Is that Whitney Houston on the radio? Great song. Crank it. Oh, and did you hear? Mike Tyson’s the youngest heavyweight champ ever and the USSR doesn’t want to fight.

Aviator glasses? Right on. You don’t look quite as slick as “Maverick”  (Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”), but those screaming neon-colored parachute pants and your big hair are just perfect.

We’ve arrived. It’s 1986. Let’s get to work.

We’re in some ad agency’s conference room. Lots of brass. Lots of glass. The chairs are cozy. In class are 12 folks who hope to be transformed into advertising copywriter superstars. We paid over $100 to become David Ogilvy and we’re not leaving until we’re have the chops to dominate the world—or at least the world of advertising.

The teacher is a creative director, a real life Don Draper. Ooh. Aah. To me, the job title sounds more bitchin’ than heavyweight champion of the world. You would think I’d remember this legend’s name. I don’t. I’m actually happy I remember my own.

I do remember the lesson he gave. I always will.

The goal is to cruise Madison Avenue in a Rolls Royce.

Nike has set the bar high in consumer advertising. Rolling Stone is running one of the snappiest B2B print campaigns ever (“Perception/Reality”). Us students want to know how to do stuff like that.

Where do you begin?

Nail down a USP.

The teacher says you begin with a thing called the “unique selling proposition,” or USP. He says every company, product or service must have one. Then he tells us his simple process for getting it down on paper.

He uncaps a pleasant-smelling dry erase marker and writes:

How to ________________________________ .

The benefit goes in the blank.

Pencils down please. We’re not ready to write. First, we need to understand the difference between a feature and a benefit. The teacher reels off a real world example. I remember this one exactly as he said it:

• Feature: McDonald’s has drive-up windows.
• Benefit: You can grab a quick breakfast on the way to work without dragging your ass out of the car.

Because I’m a cagey old ad guy and it’s not really 1986, I’ll toss in my own era-appropriate example.

• Feature: CERTS breath mints have Retsyn (scientific sounding ingredients were very hip at the time, even if they were complete BS.)
• Benefit:  People will want to kiss you.
  

So now we’re going to learn…

How to write a great headline.

“How to write a great headline” is not a great headline. The words I chose there, “great headline,” merely describe a feature. According to the teacher, a great headline reveals a benefit.

So here’s a second stab. How to get people to read your ad/email/article.

Ding. We have a winner.

You try it now. Use your product or service. Notice its features. It might be shiny, powerful, scalable, reliable, user-friendly (always hated that term), 100% natural, made in the U.S.A., grown on a tropical island, cheap to buy or free to try.

All these things might be good news, but they’re not benefits and therefore, not headline material. They’re features.

Features are duller than dull. Your job as a great marketing writer is not to begin the story by telling me about the shoes soft supple leather. I don’t care. Tell me they feel good on my feet. Now I’m listening.

Get out your sharpest pencil now.

Try it….

How to ________________________________ .

Stick a benefit in there, a reason to care.

Well done.

Class is almost over.

I want to thank you again for trekking back in time with me. Now, here’s the lesson I learned on that day in 1986 and share with you just 27 short years later.

Fill in the blank that follows “how to” and you have your unique selling proposition.

And it gets even better. You may have your headline too. Think of how many headlines begin with those two words.

“How to” is the formula of formulas. It’s not a creative or unique headline writing technique, but it’s great bait bound to hook readers. It’s why we read non-fiction. We want to know how to do something. Don’t fight it.

And so then, with media stardom and world domination in mind, you unleash the creative juices. You work on writing a better, more unique headline than “How to (blank). Ideas should come. If they don’t, you have a killer fallback position with “How to (blank). It’ll do the trick.

So it works like this.

Dateline: 2013. In addition to contributing educational (and opinionated) articles like this one to sites like this one, I actually sell my time and talent as a copywriter, creative director and content marketer. As such, I need to help clients cut through the crap and establish a clear USP, and then, bake tasty headlines based on it.

When I ask clients, “what’s your USP?” you might not believe how often the room goes silent.

Know what I do? I head for the whiteboard, uncap the marker and write those two little magic words. I say we’re going to fill in the blank first and then get to the creative part second. No “how to” statement, no go. It’s that simple.

Now, here’s one more interesting little headline writing secret I’ve discovered. If the time-tested “how to” feels worn out and cliché, I offer an easy alternative.

When you’ve filled in the blank with an effective benefit, you can go back and strike the words “how” and “to.” What you’re left with is a headline that starts with a verb.

Check it out…

How to finish your blog post with a memorable last line.

Strike “how to.”

How to finish your blog post with a memorable last line.

Ta-da:

Finish your blog post with a memorable last line.

Works every time.

This will be fun. Treat the comment section below as your whiteboard. Resist the temptation to feature a feature. Leave a comment that is: “How to [benefit of your product].” Thank you for playing.

The post (How to) Write a Headline and Become a Media Star appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

But hey, I’m sensitive about some things. I’ll unapologetically tell you that romantic comedy is my favorite movie genre. I would never balk at quiche (I might want some pepper sauce though) and I think George Michael is (was) great. These things count for something, no?

Now that you understand my softer side, I want you to hear me on this…

You social media managers sure whine a lot.

Now when I say “you,” understand of course, I don’t literally mean you. You read our stuff here at Social Media Explorer. You mean business. A weekly dose of Jason Falls and his bullshit-busting articles are right up your alley. Mrs. Kelly tends to call a spade a spade, too and you love her stuff.

