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It’s not your content… it’s that you don’t care.
Back when I started writing for the Web about nine years ago, before I joined the team at Sametz Blackstone, nobody really talked about “content.”
Words were either “copy” or “text” — or if they were published via a blog platform, they were “weblogging.”
Essentially, you wrote what your client wanted, and that was that. Testing methods were fairly archaic, and a profound lack of search competition meant even awkward sentence structure generated results.
The words we write for client websites now are still often just called “copy.” And weblogging is now “blogging.”
But now our clients want to talk about content, too.
Let’s get this straight: website copy and blogs are forms of content and always were, but the definition of content has blown up; it now serves as the umbrella term for everything you say about yourself or whatever it is you’re talking about, anywhere you say it, whether you use text, images, or a variety of other media.
If you post something somewhere folks can see it?
Content.
Now, I don’t actually want to get into what content is or isn’t, or what it means to have a strategy for it. There are approximately 80 bajillion (excellent and not-so-excellent) articles and posts about those topics, all at your Googletips.
I’m more stuck on WHY all those articles are necessary.
Certainly…
- the rise of social platforms has opened up a universe of discussions that never could have happened before…
- companies and organizations and individuals are now subjected to more public scrutiny than ever before — for better or for worse…
- more and more people are leaping onto the Internet to make their fortunes or make their point or make their way, with a diverse range of motivations…
…so we’re madly in flux, with multiple channels and venues and variables in play. People want to get heard for every reason under the sun — but somewhere along the line, they’ve figured out that the people who snag eyes and ears have something called great content.
There it is again: Content! You need content! Content is king! It’s a brave new world, right?
So you go to all the trouble of writing and posting and tweeting and “Facebooking” a million things, and then…. nothing.
Huh? I thought content was important?
Well, it is.
But something else is more important.
While the way we communicate and share has evolved and expanded (and some might say, exploded!), one thing hasn’t changed at all: the most successful individuals / companies / organizations / boy bands are the ones who provide their audience, fans, customers, consumers, and clients with exactly what they want, whether in terms of their products, services, or messages (content!).
And maybe a good portion of the population doesn’t want it… but someone does.
Sometimes it happens by accident, and a little bit of kismet turns an idea into a sensation. But more often than not, someone took the time to figure out what’s needed or what’s wanted, and what works — whether via research, trial and error, evolution, or good questions, posed in the right directions.
Sure, this might seem like a lot of trouble when you’ve got something to say, but before you do, ask yourself: do you care?
Not in a touchy-feely, “hug it out” kind of way, mind you — but in a “does this matter to anyone but me?” way.
Successful content — about whatever, for whomever, on whatever platform, and to whatever end — requires the same thing any successful venture does: that you know what others care about, and that you demonstrate that knowledge by providing it for them (and not just what you wish they’d wanted in the first place).
Or, if they don’t know they care yet, figuring out the way in through the things they do care about.
If you have no idea what your audience is looking for, or how they’re reacting to what you’re putting out now… and you’re not so much trying to find out?
Your content won’t be successful.
If you don’t care about giving people something they’ll value — but rather what you value, because it’s really, really important?
Your content won’t be successful.
If you can’t figure out how your goals align with those of your audience or you’re not working to strengthen any alignments you’ve found?
Your content won’t be successful.
If you’re not paying attention to the other people who talk about the same stuff you do?
Your content won’t be successful.
If you’ve come up with incredibly clever taglines and fantastic copy and informative posts that perfectly embody everything you are and you honestly think everyone else will love it, too, because you took so much time doing it... but you don’t verify that with anyone else?
Your content won’t be successful.
Face it: you can have the most UX-friendly structure! and author-friendly CMS! and a great messaging architecture! and keywords that seem bang-on! and the most search enging-optimized content for those keywords! and the best authors posting super often! and writing that shoots like laser beams from the screen to zap the eyes of your readership… but unless it’s what matters to your audience?
Your. Content. Won’t. Be. Successful.
