It’s almost 2024, this sh*t changed. Wake up from the 90s and 00s. You'll win back in the end from what you give away in the beginning.

→ ‘Content has become the heartbeat of digital-first, modern marketing practices. We invest significant time, budget, and energy in creating content, the purpose of which is to connect with our various audiences. And what do many B2B brands still do with these valuable assets?’ Amy Heidersbach in Contently

I get it that that’s B2B marketers’ dream, to collect as many email addresses and data as possible to shitty shine in reaching their KPIs.

These people and brands forget that gating the content also means missing out on claiming your leadership, and your expensive content doesn’t get seen.

Why it matters

If you want your content to be seen, you have to make the access as easy and frictionless as possible. The more people can educate themselves with your content, the more you can claim your leadership in the industry. Win-win.

Maybe you’ll collect a little less data – be honest, were you really going to use and monetize all that data?

Below, I’ll explain all about

• Dark funnel,
• Nobody wants to feel like a lead,
• Consumers want to self-educate,
• SEO, it's a thing,
• How this impacts shortening your sales funnel,
• And what I’m not saying.

Including an example.

Dark funnel

According to ChatGPT, the dark funnel is ‘the hidden, untraceable stages of the online customer journey where potential customers research and engage with a brand without leaving conventional digital footprints for tracking.’ In short, your prospects' activity is invisible.

That means you can’t track it; you can’t collect first-party data and follow up with email marketing.

Compare this to dark social; you share content directly via WhatsApp with your friends. Untraceable for brands, more convenient for you.

F*ck data

Marketers, please don’t get drunk on data and email addresses. Don’t fall for the pitfall to measure everything that can be measured and collect as much data as possible.

Nine out of ten, you’ll do nothing significant with that microdata except for shining in the boardroom where the one-eyed still is king on content. And if you have those email addresses, you have to set up a campaign to follow up and try to convert these super cold leads.

There is nothing wrong with not knowing everything. The so-called dark funnel, where your prospects' activity is invisible to the brand, rules big time.

And be honest, if you have all that microdata. What the f*ck are you going to do with it? If you have hardly enough budget to produce amazing content, I severely doubt that you have the budget to analyze this micro correctly and follow up with new content, funnels, and A/B testing programs.

Publish your knowledge openly, no gates. And share what you know with your audience. This is the way forward to claim your leadership and become the go-to brand in your industry.

No one wants to feel like a lead

The same goes for B2C, where no one wants to be marketed. As soon as you feel you’re going to be chased by the brand with obligatory emails that usually don’t add value to your life or inbox, you’ll pass and click away.

Make accessing your content as easy and frictionless as possible. Any marketer knows that every additional click causes a drop in conversion. In this case, the conversion is getting your content seen by your audience (prospects).

They want to self-educate

The B2B industry is all about education, information, and sharing knowledge. By claiming your leadership, you’ll be ahead of your competitors.

When you’re doing your online research and searching for information, you want to do this by yourself without the hungry, pushy salesperson chasing you down the digital aisle. If you wanted some not-entirely-unbiased advice, you would have hit the ‘contact’ button and reached out.

→ ‘Customers want to self-educate, and we should do everything in our power to make it easy for them by making our content easily accessible.' Asma Steward in Contently 

SEO

Gating your content also means that SEO can't access it. And that's bad for your ranking. 

For sure, there will be hacks and workarounds to give Google's spider access. That probably is advanced SEO work and not something you can DIY. So if you don't have the big boys' budget and have to play smarter, make sure the Google spider can access the content as easily as your audience can. 

Don't gate. 

Shorter sales funnel

I know this sounds quite contrary. Yet it’s true. Giving away your content for free does shorten the sales funnel in the end. 

Compare this with buying a laptop at MediaMarkt; you do your homework at home, yet you do want to touch and see the laptop before making the purchase. In the store, you just close the deal, and no need for the nitty-gritty technical details. 

By educating your prospects on how to solve their problem (first), preferably with your product (second), they’ll come a lot hotter in your sales funnel.

Once you claim your leadership in the industry by showing your care and your passion for what you do, they’ll come back to you for more information.

The chances you’ll get a hot lead via non-gated content are much higher than via boring newsletters. Or via a too-swift call by a sales rep. See above; if your audience wants some advice, they know how to contact you.

Keep your newsletter

Just for clarity, I’m not saying, ‘don’t do email marketing.’ I love email marketing when it's done right with the audience's best interest in mind, not the brand.

 I say, don’t gate your valuable content by asking for their email address and shoving them in the database.

Again, if they want to subscribe to your newsletter, they’ll find it on your .com.

Example Contently

If there’s one platform that gives away all their knowledge and insights, it’s Contently. Great website and an amazing newsletter that was actually the inspiration for this page.

Why they are good

• They know content 
• Great case studies
• Value-adding newsletter 

And yes, they have a sales funnel. And it’s quite pushy. And I get that as they need to drive business to be able to give us content. Quid pro quo.

I do know who I’ll call when I need a content marketing platform.

Summary

Please don’t gate your content. We are in a new content era. Gating your content to get as many leads as possible and push them into your email database is not moving the needle. Even more so, you miss out on reach, and your expensive content doesn’t get seen.

We are not in the 90s or 00s anymore. Make your content as easy and frictionless accessible as possible, claim your leadership, and the leads will follow if you’ve done your content right.

Remember, no one wants to be marketed to, no one wants to feel like a lead, and they do want to self-educate. And once they hit the ‘contact’ button, your sales funnel will be shorter (and cheaper).

Credits

Inspired by, and bits and pieces stolen with pride from Contenly. 

Check out their non-gated whitepaper ‘Mastering the Content Matrix Innovative CMOs Rewrite the Rules of Engagement’

It's number four in the most asked questions about content; please, check the last paragraph for all five questions and the bonus on AI. 

Why it matters

All brands struggle, big and small. No matter your size, the lack of results is deadly. 

First and foremost, for your budget. 

Second, without results, is harder to get the content out of the organization. Vice versa, if you share the results with all employees and departments, you'll notice that content ideation will pop up like crazy. 

 First, let's define ‘results.’ 

These should be measured in business objectives

• Sales numbers and leads 
• A higher ranking on SEO for leadership and traffic

Second, the reasons, presuming you've got great content (are you sure?)

1. Too fast; keep your patience
2. Wrong metrics: vanity over business objectives
3. Lack of budgets: focus
4. You do have crappy content (told you!)

1. Too fast; keep your patience

This is the number one reason for not seeing the results of your content efforts. Content takes time. Much time. More than you think.

Content is not plug-and-play. It's not a ‘Start today; see results tomorrow.’ Or within a few months. 

It takes at least one year; two years is more realistic.

How to fix it

Well, duh, … be patient.

2. Wrong metrics: vanity over business objectives

The second most made mistake in why you’re not seeing results is that you're using the wrong metrics. Usually, the content reporting focuses on campaigns with vanity metrics. Not the overarching business results with the general sales numbers.

Below you find a recap of ‘Accountability of content.’ 

Report on what matters to management, don't bore them with death-by-powerpoint details on likes and engagement. Getting the buy-in from the board and senior management matters to lock in next year’s budget – or prevent loss of budget in the running year.

How to fix it

Choose the metrics for management that reflect the strategy. Your content strategy should be aligned with the business objectives; hence, so should the reporting.

Quarterly or half-yearly

• Content efforts plotted against overall sales 

• SEO performance 


Monthly, if desired by management

• 
High over content planning with campaigns and channels

• Budget reporting: production and media
• Team reporting: FTEs and external help

3. Lack of budgets

The final reason why you’re not seeing results is that you don’t invest enough. And double that budget for media buying to get reach. I know you want more content for less; I'll be the bearer of the bad news, that is not possible. Quality is really expensive. Penny pound foolish.

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. In your team and agency.

There’s no such thing as getting results while you’re not investing serious money. 

How to fix it

Please don't fall into the trap of wanting cheaper content, which equals more content for less budget. A better option is to focus and scale down in the amount of content you want to produce. And that what you produce, you're f*cking going to nail it top-notch, high quality, re-usable and long lifetime. 

I wish I could give you a ballpark number or percentage for your content. Unfortunately, I can’t. There are just too many variables that define how much you need to invest.

If you want to get a gut feeling, in a 15-minute call, you can chat about your brand and company; I can give you an indication of what you’ll need. Just drop me a DM for my number.

4. Crappy content

Honestly, this is the number one reason for the lack of results. Get your head out of your a** and be upfront. How is the quality of your content? 

Low-quality content is a real issue. The cause varies. It can be the management that's too focused on the brand and not on the customer. It can be the team with a lack of knowledge or focus. And I can think of many other reasons why your content is not what it should be.

If you have a firm belief in content and you invest serious budgets and, still, your content is crap – then you’ve got a whole other problem.

Final words

It s*cks if you’re not seeing the results of your efforts. Aside from annoying, it’s indispensable to get the buy-in from the board and senior management matters to lock in next year’s budget – or prevent loss of budget in the running year.

Need help with all this? I got your back. Drop me a DM, and we can jump on a quick call about how to get started and if I can help you or if you need something or someone else. 

