How to execute a publicity stunt so well that it becomes legitimate news

Never underestimate the news value of a really, really, REALLY well-executed PR stunt. It takes courage to fully commit to a publicity stunt. The Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson went "all in" with this one, and boy does it pay off.




So what makes this work?

1. It's visual, so TV loves it.
2. It's bigger than life -- always a key to attracting attention.
3. It starts with kids. This wouldn't be nearly so cool if it had started with engineers.

Big Data is good, but the Human Touch is better

Brian Babineau makes this point on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog: 

Marketers are in danger of forgetting they are trying to reach people. They are focusing on the science of analyzing target demographics like they are specimen in a Petri dish. 

I spoke on a panel recently, and an audience member asked how we panel members thought marketers would best take advantage of Google Glass data. Would it be through pop-up ads? Or quick video pre-rolls? And to that, I say, “Uh, what?” You mean you want to take one of the most up-close-and-personal experiences where a digital dashboard is attached to your head and use the information gathered to better target intrusive ads? Instead, stop, and think about how to have a human touch. Think about how to enhance the personal experience that the Google Glass user is uniquely having. 

So, stop telling me Big Data points about the Big Data. I don’t want to know how much there will be or how much it will grow. If you want to thrill me as a marketer, tell me about the simple insights culled from that data. Share with me the authentic notions about a target or a behavior that emerged. And surprise me by showing how the data fueled a simple, elegant marketing experience that was, at its core, very human.

A key insight for the brand journalist: Always remember, you are writing for people -- not a "target audience."

Your keywords should serve your readers, not your agenda

SEO blogger Chelsea Adams says: 

When you start looking at keyword suggestions it can be easy to fall into a high-volume drunken haze and forget that relevance means directly descriptive of your content or product — not loosely related to the idea of the content or the general needs of the target demographic. 

Don’t approach your keyword like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  If you identify a keyword phrase that doesn’t describe the topic on your landing page, but is related to your topic, or of related interest to your target demographic, create a new landing page with new content to work in that keyword phrase. Don’t try to fool humans or Google spiders by using phrases that do not exactly describe your content — use keyword research to inform content strategy! 

Think to yourself: When the user searches this query, what are they looking for? What do they want? If they find my site, will their needs be met?

She offers a useful six-point checklist for conducting keyword research. 

Why you should give away your best content to your customers

Anne Janzer is a freelance writer who specializes in B2B tech complains. She blogs at  Content Marketing for Technology: 

When I started in technology marketing, marketing saved its really ‘meaty’ materials for the sales team. Anything that included target audience, potential objections or competitive differentiators was marked with “Confidential” and included as part of sales training. You didn’t want your competitors to see what you were doing or to put potential objections into the minds of your prospects. 

Those days are gone. Today people are actively researching solutions long before your sales team ever talks with them. You still need sales training, but you also need ‘prospect training.’ Focus on the customer. That’s where content marketing comes in 

The key is to give people useful, high-value content that helps them solve their business problems. Give it away freely, without waiting for prospects to talk to your salespeople. They can find this information on their own, anyway. You can earn their trust and attention by providing value early in the sales cycle.

How to write a headline that demands attention ... in two steps

Let’s start with Rule No. 1: Make your copy looks like news, and not like traditional advertising.

People are conditioned to seek out news.  If your copy looks like advertising, they are more likely to ignore it.

The research bears this out. “If you make them look like editorial pages,” advertising icon David Ogilvy said, “you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.”

How do readers tell the difference between news and advertising? The layout says a lot. So does the choice of photos, graphics and other images.

But the most important element is the headline. Write a great news headline and you will capture your audience. Write a bad one and you will never recover.

So how do we write a great news headline?

As the creative director for Reader’s Digest, Tony Antin studied the art of headline writing for 30 years. He broke the process down into two steps.

1. What you will say.
2. How you will say it.

What you will say

• Imagine the ideal customers you want to reach. The more specific, the better.
• Now imagine that two or three of these ideal customers are discussing the problem you want to address. How can you enter that conversation? What can you show them that solves their problem? Are they likely to agree with you? Are they likely to believe you? Will they view what you offer as something they want right now?
• Focus on what is immediately meaningful to those customers. What are the specific benefits of your product that solves their problems?
• Based on all of this, write down a generic headline that will likely interest those ideal customers. If you get stuck, try using these headline templates:
  • How you can  …
  • Seven ways you can … (Try to keep your list to no more than 10 and no fewer than three.)
  • The best way for you to …
  • Everything you should know about …
  • The secret you should know about …
  • Little known ways for you to …
• The headline should make a promise that resonates with your target audience: “Read this and you will learn how to cure this particular problem that is driving you nuts.”
• Keep it simple. Just say it. Don't get fancy.
• Remember: Marketing is a triage. You can't sell everyone with one piece of copywriting. So identify the folks who are most likely to embrace your product as a solution to their problem – and sell them first.

How you will say it

• Clarity is far more important than cleverness. Focus on saying what you have to say as clearly as possible.
• Try to use no more than 16 words. Be ruthless. If you don’t need a word, cut it.
• Make one of those words a verb. A headline is a sentence, not a label.
• Work in “you” or “your.” This makes it clear that the copy is about the reader, and not the company.

If you want to know more, Copyblogger offers a great (and free) short course on writing headlines.

'Why' is becoming as important as 'when'

From Jonathan Stray at Nieman Journalism Lab:

Interpretation: analysis, explanation, context, or “in-depth” reporting. Journalists are increasingly in the business of supplying meaning and narrative. It no longer makes sense to say that the press only publishes facts. 

