Content Rules

I. OVERVIEW & THE CASE FOR CONTENT

• The New Reality of Business: Every organization is now a de facto publisher, moving beyond traditional advertising to engage directly with customers online.

• What is "Content"?: A broad term for anything created and uploaded to a website or online platform, including text, images, videos, webinars, blogs, white papers, ebooks, podcasts, FAQ pages, product pages, and social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

• The Power of Content: Great content attracts customers, builds trust and credibility, and ultimately converts browsers into loyal fans and advocates by deepening relationships over time. It's an "information annuity" that generates web traffic and helps remove purchase impediments indefinitely.

• Why Content Marketing is Imperative:

  1. People Search: Customers actively seek information online, and you want them to find your company.

  2. Customers Educate Themselves: Buyers conduct extensive research before engaging with sales, so you need to provide the information they're looking for.

  3. Everyone is the Media: Technology has removed barriers to publishing, allowing businesses to reach customers directly and engage in direct conversation at a relatively low cost.

• Good Content as a Competitive Advantage: It helps you stand out in crowded markets, positioning your company as an expert and trusted resource. Businesses like River Pools and Spa focus on becoming "encyclopedias" for their niche, using long-tail search terms and addressing customer questions honestly to build trust and loyalty.

• "Rules" as Guidelines: The "Content Rules" are not rigid laws, but rather a set of broad suggestions, like bowling lane bumpers, designed to simplify content creation and ease anxiety, improving your chances of success.

II. THE CONTENT RULES (Core Principles)

1. Embrace Being a Publisher: Acknowledge and leverage your company's new role as a content creator and information provider in the digital age.

2. Insight Inspires Originality:

   • Start with "Why": Define clear objectives for your content, such as attracting new customers, raising awareness, sharing information, or fostering community. Without a strategic plan, you're doomed to underperform.

   • Know Your Audience: Understand your buyer personas, their concerns, objectives, and what keeps them up at night. Use online listening tools and keyword research to inform your content and speak their language.

   • SEO is Key: Unique, compelling, keyword-rich content combined with inbound links boosts your search rankings, ensuring people find you when they search.

3. Build Momentum: Every piece of content should have a clear objective and include "triggers to action" to guide prospects to the next logical step in their journey, whether it's signing up for a webinar or moving closer to a purchase decision.

4. Speak Human:

   • Authentic Voice: Communicate in a natural, loose, and direct voice, as if writing to a friend. Let your company's unique personality, empathy, and emotion shine through.

   • Avoid Corporate-Speak: Eliminate jargon, buzzwords, and bland "Franken-speak" (e.g., "synergy," "leverage," "incentivizing," "solution") that makes your company sound like a "tool". Words matter.

   • Take a Stand: Express a distinct point of view or attitude on a subject to differentiate your content and communicate your unique perspective.

5. Reimagine; Don't Recycle:

   • Content Circle of Life: Adopt a holistic view where a "Big Idea" or core message fuels the creation of various content formats across multiple platforms, maximizing reach and discoverability.

   • Atomize Content: Deconstruct larger assets (like a white paper or ebook) into smaller, snack-sized pieces (blog posts, videos, podcasts, social updates).

   • Editorial Calendar: Create a publishing schedule (e.g., the "1-7-30-4-2-1" model for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly content) to ensure consistent content delivery and efficient management.

   • Bust Silos: Distribute content freely across all your platforms, optimizing each piece for search engines and including social sharing options ("social bling").

   • Content Ideas: Reimagine existing content through various formats like short blog posts, aggregated Twitter/Facebook insights, bundled ebooks, video interviews, client success stories, presentations on SlideShare, mobile alerts, and behind-the-scenes glimpses. Also, curate relevant content from other sources to become an authority, but don't rely solely on it.

6. Share or Solve; Don't Shill:

   • Create Value: Content should provide useful information, solve problems, or improve customers' lives, positioning your company as a reliable, vendor-agnostic resource, not just a seller.

   • Good Content Characteristics: Be truthful, relevant, human (specific yet universal), passionate, original (fresh perspective), and surprising (unexpected elements).

   • Finding Stories: Source ideas from customer conversations, interviews with thought leaders, customer service insights, search and social media keywords, industry news, personal passions, behind-the-scenes content, events, how-to guides, best practices, and community highlights.

7. Show; Don't Just Tell: Instead of just stating features, demonstrate how your products or services live in the real world through case studies, client narratives, and real-world examples. Focus on the human benefits and emotional impact, not just facts and figures.

8. Do Something Unexpected: Inject elements of surprise, humor, or entertainment into your content. This helps drive viral sharing and enhances your company's personality, especially important for B2B companies with complex or "dead-serious" products.

9. Stoke the Campfire: Good content, like a campfire, should spark interaction and ignite conversations among your customers and between them and your brand. This builds community, encourages sharing, and fosters engagement. Start with small, highly shareable "tinder" content and consistently feed the fire with more substantial, reimagined content. Remember, community takes time to develop, and quality engagement trumps sheer numbers.

10. Create Wings and Roots:

    • Roots: Ground your content in your company's unique perspective, voice, and point of view, ensuring authenticity.