The 5 most asked questions about content

You ask me the same questions over and over again. My clients. During workshops, keynotes, and calls. 

So, why not write them down? Here's my ‘They ask, you answer’ series on content and strategy.  The questions are in the most asked order. 

1. I want more content for less budget; what are the tips? 
2. What do I need to measure? I struggle with accountability.
3. It takes forever; how can I speed up the process and shorten the time to market?
4. I don’t see the results; what can I do? (this blog)
5. We struggle with ownership; where should content be?

• Bonus: How to prepare for AI; We have no idea what’s its true power; 33% cuts in teams are expected

Click on the links to read more (duh…)

The one thing that’s always missing is how content contributes to the business in overall numbers. And that’s the sh*t that really interests the board and seniors.

Why it matters

Getting the buy-in from the board and senior management matters to lock in next year’s budget – or prevent loss of budget in the running year.

Them wanting to know how content pays off for the business is a legit question. With an answer that got stuck in the vanity metrics and daily operational reporting.

Let me explain

• Vanity metrics: steering on reach and engagement. These are in no way a predictor of sales. And in the end, it’s the sales that count. Right?
   
• Daily operational reporting: usually, we report on campaigns. We jump from campaign to campaign with the vanity metrics. No step back to zoom out to discover how content contributes in the long term.

Managerial KPIs

Choose the metrics for management that reflect the strategy. Your content strategy should be aligned with the business objectives; hence, so should the reporting.

Quarterly or half-yearly, the reason for these long intervals is that these KPIs don’t change overnight; it takes time. Lots of time.

• Content efforts plotted against overall sales 

• SEO performance 


Monthly, if desired by management

• 
High over content planning with campaigns and channels

• Budget reporting: production and media
• Team reporting: FTEs and external help

Content efforts plotted against overall sales 


Plot your content efforts against your overall sales data for a minimum of three years. You need the long-term to get insights. Doing this over a 3 or 6-month timespan is useless. 

Vertical ax (left):  the overall sales 

Horizontal ax: all content efforts; e.g., ‘Campaign XYZ, ‘publication help content’, ‘SEO optimalisation content’, ‘...’.  Including an overview of when you added resources to the team, hired a new agency, or budget cuts. 

Are there any specific milestones or events that influence the sales? E.g., the big launch of a new product or a pandemic lockdown, include these as well. 

Vertical ax (right): budgets for production and for media. Mention both, as you need both to create impact. 


SEO performance 


This is an indication of your leadership and digital maturity. The better your content, the better your SEO ranking. 

Without jumping into the SEO details, as this is an expertise by itself, I suggest you aim for a top-five position on the keywords people use to search for your product - not your brand name. 


If you rank outside of the top ten, your content is crappy, and your www technology is outdated. This is signal you have a bigger problem than just your content.


High over content planning with campaigns and channels


This one is more for the monthly reporting. The objective is to keep the management and stakeholders involved. You give an overview of the campaigns you are running and how you are performing against internal and external benchmarks.

Include your lessons learned and how you will implement these in the following campaigns and content production. 

Please. Keep this high level, and don’t fall into the pitfall of vanity metrics. Detials don’t matter to management - they want to know how you are doing and moving forward.

Budget reporting: production and media

Another thing that matters is how you are doing moneywise. What is the allocated budget, and how are you performing? Are you on track, overspending, or understanding? 

This underspending may sound weird. However, I encountered a few brands that were underspending on their media budget due to the suboptimal setup of the campaigns and audience building: too narrow or too conversion-focused. Or your content is so crappy content that the social channels didn’t use all media budget - remember, if the content is crappy, the socials don’t push it as it has no engagement.

Also, include your lessons learned on the budget; it’s the process and how you are going to improve.

Team reporting: FTEs and agencies

The war for talent has started. More often than not, a brand has many vacancies in its content team. Therefore, this is a valid metric to include in the reporting. Do you have the team in place to perform, or are you understaffed, causing suboptimal results?

Next to the team, you can include your agency management. This goes for production and media agencies. With whom are you working, and how are they performing?

No details for management

Why senior management should get a high-level, long-term reporting

• The details are a matter of the team, not of management 

• The details usually are vanity metrics focused on engagement, likes, 
and clicks 

• The details overshadow the bigger picture 

• The details are mostly short-term focused 


Final words

That having said, reporting on what matters to management isn’t easy. It’s bespoke and depends on the organization and its maturity, and the maturity of the management.

I hope I made you think about how to report to get next year’s budget

Quarterly or half-yearly

• Content efforts plotted against overall sales 

• SEO performance 


Monthly, if desired by management

• 
High over content planning with campaigns and channels

• Budget reporting: production and media
• Team reporting: FTEs and external help

Need help with all this? I got your back. Drop me a DM, and we can jump on a quick call about how to get started and if I can help you or if you need something or someone else.

The 5 most asked questions about content

You ask me the same questions over and over again. My clients. During workshops, keynotes, and calls. 

So, why not write them down? Here's my ‘They ask, you answer’ series on content and strategy.  The questions are in the most asked order. 

1. I want more content for less budget; what are the tips? 
2. What do I need to measure? I struggle with accountability. (this blog)
3. It takes forever; how can I speed up the process and shorten the time to market?
4. I don’t see the results; what can I do?
5. We struggle with ownership; where should content be?

• Bonus: How to prepare for AI; We have no idea what’s its true power; 33% cuts in teams are expected

Click on the links to read more (duh…)

Open mindset

This all starts with an open mindset. What I mean is that content is not exclusive to the marketing department. My advice is to involve other departments in your content ideation, production, and evaluation. Content is holistic, about your brand and it travels through all silos and layers. Pretty much a no-brainer, yet in reality content still is silo’ed.

Purpose of your content

Secondly, before you continue to read, you should realize it all starts with the purpose of your content.  Are you a one-way broadcaster or do you want to inspire and interact with your audience to create some kind of relationship?

If you want to engage with your audience, involving webcare can make a huge difference. If done correctly, webcare can be the second engine of your content ideation. The first engine is the brand strategy and marketing calendar — obviously.

Customer-centricity

The third is your customer-centricity.  Do you practice what your preach, do you put your customer in the heart of all your communications?  Do you really listen to their feedback to integrate those insights into your content production? Or are you just broadcasting?

Be honest with yourself. When is the last time you asked for and listened to feedback from your customers? Your webcare agents do this on a daily basis. 

Why webcare

If you really want to create an impact with your content via higher engagement, integrate webcare into the editorial board. The main reason is simple, webcare is the first point of contact with your audience and customers. Webcare knows what makes them tick and what’s going on in their minds.

• Webcare can predict the buzz and the sentiment of the content: if and how are people going to react to this piece of content.
• Based on audience feedback on social posts, webcare can help with content ideation.
• Due to their close contact with the customer, webcare has an overview of your audience’s concerns.

You just need to realize that webcare is not there to pick up the garbage of the marketing and communications department. And they are not only there to fix what others have broken. They are your co-workers and have valuable insights and data. Integrate them in the content team and make them part of the production process.

Webcare and data

As webcare is in close contact with the customer care department, they have an overview of the complaints, concerns, and feedback of your customers. They should have a list of the frequently asked questions and a list of the top 10 complaints about your products and services. Use those insights to produce content to engage with your audience on social.

Next to this, webcare monitors and reacts to social posts, therefore they get direct feedback and suggestions. Use this feedback to create new content. E.g., you sell a natural deodorant, and a mother reacts this product also works amazingly for her teenage son.

Editorial board

This is also pretty easy. Invite the customer care and or webcare department to your editorial board and content meetings. In this meeting, you discuss the content already published, the new content, and the content ideation list.

No editorial board?

If you do not have an editorial board yet, and you just jump from campaign to campaign without any structure, I kindly suggest creating this immediately. If you want to connect to your audience, you need to strategize, plan, and evaluate your content. And this is done in the editorial board, not in a PowerPoint report with some doggy vanity metrics and vague KPIs.

More impact

How this creates more impact? Easy answer. Content that fulfills audience needs, answers their questions, or provides a solution for their problem, by default has higher engagement than broadcasting and boosting your production features and technological advantages. Don't overcomplicate, just create content that adds value and your audience will engage. 

Photocredits: Rachel Claire via Pexels

He explains this from first-hand experience. ‘We use data to discover our audience’s needs and optimize our content on their keywords.' 'Nowadays we publish a little less content with more focus on SEO quality.’ 'This results in hotter leads, as they are better prepared and far more eager to buy. You start the first f2f meeting already a few steps into the sales process.’

* Long read * in this blog you will learn

• First: the definition of help content
• Second: why help content results in hotter leads and shortens the sales process
• Then: how to get your help content
• Followed by: why most brands don’t have this in place

Definition ‘help’ content

If you are not familiar with the Help-Hub-Hero model, please check it out. It originates from YouTube, yet is usable for all content.

Mostly the ‘help’ content is defined as ‘always on’. A continuous flow of campaigns to promote a product or brand. I would like to re-define and add the ‘why you do what you do’ as help content. Actually, start with this content first before you jump on the marketing bandwagon.

Why? Because you need to explain first why your (potential) customers should buy YOUR product instead of the competitors' product. What makes your brand special and your products indispensable or essential to improve their lives.

