Should You Launch A Facebook Group?
🎙️ Podcast time: Christina Jandali, a Business Growth Strategist at Deliver Your Genius, explain how brands are leveraging Facebook groups to build communities of engaged fans.
Stop Overcomplicating Your Content Strategy
This helpful Modern Digital Content Strategy For Startups Playbook popped up in my LinkedIn feed from the talented Anna Furmanov.
Use it to hone in on the true goal of content creation:
“To develop an ongoing conversation with the right people that eventually leads to purchase.”
Anna provides a smart framework for organizing the content production process. Note: she’s focused on start ups but I’d argue that it’s a game plan that even established brands should adopt. My favorite line:
“Stop asking ‘what’s the ROI?’ from brand awareness channels.”
Related: Google’s John Mueller tweeted that consistency is still the best SEO strategy.
What You Need To Know About Apple’s New Privacy Feature: App Tracking Transparency
This guide to Apple’s big privacy play helped me understand this issue a bit better.
“Users have been able to opt out of IDFA-based tracking before, but the new update puts the choice front and center.
It forces developers to give users a choice: once updated to iOS 14.5, every single company that wants to track users and their data across different apps and websites now have to ask permission first using a standardized prompt created by Apple...”
Bottomline: If users say no to tracking, companies that use that data for ad targeting will lose the insights they’ve had in the past. Facebook is now encouraging people to allow tracking when it all goes down so that they can be served relevant ads.
It’s going to be quite the challenge for advertisers who’ve relied heavily on this 3rd party data to target consumers. Maybe that spend will be reallocated to sponsoring content publishers and niche newsletter creators? 😉
Related: Guess which 2 words Apple uses most often to sell products.
A Guide To Measuring Content Marketing
Hoping to get granular in how you measure content marketing? This guide could be helpful.
Warning: It’s a never ending process.
Here’s a thought, though. Why not focus on the cumulative value of consistently producing content that is consumed versus trying to pinpoint the ROI on a single piece of content? We can easily extend the journey metaphor from today’s Prologue to all the content a brand produces. Just be valuable. Period.
Is More Traffic Always A Good Thing?
Here are 7 times when it might not be.
Number 3 is my favorite:
“More Traffic Is Not More Valuable Than Conversions”
In other words, aim to attract people who are better fits for your product.
No Cookies? Don’t Panic. Email Could Solve This
Jeff Kupietzky thinks email is the answer to the death of cookies for digital publishers. Why?
“By turning drive-by visitors into logged-in subscribers through email, publishers can begin to track user interests and behavior to better understand the type of content they want. Data shows consumers have no problem being tracked when it creates a more personalized experience, and they’re more likely to engage with content from publishers they know and trust.”
So... leverage email for personalized experiences across channels by creating content so good people opt in for more.
Related: Learn about how this is not a drill: The loss of third-party cookies is bigger than GDPR and CCPA from the Litmus blog.
Turns Out Emails From Real People Get Real Results
“I’m shifting my mentality from, ‘don’t pester people!’ to ‘don’t ignore people who said they want to hear from you!’”
Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro breaks down how soliciting customer feedback with an email that asked for direct responses worked for his company.
Seth Godin Teaches Us How To Get Better At Marketing
Seth Godin speaks wisdom about sticking to a plan long enough to see if it’s going to work in this video interview.
On planning for when to give up on a strategy:
“You should plan before you spend a dollar when you’re going to give up. So if I was building a brand that sold, I don’t know, sweatshirts or microphones, I’d say, all right, I’m going to run these ads for six months and I’m not going to change my plan for six months. I’m going to show up and show up and show up because people need to see a message twenty-seven times before they even begin to register with it on the Internet. It’s even more than that because there’s so much noise. And so if you’re going to spend this money, it’s got to begin with a commitment. You don’t want to spend your money on one ad and then decide.”
Does Your Brand Awareness Strategy Create Urgency And Demand?
Jay Baron thinks you’re doing brand awareness wrong if you’re not crafting a narrative that prompts an audience to rethink what they’re doing and why. I know, I know. Very meta.
In this article, he provides eight steps to what he calls buyer-led growth. It’s definitely worth a read.
“The most powerful marketing isn’t marketing that waits for pain and serves up content; it’s marketing that shows the buyer their pain before they’re even aware of it.
The secret to building real interest in your offers is to meet people where they’re at with their current beliefs and habits, begin to shift their beliefs and habits so that you develop a need, and cultivate tangible growth.”
Y’all know I love it when narrative design comes into the discussion.
If It Isn't My Old Pal, Marketing
Traffic, traffic, traffic. Everyone wants it. Acquiring it is a challenge. There are a few things that hold back traffic- a misaligned content strategy and dull content that isn't optimized for the audience.
But then again... is traffic really all that important?
Databox and Search Engine Journal touch on these aspects of growth in two compelling articles that deserve some attention:
1) Databox's article on How CoSchedule Increased Trial and Product Sign Ups by altering their content strategy to align better with their audience. It makes a huge difference, ya know.
2) Search Engine Journal's article on the 7 Reasons More Traffic May Not Be Better for Business dives into the reality that more traffic doesn't equal more business and how a misaligned content strategy may mean your large traffic is entirely wasted.