    • Wings: Give your content the ability to soar freely across the web by making it findable, accessible, and shareable as a "social object".

      • Findable: Optimize for search engines by including keywords, long-tail terms, and comprehensive descriptions. Establish profiles on all leading social networks to maximize discoverability.

      • Accessible: Ensure content is viewable on various screens and devices, including mobile phones. Test compatibility and make strategic decisions about content gating (requiring registration).

      • Shareable: Design content that inspires awe or an emotional response. Make sharing effortless with prominent social media buttons, Creative Commons licensing, and embeddable widgets, tools, or presentations. Promote your content on activity streams like Twitter by being concise, providing context, leading with good stuff, and writing killer headlines. While you can't guarantee content goes "viral," you can enhance its shareability.

11. Play to Your Strengths: You don't need to create every type of content or publish on every platform. Focus on doing at least one thing exceptionally well to stand out and build a dedicated audience.

III. THE HOW-TO SECTION (Specific Content Types)

• Blogs as a Content Hub (Chapter 11):

  • Purpose: A blog serves as your online home base for content, including posts you write, curated content, and press mentions.

  • Guidelines: Define your blog's purpose and set a reliable publishing schedule. Mix up topics (short/long, timely/evergreen, personal/professional) and move beyond just text by including images, charts, videos, and embedded content. Write killer headlines that pique curiosity, use superlatives, surprising analogies, specificity, or a contrarian view. Include clear calls to action to create momentum and guide readers to more content. Categorize and tag everything for search engines and readers. Write conversationally and humanly, but remember to edit for clarity. Don't overthink; leave room for audience participation.

  • Simple Template: For non-writers, a basic framework can ease anxiety: a compelling title, a hook (question or controversial statement), explanation, bulleted lists for key points, a relevant image, and a closing question to invite interaction. Brevity is generally best.

• Effective Webinars (Chapter 12):

  • Strategy: Webinars are powerful lead generation and relationship-building tools. Define clear objectives, such as broad awareness or targeting qualified prospects.

  • Preparation: Create registration forms wisely, collecting information gradually like a "dating scenario". Write the story of your presentation first, not just bullet points. Design visually compelling slides with one idea per slide, authentic images, and large fonts (no smaller than 32-point). Craft intriguing titles that promise value.

  • Execution & Follow-up: Keep video short and relevant if used. Reimagine the webinar content into pre-webinar articles/podcasts, on-demand recordings, PDF slides, and transcripts. Encourage social media chat with hashtags. Design a visually inspiring final slide with clear next steps or calls to action. Follow up promptly with attendees and those who missed it, offering additional content and addressing questions. Measure success by tracking registrants, attendance, lead quality, and conversion rates.

• Ebooks and White Papers (Chapter 13):

  • Definitions: White papers are authoritative, often technical reports (10-12 pages) focused on a single issue, usually for B2B. Ebooks are typically looser, more playful, and visually engaging, designed for skimming and scanning, and can be equally long. Both address problems or trends important to customers.

  • When to Use: Ideal for transforming expertise into tangible value, educating prospects, products/services requiring thoughtful consideration, long sales cycles, addressing multiple influencers, industries hungry for information, and showcasing customer success stories. Not suitable for impulse buys or price-sensitive products.

  • Creation: Position as a vendor-agnostic resource that solves problems, rather than shilling. Infuse fun and personality (even for B2B) and "show, don't just tell" with human stories and examples. Craft intriguing titles that pique curiosity, simplify complex subjects, tell a story, use unexpected analogies, or challenge conventional wisdom. Design matters: use landscape format, plenty of visuals, callouts, and white space. Include interactive elements like live tables of contents and hyperlinks. Encourage sharing with Creative Commons licenses and social sharing icons. Create a dedicated landing page with compelling copy, social validation, and testimonials. Promote widely across all channels. Reconsider rigid registration requirements; a "dating scenario" approach (collecting info gradually) can be more effective.

• Compelling Customer Success Stories (Case Studies) (Chapter 14):

  • Secret: Tell a true story where your company is the "cape-wearing superhero" who solves a problem for a customer. Focus on human benefits and the emotional impact of overcoming a challenge.

  • Structure:

    1. The Setup: Present fundamental facts about the client or company being profiled in an easy-to-scan format.

    2. The Challenge: Focus on the human story of the main character, outlining the problem or "villain" and its emotional costs.

    3. The Solution: Introduce your company, product, or service as the hero, detailing how it provided a resourceful solution, even highlighting "plot twists" or initial challenges.

    4. The Results: Convey the emotional "happily ever after," emphasizing the benefits and including "ideas you can steal" or lessons learned. Reimagine these stories into videos for greater impact.

• FAQs Makeover (Chapter 15):

  • Purpose: FAQ pages are "unsung heroes" that function as an online customer service center, anticipating questions, building trust, and educating customers.