If someone has to beg you to care about what the people you’re speaking to want to hear — that you should want to provide them with value, that you should be meeting a need, or at least a want — you’ll never get where you mean to go.
So work on caring first — with all the open-eyed listening and asking and noticing and research and responding and adjusting that entails — and content second.
And see where that gets you. Besides everywhere… and far.
Categories: Digital Media, Strategy and Management
One day left to vote on SXSW panel proposals… and here’s ours!
That’s right — just one day left to vote on SXSW panels! Head here to vote right now.
Our contributed panel proposal, “Scratch Your Niche! How Digital Dimensionality Builds Influence,” brings together:
- our own Tamsen McMahon, Director of Digital and Strategic Initiatives and “co-tack” at Brass Tack Thinking;
- C.C. Chapman, Boston-based media maven, Digital Dad and the man behind Accident Hash and Managing the Gray;
- Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6 and “co-tack” at Brass Tack Thinking;
- Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents, and in-demand speaker and consultant.
You can read more about what the panel’s all about at the link above, but here’s a quick peek:
“Influence based on “digital dimensionality”—a coordinated presence across four dimensions—can expand your potential audience, and influence, to almost infinite proportions. In this session, you’ll see real-life examples of how both individuals and organizations have used the digital dimensionality to advance their goals…and learn how you can, too.”
To learn more — and to vote! — just head to our SXSW PanelPicker page!
Categories: Branding, Digital Media, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
New workshops to advance your brand
We’re pleased to roll out a new series of workshops today, focusing on four of our most important areas of collaboration with clients: brand strategy, messaging, visual brand expression, and social media.
Each one of these modular, half-day (and customizable!) workshops offers your organization the opportunity to learn how you could more effectively be communicating with your audience (both internally and externally), and how to make more significant connections with the customers, constituents and community members that matter most to you.
Sound good?
We’d love to work with you to help you do what you do even better.
Drop us an email via the form on the Workshops page to get in touch, or give me (Meg) a call at 617-266-8577.
Categories: Branding, Design, Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
Are your supporters a community… or an ATM?
After 20-plus years of working with nonprofits, I can say one thing for certain: you can measure the strength (not to mention the future strength) of your organization by the depth of your relationships.
If you’ve built a strong community of supporters, you’re going to be able to rely on them when you need extra help to meet your goals.
These supporters are the volunteers who show up to help out when your staff is overtaxed, who talk passionately about your latest project with their friends and family, or raise their monthly donation when your other sources of funding run dry. They do it because they believe in what you do — and because they believe you value them right back.
In his article “Friend-raising before fund-raising” Roger and Brandon highlight the importance of relationship building in soliciting support:
“Organizations that compete successfully for major donors are skilled in making friends, in fostering relationships with people who share a vision and values, and instinctively understand the need for collaboration.”
A big part of the friendship equation lies in the way you communicate and connect with your constituents. Do you truly see them as friends of your organization, invested in who you are and what you’re doing…. or do you see them as nothing more than a bank?
When you go to the bank to make a withdrawal, you don’t have to justify why you’re taking the money out, or what you’re going to do with it. After all, it’s there waiting for you. It’s yours. The ATM isn’t going to ask why it should hand over the cash! The number on your card is all the justification you need.
(And it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to say “thank you,” either, or follow up with the ATM to let it know what you did with the cash.)
Too many nonprofits are just as confident (and blunt!) about asking for money, time or other forms of support from their constituents, regardless of the fact that the support they’re seeking is anything but a given: they feel entitled, because they believe in their mission and how deserving it is.
But unless they’ve done a good job of articulating their mission and why it matters to them — and learning why and how it matters to the people they’re sharing it with, and asking for support from — they’re likely to be met with more resistance than unabashed acceptance. The “ask” simply isn’t enough.
So how can you avoid treating your community like a savings account?