You can handle the truth.

So when I say you social media managers are whiners, I’m talking about the ones that, er, well, whine a lot. And golly-gee, can they whine.

They whine in blog posts—not on their company’s websites, but online.  They whine on social media. But these are clever little whiners. The whining is disguised in posts about “unrealistic expectations” or “reasons executives don’t get social media” or “questions you shouldn’t ask.”

Those types of headlines suck me in. I expect to find some interesting revelations, but invariably what I find is whining. It’s often well crafted, or subtle, or creative, but it’s whining nonetheless.

Don’t tell me it ain’t so. I see it every day. Today, I went to one of the web’s leading social media sites and read two pieces of world-class whining in a row. Go ahead and challenge me on it and I’ll serve you a Denny’s Grand Slam plate of whining served with a piping hot cup of bitching and a  glass of fresh-squeezed moaning.

I present the finer whines.

(But also, some highly sensitive solutions.)

“People in the company think I screw around on Facebook all day.”

I hear you. I read it all the time. It’s a bummer. But you know what? If people think you screw around on Facebook all day, I suspect it’s because you screw around on Facebook all day.

Not true? Well then why not prove it? How about you draft up a nice little list of marketing objectives, ways your social media marketing efforts achieve them, and data that proves it? Then, march into the Chief Cynical Officer’s office and (1) show him how many people like his company and (2) what that translates into in business terms.

“Everyone expects me to get the company 10,000 Twitter followers.”

Crazy birds. This is just one example. These types of whines include: make our videos go viral; get more +’s; more downloads; more people subscribing to the blog; and a miscellaneous heap of achievements that strike me as having a whole lot to do with social media.

So excuse me, but do they have the wrong department? Should these types of media milestones be cast upon the custodial crew? Maybe they should be stuffed into the customer service suggestion box? As you can see, I’m kind of confused. But I think I have the answer.

Try this. Get more Twitter followers. Get more subscribers. Get more eyeballs on the videos and get more tweeps talking about your company’s content. Or get your resume together and go whine at another company.

“Very few people in the organization understand what I do.”

Hmm. Tough one. Social media does tend to remain mysterious to a lot of people. But I think I have a solution for this one too.

Tell them what you do. Publish something. Conduct internal training. Send email. Make an informative slideshow. Here’s a wild idea: create an online forum to help employees understand how awesome it can be to exchange ideas and engage online. Would this sort of thing be asking too much? I’m thinking these are fair requests to make of a communications professional.

“I’m not given the resources I need.”

What resources would that be? I hit up this website’s CEO, Nichole Kelly, for answers on this one. She said social media managers tend to ask for: online tools, social media ads, and better content.

These are resources indeed. The e-ticket to get them would appear to be human resources and financial resources—and maybe a little dollop of resourcefulness.

Okay, sure, it’s never easy to extract more money from the boss and it’s harder still when people who don’t appreciate what you do to begin with populate the offices above. But again, whining won’t cut it. You need to beef up your RFR (that’s my new abbreviation for “request for resources”) with compelling arguments and evidence.

More specifically, speaking to the trio of things on the social media manager’s wish list….

We need to (but don’t) invest in the serious tools we need.

Getting a budget, or a bigger budget, for anything is an exercise in presenting potential (and attractive) ROI. So there’s your charter.

Do not lead with “Facebook this” and “Twitter that” or anything that conjures images of kittens and casseroles to social media naysayers. Lead with core business goals. Follow with clear strategies for achieving them. Connect the dots to the tools that will accelerate your success.

We should (but don’t) invest in ads on social media sites.

If the boss already thinks you’re wasting time on social media, you can imagine how quickly you’ll be shown the door when you come looking for money too. You better damn well come prepared with a plan.

What’s the objective? How will it be measured? Why is “said” advertising a fit for achieving objectives X, Y, and Z? Why will the company be increasing (not decreasing or deep-sixing) its online ad budget in the months to come?

Our content isn’t strong enough.

Ain’t it the truth? But WHO cares? If the boss stands between you and the money vault, you better make sure the boss cares.

You may have to go back to content marketing square one and build a case for the strategy at large. The exercise that follows should include a strong case for why quality trumps quantity. Along the way, you’ll want to acknowledge the power of SEO, but explain why engagement matters more.

Finally, when it comes time to finance the hiring of the writing, design and production talent you need, I suggest having some undeniably awesome real-world case studies in your back pocket. You might paint very clear pictures of two competitors—one kicking ass and taking names—and one playing the ever-present copycat game that amounts to wasted time and space.

So there you have it: the flavors of whining I come across most often. I know, I know. It’s tough. Not everyone gets this social media stuff.  Whatcha’ gonna’ do?

I propose you resist any temptation to get defensive and play offense like an ass-kicking social media all-star.

The post Social Media Managers: What’s With All the Whining? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We’re very excited to bring you our first program, “Social Media is as Worthless as the Telephone.” We had the privilege (the playwright asked us to say that) to discuss the inspiration for this script with Barry, who is known not for his contributions to modern theater, but for writing marketing communications, websites,  blog posts, and various forms of online content. Whether it was passion, frustration or simply one too many espressos, Mr. Feldman was extremely animated when he explained the genesis of his one-act play came from having read close to 1,000,000 articles about C-level executives’ disregard for social media.

