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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

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: ,

How a little string can improve your blogging

May 19, 2012 By

Ever find yourself struggling with what you should write about next, or needing more details, anecdotes or statistics to illustrate a blog post, white paper or media pitch? Me too. Fortunately, I have a solution.

When I was a reporter, I gathered a lot of string. This does not mean that my desk was cluttered with balls of twine or little pieces of thread. It means I consistently collected interesting facts, anecdotes, statistics, studies, articles and other information. I could later pull from that store of ‘string’ for new story ideas or to add rich detail to existing projects. (There’s a pretty good definition of ‘gathering string’ at Netlingo.)

Ball of red string

Photo via nicootje.

In fact, this is such a common term and common practice that my editors and I would regularly have conversations about how I was “gathering string” for a big story or upcoming feature.

If you’re responsible for generating a regular stream of content for a blog, newsletter, media pitches or the like, then you should start gathering string, too. Done consistently, it will give you more content ideas, more links and more research ready to go when you sit down to write.

So how do you do gather string? Make these three easy steps a habit:

1. Expose yourself to a steady stream of relevant content from other sources. For me, this means I’m constantly scanning RSS feeds and email newsletters related to topics I’m interested in – writing, public relations, social media, content marketing and the like.

2. Store the information you find interesting for future reference. I use Evernote, a free application available for virtually every modern computer, smart phone and tablet; my notes are synced and always available no matter what device I’m using. I can organize material into folders and use tags to categorize it.

3. Periodically review the string you’ve gathered and figure out how to use it. Some of it, inevitably, you won’t use. Some of it will support a line here or there in something you write, or provide supporting statistics or anecdotes. And some of it may serve as inspiration for entire content pieces.

If you want a way to generate more ideas and give your writing more depth and richness, you should try gathering some string.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content marketing, Creativity, Writing

Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

February 16, 2010 By
Road closed sign

Some blogging mistakes can block your path. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/589399)

I’ve been blogging for about 10 years now. Along the way I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made a lot of mistakes. A lot.

So, if you’re new to blogging and determined to be successful at it, here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not sticking with it.

Some bloggers see a lot of success relatively quickly, but there is no such thing as an overnight success. Even those bloggers who brag about how they took a new blog from zero to 10,000 subscribers in three months, or whatever, didn’t really go from zero to hero overnight. Chances are they put in years of work before they ever launched that “overnight success” blog, developing skills and acquiring tools to make a big splash quickly.

Whatever your goals are as a blogger, you’ve got to stick with it to see success. A good rule of thumb would be six  months of steady blogging before you begin to see significant traffic, readership or (if it’s a goal) revenue.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Blogging Basics, Content marketing, Creativity, Personal branding, Social media, Writing Tagged With: ,

What's your purpose?

February 15, 2010 By
Flowers by the side of a path

What's your purpose? (Photo source - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/867083)

I recently listened to an interview with author Daniel Pink (via Elizabeth Marshall’s free Author Teleseminars) about his new book Drive. (Confession: I haven’t read it, so I’m basing this blog post on the author interview, which ran about an hour. If you want to learn more about this, you should read the book, which has exercises and, I’m sure, a lot more detail and insight. The book is going on my to-read list.)

Drive examines decades of research on what really motivates people. Pink says that there are two kinds of activities — algorithmic and heuristic. Algorithmic work is anything that can be broken down into a set of rules. Heuristic work is more complex, more nuanced, and requires judgment, creativity, intuition and analysis. Heuristic work is what many of us spend a lot of time doing.

Pink says that the overwhelming evidence from decades of research on motivation was that carrot vs. stick type approach to motivation (penalizing people for mistakes, rewarding them for successes) work well in motivating algorithmic work. But for heuristic work, penalties and prizes have the opposite effect. So long as people are being paid at a level they believe is fair, paying them a lot more in hopes of motivating them for heuristic activities doesn’t work.

What does work to motivate people to accomplish heuristic work? Three things: autonomy, mastery, purpose.

  • Autonomy, obviously, is the ability to make your own choices about when and how you do things.
  • Mastery is the desire to achieve a high skill level.
  • Purpose is the belief that you’re acting in service to something greater than yourself (not money).

It’s the last one I’m particularly interested in. If you have a purpose, it can bring fresh reserves of motivation into your daily life. And that’s a good thing. Worthwhile things are frequently difficult to achieve, and achieving the difficult requires motivation.

Which brings me to — What is your purpose? Have you ever thought about that question?

For that matter, what is the purpose of your company? Your brand? Your blog? Your social media activities? Your marketing?

Are you doing it just to make money? Or is there something else that motivates you?

Google, a company that has made lots of money, says its mission is to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That is a grand purpose, and I wonder if it doesn’t play a role in motivating people at the company. A cynic would say that words like that are just clever PR, spin designed to pretty up Google’s real purpose, which they would claim is to make the founders and shareholders rich. Google has made its founders (and many shareholders) rich, but I don’t think that excludes the company having a purpose beyond that.

Most marketers (myself included) would urge the typical company (or product/brand/service/whatever) to clearly define its USP, its unique selling proposition. That’s the one thing that makes that product or brand different from everything else and desirable to some group of buyers.

But before you ask yourself what your USP is, maybe you should ask yourself what your purpose is. You with me? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed Under: Career, Creativity, Doing Good Tagged With: , ,
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