Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

How to Build a Content Machine Without Spending a Cent

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 18:05:58 +0000

Lisa Toner

https://twitter.com/lisatoner13

https://ettch.org/

Bad news, money does not grow on trees and people who have it spend it on absurd things, like a diamond encrusted mouse. The same happens with marketing, where ad space is bought at thousands of dollars.

The good news is that we don’t need to be doing this. Smart marketeers think differently and know it’s not about the budget but using the resources you have to create value for your audience.

Your brain will get further than your budget.

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062677914666315776

Packed room @LisaToner13 : your brain will get you further than your budget #spark pic.twitter.com/A6JBaRRNvw
— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6zVzWU95Sw

Website grader generated 500 000 prospects: https://website.grader.com/

1. Right goals and right time

The last examples were very focused in one goal.

2. The value was greater than the required commitment

3. They knew how to reach the buyer personas

4. Optimising every bit of content to get the most out of it

These 4 are the keys for successful content.

We need to invest in the right goals and that means understanding the funnel and pin pointing the right places to act on.

tips for great content

1. Buyer personas

Know their goals and challenges and how they match your company’s offering.

2. Build a pilar and cluster content strategy

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-strategy

BusinessBrew used a pilar page and all their content was driving traffic there.

3. See what’s working for the competition using Buzzsumo

https://buzzsumo.com/

4. Add a meeting agenda item for the hot topic of the month/week

5. Create a blog post for each FAQ your customer support team receives

6. Use the hub spot blog ideas generator tool

7. Identify hot trends via influencers with buzzsumo

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062680553521065984

@LisaToner13 explains how we leveraged #pillarclustercontent to boost our organic growth result #spark @FalconIO pic.twitter.com/raPkbyzzac
— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

8. Figure out what you can automate for your potential customer (for free)?

9. Build a User Generated Content strategy

Example: Starbucks got customers to tweet a photo of their doodles on the paper cups. The customer had a reward at the end.

10. Get creative with video

11. Add structure to your content ideation process

Make a scorecard for what matters in your content.

Reach your audience

Experiment with different formats of content. Micro pieces of content can drive people to your pillar page.

Create a promotion template, a scale of how you wish to promote each piece of content.

Buffer got 60 guest posts and that helped them grow to 100,00 customers.

75% of hubspots blog views and leads are from old posts. That is a strong argument for optimising old content.

structure your experiments

PIE

Potential for change that the experiment has.

Important metrics that we can change, are they relevant?

Easy? How easy is it to run the experiment.

Bring back my Web !

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:09:48 +0000

I remember a web before Facebook and before Twitter. It was a place built so that people could talk among themselves, share and collaborate to build things that would make everyone’s life easier.

Sure, you would also use to post funny pictures of cats or brag about your latest party. There was however a different way of doing things online that I can’t explain. Less ego and more community.

I still love that web, and I still think we live in that reality. (Even though it does sound a bit lyrical to say this.) Sometimes I do lose faith on that web, for a little while. Then something wonderful happens, like a new open source project on Github, a new and constructive subreddit, or a blog post to rally time and resources towards something worth doing.

Cidadania 2.0

Lately, it was Cidadania 2.0 that brought my faith back. It’s a conference on using the web to build social tools, forums and ways to practice citizenship and governance in a more effective and efficient way. This year it was filled with amazing new projects, blogs and platforms to help us understand what is going on in our own street or what we can do to improve our education system.

It is also a project built by the love and dedication of three people. Ana Neves, Ana Silva, and Vitor Silva work hard to bring everyone a free event, 1 day full with presentations and discussions and one morning to network with people who are behind new projects and look for partnerships and people to help.

And did I mention it is free to attend? I would gladly pay 50 euros or more to attend and meet so many interesting people. Yet, the team insists on keeping it as easy to attend as humanly possible. You would imagine that government institutions and other companies would jump at the chance to sponsor this initiative.