Many continue deeming social media as trivial. A shocking population of executives, business owners, and even marketing professionals maintain a cavalier attitude standing adamantly by the position social media has low or no value for marketing and sales. All too often, even those that have plugged into Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and the like, are prone to pull the proverbial plug in the early stages. They cite minuscule ROI. They deny a 140-character quip will ever get the cash register to ring. And, of course, they continuously attach social media to the prepubescents demographic who lack any real spending power. Some would actually LOL if: (1) they knew what the common text abbreviation meant and (2) you were to tell them social media is how people engage with one another today.

Our story takes place in the chief executive’s office at a business enterprise. Please silence your mobile phones.  

John
Have a seat Marty. It’s good to see you. Would you like a scotch?

Marty
Scotch sir? It’s 9 o’clock in the morning.

John
Right, right. It is early. Just want you to be comfortable. Would you prefer a beer?

Marty
If it’s okay with you sir, coffee would be just great.

John
Suit yourself buckwheat. And please, call me John.

Marty
Yes sir. Er, Mr. President.

John
John. Call me John.

Marty
Yes, yes, John.

John
So what have you got for me Marty? Connie mentioned you sent me a memo. I never get to the damn things, but she said you wanted to show me something you thought would be useful for the business. Is that right?

Marty
Yes sssssrrrr—yes, John. Let me get right to it. I know you’re busy.
(Reaches into his case and sets his device on the president’s desk.)
This is it. It’s called a telephone.

John
I’m listening.

Marty
Great. Well John, the telephone is really ingenious. With it, you can communicate with people, anybody, any where. They don’t need to be in the same room. Each user has a number, so you simply press the buttons and if they’re there, they pick up this part, the handset, and you can hear each other talk.

John
Well I’ll be damned. That’s very clever. What will they think of next?

Marty
Only time will tell. I suspect there could come a time when you might be able to record the conversations, speak with more than one person at a time. You never know. Maybe someday a pocket-sized version will allow you to take it with you.

John
Pocket-sized!? Why that’s very funny Marty. Maybe someday it’ll give you directions to a nearby bar. No, I got it: you’ll be able to watch football games with the damn thing.
(John laughs his ass off. Marty shrinks.)
So tell me son, how would this help us grow the business? It seems like a distraction to me. I would think you’d use the thing, uh, what did you say it was called?

Marty
It’s called a telephone.

John
Right, right, right. Catchy name. So what I was saying is if you had one of these telephone machines, you might talk to your friends, your family… You know what I mean son? How would you get any work done?

Marty
Great question Marty. My theory is while it’s true you could talk on the telephone with your friends, here at Innovation Global Enterprises, we could use it to talk to our customers and our partners. We could build relationships.

John
I think your heart’s in the right place John, but I guess I’m the president of this taco stand for a reason. We don’t want to build relationships. We have a business to run. Priorities. You understand.

Marty
Excellent point sir, but if you don’t mind me saying so, I think if we built relationships by having conversations with people and sharing ideas, we would in turn, build our business. The people we spoke to might even call their friends and tell them about what we make.

John
I like you John. You might be a little green and naïve in the ways of business, but you dream big. Those are some interesting ideas you have about communications, even if they are a little, er, how should I say…? Whacked.

Marty
Sir, I think I might have that beer now.

John
That’s my boy. Here you go. Try this one. They call it “Lite.” Seems to weigh just as much as any other 12-ounce can, but they say it tastes great and it’s less filling.

Marty
Thank you sir, John. So could I ask you to consider what I’ve said here today?

John
I must have missed something. Tell me again why we’d want our people using this fancy machine to talk to customers?

Marty
Lots of reasons. They might have questions we can answer for them. If they were having problems with the products, we could tell them how to solve them.

John
You want the company to answer questions and solve our customers’ problems? We have products to make and we must sell them. I’m not running a charity here son.

Marty
Yes, sir, but I was thinking if we could be the company people trusted as a resource for information and advice, they might buy even more of our products.

John
It’s a very nice thought Marty. It’s admirable how you young ‘uns like to embrace all the abstract ideas about community and love and all that touchy, feely shit. It really is. Will there be anything else John? I have the advertising agency coming in very soon. They said they wanted to talk about some box that has channels people can turn on to watch people talk and tell jokes.

Marty
Right, right. They’re probably talking about the television.

John
Television! Right! I think that was it. Telephone. Television. I don’t know how anybody can keep up with all these tele-things.

Marty
Well, things do tend to change very fast in media. People want to share their experiences.
(Marty gets up to leave.)
I’ll get out of your hair now sir.

John
Marty, I’m a fair guy. And you know, I wouldn’t have got to where I am today if I wasn’t open to new things and new ideas. You kids coming out of college sure have a lot of them. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to think about this telephone device. I might even buy one for the office.

Marty
You may like it.

John
No, no. I’m too old to be screwing around with fancy technology. But maybe someone here could use it to talk on. They could call up people that don’t buy our products, maybe at dinner time when everyone’s home and tell them when we’re having a sale and that sort of thing. I want you to do something for me Marty. Play around with that one you have and bring me a report. I’d like to see some documented evidence that this sort of thing has a return on investment. I call it ROI. Get it? ROI. It’s an abbreviation for return on investment.

Marty
Good one sir. And thank you for the beer. It really was very light.

John
Damn straight my boy. Some brewery came up with some fancy way to take out a lot of the calories. Just goes to show you son, you can’t put the brakes on innovation.