When your organization has a clear, well-defined brand, you’re off to a great start. You’ve done the work of differentiating yourself by establishing your values, your goals and your unique areas of capability. Your supporters can identify easily with your core mission because they truly know what it entails. When they talk about you to their friends and family, they don’t have to scramble to talk about who you are… the right words are at the tip of their tongues.
But, as with any real relationship, it simply doesn’t work when it’s all about you.
You need to be aware of your constituents’ brands, too.
As Roger and Brandon write:
“While articulating your brand is very important, it’s only part of the equation. Organizations that are successful at connecting to major donors are also skilled at understanding the “brands” of their prospects. What is it that they care about? What do they stand for? What is it that they want to accomplish?”
Are you asking these questions? Do you care about the answers?
The reality is that people are giving for reasons intimately connected to their personal brand now, as Roger and Brandon explain:
“Major giving today is not about being a ‘good person,’ checking off the $100 box on an annual fund donation form, or becoming a member. It’s about accomplishing something both the donor and the organization consider as vitally important.”
And if you’re like most organizations, you have a support base that brings together a lot of different people with a lot of different reasons for getting behind your mission. One message, or “way in,” does not fit all — even if your core brand is crystal clear.
This is where listening comes in.
Take the time to ask all the people who support you — from the folks on your board to the people who work in your office, right on down to the people who give $10 a month through automatic debits — why they take the time to be involved.
How did they find out about you? Where did the emotional connection to your organization begin? What do they value most about what you do? How does contributing to what you do make them feel? When they talk about you to others, what words are they using? What kind of responses do they get?
These are just a few of the questions that will help you get to the heart of why people support you — and by taking a good look at the answers, you’ll learn to share your mission with them more effectively… and connect with other future supporters just like them.
Don’t worry if you discover a lot of different answers to the same questions — understanding the unique and diverse nature of your support base will make the job of reaching out to them that much easier.
And you’ll never treat them like an ATM again.
To read more from Roger and Brandon about ‘friend-raising’, head to Sametz.com. And be sure to take a look at our other articles, too — we’ve got lots of resources for nonprofits and for-profits alike.
Categories: Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
Roger Sametz at the National Arts Marketing Project
We’re pleased to point you to an article by our president and CEO, Roger Sametz, on the front page of the National Arts Marketing Project this month.
“Brand Control to Major Tom: The New Rules of Brand Management” explores the challenges that brand managers face in this ‘new age of extreme participation’:
“No, you haven’t lost control. The notion that you can manage your brand by making and distributing messages and materials that you want “out there” is becoming quaint.
Rather, now, monologues need to be replaced by dialogues; formal market research needs to be paired with attentive listening; “advice” is offered round the clock; participation in social media is now table stakes; and customers and prospects who have always trusted friends to help them make decisions often have a huge network they can carry around with them to consult.”
You can find the full text of the article here.
We welcome your comments on the article in the comments below — let us know what you think!
And special thanks to the National Arts Marketing Project for connecting us with your passionate group of constituents!
Categories: Branding, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
Who are you, REALLY?
Discovering your core message… and how to share it
Do you know who you are? Do you know what you represent to others?
It’s funny that we can inhabit our skins (all the time!), carry on a continuous internal dialog, and still not have a clear picture of who we are, even in terms of how we see ourselves. We know what we like, or what we’re good at; we know what we look for in a friend; we are shaped by countless experiences and relationships. But the closer we look, oddly, the fuzzier the picture can become.
Nonprofit organizations are the same way, especially those in “midlife”: they’re far enough from their moments of conception to look upon those times as relatively simple and progress-rich, but they’ve still got long roads and countless opportunities before them.
In reality, it’s no easier for organizations to “know” who they are, and what their places in the world are. But while a person can approach this problem as a lifelong adventure (or as a ride), nonprofit organizations owe it to their stakeholders—staff, volunteer leadership, benefactors, and their constituencies—to realize an identity, to have a plan, to choose a direction, and to make a difference.
