Real-time social content is a perfect mate for live television programming because it greatly enhances the overall experience for viewers. Through the integration of real-time social content and live programming, people can watch reactions and commentary from a global live audience while they’re watching and hearing a show on TV. Chloe Sladden, Twitter and Beverly Macy, author of The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing have recently written about how real-time social content will create more engaging experiences for TV audiences.
content
What the Heck is Good Content Anyway?
Earlier this week, I talked about the importance of blog post frequency. If you’re not updating your blog regularly, it’s the first thing that sends me packing.
However, blog frequency means absolutely nothing if you don’t have good content to back it up. That’s why the very best blogs in the world offer killer content on a consistent basis.
If you spend any amount of time reading blogs, you’re likely to hear “content is king”. While that is most certainly true, trying to achieve truly great content is a lot easier said than done.
So, what the heck is good content anyway?
5 Simple Steps to Building an Awesome Blog Post
Your content is the most important aspect of your blog. But, how you deliver and present your blog posts often dictate whether a note a post will get read.
There are plenty of blogs out there just begging for attention, but they lose the reader with lengthy diatribes or perhaps they don’t even attract readers at all. Maybe that blogger is you.
Not to worry. We’ve pulled together five simple tips to help you take that killer content of yours and build an awesome blog post that’s more likely to be read and shared.
Let’s get started, shall we?
You Are What You Tweet: Content & Company Define Us
As little as two or three years ago for most of us, we relied on information mainly from the mainstream media. Today, the internet is content rich (and of course has been for longer than a few years) and with “everyday” folks like me joining Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc. the content available is incomprehensible. I could go into all the stats available to support it, but since that’s not where I’m headed, I’ll skip that. Where I am headed is this: you are defined, categorized, listed, judged and perceived by both the content you post AND the company you keep.
Yes, I said that and—although I don’t have the metrics to prove it—I can tell you from my own personal experience online that it’s very true. I have tweeted “You are what you Tweet” and what I mean by that is this: If you want to be recognized for a certain type of skill, industry, vocation, cause, etc, tweet 80% of content about or relevant to that subject(s). A new 80-20 rule: I tell clients to post 80% about business related content and 20% other stuff. What’s other stuff? I say reserve it for this: fun with other Twitter friends, hobbies, and family—but not too much. I think this is a good formula in general for keeping your “stream” valuable and credible, yet interesting while simultaneously demonstrating that you are indeed a real person with a sense of humor and knack for attracting like-Tweeters. Ah-ha!
How Social Media is Changing Public Relations
In 2010, facing the biggest public relations crisis in recent history, oil company BP turned to the one medium that could instantly address public concern: social media. Nearly six months after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill occurred, BP has nearly 48,000 Facebook fans, over 19,000 Twitter followers and more than three million YouTube channel views.
Social media updates describe cleanup efforts, research projects targeting impacts of the oil spill and calls for volunteers.
While the success of BP’s social media efforts is debatable, few people can argue the need to monitor and address online comments and feedback. As BP has shown, the biggest change may be the new challenges in reputation management. With these challenges also come new opportunities – opportunities to mitigate bad press, connect with customers and reach potential influencers in the media.
New Threats, New Opportunities
Reputation management isn’t just necessary for big corporations. Small businesses also benefit from monitoring social media chatter, whether or not they have social media profiles. Simple searches on Facebook and Twitter reveal valuable information about customer satisfaction, competitor weaknesses and new market opportunities.
Filling the Big Content Gap
In social strategy there is always something missing and something to improve. But there’s one area where I see a big gap.
First, the good news. Brands are starting to ‘listen’ to what people are saying. There are great listening and social media management platforms available, such as Spredfast (plug disclosure…I’m an advisor). However, it’s typically a few people inside the company that are paying attention to user generated content. There’s still a long way to go to make this listening penetrate the depths of an organization to achieve what I call “Customer Oxygen”.
Then, there’s the analytics. There are a lot of ways to analyze the data of what people are saying. Many solutions are out there. The gap here is in making the analysis actionable and operational.
But then, once the listening and analysis is going, brands have the biggest challenge with content. What do they say? How do they say it? They have difficulty finding their ‘social voice’, and figuring out what to say where.
This is the big content gap.
The Content Marketing Fail, aka “the Twinkie Effect”
Creating fresh, valuable content for your company’s website not only improves your search rankings and gives your brand a voice, it also shows your customers, your prospects and your industry that you have something to say. And, more importantly, it shows you’re listening.
Content is king, long live the king. Digital content lives forever.
There is, however, a downside. I call it the “Twinkie Effect.”
Long Tail death knell… I think not!
Some in the digital media world are declaring the death of the long tail due to digital ADD, the exponential growth of and time spent on Social Media platforms and the time taken up by gaming. I have to strongly disagree. The long tail is alive and well, and if anything, experiencing a re-birth of sorts with regard to media and independence.
As stated so well by Chris Anderson, even if he is changing his mind now… “One of the most frequent mistakes people make about the long tail is to assume that things that are not viewed by a very large audience are ‘not as good’ as things that do have vast distribution. A given niche has both quality content and a lot of junk across a broad spectrum. Sturgeon’s Revelation states that the percentage of crud (junk) is in the range of 90 percent. On a store shelf, or in any other limited means of distribution, the ratio of good to bad matters because it’s a zero sum game: Space for one eliminates space for the other. Prominence for one obscures the other. Long tails in the online world are not pre-filtered by the requirement of factors such as shelf space, bandwidth, or the biases of purchasing managers.” Companies are popping up every day to serve and offer valuable services to the long tail at very affordable rates and the desire for people to communicate, build audiences and relationships, is not only growing, but a very basic part of human nature and something that is gaining momentum, not the other way around.
As long as publishing is low-cost and easy, and people have an easily accessible means to access that content, the long tail will not only live on, but thrive.
Ted Rubin
How to create a content marketing plan — without any content!
When somebody talks about “content marketing,” they’re really talking about “content engineering” — scientifically optimizing documents such as blogs, case studies and white papers to create search engine results and sales leads.
This can be an extremely complicated, time-consuming and expensive proposition! So I started thinking about this in the context of my friends and small business customers who simply can’t afford that kind of effort. It led to this idea: micro-content, or marketing content when you don’t have time to produce content!
Let’s examine ideas about micro-content that even a time-starved business owner should be able to master in 15 minutes a day …
Calling for the Death of Consumption Guilt
How often do you lament the fact that you can’t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I’ve done it.
Do you feel guilty when you unsubscribe something or unfriend someone in your network? Why?
Consumption of content is not a democracy. Giving of attention is not a democracy. We each have to decide what we find value in, and leave the rest behind. If that’s one blog or no blogs or five Twitter followers or a hundred, it’s up to us. And there is no standard that’s fit for everyone.