THE END

The post Social Media is as Worthless as the Telephone appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

In fact, according to a recent report by Fournaise Marketing Group, 70% of the 1,200 CEOs interviewed in their study don’t trust marketers’ abilities to deliver growth. A majority state marketing professionals are unable to prove ROI on campaigns. Ouch.

A little more fuel for the fire.

The report also says:

• Many CEOs have marketing departments purely out of tradition.
• CEOs feel marketers “live too much in the brand, creative and social media bubble.”
• Marketers lack credibility.

Jerome Fontaine, chief tracker of the study concluded, “Marketers have to stop whining about being misunderstood by CEOs and have to start remembering that their job is to generate customer demand and to deliver performance. This is business.”

Apparently whining isn’t the answer.

Tradition? Bubbles? No cred? Them are fighting words.

Are you riled up at all? I am—and I never have or ever will be a CMO. But CMOs are my clients. Some of them have credibility, I think. Well, anyway, in my job description there’s this clause in the fine print that reads…

Make the marketing people look good.

So I say we don’t take this abuse lying down. You with me?

I say we play offense—aggressive offense. We pay supremely close attention to the details, focus on online marketing because it’s inherently measurable, and bury these whip-snapping, credibility-attacking, ROI-rapping CEOs in incontrovertible evidence proving us marketing pros aren’t just messing around with bubbles (whatever that means).

We need a plan.

For a starting point, I have just the thing, an eBook. It’s called, “The Plan to Grow Your Business with Effective Online Marketing.” Convenient, eh?

I’m not going to get into each of the 16 tactics in the eBook, but will try to list and explain several of the steps you need to take.

First and foremost: think inbound.

It’s time to seriously re-evaluate all or most of the “push” or “outbound” marketing we used growing up in an era of mass media domination. The costs are high. The risks are high. And not only is the ROI that seems to dictate our fate forever shrinking, accurately measuring it was never entirely feasible in the first place.

It’s time to do a marketing 180. The strategy is to “pull” people to your website, win their trust and guide them through the buying process. “lnbound marketing” is the name of this game.

Clearly define the objectives.

Begin with the end in mind. Precisely, what will be deemed “ROI?” It may be sales dollars over dollars invested. If so, you need to agree on everything that does or does not go into the calculation.

Of course, a great variety of objectives might be valid—website traffic, leads, subscriptions, reservations, various metrics, and so on. The point is this lack of credibility thing doesn’t sit well. Marketing programs and the professionals that run them should have objectives. Let no man or woman claim the marketing clowns aren’t getting the job done unless it’s crystal clear what “the job” is.

Get on the same page.

This is tricky territory, this online world we’re marketing in. Of course, you need to keep up with search, social, analytics, and all kinds of new services, strategies, tactics, tools and technology.

But it’s not just you that needs schooling. If you’re going to live in peace and harmony with your staff, peers, other departments, other chiefs, and above all, the chief of chiefs, you need to do some schooling. You’ll have some tough calls to make regarding who needs to know what. When the time comes for talking turkey, whether you hit or miss your numbers, everyone at the table needs to be speaking the same language.

Chief Executive optimization.

It may be your marketing department, but it’s also the company’s marketing department. This plays downstream and upstream. It’s not only unfair for the CEO to check out of all things online, it’s dangerous. Ideally, through some reasonable combination of strategy planning, content marketing, authority building, customer and media relations, the boss should play a meaningful part. For more on this, read this insightful article from marketing expert Heidi Cohen.

Build community.

For number crunchers, it may be a bit less than lucid, but the social media strategy you pursue must focus on building a community. Your reach and influence will ultimately factor large in your ROI.

Grow a pair.

You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating because when committees make the marketing calls, companies tend to aim down the middle and incite next to no one. If you’re going to be held accountable for ROI, you need to target, take a stand, project a personality, march forth fearlessly and fight for the big ideas.

Embrace analytics.

Social Media Explorer’s CEO Nichole Kelly literally wrote the book, “How to Measure Social Media.” Dig in. Understand the guidelines for assessing ROI in the new media space and apply them rigorously. The practice extends beyond adopting new tools.

True ROI isn’t strictly new business. It’s the result of some combination of reputation management, brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention, and increasing revenues from existing customers. Sure, marketing needs to embrace metrics, but the company at large needs to opt-into a culture of perpetual measurement and continuous improvement.

Finally, put in for a raise.

Perhaps you can cool your new compensation requirements for some reasonable period of time while the plan kicks into high productivity. But why not be optimistic? With new ROI initiatives, you’re not only stepping up to new demands, you’re demanding marketing steps up to drive sales.

It’s execution time.

The Marketing Week article I read, “70% of CEOs Have Lost Trust in Marketers,” generated a lot of reader commentary. Very few put up their guard or reacted defensively. Interestingly, most commenters claimed to not be surprised by the figures and findings. Several responded by saying it is indeed time to execute marketing programs that unquestionably boost the bottom line.

Go get ‘em, killer.

The post Murder, Execution and Other Strategic Plans for Ambitious CMO’s appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Super bros John and Jim Harbaugh lead their teams into the battle by the bayou. Everything’s supersized: the anticipation, the audience, the ticket prices, the parties, the halftime show, and the media coverage.

Of course, the enormity of the game dwarfs any other one-day clash in all of sports. And then there’s that other super showdown, the mega-million dollar mêlée where the titans of television advertising dig deep into their imaginations and deeper still into their piggy banks to vie for, uh… um…

Sales? Brand awareness? Laughs? Press?

