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Score your ideas to boost your content marketing

November 8, 2012 By

Right now I have at least 40 blog post ideas sitting in my queue. The potential topics include:

  • Is LinkedIn’s premium for-pay service worth the money?
  • How to market a blog post
  • How to make your public relations and marketing efforts useful
  • Better email subject lines
  • Basic online tasks all marketers and PR professionals should be able to do
  • And many more.

Given my non-blogging commitments and my focus on generating unique, high quality content, rather than just cranking out copy, there is no way I’m going to get all 40 written anytime soon. One of my biggest challenges is deciding which one to tackle next.

If you’ve ever finished up a brainstorming session with a whiteboard covered with ideas, you’ve probably faced this problem, too. Since coming up with ideas is pretty easy, this can be a huge obstacle to actually executing an effective content marketing campaign.

Photo of a whiteboard

Via lukethelibrarian on Flickr.

So what do you do?

Which ideas do you choose to execute on and which do you discard?

Are there some you should do sooner because they have higher value?

How do you resolve conflicts between internal decision makers about what content to focus on first?

Given the time and budget constraints we all face, answering these questions quickly and effectively is critical.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. Content marketers, bloggers and writers can take a tactic from sales professionals and “score” their ideas to figure out which ones are most valuable and worth focusing on. By scoring, I mean using a system to rate and quantify the value of these ideas, and then using the resulting score to prioritize your efforts.

Here’s how it works.

1. Establish a small number of key criteria that you can rate numerically from 1-5.

Your criteria could include things like:

  • Would your target audience find this useful?
  • Would your target audience email this to someone or share it on a social site?
  • Do you have the expertise (or can you get it) to create this content? If not, can you obtain that expertise in a reasonable time frame (research) or can someone else write this?
  • How unique is this topic? Is there a lot of similar competing content online, or can you offer something that helps you stand out?

Your criteria may be different. Depending on your marketing strategy, things like “likelihood to lead to conversion” and other factors may be important. If you’re not sure what your criteria should be, look at your marketing metrics or web analytics to figure it out. (Jay Baer has a great guide to content marketing analytics here, by the way.)

Note that if you are working for a large company or doing this for a client, it’s important to get buy-in on these criteria up front.

For me, spreading ideas and gaining audience are critical, so my criteria reflect that.

2. For each idea, rate these criteria on a 1-5 scale, from least likely to most likely.

  1.     Probably not
  2.     Possible, but not likely
  3.     Maybe
  4.     Probably so
  5.     Yes — absolutely.

If you find this rating process difficult because you’re having trouble getting inside the heads of your target audience, than you may need to do some work on brand personas.

3. Enter all this into a spreadsheet.

Put the ideas and scoring for each metric in columns — the idea, a rating for each of these metrics (or alternative metrics if something different works better for you).

Then add an additional column to take the median of these numbers (you can use the average or sum or something else if you like; you just need a way to translate this into a single number). This number is your score for that particular idea.

An example of a content-scoring spreadsheet
4. Once you’ve got the median, you can sort your spreadsheet from highest to lowest by that score.

(Not sure how to do that? Here’s instructions on how to sort in Excel.)

That sorted spreadsheet tells you which content is potentially the most valuable for you, and you can make decisions about how to allocate your time and resources based on that. Now you’ve taken a bunch of ideas and turned them into an action plan.

5. Bonus step once you’ve implemented this method.

Let’s say you’ve been using content scoring for a while to guide your efforts. Do you know how realistic your criteria were? For instance, if “shareability” was a criteria you ranked, did those pieces of content that you thought were going to have high shareability actually get shared a lot?

This is a great way to go back and check your own assumptions and methods. You may find that, in fact, despite brand personas and other insights, you still have some work to do to get your estimates to match up with your audience’s behavior.

Need help executing against a content plan? I provide freelance writing, public relations, social media and content marketing consulting services. Please contact me if you think I might be able to help.

Filed Under: Content marketing, Creativity, Productivity

Social media productivity: Have an impact online, while still having a life offline

October 15, 2012 By

Friday I presented at ConvergeSouth 2012 in Greensboro. I gave a talk about how to use social media productively, by which I mean getting results without having to spend 18 hours a day online. Below are my slides.