Please notice this is not sales-driven marketing content. This is being proud and show-and-tell your amazing brand and products. It is functional and slightly emotional. The biggest difference with sales-driven marketing is that there are no call to actions, no funnel, no activations, or promotions.

And more focused on the brand than the product. Read more in 'Build a brand before products'.

Help content claims your leadership par excellence. If you show-and-tell your pride and passion for what you do, and know how to do this in an informative and functional way, you proof that know what you are doing. And that’s (part of) being a leader.

Besides, this content is timeless. And it leans heavily on SEO and SEA, instead of paid social media or other activation channels.

Hotter leads

Why this help content creates hotter leads? Because you functionally answer the audience's common (search) questions. You are audience focussed and not focussed on yourself. People like to be serviced and not to be marketed to. 

Based on experience by Bart Verhulst, having the extended help content in place does result in an absolute number of more leads. And a significantly bigger part of these leads is very hot. ‘People are eager, inspired, and educated by our content, even before they contact us’.

Shorter sales process

‘Once you get to the face-to-face meeting, you notice they have done their ‘homework’ and they are very well informed.’ ‘There is no need to explain our platform anymore, the features, and the specs.’ Bart explains. ‘Compare it to buying a new TV. You do your extensive research online for specs, features, and brands. And then go to your preferred brand to negotiate the best prices possible.’

'It's not just about giving them content when they're already researching a new TV, it's about already entering the space before that - and giving them inspiration on how much enjoyment they would get in the first place from buying a new TV.'

‘So with the leads that enter via your help content, you can skip the first and or second meeting to convince them of your brand and product. By the time we get to the table, potential customers are eager to discuss two things - requirements and cost.'

Why it works, in a nutshell

• Your potential customers search for answers and your help content pops up above the fold in Google: SEO and SEA.
• If they do contact you, they are inspired, enthusiastic, better informed and thus it is easier to close the deal.

Case study: PressPage Guides for new audiences via SEO

Practice what you preach, PressPage developed guides with in-depth insights on 'Brand Newsrooms', 'PR distribution', 'PR Strategy and Planning', and 'How to prepare for Crisis Communications'. The content in these guides is about the industry, trends, tips, and tricks. Anything but praise for PressPage. The objective is first to inform based on audience needs, sales are second. 

A bit more context on their guides - they follow the framework of problem education - solution awareness - solution research. Their goal is to provide potential customers with educational content on the pain points they might be having. Then creating awareness about how they could solve the problem. And finally having content that answers their question about whether or not PressPage is the best solution for them.

With these guides, they aim to reach a new audience. Those who are searching for content on specific PR topics and uses Google for a specific query based on keywords. The business case is a long term, this audience downloads the guides, subscribes for updates, and with time, they contact PressPage for more information and detailed pricing. 

Bart explains there is no need to include these guides prominently at the home page or in the top navigation, as these as pure SEO landing pages. And they are doing their job excellent: generating search traffic. Due to confidentiality, I cannot give you the statistics and details of this traffic. You do can find these guides on their www, a bit hidden in the footer. 

How to get your help content

There are a few sources to get an overview of the help content.

1. Google and YouTube data

First, data by Google and YouTube. Do a reversed search query on the keywords your audiences are using in relation to your industry, brand, competitors, and products. What is the first and second keyword they use? Read more on 'Data for content'

Take those keywords as the answers and develop your content accordingly. Keep in mind this type of content is very functional, descriptive, to the point. No fuzz. No blah blah. No marketing. Forget the polished and shiny content, stick to the functionality.

2. Competitors content

Second, analyze your competitors' content. Not only with the data, the first source, also deep dive in their www. Make a list of their help content topics. And create an H1 and H2 overview: what are the actual words they are using in their content titles? H1 is the main title in a content piece, H2 is a subtitle. Google scans these H1 and H2 to rank your content for SEO. This overview is important to know for the level of functionality in your own copy. Read more on 'Analyse your competitors content'

An example. For an automotive brand who specializes in ‘electrification’ (electric and hybrid), this analysis revealed:
• The search by their audience is very functional. E.g. ‘Hybrid advantage’
• The content of their competitors answered this search in a very descriptive and functional way: [H1] ‘The 10 advantages of hybrid driving’.
• Their own content was polished marketing and emotional: [H1] ‘The best of both worlds’.
By rewriting their H1, H2, and copy, their SEO ranking improves.

3. Sales and customer care input

Third, ask the sales and the customer care department for their input. They have the first contact with (potential) customers and know their questions, worries, and insecurities.

Tips for the help content production

Be extensive. Create minimal viable topic content pages with inexpensive content first. Then develop the expensive content for those pages that actually get visitors.

Once you know what pages and topics get traffic, use different formats. You can tell the same story in a long read, in a video, create a white paper or a slide show. Different people, different preferences to consume content. Just make sure everything is SEO optimized.

Create a list of your help content pages with the URLs. Having an overview is always a good idea.

Make it timeless. So you can push this content over and over again. Yet do a frequent check and update accordingly. A quick tip: schedule the help content maintenance quarterly on your agenda. You can do this in batches or all in one go.

Iterate. I get that it is expensive to produce all content at once, especially with the return on investment in the long term. Create batches and allocate a part of your yearly budget. Or integrate the help content production with campaign content production. It saves costs to do both types of content in one go with your agency.

Mobile-first. A bit of a no-brainer, yet often forgotten. As goes for all content, mobile-first is the way forward. By preference even social-first, yet this can be a step too far at the moment for the help content as you seed via SEO and not via social.

KPI

How to measure success? I suggest using your SEO ranking and visitors on the pages as KPIs. Make it a quarterly or half-yearly KPI as it takes time to get the ranking and generate the traffic.

Link to PR

The nice side effect is to use this help content for PR. Once you send out a press release on a new product or feature, you can add these help pages as cross-selling or ‘more information’ to feed the press.

Make it easy for journalists to create content based on your input. Like all of us, they are busy and like to be serviced with information as much as possible. It’s their job.

Why most brands do not have this in place (yet)

This all sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. In reality, most brands do not have this in place. Given the automotive example above. Or think about a dairy producer who doesn’t claim the story ‘why drinking milk is good for you’. Or a coffee producer who has no SEO content on the number one search ‘how to make a cappuccino’.

In my experience, there are three main reasons:

There is a focus on marketing and sales campaigns. This is the shiny award-winning stuff. The help content on the basics of ‘why you do what you do’ is not that sexy.

The revenu is in the really long term. It takes time to develop this type of content and no immediate results. Again, not sexy.

Last not least, telling ‘why you do what you do’ is often overlooked and taken for granted by the brand. We simply forget to show-and-tell our pride and passion for the brand and its products in the rat-race for the marketing and sales revenue.

Summary

The better your help content, the hotter the leads, and the shorter your sales process. This a commonly overlooked and nice side effect of having your content sh*t together.

Affliation to PressPage

For transparency, I am biased regarding PressPage. I absolutely love their platform and in my opinion, they are the best out there for digital newsroom software. Their amazing list of clients speaks for itself. Next to that, they provided me with their platform to publish my own content. Yet there is no financial affiliation. 

Me-marketing

If you want to hit the ground running with content strategy or do data research, don't hesitate to nudge me for help. With over 20 years of experience and helping great inspiring international clients, happy to share my knowledge and experiences.

• 📱+31 6 245 03 999
• 💌fleurwillemijnvanbeinum@gmail.com
• or check my LinkedIn

Data supports creativity

Quite an open door, yet MediaMonks brings this into practice with two hands-on tips on how to get there. They speak from almost 20 yrs experience, working for top class brands and recognized by some impressive 131 Cannes Lions and 250+ FWA awards. You better take their advice and listen to them. 

First: Trust your agency

'If there is no trust, there is no relationship, and that magic will never happen.' As a brand provide your agency with your internal confidential data and those insights. There are used in your benefit. And this facilitates your agency to produce content that is way more relevant, to the point, and contributes to your business objectives. Win-win. 

Sicco explains 'this (strategic) data does in NO way hamper creativity. It is used to create a dynamic framework where flexibility and creativity are fed by data to create “bespoke” expressions -- the content assets.’ ‘This is where (content)marketing and business meet the interests of consumers.’

Second: Continue to use data

'Use this data-driven-way-of-working not only for the strategy but also for your content production. To be effective and efficient, it is important to adopt a performance-driven approach that recognizes the context in which users interact with the brand. With the note that 'it’s vital that the (content)message is designed from the ground up, to best fit its (distribution) platform.'

This performance and best-fit are measured in KPIs and real-time data. This data continuously feeds the dynamic framework to improve content assets. 'Be cheaper, faster, and better by using data to strengthen your content.' 

Not affiliated

Small side note for transparency. I am not affiliated with MediaMonks, I just like the agency. In my humble opinion, they are one of the best agencies out there. I have been working with them since 2008.  Back in those days, they saved my ass by going 24/7 to launch the website for my client within a few days. And in 2020, my clients and I are still going strong with them. Sure they got their flaws like any other agency, yet when they say they deliver, they deliver. 

