Strategizing Content

OK, so you get that developing an online presence for your businesses is important.

You know that there are tools out there that allow you to develop conversations and relationships with both existing and potential customers. You know that social media is not going away any time soon, and that eBooks, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and web content can become key content distribution vehicles to help your organization communicate, engage and inform.

So what do you do now? What’s your brand message, it’s story, it’s voice? More importantly: What are the informational requirements of your customers, and what's your plan to address them?

In order to maintain their relevance and develop a valuable online experience for their customers, any organization developing an online marketing presence (or arguably any marketing presence) needs to have what is called a content strategy. Key to developing your brand’s online reputation lies in the ability for your company to produce relevant and valuable content. Without interesting content, why should your target audience keep coming back for more?

There’s a great article by PR and social media guru Brian Solis on the Mashable website called Why Brands Are Becoming Media. Brian talks about companies developing publishing calendars, performance analyses and so on as part of their content strategy planning.

“New media necessitates a collaboration between all teams involved in creating and distributing content, including advertising, interactive, communications, brand, and marketing — with an editorial role connecting the dots. We are competing for attention and our success is dependent on our ability to not compete against each other. Producing content and lobbing it over the firewall to an “audience” will only confuse communities. Therefore, we are obligated to build pipelines that carry strategic communications, each with calculated intents, targets and outcomes.”

In its most basic terms, content strategy is about a way of thinking. It’s about developing a clear, company-wide plan on how to create, deliver, manage and govern content. Today, content has become one of a company’s most valuable assets. Don't underestimate it.


PS: If you'd like to learn more about content strategy then you may want to attend the Content Strategy Forum 2010 in Paris next month.

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What Does Your Company Sell?

Some companies sell products...while some companies sell services.

Some other companies sell neither of these. They sell an experience.

The majority of the things that we buy, we buy because we want them - rather than need them. We buy them because of how we think they will make us feel. Our buying decisions are initially based on an emotion, with the pragmatic argument following behind to allow ourselves to justify the purchase.

Stop selling the product, or the service. Sell the experience.

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Lingua Franca

If you’re a regular reader of Business Value Matters, then you’ll know that it's rare for me to blatantly promote my company’s services. However, today I’m making an exception, so if you choose to stop reading right now then I’ll totally understand.

We’ve just launched Qarto, an online transcreation portal for businesses and organizations that need a quick and easy way to localize documents or artwork.

So, what’s ’transcreation’? Well, a good explanation can be found here. Fundamentally, it's taking a document’s content from one language and totally re-creating it in another, in such as way so that the reader isn’t even aware that the text actually originated from another language. Transcreation is not simply translating text from one language to another. It’s about creativity and originality, not a 'word for word' transcription, employing the destination language’s cultural and linguistic nuances.

Qarto takes the concept of transcreation even further, in two clever ways. Firstly, the system is an online service that effectively streamlines the whole localization process.

If you have ever had to translate a document, you’ll know that the production process is often a nightmare. Appointing and then sending documents to translators, chasing people with phonecalls and emails, getting the translated text approved, making sure that the right version of the right text gets sent to the right person, etc. It's a major pain and a logistical headache.

Instead, Qarto is a simple online interface where you can submit, track, edit and approve every element of a project - from anywhere. This cuts down on production times, reduces human error and makes the entire process less stressful.

The second Qarto feature lies in the document format itself. If you’re translating something that’s intended to be printed - like a brochure, report or catalog - then once you’ve finally got your translated text, someone then needs to create a new layout file in the new language, using software such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, before it gets to be printed. Qarto, on the other hand, doesn’t just work with MS Office or text files, but allows you to submit artwork file formats as the source files. Throw a QuarkXPress file up there, and get a QuarkXPress file back. A quick once-over to check everything’s OK and the file’s ready for printing. Easy.

Qarto’s not for everyone, mind you. For example, it's not for 'one-off' transcreation requirements - not yet, anyway. However, the system makes a great commercial argument for any organization that needs to produce localized content from documents or artwork on a regular basis.

Does Qarto sound like something that you - or someone you know - could use? If so, I'd really appreciate it if you'd get in touch with me and I’ll give you more details.

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Don’t Blame The Tools

Spend time searching online for how to create better corporate or product presentations, and very quickly you’ll learn that slide presentation software, particularly Microsoft PowerPoint, seems to be reviled around the world. Why?

Because we’ve all be subjected to those ‘death by bullet-point’ presentations where the speaker packs in too much information - both in terms of each individual slide as well as in the entire presentation. Where the speaker seems to be in a supporting role to the presentation, rather than the other way around.

But is that PowerPoint’s fault?

The reason why many business presentations are so painful to sit through is that they are not thought-out. Presentations are slapped together the day before they are needed, from content mined from various disparate sources. Images or illustrations are repurposed from other media, with the inevitable result that they are inappropriate from a communicative point-of-view. Clip art, or its 21st Century Bastard Son in the form of stock photography, is used to break up the monotony of too much text - rather than for better communicating the value message. Finally, the speaker has not had the time (or the forethought) to rehearse the presentation. They end up trying to convey too much, resulting in confusion, complication and frustration for all concerned.

None of the above is the fault of slide presentation software. PowerPoint and its ilk is simply a vehicle for delivering content. No more, no less. Yes, I agree that software that compels the novice presenter to “Click Here To Add Text” can be seen as being instrumental to the problem of generally poor presentations. However, one should not apportion blame to a communications tool when the core of any presentation - its message - is the author's responsibility. You can create as many good presentations using PowerPoint or Keynote, as you can bad ones. Just as you can using Acrobat, Word, QuickTime or any of 101 other software applications.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Don’t blame the tools, blame the workman.

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Are Your Salespeople Selling?

