
    You can take on the battle of blog vs. newsletter, but I recommend you do both, and add internal social media sharing. There are so many great tools out there that will make it very simple to do so, starting with WordPress and Mailchimp.

  • My Top 5 Posts of All Time

    According to Blogger, these are the posts that have received more visits and page views than any other post I’ve made since early 2012.

    1. So You Wanna Bootstrap Your Startup? (Feb 28, 2013) – Heck I still like reading this one. I delivered this as a seminar at ATDC, and the reception was so good I decided to do a long, long, long form write up of the whole thing.
    2. Apple Keynote? What Apple Keynote? I’ve got Chromecast! (Sep 10, 2013) – I was working from home and very excited about the Apple announcement (can’t even remember what it was now), but got totally distracted when my Google Chromecast arrived. We had just cut the cord of cable TV, and have never looked back.
    3. Preparing to Launch (May 7, 2013) – Ouch! We were just about to officially launch deductmor. Then I pivoted to c|d8a. Then I shut it down. :-(  Oh, the lessons we learn…
    4. Atlanta’s Consumer + Design Weekend Accelerator (Apr 22, 2014) – The birth of Tavani’s Switchyards! That was so much fun. Nearly a year ago? Wow.
    5. Pitch Practice 11-22-2013 (Nov 22, 2013) – I still have absolutely no idea why this post is so popular. Seriously. I’ve just re-read it for about the 100th time. Typical Pitch Practice. No idea why.

    I still enjoy randomly re-reading an old post once a week or so. If I’m feeling really nostalgic about my family, I’ll go back and peruse some of the posts from our adoption adventure to Kazakhstan, 10 years ago this year.

    Think I’ll go hug my kids now.