MediaMonks, the content practice of S4

• How to structure content
• Data for content
• Analyse your competitors content
• Minimum viable content pages
• How to measure your goals and progress

In these blogs, you learn how you can use (free) data for your content strategy. From a reversed research on Google and YouTube to discover your audience need, based on their search queries. To analysing your competitor's content on the H1 and H2 to have a better ranking in SEO.

Including how you can be smarter with your budgets. Produce content and boost media only for those content pages that actually work. 

This data is almost for free, or at a relatively low investment. A search query on Google and YouTube will costs you a ballpark of 10k to 15k. Making a competitor analysis will cost you about 1h per keyword. Creating minimal viable content pages just takes time and effort. 

Get more bang for your buck using data.

Flipping the perspective, start with cheap minimal viable content. Use data. Then expand and scale up with expensive content for what works. It sounds simple and it is simple if you consider a few steps. 

SEO to start

Your biggest friend is data. First, you start with SEO as the main traffic driver. SEO is for 'free', no media budget needed.

Keywords

Get your main keywords in line with your content structure. Read more in 'Data for content' how to get them. 

To start, focus on one keyword or a specific combination of keywords for your pilot project. Then 'Analyse your competitors content' for better SEO ranking. Steal-copy-paste-and-adapt with pride.

Build a bunch of SEO optimized pages around this specific keyword.

Content pages

Create about 5 to 10 different landing pages for that one keyword. Each page with a different setup, different angel, different content. Variation is key. At the same time, you use 'cheap' content. The bare minimum text and visuals to answer the search query by your audience.

Minimal viable content

Meaning, do not produce expensive videos, go overboard in extensive long reads, create whitepapers, set up sales funnels, inspiring infographics, etcetera. Use an excellent copywriter and get great non-stock visuals. And you are good enough to start.

This 'minimal viable content' concept is stolen from the MVP in agile product development. If it works for products, for sure it can work for content. It is the philosophy and mindset that makes you nimble and fast to iteratively learn what works - before investing all of your budgets.

Data

Analyze weekly or monthly which pages are visited the most. Ergo, which page answers the search query and information needs by your audience. Rank the highest number of visitors, and score on the call to action.

This analysis takes time. After about 3 to 6 months you have a trend. Delete what doesn't work. Expand what works.

Now is the time to create that really kick-ass unicorn magic sparkling content. Spend serious time and money to produce this. Now it is worth the investment because you already know what works and what doesn't.

Rinse wash repeat

Do it again for the same keyword. SEO is a continuous process and does not end. Due to changes in your audiences' needs, changes in SEO, and changes in society, you always need to be monitoring and analyzing to learn and improve.

And do it again for your other keywords.

Expand to paid channels

Once you know what works, expand the distribution. From SEO to other channels as social and SEA. Now is the time to invest your media budget for boosting. 

Use your content eco-system for the overview. 

Budget savings

By producing and boosting 'expensive' content for what actually works, you can save yourself a lot of budget and time.  

SEO placeholder strategy

Very nice 'how to' by Klik Proces. Unfortunately only in Dutch available. 

• Why this works
• Requirements
• Cases
• How to implement this yourself

Break the content silos

As 'content' mostly lives within the marketing department, there is a lack of an overview of all content produced and distributed by PR, corp comms, HR for talent and recruitment, and customer care. When why what where does your audience stumbles upon your message, online and offline?

Content is undeserved one of the most silo'ed elements of a brand. Good news, it is easy to fix once you know the trick. 

Content eco-system

A visual overview helps to align all your touchpoints with a consistent and integrated message. Be detailed for the distribution; divide the touchpoints into audiences and topics. 

• In the center is your 'content house': your owned channels: www's, apps, organic SEO. The central place where you (should) publish all your content. From branded stories to commercial activations and campaigns.
• Surrounded by an overview of the channels to get eyeballs and to drive traffic. From social to search, to performance, to CRM, to the e-shop, and to your offline touchpoints as TVC, DOOH, brick and mortar shops with POS and product packaging.

Benefits

There are three main benefits of having a content eco-system in place. 

First, you have an overview of all online and offline touchpoints for content. To have an integrated story or campaign, you now can verify what content assets you need for which channel and where to push it with media spend. Small side note for those perfectionists out there, no need to include all touchpoints in every piece of content or campaign. The purpose of an overview is for you to know what you have available, then to decide what you are going to use. 

Second, in line with media spending, you have an overview of all paid and unpaid channels. If you push a social campaign, in one glance you know you have to spend the media budget on SEA as well. In reality, you seldom cross the bridge between marketing campaigns on social and SEA or even CRM. This visual overview helps. 

Last but not the least, crisis communications. You never know when the sh*t hits the fan, expect the unexpected and be prepared. No need to explain it is indispensable to have one overview. A checklist with all touchpoints and channels, including audiences and topics, paid and unpaid. 

Message over execution

The content eco-system is not about using social to always drive the traffic to the website or app. It is about your story and message. How this is executed into content assets depends on the chosen touchpoints and channels. On social, you go for native social content and shop-in-channel. For SEA it is about driving traffic.

Mobile-first

If you publish mainly on social, then place the app or mobile pages in the center -- not the www desktop. Meaning, if your traffic originates from social, they are on their mobile, visiting your mobile pages or app. Hence, mobile visitors are a larger number than desktop visitors. Therefore, place the mobile-optimized content in the center and make this more important than the desktop content. 

It seems a small difference, yet the difference in mindset is huge. Social savvy content on a mobile website means sticking to the social drumbeat. Short reads, easy to scan and digest, fast-paced and pleasant on the eye with clear formatting and bold writing. Short. Simple. To the point. No fuzz.

Read more on mobile and social first

Employees

'Employees' can be a channel to include in the content eco-system. Your coworkers can act as an amazing channel to spread the passion and enthusiasm for the brand and products. The initial reason I didn't include them is to empower, motivate, and inspire them to spread your content, is more aligned with internal communications. And I am not an expert in this area. 

On the other hand, if your content is of high quality and adds value, your coworkers will spread the word by themselves. Then there is no need for a reward system -- by internal comms -- to make them do it.

Hence, including your employees in the content eco-system has all to do with the quality of your content and not the department or silo within the organization. Thanks to Paul for nudging me on this topic. 

How to make a content eco-system

A few tips and tricks on how to create your own content eco-system for the visual overview. 

• Own it. Make one person responsible for the content eco-system and to keep it up to date. 
• It is tailored. There is no such thing as a content eco-system template. Every brand, company, and its channels are different. 
• Include all departments of the organization, interview all stakeholders. An easy trick is to get the organigram of the company and you work through every silo. 
• Sketch, iterate, adjust, and test. It is a living document and subject to changes. 

  A tangible and practical example of how I use the content eco-system for publishing my book.

Note

The content eco-system presented in this blog is completely fictional and not related to any of my clients. 

No need to explain an SEO strategy drives organic growth, is a ‘cheap’ way to drive traffic, and therefore is an indispensable part of your content strategy. Yet, once you know what content to produce, you have your themes, and you decided to go short-form or long-form, how to crack the code, and get a high ranking?

Simple, check out your competitors. This is so obvious and simple, yet actually never done by anybody. It’s a bonus and you take your advantage.

How to do the copy analysis 

It sounds complicated, actually, it is pretty easy once you know the trick. The keyword competitor SEO analysis for one keyword should take you about one hour. Start with your main themes, about 4 to 8. And you can always expand this SEO competitor analysis to all other keywords you want to be found on.

• Pick the keyword you want to rank on, in line with the core of your content piece and themes.
• Tip: open an incognito browser window to prevent your former search to influence the results.
• Go to Google and type in the keyword. Look at the organic top 5 or 10 first page results. Pick the credible sources. Reference: only select the links you would click on yourself and discharge the dodgy ones.
• Copy-paste the H1 and H2 headers from those pages and put them in excel. If there are a lot of H3, include these as well.
• Include the url in the excel. Learning by doing, I forgot this in the 'content' example.
• Make an analysis, break the H1 and H2 copy down in common topics and similarities.
• Tip: look at the style of writing. Depending on your industry, this writing can be very functional and not fancy marketing-driven at all. You should always write a ‘what’s in it for me’ copy, based on the needs of your audience. People google to find an answer to their question and to fulfill their needs, not to pro-actively read your beautifully written marketing sales pitch.

Go pro for copy

Now you know the difference between your competitors and your own copy. Three more tips.

First, get the copy pro on board for writing the content. It is an art, it is craftsmanship. The copy will make or break your content and your SEO ranking.

Second, involve your technical agency for the nerdy stuff in the backend to optimize for SEO. A part of the ranking is a threesome between the message, the copy and visuals, and the coding.

Last, not least. Obviously, there is much more to ranking on SEO than mentioned in this short blog. Think about URL structure, the naming of visuals, alt text, and meta tags.

Deep-dive in the nerdy details, do your homework, and optimize continuously. SEO is not a one-off, nor limited to copy. 

Google and Bing

Usually, in the EU, we focus on Google. Yet, don’t rule out Bing as a search engine. It is on the rise due to voice search, Bing is the go-to source for Alexa and Cortana if they cannot find the answer immediately. Great insights on voice search by The Drum.

Sources

A bit from myself and a bit stolen with pride from Content Marketing Institute https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/11/rank-blog-top-google/. And others https://blog.parse.ly/post/1511/the-ultimate-referral-guide-to-your-audience/, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/search/google-website-seo/.

