by: Jason Miller
Following up on yesterday’s post, I am still reveling in the thought leadership bliss and overflow of insights from last week’s Blueglass LA internet marketing conference. Here are five more key takeaways for the B2B Marketing professional from experts Chris Brogan, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, SEOmoz’s Jamie Steven, and HARO’s Peter Shankman.
6. A Formula for Improving Your Content Process
SEOMoz’s Jamie Steven spoke about improving a company’s overall content marketing process. “The first thing you need to ask yourself is “What are the objectives of your content efforts?” Steven’s answer, and rightly so, “The objective should be to create something that is extraordinary, useful and unique.” He continues, “The value of content is effectively driven by the quality of content. Your content needs to be truly impressive before you can get value from it. If you create exceptional content, everything else tends to fall in place.” So how does one create exceptional content? Steven offered up this helpful equation:
Extraordinary + useful + unique content = traffic + authority + attention = followers, visitors, readers = conversions
7. “Seeding” Can Help Build Your Content Link Strategy
Link building is an essential part of a good content strategy, but can be challenging for many businesses. Seeding your content with third party links can help. SEOMoz’s Jamie Steven recommends that you “Ask key link targets ahead of time for their opinion. Ask them which of a few options they like, then get buy in, thank them and share when completed.” By seeding content with a third party, you will be more likely to get a link from that individual.
8. Go the Extra Mile for Your Customers
“The greatest lover in the world is a reformed hater”, says HARO’s Peter Shankman. He continues, “Your most loyal customers are the ones that had a problem that you were able to get fixed.” These customers are also more likely to be vocal in social media, so it’s vital that businesses reply, listen, and react quickly. Shankman adds, “Go out of your way, and take that extra step to make someone who’s a hater, a lover and they will do your PR for you.”
9. Email is not dead
“Email is still the primary way people want to find out how to make purchases,” says Copyblogger’s Brian Clark. He continues, “As a business you want to do cross promotion, launching new stuff to engage your audience. Content is the mechanism that gets people into a warmer relationship with you until they buy something.”
Chris Brogan chimes in, “Email marketing is the favorite thing I do every week. Human kinds’ greatest need is to feel wanted. When you respond to people, you are saying ‘I see you.’” Brogan does his best to reply to all of his email, but as you can imagine, he can’t respond to them all. He finished with a quote that rings true for all businesses crafting messages for their email marketing campaigns: “Aim for their brains, that way you get into their heart. The wallet comes along with the rest.” Well played Brogan, well played.
10. What channels work best for different types of content?
Chris Brogan uses different channels for different content. “I never told people ‘blast your crap all over the place’,” says Brogan. “My blog tends to be business-minded tips, and my newsletter is passion and feeling. In G+ I’m a lot more open; it’s the spice rack that goes with the delicious meat I’m providing. I use social networks as the liner notes to my awesome album.”
Copyblogger’s Brian Clark says, “It’s about who your people are and where they like to hang out. If you don’t understand that, you won’t get very far out of the gate.” He continues, “Twitter is focused on content distribution that’s relevant to other publishers. We’re trying to get people used to consuming and spreading content in that channel.”
For a complete overview of the Blueglass LA internet marketing conference, check out the full recap here.
Original post: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2012/05/ten-takeaways-from-blueglass-la-the-internet-marketing-experience-part-2.html