By that, I’m not asking you if your sales team are hitting their sales targets. What I mean is do your salespeople actually ’sell’, or are they simply asking their prospects whether they are interested in buying?

On the (thankfully rare) occasions when I have no choice but to visit a fast food restaurant, the person behind the counter simply takes my order. Is that selling? Clearly it’s not: it’s simply taking my order and fulfilling it.

Now and again, I may get asked if I want large fries instead of regular. Is that selling? Again, I’m guessing that most people would say that it’s not.

However, supposing that I’m in a restaurant and my waiter recommends a choice of wines based upon what I’ve ordered as a main course; or suggests a light refreshing sorbet for desert because he noticed that I didn’t want dressing on my salad, or a cream-based sauce on my chicken.

Is that selling? Yes, I’d say that it was.

I often hear stories from underperforming, so-called salespeople that say “I asked them if they wanted to buy my product/service, but they said no.” If your sales pitch is simply to ask “Do you want to buy this?”, then I’ll bet that you’re used to disappointments. If you’re doing little more than simply asking people to buy, then you’re not selling: You’re begging.

You’re not interested in helping your customer. In solving their problem. In making their lives easier. You’re only interested in trying to close a sale.

And it shows.

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Energizing Your Digital Revenues

A great article over at Accenture about media and entertainment companies creating better and more unique customers experiences using digital media.

Most companies today still rely on outdated marketing techniques that fail to engage their customers and develop customer loyalties.

The secret to online success for these companies - and maybe also for your company - lies in developing ways to present more individual and compelling content (both editorial and advertising) based upon a much deeper, metrics-driven understanding of customer likes and dislikes.

The Problem Is Never The Problem

Here's a great 2 min video by management guru Tom Peters.


"The problem is never the problem.
The response to the problem is almost always the real problem."

Is Conventional Marketing Dead?

Spend some time on the internet and within a very short while you'll run into a common thread running through the various marketing-focused blogs and websites. There's increasing popularity in the notion that 'conventional marketing' is dying out, and is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Today, all the talk is about social media, customer engagement and so forth. The theory is that so-called 'conventional' marketing techniques and assumptions are outmoded within today's 'empowered customers' who have changed the way that they evaluate products and brands. Proponents of the theory point to how the new-generation media channels are challenging conventional marketing ideas on targeting and reach. Publishers and broadcasters are suffering with regards to revenue generation because many advertisers feel that such content distribution vehicles are no longer as efficient as other communications media. Companies now have a greater choice in how to deliver their content. Outlets such as social media allow organizations to target audiences with far higher level of granularity than was previously possible with mainstream media channels such as newspapers, magazines or radio.

So, is 'conventional marketing' as we've come to know it on it's way out?

Yes, and no. Conventional marketing has always been dead. Why? Because there is no such thing as 'conventional' marketing, just as there's no such thing as 'new-age' marketing. Marketing has always been about using the most applicable strategies, tactics, communications and media channels of the day. Whether that's a sandwich board, newspaper ad, cable TV informercial or social media campaign. Marketing evolves, just as we as consumers evolve.

Sure, there's no doubt that the growth in "word of mouse" - social media, blogs, forums and suchlike - has played its part with regards to existing media channels. However, that's all they are: channels. Advertising and communications may well be part of marketing; but marketing isn't (just) advertising and communications.

Marketing's fundamental concepts haven't changed with the advent of new communication channels. They've evolved. If anything, the opportunities that internet-based channels provide have made marketing activities even more relevant in terms of communicating a business value proposition.

The way we communicate - and who's doing the communicating - is changing. Of that there is not doubt. Marketing continues to evolve, as it's been doing for decades. As a result, marketing strategies that we've taken as read for years may - over time - become less applicable in some instances. But that's how it's always been.

If 'conventional' marketing is dead, then it was already buried a long time ago.

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"One Size Fits All" Coming For Online Video Format

One of the challenges in using video content as part of your online marketing strategy has been with regards to what video format to use.

Today, it ultimately comes down to two choices: Adobe’s Flash format, or Apple’s QuickTime. Both have their pros and cons, but the main ‘con’ for both formats is that the PC that you’re using needs to have a bit of software installed, otherwise you won’t be able to watch the video.

Any modern PC that you buy today already has both Flash and QuickTime installed. If you’re unsure, it’s easy to find out if your machine is online video-ready. If you can watch a YouTube video, then Flash is already in there. If you use iTunes, then since QuickTime is part of the install, you’re good to go as well.

But what about mobile devices?

I’ve written about the phenomenal growth in the use of mobile devices to access online content before. Based on the growth numbers, it would seem that any video-based online campaign simply has to take into account mobile device access. While optimizing content for mobile devices is a little different than for PCs, by far the biggest issue is support for Flash.

Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch cannot display Flash content at all (YouTube videos only work because Apple convinced them to re-render their entire repository into an Apple device-friendly format, but any Flash objects in a website won’t display.) The new Palm devices (Pre and Pixi) and the various Android devices are set to get Flash later this year, while Windows Mobile and Symbian users have a cut-down version of Flash available right now.

So, do you go for QuickTime to satisfy the Apple users, or use Flash to cover just about everyone else but exclude Apple users?

Thankfully, we may just be on the brink of not having to make that decision. Last week video site Vimeo announced that they have finished implementing what may be the perfect solution for online video accessed from mobile devices. When you upload your content to the site, you have an option for Vimeo to simultaneously create mobile device-friendly versions. From then on, Vimeo automatically offers up the best version of your content depending on the nature of the device requesting access. Brilliant!

Vimeo is a place to share creative work, and is definitely not a place where you would upload videos that are commercial in nature (you risk getting banned from the site if you do). But you can bet that the other video platforms such as YouTube and DailyMotion will soon follow suit, meaning that the goal of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ format for online video may finally be within reach.