What exactly are the advertisers trying to accomplish?

The spots go for around $4-million a pop this year. That’s a lot friggin nacho chips.

Those companies can’t be betting on the reach (that’s media speak for “headcount”) of the broadcast, can they?

It’s worth noting, there’s always a lengthy (albeit boring) epilogue to the Super Bowl ad war. Every media outlet plugs into television advertising 100X more acutely than any other time of the year, so there’s the residual PR, if you will.

And more importantly, there’s the water cooler conversations going down in offices everywhere on Monday…

Did you see the one where the frog did that—? Dude, that wasn’t nearly as hilarious as the polar bear with the—or maybe it was a kangaroo. C’mon man, the hot racecar girl was even more epic… You know, the commercial for the, the, the, you know, the company that, you know.

Yeah, generally even if the ads are good our memory isn’t. Most fans are at noisy parties unable to hear a word. Or they’re jockeying for a bowl of chili, in line at the keg, or in the can.

But none of this really diminishes the buzz, does it? Wherever we are come game day we’re going to put an indelible stamp on the proceedings with the thoughts we broadcast on the publishing platforms social media affords each and everyone of us.

A little bluebird makes a lot of noise.

Twitter chatter soars while any major story unfolds.

Last year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched TV show in U.S. history and clearly a social phenom. According to social scientists Bluefin Labs, the game activated 11.2 million social media comments.

During the game, Twitter broke records twice. Network Insights reported 42% of the record-breaking tweet volume was about the commercials. 32% were about Madonna’s halftime performance.

Twitter even gamified the hoopla with its first ever “Twitter Ad Scrimmage.” Samsung’s Galaxy Note commercial took the honors while a Disney trailer and an H&M spot featuring David Beckham also earned positions on the podium.

Fast Company ran an interesting story about several of the advertisers’ Twitter Bowl strategies.

GE created a hashtag in hopes of generating conversation about how their energy businesses help power the country. The campaign connected to a website and Facebook page where people submitted stories about what’s working in their communities.

Demonstrating the company “gets” social media, global head of digital marketing, Linda Boff said the success of the campaign wouldn’t be measured strictly in terms of sales. “The more people know about GE, our technologies, their impact, and the people behind them, the more they want to partner with us, do business with us, and invest in us,” she says. “That’s where we connect the dots.”

Not-so-instant replay.

As immense as the Twitter chatter is during and after the game, the real story is the power of social video (yes, you need to add this phrase to your vocab). In fact, it’s become its own social science. So much so, Unruly Media, a multinational specialist in social video advertising, has developed an algorithm to predict a commercial’s “shareability.”

Unruly claims to have identified the emotional triggers, which encourage sharing and increase brand advocacy. In its “Super Bowl XLVII—A Social Video Advertising Playbook” paper, the company writes, “Timing is crucial for brands hunting social video success.” They go on to suggest teaser ads should be released online before the game to increase interest and report 75% of the top 20 most shared ads were launched before Super Bowl Sunday last year.

The replays are magical in a way because unlike the “it’s here and it’s gone” reality of a live TV spot, social video has staying power. Get this: 55% of the shares of last year’s top 20 Super Bowl ads occurred after March 1.

Coca-Cola’s got game.

Perennial big spenders Coca-Cola, giants of social media, released a speechless 60-second ad last week—sans polar bears.

The mega-production, “CokeChase,” is a game starring showgirls, cowboys, and badlanders. Viewers are invited to vote—via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr—for which group wins the Coke. After the football game ends, the winner of the chase will be announced in another commercial.

Social media is the real winner.

Social media has changed every game, none more obviously than the game of games, the Super Bowl. And advertisers are all over it for good reason.

Consider this: when commercials are talked about, shared, and replayed online, audience members can, and will, take action. Isn’t that why companies invest in advertising? Advertisers get far more for their money because they can make meaningful connections, which couldn’t possibly be made in a span of 30 seconds.

Last year, one in five brands included hashtags in their commercials last year. It’d be safe to bet the spread will shrink sizably this year. It’s conceivable every commercial includes a Twitter hashtag, Facebook page, or the like.

Think about it. Miss out on the opportunity to put a social play into the game on Super Sunday? Why, you’d have to be an incredible birdbrain.

The post Only Birdbrains Bet $4,000,000 on the Super Bowl appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Meet a rock star of the street corner advertising business.

Her job is to generate traffic to the Verizon Wireless store. She has no props. Nor does she hawk an offer you haven’t seen a million times. Sounds, pretty ho-hum, I know. But day after day, she’s doing her thing on the well-traveled corner of Green Valley and Francisco and she calls a ton of attention to herself and the store. I bet my humble farm she actually does generate traffic and is paid several shillings more than minimum wage. Why?

She dances. Enthusiastically. Relentlessly. Oddly, actually.

She has an iPod in her pocket, ear buds in place, music in her heart, and she never stops dancing. She doesn’t dress or move like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and if you’re wondering if she were to audition on one of TV’s slew of talent content shows, she definitely wouldn’t snag a ticket to Hollywood.

She doesn’t bring amazing talent to her extremely unusual profession. She brings originality and passion.

Let’s talk about content marketing now.

A copywriter handles your content marketing, maybe even a specialist, an online marketing copywriter. Assuming, of course, you take your online marketing communications seriously.