Introspection is the pastime of most nonprofit organizations. Their identities are usually more complicated than those of for-profit enterprises, which can very often frame their purposes in commercial terms. (Though they are not immune to bouts of narcissism now and then, to be sure.) And now that most nonprofits have come to think about their brands, and try to act deliberately to shape their brands, there seems to be all-new justification for committee-based navel gazing. But many a committee have found themselves unable to translate insights about their organizations into meaningful stories for people “out there,” or to learn anything new at all.
How much introspection is a good thing? How can you learn from it? How can you put self-knowledge to work? Maintaining focus and turning discoveries into tools are themselves important projects. But not every organization has the time, the resources, or even the need to be on the proverbial therapy couch for very long.
That’s why we recently launched a series of workshops, rather like brand communication “boot camps”, designed to help organizations maximize the value of what they already know, and get set on the right path for strategically building their brands.
For example, our strategic messaging workshop is designed to help both for- and nonprofit organizations articulate what’s special about their activities, connect that value to constituents’ interests and needs, and optimize their story. This workshop puts the Pareto principle to work, because many of the answers to your brand story problems are already in the minds of an organization’s people.
It’s rare that an organization, especially a mature one, can discover something about itself so novel that it changes their outlook and brand. If it is who it is, and it’s going to do more or less what it’s already doing, it can address many brand awareness and comprehension issues with rigorous focus on relevance, simplicity, clarity, and consistency.
What about that other 20% of the problems? Solving them could be the key to sustainable growth or meaningful change. That’s where more hard-core self-study—and, crucially, internal alignment—comes in. No workshop can mend deep rifts in strategic vision, or plot a careful course through a time of transition.
Taking the time to look deeply will give an evolving organization the perspective to reevaluate its past and its values, to determine what kind of change is desirable, and practical. It also affords all the stakeholders the opportunity for their voices to be heard, contributing to the solution and having the time to adjust to new realities. Sometimes, reorienting your perspective just can’t be rushed. (But this doesn’t mean you can ever take your eye off your goals. Many get lost in the reflection!)
Many nonprofit brand identities, like the people behind them, are complex—full of contradictions and inconsistencies. But that doesn’t mean they’re all worthy of attention.
Knowing how to sort out all your traits and ideas, and strengthening those that support business strategy while attending appropriately to gaps and weaknesses, is the key to avoiding introspection paralysis.
Categories: Branding, Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
Filtering the social media firehose
That’s it. I NEED A SYSTEM.
While that statement can (and unfortunately, does) apply to far too many areas of my life, it’s probably the thing I say most often when faced with the daily influx of Twitter streams, Google Waves, RSS feeds, Facebook and LinkedIn status updates, and all the other sources that form the social media firehouse.
I NEED A SYSTEM.
It’s a natural cycle of gathering information: when we first start learning about something (or join a social network), we cast the net wide, and follow every rabbit hole.
Every new blog post leads to at least one new person to follow on Twitter (i.e., the author, if it’s good)—and many more if we’re impressed with the commenters. Every new tweet on Twitter leads to a new blog to subscribe to, which means more email coming in, or more feeds in our RSS readers. Every new Facebook update holds the potential for finding a new site, or connecting with a new—or very old—friend (or even the opportunity to creep on an old enemy). Every new LinkedIn group means another daily digest, and yet another place to spend even more time we don’t feel like we have.
After a while, it’s too much. The tide is overwhelming. You can’t hear the quality signals for all of the noise. You miss updates from those you care about. You start to avoid whole sections of your network, or even entire platforms, entirely (hellloooo, LinkedIn groups!!). And you hear yourself say it:
I NEED A SYSTEM.
We all seem to want a system, and so we read eagerly how everyone else manages the influx, hoping to find the one that’ll work for us, too. The funny thing is, no two people’s systems are the same. Just this week, Ian M. Rountree and Justin Kownacki told us they’re going to read it all (and challenged us to), while Amber Naslund told us she’s razed it all (and challenged us to).