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to happen, as this year I didn’t see many public institutions in the list of sponsors. It’s not that the content of the conference isn’t interesting to them. In fact, most of it challenges the status quo or proposes new models of governance and decision making. From where I stand, every city hall in Portugal should be ashamed for not to being present at Cidadania 2.0 and listed as a sponsor.

The people

Every good story needs a hero, right?

My friend Basílio decided to use the web and social media to pressure a number of public institutions into doing their job of making a street safer to walk in. It took him 2 years to get them into doing the job they are supposed to do anyway. Just think about it: they had to be pressured into doing their job.

I talked about this when I was in BledCom last year and you can find the slides in the end of this post.

Upload Lisbon

This is more about the future. Today mostly everyone from digital marketing and social media in Lisbon will be at Upload Lisboa. They will surely talk about Facebook, Twitter, the latest campaign and best practices. They will talk about what is new and exciting, because it is indeed exciting and interesting and shows great promise.

But I don’t think they will all be talking about this web I know and love. Where the main goal is to get people to talk and understand each other, instead of increasing the reach of a facebook post. I risk saying they will forget about the importance of 4chan in monitoring, how to take part in a community on reddit and worst, they may forget to mention why #blogs are still so important.

Well, some of them might but I am here to talk about blogs and about the web I grew up with. How it is still alive and showing great promise even to those who seem to have forgotten about it. And thanks to Pedro Rebelo I know I am not alone.

BledCom 2013: Towards a connected government from Bruno Amaral

What I learned about Social Media with Aerosmith and Run DMC

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:29:07 +0000

If this song doesn’t sound familiar, please do share in the comments how you have been living under a rock since the 70’s or how much you love Justin Bieber. Otherwise, I don’t see an excuse. Love it or hate it, it is a landmark of rock and rap. The original song is from Aerosmith’s album Toys in the attic, and in 1986 Run DMC covered it for their album Raising Hell.

Technically it is one of the best examples of how two musical genres can come together, it bridges a gap between two opposites.

and it started with a little kiss, like this

Content-wise, the song tells the story about a high school boy and his … objective. Regardless of how you feel about it, he knew what he wanted and looked to ways of making it happen. Also, he knew he was no good at it and seeked advice. It is a lot like communication. If you’re starting, be sure to start with simple objectives.

You either have a clear goal and try to come up with a strategy, or you are just doing it for fun. And we know there is nothing wrong with doing it for fun as long as you are clear about it.

Now that you have an idea about what you want, it is time to think about how to make it happen.

Remember the whole Keep It Simple ~~Stupid~~ adage?

I am taking the stupid part out. People aren’t stupid, they just don’t want to waste time understanding an article or complex set of ideas. But nonetheless, when we first start out with anything it is important to take simple steps. Think of it like this:

For individuals: I want to use twitter to talk with people who like photography.

For business: I want to know what people who like photography talk about so I can adjust my company accordingly.

Don’t start with a complex mission or set of tasks with e-business solutions, elaborate social media strategies or complicated goals. Take a step forward and be ready for the long run and not a short sprint.

She told me to Walk this way

Once you have your feet in, listen to people who have more experience. Ask questions, try to understand two things:

how does this communication channel work?

Whether it is Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest or any other, you need to know what features you have at your disposal and what they can do.

how do people use it?

Next, forget about step 1 and look at how people actually use the channel. For example, at first Twitter did not have the feature that allowed users to reply to each other. That feature came to light when the developers noticed how people use the @ sign to signify a reply to another user. Same thing happened for ReTweets, that feature was implemented to accommodate the way Twitter users used the RT

Whether you are a business or an individual, you need to learn the walk with people who actually do the walking.

Facebook is a good example of this, their Terms of Use allow you to run applications and contests on your page but people want you to share stuff about your business and to have a direct interaction with you, not to be spammed with your latest contest whether directly or via their friends. Although Facebook’s development guidelines allow you to build contests based on number of invites accepted, the users will not look at that with kind eyes.

