Connect Your Content

Stopping The Thought Leadership Content Free-Fall

Thought Leadership has become one of those corporate buzzwords that make people want to roll their eyes and take out their BS Bingo scorecards. What used to symbolize deeply researched, well-considered points of view, thought leadership content has been watered down to a point where it’s more likely to slip under the radar without notice than drive robust discussion.

So when your firm does create actual thought leadership pieces, it must work harder to get them noticed.

Unless you are an established industry expert with a faithful following, your thought leadership pieces must actually be thought leadership. But the effort cannot stop there.

Your pieces must have a strong merchandising strategy behind them.

There must be public relations, conference speaking engagements, webinars, client meetings, banner ads, paid search campaigns, email, social media and website promotion.

There must be opportunities for your audience to interact both with the writer and each other, offering opinions, suggestions and counter-arguments.

Finally, it must drive follow-up pieces so conversations continue and your audience begins seeking your point of view rather than you scraping to find an audience.

Producing quality content is table stakes for calling something thought leadership but what happens after it’s created determines whether anyone reads it.

Figuring Out What Viral Means To You

Most of us are bombarded with content that goes viral. We receive emails from friends, watch videos on YouTube or see links on the homepages of Yahoo, Google and MSN. People will pull out their smart phones at social gatherings to show the latest, most hilarious thing you’ve ever seen.

But for content marketers, viral content usually doesn’t equate to millions of video views. And for most of us, it doesn’t have to.

Expectations for what viral means to business need to be toned down and re-evaluated.

For a mid-sized B2B firm, an email that is forwarded on to five new leads that concludes with two additional sales means viral. The same goes for a video of your firm’s CEO that’s picked up by a local television station resulting in several hundred views.

The important part is that when you are creating content, do so with your clients’ needs in mind, knowing that if it’s important to them, they’re more likely to pass it on to others. It may not end up on the front page of your favorite search engine, but it will result in a small buzz that could generate interest in your company or your products. In other words, your content will have gone viral.

When Thinking Inside The Box Is A Good Thing

Whenever I enter planning or brainstorming sessions, inevitably someone will mention that they want to get away from doing something just because that’s the way it’s always been done.

They’ll preach the need for innovation, for trying something different or for stepping outside the box. They’ll clamor to grab the client’s attention.

But there are some things that clients expect at a certain time and in a certain way. Those items may occasionally need to be refined, but usually not radically changed. Whether it’s a piece of collateral or a product page on your website, consistency can have its benefits.

The client has a comfort level in finding the information he or she needs and the business team members can document a process and timeline for success. Additionally, when team members come and go, there isn’t a disruption of service to the end user.

While it’s nice to make a splash and thrilling to come up with a new idea that transforms an aspect of your business, sometimes customers want and need the things done the way they’ve always been done. And there’s no shame in admitting it.

What are instances at your business in which consistency is beneficial?

The Site Launched – Let The Real Work Begin

After many months of proposals, competitive analysis, stakeholder interviews, design, development and reviews, the site redesign project I was leading launched.

Looking back, that will probably be the easy part.

Launching a site is a big milestone, but it’s what comes next that really matters. For those who have been through this exercise, you know that the new site often provides the framework to deliver an optimal customer experience and meet company goals and objectives. It aligns with existing brand standards.

But it’s how the site is optimized and managed after the launch that makes the real difference.

For that reason, it’s important that the individuals spearheading the redesign remain active in the day-to-day efforts after the launch. They don’t have to be involved daily content updates but they should help oversee the site direction, demand generation and work closely with internal teams and customers to ensure that not only key performance indicators are positive but that client usability issues are addressed. The new site leaders can help keep the site on track to meet business goals, retain style and SEO standards and devise optimization tests.

While many were quick to congratulate me and the team on our recent site launch, the real work is only just beginning.

What’s the impact of an extended blog break?

What happens when your regularly-updated blog goes stagnant for month?

I’m about to find out but my gut feeling is that I’ve missed the interactions with my audience more than my audience has missed my blog. It’s very much a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind so if I’m not driving traffic to my blog, my audience will seek similar content elsewhere.

Now that I’m posting again, I still have my social media following and if I effectively drive traffic to my blog and have compelling content once visitors arrive, the rest will take care of itself.

I don’t recommend taking a regular month-long hiatus and obviously regular, consistent posts are a much better way to go. But sometimes other priorities emerge and a few days turns into a few weeks. In any case, I doubt a break is a deal-breaker.

So now, it’s on with the show.

Have you taken extended breaks? Did you notify your audience before-hand? What was the feedback once you returned?