content

Apple’s App of the Year winners and runners-up for both iPhone and iPad are all about the creation (or at least manipulation) of content. The apps listed are Instragram and VidRhythm for the iPhone, and Snapseed and djay for the iPad.

When chatting with colleagues, friends and relatives about the delineation between mobile computing and desktop/laptop computing, it’s often mentioned how consumption of content (mobile) and creation of content (desktop/laptop) defines how we leverage different computing platforms.

With the success of products such as the App of the Year honorees, and other apps built for content creation, we're starting to see a blurring of lines between the various computing platforms in the consumer space. It won't be long before we start to see a shift in the commercial space. For many, this change is already upon us.

OK, I know we’re not going to produce annual reports on our smart phones and send them to a 10-color press over the Whatever-G Network. But I’m curious – as marketing pros, how are we utilizing the strengths of mobile as of late, not so much as a destination for our messages, but in the creation of our messages?

In my case, I’ve adopted OmniFocus to aid the planning and management of communications design projects while I'm away from my desk. On many occasions I’ve found myself relying on Camera+ for photo scouting. These are just a few examples.

So, how about you? In what ways is the mobile platform influencing how you work as a marketing communicator?

The following link is a great little article with a five minute audio piece on Google's preference for original content when ranking sites. It tells the story of an online retalier that got killed when Google recently changed its ranking criteria and what he's doing about it.

Here's a clip from the article on what happened:

Immediately, Lieberman pulled up his traffic numbers. He found that two-thirds of his customers had disappeared.

"As days went by, and I saw that dip in the graph was holding — and it was a cliff — it was really a shocking drop," he says. "My first reaction was not to panic, try to find articles related to this Panda update. What is it about?"

Click to read or listen to the entire piece: Google's Search Tweak Puts A Company At Risk to check it out.

Just another reminder that good content is king.

Content strategy calls for regular content on your web site and that's great, but only if it's useful and relevant to your prospects

Maybe you’ve noticed a lot of talk lately about content strategy. If you’re a savvy marketer, the idea of driving traffic to your site by providing awesome content makes perfect sense. Ideally, you’re already developing a strategy to provide your target market with useful content.

I want to address one aspect of developing a great content strategy that often gets overlooked: relevance.

The potential to connect with our prospects via our web sites is exciting. We know that prospects are continually searching the internet for information. We also know that traditional media is delivering less and less of the return on our investment than it used to.

So, we create as much content as we can and publish it to our site.

But, for our content to truly be effective—meaning for it to draw in prospects—it has to be relevant and useful. Just putting content up on a regular basis is not going to drive sales unless that content is somehow worth something to your audience. It’s like a magazine for dog lovers. If the magazine is chock-full of articles about cats, well, there’s a good chance that its readership will drop off significantly.

I know that’s a bit extreme, but it’s not far from what a lot of companies are doing because they are publishing content, but its worth to their target market is dubious.

I’ve been following a publicly traded high-tech company with close to a billion dollar market cap as they foray into content strategy. They have a blog, video, news releases and regularly revised sales info. Not bad, right? I mean, they’re doing it by the book. But, almost all of their content is a sales pitch. Their blog posts can be distilled down to, “Hey! Look at our cool new thing we’re offering!” Their videos are product demonstrations. Their news is about what trade show they’re attending. Who cares, other than the company itself?

What they should be doing is first drop the sales pitch and start to provide information that impacts their prospects' lives. What problems can they help solve? What information can they share that will make their prospects' jobs easier or make them more successful? How can they make their company more accessible in ways that are useful to their prospects?

We, as marketers, want to publish information that we are excited about. “Look! A new product!” But, our prospects are trying to solve problems and their problems are not the same as our problems. Our prospects aren't worried about our lead-gen campaign or our sales quotas.

Start giving your prospects content that helps them with their problems and you won't have to worry about quotas. Instead you’ll have to figure out how to deal with your new sales volume, and who doesn’t love problems like that?

It's time for the Marketing Tip of the Week, a feature dedicated to helping marketers get that extra edge.

This week's tip: Realize You're A Publisher.

What business are you in? High tech manufacturing? Health care? IT? Marketing? It doesn't matter what industry we find ourselves in any more because we're all in publishing.

With the advent of web sites and their use to promote companies, we all became publishers without even knowing it. Every business that matters in America has a web site. Even my dry cleaner has one! If you're in business you have to be online. It's just that simple. And, if you have a web site then you are publishing content.

So, the question isn't if you're a publisher or not. We're all publishing. The question becomes are you a good publisher or a lousy publisher? Are you putting out great content that your customers and prospects want to consume? Or, are you careless about content?

Some marketers get this. They see their web site as a digital printing press and they use it to regularly put out great content that they know their audience will love to consume. They're building loyalty, credibility and sales by being great publishers.

But, some folks just don't get it at all. They throw a site up and leave it there to moulder. The content is poorly written and it's not relevant to the needs of the users.

There was a time in England when owning a printing press was illegal. The monarchy knew that a press was a powerful tool that could be used for subversion and so only very trusted people were approved to own a press. The king knew that the ability to mass communicate was power. Today, we marketers have that same power sitting right in front of us. Are we using it?

Buy an offset printing press today and you can easily spend a quarter of a million dollars just to get started. But, a printing press is only valuable when it's in use. You wouldn't spend $250,000 for a press and then just let it sit in your warehouse. But, that's what businesses are doing today when their web site just sits there, unused.

Realize you're a publisher and use the power of your web site to make your business more profitable, stable and healthy.

It's time for the Marketing Tip of the Week, a feature dedicated to helping marketers get that extra edge.

This week's tip: Think like an executive editor.

Executive editors are publishing's heavy-hitters. They have a lot of responsibility, but one of their main roles has to do with content. It's the executive editor who decides what's worthy of publishing and what's not.

This week's tip is based on their selection criteria; namely, editors only publish content that their audience is interested in. The really good ones are maniacal about this. They know their audience and will move heaven and earth to publish great content. Conversely, they don't worry about whose feelings get hurt when they have to kill weak stories or misguided pieces.

It sounds pretty obvious. But, think for a minute about your publishing platforms: your web site, sales literature and other marketing collateral. Ask yourself, are they full of content that your readers want to read? Be honest.

When a prospect lands on your web site they should feel like they've found a gold mine, like they've just found a rich resource that will help them do the things that matter to them. That's what an executive editor aims to do. She wants you to engage her publication and feel like you just found your soul mate. She wants you to think of her publication as the best resource and she wants you to keep coming back, day after day, year after year.

When creating your next communication piece, be it a pamphlet, video or case study, create it with the executive editor's mindset. Create something that gives your audience what they want and something that will keep them coming back for more.

Note: Post illustration created by Bob Wright Creative illustrator, Ken Townsend