And some more background on SEO and the options to improve your ranking https://expresstext.net/blog/search-engine-optimization/

Don't be ancient. Do your homework before you start producing content. Three easy steps:

1. Research: Google data and other data
2. Plot the outcome on your themes
3. Competitor SEO analysis

* Warning: this is a long read *

Research: Google and YT data

A simple, cheap, and excellent check to gain insights into what your audience actually wants. In a nutshell: discover the Google and YouTube search queries related to your industry, brand and products. I promise you, you will be surprised by the outcome.

Having done this research for several clients, time overtime again, the top 3 searches revealed content needs the brand never imagined.

They all have in common that the searches relate to the ‘help’ content, the bare basics of your products. None of them had this specific content in place. The good news is, neither had their competitors…. From the different roasting processes of coffee beans, the how-to booze recipes plus hacks, to the specific details on the local road-taxes and warranty related to electric cars.

More on reverse search and the four main benefits

1. Reveal the top 3 of their concerns: what is your audience searching
2. Discover the unknown topics: you think in features, they look for solutions
3. Use the search intent to give them your solution
4. Know the volume to prevent producing unread content

Use reverse search to create relevant content

This Google and YouTube research will cost you roughly between € 7k for local and € 15k for global. With the condition, you have a crystal-clear and tight briefing for your agency. This can be your media agency or your creative agency. You can also hire a specialized data agency. Keep in mind it takes more time to brief a new agency as they do not know your brand and are not familiar with the organization.

Speaking from experience, my advice: use your creative agency. As the media agency is more inclined to develop an SEO and SEA strategy. That is exactly not what you are looking for. You want to gain insights into the audience's needs to use in your (creative) content strategy.

How to brief your agency

As this type of research is quite new for agencies, a few suggestions for what to include in the brief. Drill down the desired output and make sure they get your objectives and what you are looking for. Your executive brief should fit on 1 A4 in simplicity. If you need a death-by-powerpoint-deck, you have to learn to brief. The better your brief, the better the outcome.

• Objective: insights for content strategy
• Themes: list of topics you want to be found on
• Keywords: industry, brand, and product
• Competitors names: stick to main competitors
• Countries or region: stick to the most important
• Language(s)

Don’t include the details of your audience or personas. Keep it open to discover.

Ask the agency to do broad research. The goal is to find out if there are more keywords or specific combinations used. Can these be grouped, is there a common theme, is there a trend? What are the top 10 searches for your industry, brand, and your competitors?

Research: Google Analytics

Do a scan of your website and deep dive into the GA. What are the most and least visited pages? Include the origin of the traffic in this overview, the internal and external sources. This gives insights into how your www is actually used and what generates traffic.

This research often reveals a dis-balance between your content production and the actual audience behavior. If the majority of your content is on product features and the top 3 pages are ‘sustainability’, ‘marketing campaigns’, and ‘contact’ — then you have some amazing opportunities to stand out and to be distinctive. And you have some work to do.

Research: Google content needs

Research by Google and Kantar (2018) reveals the needs of the audience for the content. In a nutshell, there are six categories: ‘surprise me’, ‘thrill me’, ‘impress me’, ‘educate me’, ‘reassure me’ and ‘help me’. Note these are consumer-focused and not product or feature focused.

Plot your existing content and planned content against these categories. Do they line up or are you way off track and too much inside-out focused? Again, to create an impact with your content, your audience's needs are central. That defines what they actually want to read. It is not about you as the brand and about your products.

As Vogue wanted to increase their online readers base and their reach, they flipped their perspective. Research amongst their readers revealed their content needs. No surprise these align with the Google categories.

With some local differences in the order of importance:

1. Inspire me: the minority of actual content — most wanted
2. Teach me
3. Entertain me
4. Keep me up to date: 38% of actual content — least read content by the audience
5. Make me socially responsible: 2% of actual content — 53% of the audience wants this
6. Connect me

Easy to change category

There is no direct need to produce new content once you know the preferred categories. It is easy to adapt the ‘keep me up to date’ to ‘inspire me’ content. First, write a more inspiring title, and second, showcase different perspectives and points of view in the text itself.

Please view the talk by Sarah Marshall, head of audience growth by ‘Vogue International’ to get all the insights and details.

Research: Customer care and webcare

This department has the first line of (social media) contact with your audience. They know as nobody else what triggers them, their questions, and frustrations. Use them as a source to define what content is needed.

A few years ago, I was responsible for the setup of the new in-house webcare department for an insurance company. As sitting next to the boys and girls, I was reading and listening in on their conversations. Noticing the majority of the cases were questions by pregnant women on the insurance coverage.

Presuming our clients preferred to be independent and actually not wanting to chat with us, and presuming we do have these insurance conditions and fine print online… we concluded that our www-information was too hidden and scattered on several pages. And when the content was found, it was not clear enough. Hence, we did the content audit and rewrote the existing content. Furthermore, we created a merged overview-page with all pregnancy-related information. Provided with a short url and a targeted social campaign, we decreased the workload on the webcare team by significant numbers.

Plot the outcome on your themes

Pretty much an open door, you should use these insights to (re)define your themes to structure your content.

Imagine, you are a coffee company and the research shows your audience wants to know the difference between arabica and robusta, light roast, and dark roast. This could be your first theme to explain the basics of coffee beans. 

The same goes for when your audience is looking for how-to and recipes for a cappuccino. And they want to know the difference between an iced coffee and a cold brew, or a ristretto and espresso... here you have your second theme.

Read more on 'How to structure content'

Competitor SEO analysis

Once you know what content to produce, check out your competitors, and how they rank on SEO. 

Sneak preview how-to:

• Open an anonymous window in Google,
• type in the keyword and
• make a list of the first 10 content items.
• Check these pages on their H1, H2, and url,
• use these insights to produce your own content accordingly.

Me-marketing

If you want to hit the ground running with content strategy or do data research, don't hesitate to nudge me for help. With over 20 years of experience and helping great inspiring international clients, happy to share my knowledge and experiences. 

• 📱+31 6 245 03 999
• 💌fleurwillemijnvanbeinum@gmail.com
• or check my LinkedIn

Source and credits

All on the Google research with the six audience's needs and the Vogue example is stolen with pride from Cor Hospes in 'De zes contentbehoeften van jouw publiek' hope it Google translates. Next to the Vogue example, Cor also explains how BBC World Services nailed it and an interesting SXSW talk by BuzzFeed. Great read and he is worth a follow.

What you will learn

1. Tree diagram for an overview
2. Themes for content structure and using tags
3. Finding the gaps: content as proof
4. Easier content planning

1. Create a tree diagram

No real need to explain why cohesion within your story and content is important, do I? Quite a few struggle to get grip on their content and bring structure in their story. Creating this construction is the more difficult part. It provides a logical flow from one topic to another and aligns all topics with the brands' mission statement, vision, purpose, or claim. Once you know the trick, easy does it.

My personal favorite is a pretty old school. Yet it works like magic, every time again. Maybe the simplicity is the golden nugget to get the overview. Divide what you want to tell into themes, in line with your claim.

As a diagram speaks louder than words, visualize the structure. Three ‘rules’ for the tree diagram:

Topics on the higher level are more general than the sub-topics on the lower level. Meaning the ‘lower’ you get in the tree diagram, the more detailed the (sub)topic per content item. Rule of thumb: stick to one (sub)topic per content item. If you have several, create several content items within the topic.

Topics per diagram-level should match up on the same level. For example, you can have the topic ‘alcoholic beverages’ with the sub-topics ‘beer’, ‘wine’, ‘spirit’. The content item-specific on ‘Gin’ ranks within ‘spirit’ and cannot be ranked within ‘alcoholic beverages’.

Rank on themes. The highest level is the brand ‘claim’, directly divided into general themes, which are split up in detailed stories that provide the proof of the claim.

2. Themes

This is pretty easy once you look beyond sales and think of your 'why'. The first step is to check your ‘why you do what you do’; who you are and why you are different than your competitors. This usually is anchored in your purpose, mission, and vision. Simply highlight the keywords. See the automotive example below. 

These keywords are your main themes. If needed, you can add one or two more themes. The secret of success is to keep it simple and stick to your core, your 'why'. Rule of thumb is to have a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 8 themes to keep the focus. Double-check if your themes correspond with your leadership claim. If these do not merge seamlessly, you have a brand identity problem.

The setup of your themes is absolutely a bespoke exercise and there is not a default model. How to divide and balance your content between them, depends on your brand, your strategy, and objectives.

Use Google data to define

With smarter usage of Google, you can produce content your audience actually wants to read. Pretty much an open door, you should use these insights to (re)define your themes to structure your content.

Imagine, you are a coffee company and the research shows your audience wants to know the difference between arabica and robusta, light roast, and dark roast. This could be your first theme to explain the basics of coffee beans.

The same goes for when your audience is looking for how-to and recipes for a cappuccino. And they want to know the difference between an iced coffee and a cold brew, or a ristretto and espresso... here you have your second theme.