  • Tips: Write direct answers, not product descriptions, focusing on "what's in it for them". Be concise, but allow for deeper dives. Don't shy away from tough questions (e.g., pricing, competitors). Avoid corporate jargon; use a human voice, even with humor. Prioritize solving problems with facts over shilling. Showcase personality if it aligns with your brand. Make FAQs searchable, use graphics/social objects (videos, presentations), enable printing, and encourage sharing (direct links). Organize into clear sections and link to customer service options. Treat FAQs as a doorway to other relevant content on your site, not a dead end. Use "FAQ prospecting" to monitor popular questions for future content ideas. Create a "Social FAQ" by posting answers on social media and inviting customer comments. Also, address "Frequently Unasked Questions" (FUQs) to proactively solve deeper problems.

• Video: Show Me a Story (Chapter 16):

  • Importance: Videos are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text. Focus on telling a compelling story (entertaining or educating) rather than trying to make a viral video.

  • Creation: Start with simple equipment (webcam, cell phone) and gradually build up. Create "minidocumentaries" featuring real stories, real people, and outside sources for credibility, focusing on overcoming a "dragon" or problem.

  • Shooting & Sharing: Experiment with equipment. Minimize noise, ensure good lighting. Don't aim for perfect production; focus on conveying a valuable message. Optimize videos for search by using clear, informative titles, content-rich descriptions, and relevant tags. Choose compelling thumbnails. Allow embedding and sharing, and cross-promote your videos across all your online outlets.

• Podcasting: Is This Thing On? (Chapter 17):

  • Value: Podcasting allows you to be the "program manager of your own radio station," targeting niche audiences and building credibility, even if video has boomed.

  • Tips: Define your "why" and "who." Name your show clearly. Aim for shorter lengths (under 30 minutes, an average commute time). Use a photo of yourself as an avatar, not a logo, to appear more human. Plan before recording with basic notes and links. Use royalty-free music for intros/outros. Edit your recordings, especially for interviews, to remove silences or verbal fillers. Don't be self-conscious about your voice; let listeners judge. Be patient; it takes time to find your stride. Podcasting helps you stay on the cutting edge of your industry.

IV. B2B Specifics (Chapter 10)

• Context: B2B companies face unique challenges because prospects avoid sales reps until later in their decision-making process. Content marketing becomes crucial to build relationships and establish trust as a "trusted source of information—an adviser".

• Why: B2B content must be tied to both short-term goals (e.g., webinar sign-ups) and strategic objectives (e.g., increasing sales). Measuring these helps prioritize content efforts.

• Who: Understand the various "personas" involved in B2B buying cycles (e.g., application developers, enterprise architects) and their specific information needs. Consult customer databases, conduct polls, and monitor online conversations.

• What: Map your audience's buying process and their information needs at each stage to relevant content formats. Don't forget content for existing customers, helping them maximize product use.

• When: Consistency is vital. Use an editorial calendar and production schedules for content, always including a call to action that guides prospects to the next logical piece of content. Use unique landing pages for each content asset.

• How: Pay special attention to "Do something unexpected" (Content Rule #8), using humor or entertainment to drive awareness for often invisible B2B products or services.

• Four B2B Content Ideas:

  1. Competitive Comparisons: Offer downloadable documents comparing your product to competitors, or reviewing pricing. Buyers seek this info, and providing it positions you as a preferred vendor.

  2. Nuanced Case Studies: Go beyond simple problem-solution-results. Use success stories to preemptively address common objections or cater to the specific information needs (e.g., "lessons learned") of different stakeholders in the buying process.

  3. Reimagined Content Kits: Bundle related content (webinars, articles, worksheets, success stories) into downloadable toolkits that link to your existing library.

  4. Compelling FAQs: Provide lists of common questions and answers, as detailed in Chapter 15.

• Where: Make it easy for prospects to consume and share your content. Embed sharing options in PDFs and leverage press releases to announce new content. Rethink rigid registration; adopt a "dating scenario" to gather information gradually with each interaction, and use cookies to pre-populate forms. Post content on relevant online communities, blogs, Twitter, and email signatures.

• B2B Content Traits: Timely, easy to consume, offered in multiple media, practical, and written by a real person to differentiate your organization.

V. FINAL CONTENT CHECKLIST (From Chapter 29)

• Have you embraced being a publisher as a marketing shift and opportunity?

• Are you patient and recognize content strategy as a long-term commitment?

• Do you understand your customers' concerns and objectives, and what keeps them up at night?

• Does your content answer "What's in it for me?" from your customer's perspective?

• Are you creating content with a distinct, human voice and unmistakable point of view, avoiding "Franken-speak"?

• Are you showing how your product lives in the world and how people use it?

• Do you occasionally surprise or awe your audience?

• Are you sparking interaction and stoking a "community campfire"?

• Are you giving your content both "roots" (grounding in your perspective) and "wings" (shareability)?

• Are you strategic about registration, collecting only necessary information upfront to build a relationship over time?

• Does your content have at least one clear "trigger to action" and a unique landing page for each asset?

• Are you reimagining your content, leveraging existing assets, and using an editorial calendar for consistency?

• Can you measure the effectiveness of your content?

• Is your content easily findable, accessible, and shareable, complete with "social bling"?

• Are you prepared to do at least one thing really, really well?