Now, in this age of inbound marketing, content marketing, online marketing, whatever-you-want-to-call-it marketing, some truths have become self-evident. One of them is there’s a huge call for publishing stuff. When you get it right and create compelling content, it gets noticed. Your website attracts traffic and the stuff gets shared across all things social.

A “nontent” revolution is going on.

As a serious marketer, you hunt for talented professionals capable of producing engaging stuff.

However, and sadly, many wanna-be’s settle for the factory approach to content creation. Given the need to deliver a steady stream of stuff, some companies settle for some pretty low-quality, low-cost stuff. It consists of words—keywords—not much more—not ideas—not opinions—nothing original or memorable.

This brand of crap doesn’t work. Far too much of it is unoriginal and the same old, uninspired content. It’s better described as “nontent” than content.

All shook up.

Ann Handley of Marketing Profs talks about creating “epic content.” In her presentation at last year’s Content Marketing World, she challenged everyone in the packed room to find a distinct voice, take risks and take a stand.

Being the rock and roll junkie I am, Elvis immediately came to mind. Distinct voice? Oh yeah. Risk taker? Yes, ma’am. And, of course, Elvis took a stand and then some with his greasy hair, the leather, the sneer, and the provocative below the belt gyrations.

Not everyone liked the way Elvis shook things up (there’s an understatement if there ever was one). But blessa’ my soul, that audience that’s always out there somewhere, the renegades that crave something different, well, they fell in love with this new thing called rock and roll—and its  king.

When you turn some people off, you turn some people on.

I started my career in copywriting in 1988 as a rabid fan of the legendary, sometimes controversial, ad copywriter, Tom McElligot. Tom insisted his agency’s clients deliver messages that would cut through the clutter or none at all. Here’s an excerpt from an interview he did with Inc. in 1988:

“If you break the rules, you’re going to stand a better chance of breaking through the clutter than if you don’t. If you try to live with the rules, in all likelihood the work will be derivative. It won’t be fresh. It won’t have the necessary ingredients to disarm the consumer, who increasingly has got his defenses up against all sorts of advertising messages coming his way.”

(He continues…)

“We like to say that when everybody else is zigging, that’s when it’s time for you to zag. And the smaller the company is, and the bigger the competition, the more crucial that advice becomes.”

Amen Tom. My version is “When you turn some people off, you turn some people on.” Whether we’re talking about advertising campaigns or modern content marketing tactics, the lesson remains undeniably valid.

Say “no” to merlot.

I love the way Tom Stein of Stein Partners Brand Activation put it in his Content Marketing World presentation.

“Content – is it the new merlot, or the new black?  There’s lots of conversation about content being the new black.

Wine consumption increased by 66% percent after ’60 Minutes’ did a show on the health benefits of wine.  Casual drinkers went with merlot.  Demand went up, supply went up, and the quality went down.  It became synonymous with crappy wine.

Today we’re seeing a glut of content.  And quality looks like it may be on the decline.  It’s incumbent on content marketers to ensure the quality stays high. Let’s make sure content doesn’t become merlot.”

Step in your blue suede shoes.

Do your online marketing efforts evoke any emotion? Do you have a voice? A point of view?

Or is your stuff calculated and careful and anonymously swimming the same direction as the minions of minnows?

Ask yourself:

• Would I read, listen to, or watch that?
• Would I buy that?
• Will I remember that? 

3 yeses =  rocking content.

What do you say? Can you muster the nerve to touch a nerve? I challenge you. When you see a crowd, be bold. Don’t follow it.

And when the majority of the crowd is just standing there, shake it up baby—and dance.

The post Your Content Needs to Shake It Up, Baby appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Meanwhile, us new media maniacs are partying hard on content marketing.

The cork’s been yanked. Everyone’s tipping a glass.

And what a buzz. This gloriously intoxicating content marketing cocktail, this newly discovered recipe—two parts education, one part search, one part social—with an optional splash of advertising.

Content marketing isn’t just for the author/speaker/consultant types any more. For any marketer looking to build awareness, establish authority, capture leads, turn prospects into customers and customers into loyal brand advocates, content marketing is the recipe du siècle (century) 21.

Here comes the hangover.

Content marketing was canned and bottled every which way in 2012. It got big and went down easy.

You could snag sixers at 7/11. Some read the label. Some didn’t.

Some produced vintage material and experienced epic success. But some threw caution to the wind, scarfed down anything, then, barfed up everything.

They made a mess. And they’re in for it in the coming year—the hardcore, hellacious content marketing hangover.

The no-strategy headache.

WAKE UP!

Oh man, the light’s so bright, it hurts. You know the feeling. It’s the morning after. Suuuuuuuuucks.

Content marketing hacks are feeling it now. WTF happened? The rules were rewritten.

In 2012, a gazillion Google gaming gluttons got flushed. Down the drain they went. See ya—wouldn’t wanna’ be ya,—posers. Those thick on search shortcuts, but thin on useful content are now experiencing SERP sorrow, irritability, and some inevitable gastrointestinal discomfort.

Most got the memo. They learned a website with static web pages, flimsy content, and little authority were doomed. So they rushed to rectify the sitch. But far too many spewed forth another batch of keywords, data sheets and press releases and are now experiencing some horrible ROI.

Content marketing demands strategy. Get one, get out, or get ready for some intense headaches.

But there’s good news. Given the gold rush going on in content marketing, you should have little to no problem finding an able partner to help you mine the territory. Are you more of a DIYer? So be it. Good guidelines should be easy to come by as well.

