Are You Building An Audience, Or A Community?
Building community as a marketer ranks up there with tactics that are nearly impossible to copy/paste/repeat. And also it’s just plain hard and tough to measure.
You’ll need to be able to moderate, share fresh content, and engage with members to keep it interesting and growing.
In this article, MarketerHire’s Mae Rice explores why successful community building reaps enviable rewards, like loyal customers who don’t just drop your brand the moment a competitor undercuts your price.
She brings in some experienced community builders who explain what it takes to earn this loyalty: namely, that a community will not thrive if it is treated as a sales channel. Instead, it needs to be a space where customers and prospects actually enjoy engaging.
Remember the concept of worldbuilding from last week’s issue? Community building can be nestled within that approach. But do you have the patience and resources to invest in all this building?
Do You Create Email Briefs? Include These 4 Steps
Writing an impactful email is rarely as simple as it sounds in concept. Try creating email briefs and include these 4 tips from the Litmus blog to keep them simple and strategic.
1. Define email’s purpose
Be sure your email answers who, what, when, where, why, and how.
2. Define inbox strategy
Consider what your readers are going to see when they first open their inbox.
3. Define your body content strategy
You have about 11 seconds to get your message out when someone opens your email. Use that time to open a loop that gets their attention.
4. Sketch your content hierarchy
Map out what’s important to your readers.
Stop Treating Segmentation And Personalization Like They Aren’t Different Things
Do you really know the difference between personalization and segmentation?
This article breaks down the two, explains why the difference matters when it comes to strategy, and, most importantly, gives an example that makes it easy to understand (think: retail shopping).
Related: Gen Z email marketing needs segmentation and personalization, too. Check out these stats and strategies.
Tired of Marketing Best Practices? Try Worldbuilding Instead
Could you be the next J.R.R. Tolkien or J.K. Rowling, but in marketing? Maybe you should be worldbuilding (sounds exciting, I know).
Worldbuilding is just what it sounds like: building a new world and inviting people to become “insiders.”
“Instead of using aggressive direct response or media production approach, we build ‘worlds’ for our audiences to inhabit. Worlds that acknowledge their implicit and explicit motivations, show them better ways to solve their problems, meet their needs, fulfill their desires, and position ourselves as trusted, caring fiduciaries.”
In this article, Andre Chaperon and Shawn Twing break down just how and why it works, and then give you a framework to get started. They challenge us to create science, politics, and culture for the world we build.
Basically, we get to be storytellers and become the fiction writer we’ve always dreamed of becoming (except, stick to truth).
I have to admit this concept delights me because I completed an honors project studying the genre of creative nonfiction in undergrad.
What world will you build?
Related: Still sticking with the latest best practices? Check out these 7 Takeaways from the 2021 Ad World Conference.
CMO Or Editor In Chief? How The Pandemic Made Content More Critical Than Ever
Ever wonder what happens when a job description for a Chief Marketing Officer and a journalist look the same? Both need to lead teams to create content that meets the needs of their audiences.
Tony Case delves into why the pandemic intensified the CMO’s content role in this article.
“Shepherding the curation and dissemination of content has become a key role for today’s marketing chief with digitization and the explosion of content channels. And as the pandemic has shaped the future of work over the past year, the content role of CMOs has become even more urgent, as the narrative around daily business and how it is conducted has evolved so suddenly and dramatically.”
We’ve evolved beyond the days of marketing being relegated to content promotion. The CMO is now tasked to achieve impact with brand storytelling.
Social Media Insights To Consider
You know your audience is on social media, but how do you reach them and actually generate demand on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram? It’s not always easy to keep up with what’s working.
Here, I’ve rounded up some of the latest tactics and insights you might consider.
Check out the infographic from LinkedIn in this article that breaks down a few ad campaigns, explains how each one performed, and identifies why they stood out.
Learn how Gen Z marketers syndicate Insta Reels (15-second videos) to other platforms to increase reach.
Avoid these 7 key mistakes when creating Facebooks ads and consider the benefits of running ads to promote your organic content.
Is Your Creative Creating An Impact?
I LOVE words, but they’re not the only way to tell a story.
Effective visual marketing is just as important. Videos, graphics, GIFs and great images all work to create a vivid and memorable content experience. Check out Kyra Goodman’s 12 tips for creating effective visual marketing.
Related: Speaking of visuals, ever wondered about those Instagram trends? The secret’s out: Instagram launched its first publication to keep influencers in the loop.
The Ultimate Content Creation Flowchart
I admit it. I’m a sucker for a good flow chart.
Especially one that delivers 17 steps of the content creation process. This easy-to-follow step-by-step process will keep you from wondering, “...what’s next?”
Grab These 13 Chrome Extensions For Marketers
Can I get an Amen for Chrome extensions?
If you haven’t discovered the beauty in those little buttons, you are missing out. They’re not just for Pinterest and coupons anymore. They can also level-up your content marketing (and newsletter!) game.
A few handy highlights from the list:
- Headline Studio: Helps you stay in the SEO game while making sure your content is performing well.
- Grammarly: Fine-tune your writing and sound professional.
- CloudApp: This screen recorder for Chrome lets you capture, record, annotate, and share screenshots and videos.
It’s Not As Simple As To Gate Or Not To Gate
Ann Handley’s recent newsletter addressed a topic marketers seem to be scratching their heads about lately: Should you, or should you not, gate content?
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, gating content means requiring a form completion (usually asking for email, name, etc.) to see it.
There’s a bit of buzz lately around the value of ungating. What I like about Ann’s approach is that she shares a success story from a company that removed forms and freely shared content, but she also gets into what you’ll want to consider before you adopt the same approach.
There are some nuances. For instance, she mentions that Marketing Profs uses a publishing model (which many of you paid newsletter creators also use), and that gates make sense in that situation.
Psst! Speaking of gates, we’re in the final phases of preparing to launch private newsletters for Curated. That will mean you can show content to subscribers only. Stay tuned. It’s thisclose to done.