Talk this way

Once you or your company are on the web there is one thing you should keep in mind at all time.

People like to be talked with, not talked to.

Whatever social media channel you use, there are ways for you to have a one on one or even a one-to-many conversation with anyone around the world. And yet, brands still invest most of their time and budget in campaigns and one-shot tactics instead of building long term plans of relationship building.

And this bit goes deeper than your average communication department. This is the bit where you need to get as many people as possible involved in the way you interact. Some of them will simply not care, others will be thrilled. But whichever the case you need to find ways to bridge the gap between internal and external stakeholders.

On a tactical level, this will help you set the tone of your discourse. It will show you that there is a difference between starting a tweet with “We would like to share with you” or “We would like to give you”.

Words have Values attached. The way I write a blog post for a B2B service is a million ways different than the way I write for a B2C service. Both of them may requite the same hard figures and charts, but the person on the other end is different and may even allow me to be write as if to entertain them.

So I took a big chance at the high school dance

I am a big fan of comfort zones. I love to know where my comfort zone is and where it ends so I can step out of it every once in a while and take a few chances.

This can be something as simple as starting a blog and exposing yourself to possible employers or something more dangerous like crowdsourcing obstacles that your organization is facing. Either way, it is a good idea to figure out where our boundaries are and push them every once in a while.

But lets be honest, it may go wrong and as in most things, you need a backup plan. Plot scenarios, look at case studies and keep people in the loop about what you are doing.

Over at Neville Hobson’s blog you will find a good commentary about how Starbucks handled their own social media crisis.

Be Original

This one is not on the lyrics for the song, but at its heart.

Run DMC didn’t just step out of their comfort zone, they went out and succeeded in bringing two opposites together. And one thing I learned about blogging is that you need to listen to what is being said and look how it is being done to offer a Different Perspective, otherwise you’re just another voice in the crowd. (See where I got the blog’s name from?)

Also, don’t set boundaries that are too strict.

If Aerosmith had sued Run DMC for using the song it would not have made it all the way up the charts. By allowing some creative freedom everyone came out winning.

Looking back to see what’s ahead

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:21:36 +0000

If you follow this blog or simply look at the archives, you will notice posting speed is down. And no, it is not simply because of my thesis or any other activity. I simply have not found a good topic to write about.

And recently it hit me why…

I still keep an eye on twitter and in a bunch of other portuguese blogs about public relations. Recently I compiled a list of a few portuguese blogs I read and Armando Alves was even surprised to find out he fits in that category.

Also, while celebrating their one year of blogging, PiaR wrote an interesting analysis regarding Public Relations Agencies in Portugal. My take on the post is that we are lacking a good amount of discussion. And if before we used to get good insight and dialog thanks to the newspapers who cover PR and Marketing in Portugal, that is no longer the case.

And as for blogs, agencies were quick to jump on but haven’t been able to catch on. What I mean is that blogs by PR professionals are being misused. What should be about listening and engaging in dialogue is proving not to be more than broadcasting and selling. I am not sure if anyone is buying…

Some agencies re-write press releases into blog posts, others focus on commenting the sector in an attempt to set their own agenda. And a few others are sticking to the formula that worked even though it does not work anymore. All is not lost, but I fear that less than a handful of authors are listening in and trying to engage in a conversation.

To aggravate the fact that these authors are outnumbered, several “experts” have popped up over the last 12 months. Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn’t we start out as professionals and only then move on to being “experts”? (Whatever that means)

In the meantime, twitter and facebook are all the rage and the cycle is repeating.It is again more about broadcasting than about creating spaces for debate.

In a nutshell, all this means that this blog needs a new direction and I need a new perspective as to what it should be. One thought on my mind is if I should even continue to write in Portuguese.

All I can say is that this blog will not fade, nor will I move on to the next shiny new thing abandoning it altogether. So please, bear with me for a while.