Read more on 'Data for content'

Naming the themes

The naming of themes is also a bespoke exercise with the biggest pitfall to think inside-out. The naming of the themes is audience focused. Think about what words your audience is actually looking for and those to name your theme. Sounds pretty obvious, in practice, this is often overseen and forgotten. Resulting in theme names full of inside-out BS marketing jargon.

E.g. the theme is ‘electrification’, the actual name of this theme should be ‘electric driving’ or even ‘EV’.

Rule of thumb: keep it short and simple, do not try to impress.

Hack: use the keywords your audience most likely will use in Google.

Themes and #

Topics, themes, or tags. Three different words, with more or less the same meaning. Once you get into the actual content production, I prefer ‘tag’. Effectiveness of using # is already proven on social and adapted on the websites for search and discovery. A great example is the tagging used by news.airbnb.com to unlock the content and set up the pages and landing pages. The same trick applies to thinklikeapublisher.com.

Integrate

If you actually want to be Google-found on your themes, integrate these as the backbone for the navigation of your website. If ‘electric driving’ is part of your leadership claim, then ‘electric driving’ is in your main website navigation. Sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. In reality, most brands forget this important detail.

3. Content as proof and finding the gap

Your content supporting the theme is the actual proof of your claim. In other words, if you do not have enough in-depth content within your theme ‘sustainability’, you are not credible. And you are perceived as a fake. This lines up with your proactive defense reputation content.

Plot the existing content on your themes to discover the gaps in your communication. Know what content is still needed to endorse your leadership. Next to that, you can also discover an overload of content on a specific theme.

If your content publication is off-balance over the themes, ask yourself if you selected the right themes or if you are lacking in content production.

4. Easier content planning

Once you have the birds-eye overview on the proof in your content, it gets easier to plan. Four advantages: long-form or short-form, prevent duplicates, facilitate ideation, and nay-saying.

Long-form content needs

You know which of your themes are in need and suitable for more explanation and background information. By creating in-depth long-form content you can claim your thought leadership and share your knowledge on this topic. By developing the long-form content you differentiate from your competitors and you can stand out. With a very nice side effect, you rank higher in SEO.

Read more on 'Long-form content on the rise'

No duplicates

By having the visual overview, you can spot if you already have (sufficient) content on the specific topic. Then decide to update or expand the existing content or replace it with something new.

Content ideation

Another advantage is that you can use the tree diagram to plot new ideas for content items. As soon as you think of a new content item, plot it within a theme. In this way, you can create a hands-on tangible ideation list of content items for future usage.

Nay-Saying

Last but not least, having the themes helps you to say ‘no’ to content that is off-topic. Often there is some internal desire to produce ego polishing content that cannot be plotted within one of the themes. Having this theme-based content structure makes it easier to focus and politely decline any non-strategy based content requests.

Source and notes

With thanks to the book 'Schrijven met Effect' by Mariet Hermans, unfortunately only available in Dutch. Small note, the first few chapters are interesting for the 'how-to develop the tree diagram'. The rest of the book is more for students learning how to write a thesis. 

The diagram of the automotive example is completely fictional and not related to any of my clients. 

A trend in the making and now accelerated by Covid-19. The need for long-form content is growing by the week. 

Maybe it is me, I notice that the majority of the current brand content says about exactly next to nothing. A brand socially tickles me by making a claim or a statement in about 200 to maximum 300 words, or in 2mins video for the lazy readers. Clicking through to the actual content item, an explanation, the rationale, or other information is missing. 

This isn’t exclusive to brands, to (news)publishers as well. In the hunt for the readers and to be the first, the news becomes entertainment with the objective to sell advertising pixels or seconds. In addition, the fast-paced superficial social channels used to generate traffic, made the short even shorter.

Outline of this blog

What are the underlying causes and how to get your long-form content production in place?

• Definitions of long and short-form content
• 3 Reasons for the growing popularity of long-form content
• Tips for how to create long-form content

Definition long-form

First of all, what is long-form content? In Wikipedia terminology 'journalism’: 'Long-form journalism is a branch of journalism dedicated to longer articles with larger amounts of content. Typically this will be between 1,000 and 20,000 words. Long-form articles often take the form of creative nonfiction or narrative journalism.'

Next to the above, the long-form content explains, clarifies, and gives background information on the topic. It puts things in perspective and in a setting to really understand ‘what’ and ‘why’ is happening.

Social illusion

It is a fairy tale that long-form content is not suitable for online or even social media. You will do fine if your content is written to be read on a (mobile) screen and has a clear structure. Your audience will read or watch it as long as it captures his interest and adds value. It is all about quality first and the easiness to consume the content second. The growing popularity of Medium says it all.

Don’t be fooled, it is an illusion that there is a golden rule for the length of any content to be successful on digital, in writing, or in video.

Definition short-form

Short, shorter, shortest was the trend. Catching the attention in 1.5 seconds on the mobile, in 2.5 seconds at the desktop. We are in a rat race to produce the shortest content possible. With YouTube bumper ads as short as 6 seconds.

You will be surprised how much of a story you can tell in those split seconds. No doubt you can broadcast your message and share relevant information. Speedreading, fast-paced cycling images, or animations are the way to shorten the ad.

Size matters

Yet, as for other topics as well, size does matter. And we don’t always need to be fast and short. Think about the popularity of the 1+hour podcasts. Or some amazing extended YouTube documentaries. Let alone the popularity of IGTV. And don’t forget about the extensive background articles to explain innovation, features or specs. Or the several Golden Lions for up to 90 minutes documentaries (read more below). They all got a long-form content format in common.

As short as possible, as long as needed

As mentioned, your audience is looking for relevance and quality. Just stick to the simple rule ‘As short as possible, as long as needed.’ Two tips:

1. Choose: create short or long-form. Don’t get stuck in the middle to try to write a long read with a short read mentality. That for sure results in using fluff to fill the space.
2. Be distinctive: do not try to squeeze 'all' in the shortest format. This results in producing ‘more of the same’ and you fail to tell your audience something new and to be distinctive. By being too short, you repeat the open doors and you will not stand out.

How to combine short and long-form content

A simple trick for social content advertising is to produce several length assets and let the algorithm select the best ad for the best audience. All based on your KPI and objectives. Mixing assets is proven more effective than serving one or two lengths. (Source: Facebook Research 2019)

3 Reasons for the rise of long-form content

Roughly the reasons for the increasing popularity can be divided into three elements.

First: SVOD domination

The increase of the Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) dominated world makes it harder for brands to reach customers and create awareness via ‘traditional’ TVC advertising.

‘Much has been stated about the challenge for brands today that want to reach consumers when more of their audience are spending their time (and attention) within SVOD closed content eco-systems like Disney+, with limited traditional advertising or media placement opportunities.’ ‘This means it is time for brands to understand the need to, and effectiveness of, investing in longer-form storytelling to reach their audiences effectively.’

‘Resulting in Golden Lions Corazon (Give Your Heart) 48-minutes content for registration of organ donors. And for ‘5B' a 90-minute documentary by Johnson & Johnson to uncover the story of nurses on the front lines of the AIDS crisis.’ ‘Gaining consumers’ attention in the future isn’t just about understanding pathways to purchase and how to target audiences efficiently, but developing our ability as advertisers to create branded entertainment with a small b and big E.’

Source and edited quote from a Thinking Long Form – Lessons from The Lions by Cannes Lions.

Second: Covid-19

By the #stayinghome and #WFH (Working From Home), including the closure of the schools, cancelation of events, we are currently more used to educate ourselves and our children via online. Long-form content is indispensable for this. The Covid-19 is an accelerator for online learning and studying.

As I am no fortune teller, I cannot predict the future. Yet, I do expect this ‘new’ long-form educational behavior is here to stay since we are accustomed to it by the last few bizarre months at and in-home. A study by Kantar shows there is an increase in the need for long-form video in China during the lockdown. Source: Born Social webinar.

Third: fake news and proof

Also accelerated by Covid-19, the fake news. This was already a hot topic, now even more important than ever.

If we learned one thing from the last weeks, it is not to believe anything we read on social and to do news and background check if we have any doubts. Meaning, we are more prone to go to Google and search for the source and the credits. This is a big opportunity (for brands) to have your long-form content explaining your ‘why’ and delivering your ‘proof’ in the long-form content.

For example: if you are a jeans manufacturer and you claim to be sustainable, you better have your long reads in place that are the proof of your claim on sustainable fabrics and the ecological footprint for your suppliers. If it isn't for your audience, do it for the press who are digging for dirt in slack and the offseason. 

How to create long-form content

To wrap up and give you some tangible advice, a few tips on how to create long-form content.

1. Choose. Go short or go long. Don't get stuck in the middle. Become distinctive. 
2. No fluff. As short as possible as long as needed. Don't abuse words to fill the pages. 
3. From expensive high-end production to fast produced authentic. There is no need to be overly polished and have professional content. It is about the message and actual content, not the form. 
4. Stick to one topic, or create a series. Simply said, more difficult to do. Try to stick your content item to one topic. If you have more, create a series and seduce your audience to read more.
5. Be social first. Meaning to adapt your content and form to a different drumbeat.
6. Add value for your reader, not for you. This is mentioned as last in the list, maybe it should be the first. If there is no value for your audience, they will not consume your content, however long or short it is.