Ultimately, what works for me is unlikely to work for you, and vice versa.
And yet we keep looking. Or at least I do, because I hope that something about how someone else does something will resonate with something in me.
I NEED A SYSTEM.
My Twitter system is months old—so old as to now be completely useless. I rejiggered Facebook a few weeks back, but that’s only helped me with whom I publish to, not how I take in information… so that, too, needs a fix. I’ve already admitted my problem with LinkedIn, I turned off Google Buzz within 48 hours of its launch, and thankfully, I’m on few enough Waves that my lack of system there doesn’t hurt me overmuch.
But I’m frustrated. The only system that’s working for me right now is my RSS reader (I use Google’s).
So, in the hopes that by showing you mine, you’ll show me yours, here it is:
I’ve figured out over time whose stuff I like to read, and how I like to “try out” new blogs. So, forced high on my list are the blogs I won’t miss (Zen Acorns is an inside joke amongst those folks, so no, you’re not missing out on some new social media term). Next are the “Faves,” those blogs and feeds that reliably deliver great content to share, comment on, or keep for future reference (one of those feeds posts about 50 times a day, which is why the unread number is so high).
Then comes the “Need to Know,” which (as you can see from the partial list) is a group of blogs whose posts are often linked to and talked about on Twitter and other blogs. I don’t read all of those every day, but do scan to find an interesting post here or there, and to keep an eye on trends and patterns in topics (like the whole wave of influence-related posts two weeks ago). Sometimes I’ll move a “Needs to Know” feed over to the Faves, or vice versa.
The “Watchlist” is comprised of new subscriptions I’m watching for a while to see if they’ll eventually make it to Faves status, and feeds from folks I know who post less frequently, but whom I see or interact with on a regular basis (either in person or online). The “High Volume” folder holds those feeds from sites that update multiple times a day. Corralling them there keeps me from being scared at the unread number that would show up if they were allowed to mix with the other feeds. Then the subject matter folders start.
Basically, I organize my feeds by reading priority. The more time I have, the further down the list I’ll read. A lot of the topic-specific folders go unread much of the time—the best of breed of those is captured in the folders at top—but I hold onto them for those times, whether for client work or personal interest, that I want to dive deep into a particular area.
It’s been working well, but it’s my only system that is.
I NEED A SYSTEM. Several of them.
So tell me some of yours. What works for you?
Image credit: wbaiv
Categories: Digital Media, Strategy and Management
Roger Sametz in Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek carries a weekly strategy column in their Small Business section called “Today’s Tip”—and we’re pleased to announce that our president and CEO, Roger Sametz, was a recent contributor.
The “Today’s Tip” column is aimed at helping entrepreneurs and business owners improve the way they run their organizations. Entrepreneurs, academics, and consultants from a diverse range of industries offer practical advice on a variety of topics each business day.
In “Brand Management in the Age of Social Media”, Roger shared a series of steps to help business owners create a successful mosaic brand, even in this era of multilayered, multifaceted communications:
“The notion that you can manage your brand by simply crafting messages onto print and digital materials and then handing them down from headquarters is becoming more outdated every day. Today, monologues need to be replaced by dialogues; formal market research needs to be paired with attentive listening; participation in social media is now both de rigueur and high-stakes; and constituents who before trusted only close friends to help them make decisions now have a huge, portable social network they can call on for round-the-clock consultation.
What you plan and execute from your conference room can be either reinforced or undermined by what you don’t plan and execute. And anyone can create a brouhaha.
How to cope? More important: How to succeed?
Start by thinking of your brand as a mosaic. You place some of the tiles, then the rest are placed by others. Your job is to place enough tiles to control the context of your mosaic so that the brand picture you’ve outlined (and partially filled in) will influence how those extra, external tiles are seen and understood.”
You can read the full article here.
Thanks to Businessweek for the opportunity to connect with your readers—and we look forward to offering them more strategic advice to help them achieve their key business goals in future.
Categories: Branding, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
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