I created a 7-step content marketing strategy formula and expanded on it in a presentation called, “Magnetic Content: Strategies to transform your website into a customer attraction force field.” The Feldman formula goes like this:

1. Determine what action you want customers to take.
2. Determine what potential buyers need to know.
3. Create a content plan.
4. Put a content creation team together.
5. Get your digital ducks in a row (publishing platforms, social media, equipment, etc.)
6. Promote what you publish.
7. Measure everything.

Too much, too fast.

Now let’s look at some of the other common hangover-inducing practices known to spoil the party.

Too much, too fast is a major one. Just as slamming back shots will accelerate your blood/alcohol level, a bottoms-up approach to creating content will contaminate your bloodstream in short order.

Your content marketing machine should be set at a careful and calculated pace. After (which means: not before) you have goals established and a plan in place, it’s time to ideate and produce. The responsible handling of these two steps calls for:

• Online social listening—You must identify the topics your target market cares to learn about and questions they want answered.
• Tapping internal resources—Colleagues within the company should help inform the content creation plan.
• Editorial calendar—Before you get going, stop.  Establish who will create what and where it will be published.

Get more on these ideas from this great article (and infographic): “How to Build and Operate a Content Marketing Machine,” published by SEOMoz.

The cheap stuff.

The finer, more effective content marketing plans leverage a variety of content types across a variety of media.

My early endeavors into hangover hell trace to (over) consumption of low budget sparkling wine. The bad decisions my friends and I made were partially due to taste—we hadn’t yet developed sophisticated wine palettes and so we gravitated toward the sweet stuff.

However, more importantly, we were just cheap. So we bought $2 bottles of Andre. Adjust for inflation and you’re now looking at $4 per bottle. ‘Nuf said. Don’t go there.

Great content demands less sugar, more spice.

The first order here: develop a plan to produce a blog and then some. The finer, more effective content marketing plans leverage a variety of content types across a variety of media.

Second, build a strong team. Of course, experienced and talented journalistic-type writers should be on the squad, but over the long haul, you’ll want to include professionals with diverse perspectives (inside and outside of your company) as well as skills in multiple media including design, video, and audio.

For more on content marketing team building, hit the SEOMoz article mentioned above: “How to Build and Operate a Content Marketing Machine,”

And, to truly understand how to maintain a regular production schedule while maintaining quality, click on over to Christopher Penn’s excellent article, “How to Fix the Sad State of Content Marketing.”

Chris will school you on how to avoid publishing crap by building a solid team of content creators and calling on the talent it takes to create vintage stuff.

Overindulgence.

Your fondness for your company, your people and products is great—except when it comes to content creation. Let that love lie. Indulge in your customer, his wants, her needs. And stop there. Ditch the pitch.

Yes, if you must, go ahead and populate your site with the requisite levels of narcissism it takes to please the boss, but when it comes time to get magnetic (create effective content), temper the indulgence. Drink smart. Keep a level head. Appoint a designated driver. Most of all, put your audience first and attend to their needs.

A guru of content marketing, Joe Chernov, said it all so fine in one little tweet…

Top of funnel content should be intellectually divorced from your product, but emotionally wed to it. 

You partied alone.

You need to find out where your audience is and engage them there.

If you consistently created killer content and then found yourself nauseous, fatigued or irritable, I’ll tell you why.

A good many content hangovers are the result of inadequate promotion. Remind yourself, content marketing ain’t magic. If you have 100% proof stuff, you need to bottle it up then pour it on. Let people know where to get it.

This comes from Greg Samarge, digital marketing manager at Nestle:

For us, the single largest issue is being able to create breakthrough content and still have the budget to fund distributing that content. It’s hard enough to justify the budget to create that content, but it’s even more challenging to then push for sufficient budget above and beyond the content creation to distribute this great content.

Social media is the key to this. You need to find out where your audience is and engage them there. Content marketing and online sharing go hand-in-hand.

Karen Snell, content lead at Cisco Systems, offers this:

As storytellers first, our team is dedicated to finding and telling stories that make a connection with our audience and producing them in such a way that they will make an impact, an impression and hopefully result in a social action — share, tweet, republish, etc. We are continually explaining our strategy and “selling” our approach. 

Gauge yourself.

The frenzied party animal never pauses to see how’s he’s doing. Still conscious? Full steam ahead sailor. There’s no tomorrow.

Ouch. Bad idea. Whether you’re whooping it up or marketing—if you never stop to assess and adjust the plan, there’ll be hell to pay. Velocity Partners’ great publication, “The Big Fat B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist” states:

The best content marketing organizations have learning cultures. It’s important to explicitly capture what has worked, what hasn’t and why you think it’s true. 

They advise:

• Identify success factors and capture them.
• Identify what failed.
• Gather evidence to support conclusions.
• Share with the widest team possible, regularly.

Party on.

And so it goes my friends. Hit the bottle I shall, you shall, we all shall.

Live and learn. Take from this story what you can.

While I encourage you to proceed with reckless abandon, I also caution you to be a big boy or girl and realize you reap what you sow.

Cheers. And Happy New Year.

The post Content Marketing: The Beautiful Buzz and the Hellacious Hangover appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Disclaimer #1: I love The Beatles. I’ve worn out every album.
Disclaimer #2: I love the Stones too. I’ve worn out the first 75 albums or so.