What stories to tell in your long-form content? That's a different topic. Read more on 'How to structure content' with insights, tips, and tricks to create a diagram for an overview, to find the gaps, and to define where to produce long-form content. 

Explained by example

Let me explain the concept first before going into the theoretical details. With something almost everyone personally can relate to 'how to lose 15 pounds'.

All the credits to the podcast 'Chasing Excellence, '#116 Turning broad goals into concrete action' by Ben Bergeron. Stolen with pride. I have written down a part of his show, edited to improve readability.

Turn a broad goal into concrete actions

'How can you turn a broad goal into what you can do today to achieve it? How to have a system of accountability that allows you to be effective on a regular basis?'

'One of the solutions to make things happen is accountability.' 

First step 'Why'

'You begin with the higher level ideas. the ‘why’ behind it’. For example: ‘I want to get in shape’. Ask yourself 'Why do you want to get in shape?’

‘You have to answer that question first. You can’t leave it at that. Because what happens is that, if your 'why' doesn’t hurt enough, you are not going to do it.'

'You have to figure out, what it is you are trying to solve. How important is that to you? If it is something like ‘I need to get in shape because if I don’t …' or 'I need to change my lifestyle, if I don’t, the doctor said, I am going to die in six months.’ That’s a pretty big why. Most people in that situation change what they are doing.'

'You have to start with a really big thing, with a big why. If the why is not big enough you will not be as successful as you could be.'

'You need a big why to withstand some struggle and adversity along the way. And you are going to be excited to be held accountable along the way.' 

Second step 'get specific'

'From there you need to get specific. From motivational qualitative specific metrics (mission and vision) into specific objectives to narrow it down to one thing. What fires you up and gets you out of bed. From there, break it down into smart, measurable key results.'

'Have between 3 to 5 goals (and key results).'

'Then you break these goals into quarters, as landmarks. You can hold your attention for about three months. And at the end of these 90 days, you have a quarterly check-in and you ask yourself how you did. Schedule this in your google calendar en hold yourself accountable.'

'This is the magic. This is the accountability everyone else is missing when they make New Year's resolutions goals. They start and they are going for ten days and then the end of the year comes up and ‘I don’t really remember what they were…’

'Every single quarter you are going to check in to see if you are tracking to hit your one years’ and you can have different quarterlies along the way.'

Example: 'How to lose 15 pounds' and your why

'For example, you want to lose 15 pounds this year. The first question I ask is ‘why?’, Because what you created there is the metric. I don’t know if that really gets you geared up or not. So ‘why do you want to lose 15 pounds’?'

‘I want to lose 15 pounds because I want to look more confident on the beach.’

‘Why do you want to look more confident on the beach?’

‘Because I am looking for a romantic partner.’

‘Now we are getting to something, this is actually a meaningful thing. You want more confidence. It is not about those 15 pounds. What you want to do, is to have more confidence to find a potential partner. Now we are getting to your real ‘why’. What we do is to spend some time formulating this, that resonates, that’s real. Losing the 15 pounds is one of the things to get to your end goal, finding that romantic partner. Now we have the why behind that.'

We got two things now:

• the big overarching thing that makes it a bit sexier and rememberable: the why is to 'find a romantic partner'
• the specific objective is to ‘lose 15 pounds next year’

Objective and key results [OKR]

'From there what we do is to define ‘what do we believe we need to do in the next 90 days to get there’. Break it down into quarterly objective(s). And put these completely inside your control. 'You can’t just say I need to lose 5 pounds. We need to turn that objective into actionable and controllable things that are going to help you lose those 5 pounds, your key results. 

'The 90-day objective is to ‘lose 5 pounds.’

'The corresponding key results are what you need to make sure you do, to lose those 5 pounds in that quarter.'

 What are the things you must do that are totally in your control?' Your key results can be, like, ‘no desserts’ or ‘no eating out’ and ‘working out consistency’. Now, let’s make these three super-specific and measurable.

• ‘You are going to CrossFit 4 days a week’
• ‘you are going to eat out only once a week’
• ‘no desserts except for Saturday night’

The secret is the check-in

'Now we have this... Every single week, at the same time, we are going to check-in. With a coach, with a business partner or with yourself. We are going through your key results and track how did we last week. And you are going to hold yourself accountable.'

'It is amazing what checking a box does for people. It is amazing what social pressure can do. This is the secret sauce.'

'You go through the specific results: ‘done’ or ‘not done’. If you have a miss, talk about why you missed that. Now we are doing something, we are solving an issue. Than we are getting to that cause again, zoom out and ask ‘why’ you had a miss.

‘It was really tough.’

‘Why was it tough?’

Pull it back a few dominos and we might find things like obstacles we didn’t even realize; like ‘my schedule is this’, or ‘we are not grocery shopping enough’ or ... we might find so many things. Now we are solving things along the way to clear the obstacles that allow you to achieve your goal. And become accountable on a weekly basis.

If you rinse, wash, repeat that process, 12 times over a quarter, we get to the end of the quarter and we do another check-in. Depending on the result, create the next set of accountabilities for the next quarter.

Find you why, define your goals and the specific actions within your control to get there. Track on a weekly basis. Figure it out the obstacles and solve them. Take ownership yourself. What is causing them and then make the changes.

The power is being accountable

The power is in the peer pressure. Being accountable to some else, to do this in person, look them in the eye and say ‘I didn’t do that’. We, human beings, feel the responsibility towards each other to follow through to our word. It creates a lot of accountability along the way. (Not saying you cannot do it on your own as well.)

This is the secret to get your business to move forward, This is the secret to get your yearly goals and resolutions, to move the needle for you personally. You need to answer on a weekly basis if you are doing these things to achieve quarterly objectives that stack up to your one year.

OKR theory explained

A simple goal setting system and to keep track of your progress is the ‘Objective and Key Results’ [OKR] methodology. It describes your ’what we think is important and why this is important’ plus ‘how do we get there’. In the meanwhile, it smashes those nasty departmental silos. 

In all honesty, the terminology 'OKR' falsely appears to be a buzz word. It is anything but. Continue to read and give it a go, it really works and moves the needle. From business objectives into personal objectives. I tried and tested with a project for the Olympics Tokyo 2020 and writing this book.

This OKR methodology blew my mind. I never heard about it and it feels like the best-kept secret. 

Simple and transparent

I like it because of its simplicity, transparency, openness and no-nonsense approach. It gives a tangible measurable direction with accountability and clarity. As all is written down, openly communicated and available for all employees in the company, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and can help each other.

‘With the eruption of social media, transparency is the default setting for our daily lives. It’s the express lane to operating excellence. Yet at most companies today, goals remain secrets.’ This OKR methodology embraces this transparency to enable the entire company to work towards the same goals. Everybody knows the projects the others are working on, therefor it also becomes easier to say ’no’ to requests that are not in line with your OKRs. It makes objectives objective, written down in black and white.

This is used by brands like AOL, BMW, Disney, Dropbox, Exxon, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Oracle, Samsung, Slack, Spotify, and Twitter. If it works for them, for sure it can work for me and you. Described into detail by John Doerr in ‘Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs’.

Objective 'what'

You set your objective, ‘what’ is the most important for the next three, six or even twelve months. What will move the company — and you — forward. The attribution to the business value has to be clear, otherwise, there is no need to invest time and effort in the objective.

Ideally, you stick to 3 or a maximum of 5 objectives quarterly to keep your focus. Significant, concrete, action-oriented, and inspirational. And have one owner for the accountability. If your objective doesn’t fit in one line, it is not clear enough. If you wrote it down in 5 minutes they probably are not good, think.

First, you set the company OKR, than for the team followed by the individual OKRs. By being open and transparent on all objectives from top to down, the entire company can truly work as a team. And help each other.

Key Result 'how'

This is the ‘how’ you are going to get to the objective. Very detailed and specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, measurable and verifiable. Describe the desired outcome, not the activities. Mostly a maximum of five KR’s is what you need to reach the objective.

Four benefits

The four direct benefits of the OKR methodology is to bring focus and commit to priorities, to align and connect for teamwork, to track for accountability, and to stretch for amazing.

Time path

• 4–6 weeks before quarter: Brainstorm Annual and Q1 OKRs for Company. Senior leaders start brainstorming top-line company OKRs. If you’re setting OKRs for Q1, this is also the time to set your annual plan, which can help guide the direction of the company.
• 2 weeks before quarter: Communicate Company-wide OKRs for Upcoming Year and Q. Finalize company OKRs and communicate them to everyone.
• Start of quarter: Communicate Team Q1 OKRs. Based on the company’s OKRs, teams develop their own OKRs and share them at their meetings.
• 1 week after Start of quarter: Share Employee Q1 OKRs. One week after team OKRs are communicated, contributors share their own OKRs. This may require negotiation between contributors and their managers, typically in one-on-one settings.
• Throughout quarter: Employees Track Progress and Check-in. Throughout the quarter, employees measure and share their progress, checking in regularly with their managers.
• Near end of quarter: Employees Reflect and Score Q1 OKRs. Toward the end of the quarter, contributors score their OKRs, perform a self-assessment, and reflect on what they have accomplished.