If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or conference on this topic or any of the other subjects I write about here, please get in touch.
Filed Under: Content marketing, Online marketing, Productivity, Social media

How I use Evernote to be more productive

September 17, 2012 By

How I use Evernote to be productive

For the last few months I’ve been using Evernote as my primary tool for keeping projects and tasks organized. If you’re still searching for an effective, easy way to stay organized and productive, you might want to try this.

Why EvernoteEvernote logo

My criteria for a to-do list and personal project management system are straightforward:

  1. If it’s electronic (which I prefer) it has to be available on all my devices (Macbook, iPad and iPhone) with automatic syncing. A web version (also synced) is a plus.
  2. It must have a way to organize tasks into projects.
  3. It must allow me to ‘tag’ tasks to group them.
  4. It has to have the capability to store notes and details about a particular task (ex. phone numbers and notes to myself about why I need to call someone).
  5. It has to be easy to use, and must NOT be time consuming.

Evernote meets all these requirements. I’ve experimented with other apps (Remember the Milk and Todoist are pretty good), but Evernote’s robust desktop app beat out the more web-centric applications for my purposes. In addition, Evernote is free. There is a premium paid version, but so far I haven’t needed it. If I did, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to pay for it.

How I use Evernote

There are lots of ways to use Evernote for productivity. The Secret Weapon lays out an extensive system that applies GTD to Evernote. I used that method a while, but found it more complex than necessary. So I created my own Evernote-based system (The Secret Weapon was an inspiration, though).

If you’ve not used Evernote before and want to try it, I recommend the Getting Started Guide for a quick overview.

1. Setting up Evernote for easy productivity

Screenshot of basic Evernote set-up

In Evernote, I set up several basic notebooks and one notebook stack. I named them as follows:

@Inbox

@Read/Review

@Projects (the notebook stack)

@Reference

@Someday/Maybe

@Projects is actually what Evernote calls a “stack” of notebooks. It functions like a folder, with multiple notebooks inside. The rest of them are notebooks. In each notebook are ‘notes,’ which you can think of as the Evernote equivalent of a file. A note has a title/name, and you can put text, various attachments (PDFs, Word documents, image files, etc.) into it. You can also ‘tag’ notes, which gives you another way to organize notes into groups across multiple notebooks.

I use the @ symbol to ensure these notebooks and stacks are always at the top of my Evernote notebook list (sorted alphabetically). That means I can still have other notebooks in Evernote without my productivity system getting lost among them.

2. The Daily Work Flow

Once all those notebooks are set-up, it’s time to start populating them with tasks. I use a GTD-like process for this.

New items go into @Inbox. I can also send emails to Evernote, and it’s configured to dump those emails into @Inbox by default. It’s easy to forward, say, a request from someone to Evernote, or to send a quick email from my phone when I’m on the run to make sure I remember a task.

I go through @Inbox and process each note, moving it to the appropriate notebook and adding any other necessary information.

@Projects is where all of my individual projects, goals and priority areas go. For me this includes some catch-all notebooks (Personal, Family, Work) to hold tasks that don’t fit into discreet projects (filling out an expense report or getting a haircut, for example). I have notebooks for key clients at work, freelance clients, personal projects (like this blog), volunteer work and so forth.

Fitting everything into individual project notebooks is the key to my system. I can review a particular project notebook and see whether I’ve stalled on that project or priority. There may be tasks I haven’t done or it could be I’ve failed to identify next actions for a project. Project notebooks give me an overview of my commitments across all parts of my life.

I also have a notebook within @Projects called @Recurring where I put regular daily or weekly tasks (such as updating my voicemail message, finalizing weekly client status reports or shopping for groceries).

@Read/Review is where I put content — email newsletters, blog posts, videos and so forth — that I want to look at later. I try to clean this out once a week so stuff doesn’t pile up in there. I recommend you put time on your calendar to go through this folder, otherwise it’s easy to forget.

@Reference is where I put information I want to save for later use. This is good for all those bits and pieces of information that I know I need to keep, but which aren’t actionable now. Gift ideas for loved ones, for example, which I might not use for months, go in here.