If you sent me to a desert island with only one of these bands’ platters, I’d pack The Beatles discography (and my luggage fees would surely be lower).

Love is all you need

The Beatles: Good Day Sunshine… Sun King… Here Comes the Sun… “Take a sad song and make it better.” Peace. Love. The Beatles may have alluded to darker themes every now and then, but you have to admit they had a fairly sunny disposition.

The Stones: Paint it Black… Sympathy for the Devil… Their Satanic Majesties Request… “Yeah, a storm is threatening my very life today.” Rape. Murder. A few tender love songs may have sneaked into the Stones’ sets, but it would be fair to say the band painted with darker brush strokes.

War children, it’s just a shot away

You’re probably not paying close attention to The Stones anymore, but their new hit is called “Doom and Gloom.” Lovely.

Eight Days a Week…

I’m online reading headlines, searching for advice, inspiration, and success stories. And I find them. The sunny side is up and online in millions of articles and papers, and books, and videos, and interviews and… zzzzzzzz.

Ooh. Sorry. I must have dozed off on you. I was starting to bore myself. Happens all the time.

But I can’t get no… no satisfaction

I try and I try and I try.

Here’s the deal. I’m a professional marketing writer. I get happy when I’ve written some abrasive, ironic, devilish headline because I know it will stop readers in their tracks. It’ll get them to read. That’s my job description.

But my clients sometimes make my job harder. It’s seems when I’m going “na-na-na, I nailed it” they’re going “no-no-no, you missed. “It sounds negative.”

It seems my clients flush at fiery. They want friendly.

They want to compromise my statement, neutralize my stance and sanitize my dirty tricks. They want to make sure we don’t turn anyone off. I say, but if we do that we won’t turn anyone on either.

It’s positively boring to be positive all the time

I called Mick and Keith to corroborate my story, but they were at the bank cashing checks. So I did the next best thing. I went to one of the websites I read (and write for) and reviewed their top five stories of the past month as measured by page views.

Guess what I found? One Beatle. Four Stones. Check out phrases lifted from four of the top five stories:

• “The Social Media Marketing Honeymoon is Over”
• “The Engagement Disconnect Between Consumes and Brands Rages On”
• “Is Small Business Social Media a Waste of Time”
• “Is Facebook Becoming Irrelevant?”

(Gasp.) These are very compelling headlines, but the list oozes negativity. And however engaging they may be, far too often clients shy away from these types of approaches. Safe feels better.

“Can you give it a positive spin?”

If I had a dime for every time my client asked me this question.

Here’s a slice of my day today (and most of my days). Short version:

My client’s hosting a “hackathon.” That is, internally, their mostly technically inclined workforce will be invited to blow off work for a day and participate in a free-form brainstorm, a think tank sort of thing. Google made this mainstream and gearheads everywhere (in California) are going gaga.

Anyhoooooooow… My task was to write a teaser email not to spill all the beans, but to plant a little seed, apparently a harmless one.

I wrote (as a subject line, mind you): “A Big Storm is Coming.”

When you open the email, which you will because [1] it’s from your boss and [2] you want to know what the the email is about, you learn this big storm is actually a company wide brainstorm session. Brilliant, I know.

It seems the marketing director doesn’t agree. I get this: “That ‘storm’ thing could be interpreted as negative.

My response: “Yep. That’s good. Everyone will read the email.”

Client counters: “Nope. It’s bad. We want everyone to be positive about the event. Could you give it a positive spin?”

My response (mentalized, but not verbalized): Spin this.

Tomorrow will be a nice day

Did you like that subhead? It’s very pleasant, I know. It’s no wonder you’re still reading (he said sarcastically). Ugh. You got me. It’s the lamest sentence I’ve ever written.

Tomorrow a crap storm shall strike

I guess that one sounds kind of negative. Why do I love it so much? We both know everyone will keep reading. So tell me, do the only good lines comprise good news? Is being upbeat the only way to get readership up?

Stop. Being. So. Positive. Or at least stop being so negative about not being positive.

I get to pick the last tune

The jukebox has two tunes in it. Never heard either. One’s called “Let it Be.” The other one is only different by a few letters. It sounds kind of dark and quite possibly negative. I can’t listen to both. I have just one quarter.

I’ve got to make a choice. I choose “Let it Bleed.”

Whaddaya’ say?  Are you ready to cut through the clutter and stop being so positive?

The post All Positive All the Time is Positively Boring appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

in·ter·course [in-ter-kawrs, -kohrs]
noun — interchange of thoughts, feelings, etc.

Dr. Cloud talked about how very important this communication interchange is to a healthy relationship. It’s not a groundbreaking idea. But it’s incontrovertible. And it made me think that this notion, which is so essential to marriage, so essential to intimacy, is just as essential to successful social media marketing.

If, like me, you believe social media is an ongoing exercise in building relationships, which is essential to building your business, you’ll want to indulge my thesis.

So now, with your permission, we’ll get it on. Let’s examine five basic sex tips that you can apply to become a better social media marketer.

TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES

Be authentic. Be transparent. Be genuine. These have become mantras in a world turned interactive. But yick, they’re so damn sterile.

What do you say we nix the euphemistic BS and simply get naked? Are you with me? You might be used to that stiff and starched shirt—and it might look mighty fine—but it covers up the real you.

The post If You Don’t Treat Social Media Like Sex, You’re Doing it Wrong. appeared first on Social Media Explorer.