An example by Intel

Objective: ‘Demonstrate the 8080’s superior performance as compared to the Motorola 6800’

Key Results:

• Deliver five benchmarks. Develop a demo.
• Develop sales training materials for the field force.
• Call on three customers to prove the material works.’

Another example

Objective ‘Win the Indy 500’

Key Results:

• Increase average lap speed by 2 percent
• Test at wind tunnel ten times
• Reduce average pit stop time by one second
• Reduce pit stop errors by 50 percent
• Practice pit stops one hour per day

Read the book

This is just scratching the surface with the essence described in a nutshell. On my personal recommendation, read this book, try it for yourself and never look back. ‘Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs’ by John Doerr

WARC: One of the things that we've heard out of the WARC Toolkit survey is that (marketers) have a challenge making the case for long-term brand investment to convince the CFO, who is dubious of giving that money for something that they can't see is working straight away. How do they make that case?

Binet: “The first thing is to start talking the language of finance. We don’t help our case when we talk about brand-building in terms of awareness, image and ‘touchy-feely’ terms. Brand building is about selling. It’s about revenues and cash flow, but it’s about durable revenues and cash flow, over longer time periods. We have to help CFOs to understand that some marketing activity gives you an immediate short-term delivery of sales,”

Over-reliant on performance marketing

WARC: We’ve recently seen Adidas and eBay acknowledging that they had become addicted to performance marketing and were looking to make a change. How do you think some of these enormous brands have become over-reliant on performance marketing?

Binet: “The addiction to the short-term is not a new phenomenon, but it has got a lot worse. One of the problems is that (for) short-term activities, you get immediate feedback: responses, clicks, or short-term sales. If you are a marketer who's spending money and nervous about what you're getting for your money, you can immediately see that this stuff pays back. It's become easier and easier to see these short-term effects because we have more granular short-term data that comes through faster and faster. With the arrival of e-commerce in particular and digital metrics in general, all of the business is now afflicted by the same problem. All businesses now have short-term metrics, which can distract them from long-term growth. I think that's the real reason why business is becoming a short-termist. It's not quarterly reporting. It's not the short tenure of marketers. It's the data.”

Key metrics

WARC: Is there any specific metric that a brand should be looking for as an indicator that they should make a change? And if they do make that change, what type of metrics seem to see the most improvement?

Binet: “The most important metrics to look at first are financial and business metrics… If you got a strong brand, you will see it in the financials. If you've got a weak one, you'll see it in the financials. The most important brand metrics are to do with sales, profit, price sensitivity, and hard financial spend.

WARC.com

These and more great insights in the interview by WARC

For those who are unfamiliar with WARC, it is an amazing research platform with the best insights and publications on everything that's happing in the marketing world. As they say themselves 'Let’s save the world from ineffective marketing. At the heart of all great marketing is an insight. At WARC, we have the most trusted insights based on evidence enabling your work to be effective.'

From own experience, not cheap to get a subscription, worth every penny.

This is a non-sponsored nor an affiliated post. Sharing this because these insights and this platform are too significant not to know.

‘The more difficult it is to produce the content, the easier it is to stand out.’ ‘The more difficult it is to obtain content about products or brands, the higher the margin. And the less competition there will be…’ And that is exactly what Flinders does. By stepping up and raising that bar. 

The secret of success is the content Flinders creates. The numbers speak for themselves. In just 8 years from the launch of the website in January 2011 to the amazing flagship store in Zaandam (2000m2), Flinders Cafe Groningen, warehouse (9000m2) in Amsterdam, Design Studio Gent. Geert-Jan adds, all shiny and proud, that Flinders is awarded as the ‘Best Furniture Shop’ of the Netherlands in 2019. With an expected sales volume of € 24 million in the same year. 

In-house content team

They mix the traditional product shots provided by the furniture manufacturers, with their own in-house produced content showing the room setting and giving inspiration. The problem with the traditional shots is that is lacking that information for the customer to make a well-funded decision.

‘Yes, It is very time-consuming to make your own content. Especially the images. One shot of a nice room setting can take up to one day. But then again, that makes it possible to differentiate ourselves from the other furniture webshops.’ ‘The content you create and collect should be high res and flexible in size and form so that it can be used for every channel, platform, and social medium.’

The third source of content is the customers themselves. With the MyFlinders program, they collected 700+ inspirational user-generated pictures. Uploaded by the customers with #myflinders. Starting in 2017 the in-house photographer visits their most inspiring homes to extend this content. Used online and in the magazine. Priceless content to tell the Flinders stories and to help sell the products they love.

The Flinders extensive in-house content team consists off

• 2 Copywriters
• 1 SEO specialist
• 1 Visual designer
• 1 Social Media Marketeer
• 1 Trendwatcher and Photographer
• 1 Photographer

The Customer Care and Advice Department give advice to the content team. From insights on the type of interior and furniture advice, the customers are looking for, what information is missing on the website, to how the website should improve from the customers' perspective.

All these content assets are used in the online and offline formats. From obviously their website, with all the product content, trends and inspiration chapters, advice and room setting modules to their print magazines. They even provide interior advice at home. Including taking care of all the hassle that comes with buying and placing new furniture. Flinders is the data-driven e-commerce platform adding value by giving inspiration and providing 'retail as a service'.

Three tips

Use data to set your product and content strategy.

Flinders focuses on the data first. Not on the furniture. Do your research on what your audience is looking for to develop your product inventory. And use the brands to create the Google and YouTube search volume and traffic to generate immediate sales volume in your webshop.

Another really valuable often overseen source of immersive data is the Customer Care department. Involve them for the insights on the first contact with the customers. Align these two sources with the Google trends and the international Furniture Fairs — and you are setting up for success. 

Have your PIM in place

The Product Information System is the heart of the brand. Filled with their own and supplier content. By working closely together with their suppliers, the basic content like pack shots and life pictures are provided in a format that can be uploaded/connected right into the PIM (API, XLS, feed).

Every piece of content is tagged with multiple labels and topics. This is a hell of a job, painstaking and a monumental task. This can be partly automated. However, with the devil in the details, the manual check of all the tags is what makes the difference. 

Content needs attention

After a year your content becomes outdated and definitely needs to be updated. Plan this within the daily operation as it takes a lot of work. Do not only focus on the production of new content.

Source: Flinders, MyFlinders program, Flinders tag on IG

Sounds a bit like a no brainer. Yet in reality, as soon as the content assets are delivered to the media agency, most marketers wrap up and move on to the next campaign. Speaking from experience, even the evaluation afterward is quite superficial and scuffled away in a folder on the company drive. A missed opportunity to learn and improve your content efforts based on insights and data. 

How to and what you need

How to use data and set up an iterative learning campaign after campaign. Create, test, measure, and repeat. Continue the learning cycle. 

What you need:

• KPIs: what do you want to reach producing and distributing content. By preference, you align your KPIs with your business objectives. Content should always contribute to the business and you need to step away from vanity metrics such as followers and engagement. 
• Testing plan: know what hypothesis, audience behavior, you want to test within and between campaigns.
• Threesome between brand - media buying - content creation. These three must work seamlessly together to get insights. Just shifting the procuration and assets list back and forward will not do the job. 
• Real-time data: keep track of success.
• Content assets: a lot, and even a bit more. Variation is key. And use the social algorithm to your advantage and let it decide what content assets are best for your campaign KPI.
• Focus: make the testing and reporting a dedicated task to ensure it gets done.

'Focus on long term learning instead of short term ROI optimization'. Joseph Harper, E-commerce Marketing Manager - Western Europe at Kellogg Company, is a firm believer and shares his three tips for long-term testing of content assets. 

Frequency kills

Yes, you build a brand and imprint your message by repeating your message. Yet, 'most of the time the adds are 1:1 repeated without any variation, let alone testing. For me personally, as for many others, seeing the same ads over and over again, cause irritation. Make sure you have different variations and assets to test. Learn what works, and take from there.'

Channel shapes the content

By lack of budget or time, or maybe even knowledge, you see a lot of ads in the wrong format for the (social) channel. 'The most obvious example is an (edited) TVC shown in social. Allow the channel to shape your content, and not your content to shape the channel'. The social channel has a different heartbeat and asks for a different storyboard, adjusted script, and vertical or square.

Sounds like a no-brainer, in reality, more often than not the same assets are used for different (social) channels. To get the most out of your content production budget, media buying budget, you need to invest in content assets that actually work and do contribute to your objectives. The only way to discover what works is to test and adjust based on data. 

No best practice

'There is no kind of best practice for content.' 'Look at your consumer and your brand what fits and whatnot.' Joseph continues 'It is bespoke. There is not wright of wrong. Just know your audience and use data for long term learning what works for your brand.'

'Things change continuously. Nobody knows what the future will look like. So stay true to what you believe in, who you are, and stay authentic.'

Joseph Harper 

Read the interview with Joseph Harper by the Drum, including photocredits. Copy-paste 'Joseph Harper has developed and executed social and digital strategy, brand side, for the past six years. He spent almost three of these as Bet365’s social media editor, where projects included launching new digital channels and initiatives. At Kellogg's, he works on the digital transformation as social media manager for UK & Ireland across brands like Pringles, Crunchy Nut and Special K.'