@Someday/Maybe is where I put all those things that I think I might like to buy/do/visit at some point in my life, but which are not priorities right now. I go through this periodically and clean it out, but the act of writing ideas down and storing them clear my mind.

3. Tags and note titles

The third part of my system is use tags and note titles to further optimize the system.

First tags.

Each morning I review all of my notes (tasks) on a project-by-project basis. I decide which I want or need to do that day, and I tag them with “Today.” That allows me to do a search for all notes within @Projects tagged with “Today” and get an at-a-glance view of my daily to-do list. I use a “saved search” so I can just click to get this list whenever I want it (here’s how to set that up on a Mac or a Windows machine).

The second thing I do is modify my note titles with keywords to help remind me when, where or how I should do something.

I typically use a word such as “CALL” (for phone calls) or “ERRAND” (for something I need to do while out), in all caps before the note title itself. I’ll also use “WAITING” in front of notes to indicate actions that I’m waiting on someone else for (a phone call to be returned or some work task that I’ve delegated, for example).

Since I can sort my “Today” note list alphabetically by title, I can then get all of my daily action items clustered into appropriate groups — all the errands or phone calls, for example, grouped together.

Other keywords I regularly use include “HOME” (for things I need to do at home), “WRITE” (for writing tasks, so I can carve out dedicated time to them), “EMAIL,” etc. I also use dates (ex. “SEPT 29”) as keywords for tasks that need to be done on a certain date.

For @Recurring tasks, I usually have a key word such as “WEEKLY,” “DAILY,” or “MONDAY” (or other day of the week) to remind myself when to do them.

You could use additional tags instead of my keyword system, but I find the keyword system is faster and simpler. It also allows me to see all my daily tasks or all of the tasks in a project while still providing information about context, status, due date, etc.

4. Updating Tasks

One of the things I like about this system is how simple it is to update a particular task with further information. Here’s an example.

Let’s say I meet someone at a conference. We have a discussion and the person asks me to follow-up with them via phone call. I send an email to Evernote with the subject line “Call Joe Smith at (XXX) 555-1212 next week.” That email lands in @Inbox.

When I review my @Inbox notes (usually the next morning, but it could be sooner), I’ll add a few further comments to the note “Joe and I talked about the possibility of partnering on ABC project and he’d like to hear more about what I have in mind. I need to give him more details about Phase 1 and 2 of the project, as well as our ultimate goals and vision.” 

I could also put those notes in my original email, if I was worried about forgetting them and wanted to take an extra couple of minutes to do it right then.

Then I’ll add the appropriate keywords to the note title and move it to the right notebook in @Projects.

If I call Joe the next week and get his voicemail, I leave him a quick message. “Hi Joe, this is Mark. As we discussed last week at the conference, I’m calling to discuss Project ABC with you. Please call me back at (XXX) 555-1212 at your earliest convenience.”

Then I add another bullet point to the top of my note that I called Joe on that date and left a voice mail asking him to call me back. I’ll add the keyword WAITING to my note title and remove it from my daily to-do list by removing the “Today” tag.

In the next few days either Joe will call me back, or I’ll see that phone call each day as I go through my commitments. If it’s appropriate, I can follow-up with him again if he doesn’t call me.

What Do You Think?

If the lengthy description above sounds complicated, it’s not. Once you install Evernote, set up the system and start using it, it’s simple, quick and remarkably flexible.

I’d love to hear what you think about how I use Evernote for personal productivity. If you have questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:

The ultimate lifehack: Do the work

June 18, 2012 By

Want to be super productive, build fabulous wealth, write the great American novel and have six-pack abs? I’m about to give you the secret to it all, the ultimate life hack, the secret of the world’s most productive and successful people. Writer Steven Pressfield expressed it perfectly in three simple words: Do the work.

Do the work means start with the hard things, not the easy things. Don’t be lured in by the seductive dopamine rush of checking off easy tasks on your to-do list. Start with the hard stuff, the stuff that scares you.

Cover image from Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

Image courtesy Steven Pressfield

Do the work means tackling the thing that you want to do the least, that some part of you is resisting, first. As success guru Brian Tracy advises, “Eat that frog” first.

Do the work when the work is building systems so you don’t waste time on repetitive, rote tasks that have to get done.

