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?

marketerhire.com  

Is Double Opt-In Always The Best Choice?

You know what they say about assumptions, right?

In this article, Jason Rodriguez takes a good look at the assumption that email signups should always use double opt-in. You know, the kind that sends you an email and asks you to confirm it’s really you who subscribed.

His conclusion?

You might want to consider mixing single and double opt-ins. It’s what the experts at Litmus do.

“We’re marketers focused on growing our subscriber lists, leads, and customer base. As such, we still love using single opt-in where possible. But, we have seen an increase in bot signups and fake email addresses on some signup forms... We implemented double opt-in for those forms.” —Jaina Mistry, Litmus Email Marketing Manager

The article includes a nice pros and cons chart and...

Something you should know about GDPR:

Double opt-in is not required, but clear sign-up forms and unchecked consent boxes are.

Definitely click through if you want some clarity on that.

litmus.com  

Newsflash: The Writing Part Of Content Marketing Is Hard

This year’s Mantis Research State of Writing in 2021 survey results are a bit depressing.

Granted, it’s based on 204 responders (less than they’d hoped for).

But that just seems to support the general sentiment writer Sarah Mitchell reports in this article: the marketing and communications leaders who have a stake in this inbound game we call content marketing are all feeling a little “meh” about their work.

Some stats to illustrate the dreariness:

• 70% of writers aren’t satisfied with their work.
• While 61% of businesses plan to increase the writing they produce, only 39% intend to increase their budgets.
• 38% of those surveyed say they’re most challenged by knowing what their audience wants to read, but instead of talking to customers, they rely on feedback from analytics, social media and sales/customer support. Less than half participate in communities where their customers are present.
• Only 34% send all their content for proofreading and only 56% fact-check all their content.

My thoughts:

• The competition for attention via content marketing has become pretty intense.
• Writers/publishers are less satisfied when they don’t feel like their work is serving a purpose.
• If you measure the success of content based on the number of leads it creates, you tend to use it more as an MQL tactic than for brand building, which supports a mindset of “good enough is good enough.”

On the bright side, those who are running their marketing teams like media companies seem pretty satisfied with the approach.

typesetcontent.com