Do the work when the work is training and coaching others to do their work the right way the first time, so you don’t have to fix it.

Do the work when the work is difficult conversations with difficult people about difficult topics, to solve problems rather than continuing to endure them.

Do the work when the work is confronting your own innermost fears and weaknesses. Sometimes what stares back at you in the mirror isn’t pretty, but the work doesn’t care. Do the work anyway.

Do the work when you feel like you’re not smart enough, not experienced enough, not charming enough, not educated enough.

Do the work when you don’t feel like it. The work doesn’t care how you feel.

Even if you don’t become super wealthy, write a best-selling book, achieve six-pack abs or do whatever it is you’re dreaming, do the work.

Just do the work.

Note: Author Steven Pressfield, who I mention at the top of this post, has a new book out called Turning Pro. I haven’t read it, yet, but I will. I’ve read his other books on writing and creativity, such as The War of Art and Do the Work, the inspiration for this post. If you are doing anything that involves making something that wasn’t there before, doing creative work, trying to improve yourself or the world, you should read Pressfield’s work.

Filed Under: Creativity, Productivity, Self improvement Tagged With: ,

The 20-minutes-a-day method to get things done

June 4, 2012 By

Did you know that I’ve been procrastinating on getting out my first email newsletter for about the last three months? There’s no good reason for this, of course.

I have the time. It’s not like my, fairly modest, email newsletter actually takes months and months of writing. In fact, I plan to do it every month, alongside regular blogging, work, freelance work, family, teaching and other activities.

stopwatch

Photo via dachadesig

But still, I have been reluctant to start. All I’ve been able to think about is all the things I need to do:

  • Choose a template in Aweber, my email service, and then customize it so it looks something like this blog.
  • Outline the content.
  • Create the content.
  • Write catchy headlines and an attention-grabbing subject line.
  • Get my email subscribers transferred from Feedburner to Aweber (you know who you are) before I send out the first one. And more.

Knowing I had all that to do, plus a lengthy list of blog-posts-to-be-written, an off-and-on commitment to working out, family, work, freelancing efforts and more, I’ve just been putting it off.

My mind has been good at coming up with excuses, though: It’s not worth doing until you have more email subscribers; blog content is the  most important thing; freelancing is the most important thing to do with my spare time; and more. You get the idea

Enter the 20-minutes-a-day to get things done. When you have a project like this, which has several steps and can seem overwhelming in the context of an already-lengthy to-do list, the 20-minutes-a-day method can work wonders. The best part? It only takes 20 minutes a day.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Put your project on your to-do list (I’m using Evernote for this, with a customized version of this method).
  2. In the notes area, list the various components to your project (for my email newsletter, that would be all that stuff in the bulleted list above). If you can list these in the order they need to get done, that’s great, but don’t obsess over it.
  3. I put the prefix “20 MINUTES” in front of my to-do item to remind myself that I’m using this method to tackle this project.
  4. Each day, I spent 20 minutes working on the project. Occasionally, if I really get in the flow I might go longer than 20 minutes, but usually I try to keep it to 20 minutes.

I find, over the course of several days or weeks using this method, that the anxiety-provoking project project melts away, and gets finished.

A couple of considerations.

First, this will not work for a project that has a really tight deadline. For those projects, I recommend some combination of sequestering yourself for several hours and delegating parts of it to co-workers.

Second, though the 20 minute method is great for tackling projects that have lots of steps, it is not a substitute for more formal project management methods for bigger projects. If you’re rebranding a company, designing a new cell phone or doing a national product launch, you’re probably going to need something a bit more involved.

But this method is great for those personal projects you’re procrastinating on because they seem too big, too troublesome or just too unpleasant. I’ve used this method to redesign this website (a process that’s ongoing), generate content for this blog and, of course, develop the inaugural edition of my email newsletter.

Do you have specific tactics or tools you use to tackle tasks or projects that you’d otherwise put off? Please leave your tips and suggestions in the comments below.

P.S. If you’re interested in the aforementioned newsletter and are not getting blog updates via email, please go to the top of this page and enter your email address in the box. Make sure you click on the confirmation link in the opt-in email. Don’t wait – the first email newsletter goes out June 10!

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: ,
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