New research shows this change very clearly. In 1955, stories about events outnumbered other types of front page stories nearly 9 to 1. Now, about half of all stories are something else: a report that tries to explain why, not just what.

This is an interesting development for both the brand journalist and the traditional publicist. It means reporters are no longer as "event driven" as in the past. The why in the 5Ws and the H is becoming as important as the when.

For brand journalists, this means there is a growing audience for explaining the more detailed, more nuanced, more analytical story that explains the why.

For publicists, if offers more opportunity to break into the mainstream media with stories that offer analysis and with third-party experts who can answer the why.

How Twitter is reshaping the way we tell stories

From Rita J. King at Co.Exist:

Twitter forces us to learn how to play compelling characters in a shared biography, a snapshot of this moment we are living and sharing right now, but I can’t help thinking about a comment made by Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent. He talks about context in the mainstream media, and the need for more space to explain ideas that go against the grain of the status quo. Twitter also has a context problem: when you come late to a conversation, for example, and only see a couple of previous tweets.

Is Google being unfair to sponsored content?

Sam Slaughter at Digiday, on Google's announcement that it plans to weed out sponsored content from its Google News feed:

I’ve always felt it’s better for brands to err on the side of DIY — and Google’s announcement pushes the needle even further in that direction, especially in the long term. Sponsored stories are a great way to reach an audience, but they’re a little bit like a sugar rush; tons of eyeballs and great short-term results, but then the story’s gone, and it’s taken the audience with it. No Google means no long-tail traffic; that audience you rented went and moved on up to the East Side.

Objectivism for Dummies -- making the complex simple to understand

In contrast to her novels, Ayn Rand's philosophical writings can be dense and difficult -- and thus daunting.

Anticipating this, Rand distilled her Objectivism into four familiar maxims:

1. Metaphysics: “Wishing won’t make it so.” (Objective Reality)
2. Epistemology: “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”(Reason)
3. Ethics: “Man is an end in himself.”(Self-interest)
4. Politics: “Give me liberty or give me death.” (Capitalism)

"If you held these concepts with total consistency as the base of your convictions," Rand wrote, "you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life."

If Ayn Rand could boil down her entire philosophy to just 27 words, what stops us from making our most complex ideas just as accessible ? (Other than stubborness or laziness, that is.)

Brutal simplicity is a virtue.

Content is an investment, not an expense. Here's why ...

David Meerman Scott says:

Thinking of your content as an expense like advertising means you always underspend. 

For example, if you spend $5,000 in a given month on Google AdWords, the only thing you are buying are the resulting clicks of your ads appearing against the important phrases people search on to find your business. But as soon as you stop paying, your clicks stop too. This is the classic example of a marketing expense 

However, if you spend $5,000 in a given month to hire a freelance journalist to write a bunch of interesting blog posts relating to important phrases people search on to find your business, you will have assets that live on forever that will drive people to your content from the search engines for years to come. The content will have value many years after it has been paid for.

New white paper: 'Should Your Brand Take a Stand?"

From Bulldog Reporter:

WrightIMC conducted a survey of more than 3,000 consumers with diverse regional, economic, and age differences. Research was also conducted on controversial positions or viewpoints from five major U.S. brands in the recent past and how it affected business: Chick-fil-A and same-sex marriage; Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood; Hobby Lobby and contraceptives in employee medical plans; J.C. Penney and Ellen DeGeneres as spokesperson; and Starbucks' support of same-sex marriage. The survey data and case study results form the basis of the white paper.

Want more readers? Write stories and headlines that offer clear benefits

From the Function Writing Group blog::

Want people to read your post? Tell them what they’re going to get out of it. 

Like a gorilla swimming laps in Lake Michigan, useful headlines are easy to spot:

• How-To’s
• List Posts (Like, say, 6 Ways To Teach Your Gorilla To Swim)
• What Blank Means to Blank 

Headlines used most frequently by copywriters, bloggers, content managers and anyone else who wants people to read their work immediately convey benefit, usefulness and education. I use these all the time. 

People are busy and are constantly asked to manage a surplus of information every day. Let’s make life easy for new readers.

New ebook: How would the Mad Men of the 1960s have approached content marketing?

Shannon Johnson at Hubspot says:

Knowing how complicated our media landscape is these days, what would an ultra-popular, uber-successful vintage ad campaign have to look like today to make as big of a splash as it did in its time? What would Wendy’s have to do to turn “Where’s the beef?” into a modern day catchphrase? How would Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign have to be executed to make the Beetle the most popular imported vehicle? 

These are the questions we explored with the help from a handful of advertising and creative experts in a recent ebook, Traditional Turned Inbound: Reimagining 5 Iconic Ad Campaigns From the Past.

Make your web site feel like a mobile site

Tobin Dalrymple at the Content Marketing Institute says: 

Mobile is an entirely new medium and it comes with a unique way for people to interact with content. It’s all about touch, swipe, and that feeling of a full-screen, laid-back experience — simulating the “couch surfing” vibe. This is why some content publishers opt for creating a social magazine-style experience, in the spirit of Flipboard, to deliver content to mobile users in the most dynamic way possible. 

The benefit of this approach is huge. Aside from providing a more familiar and enjoyable reading experience, your readers tend to view more pages, and spend far more time with your content compared with other websites that were built with click and scroll in mind.Why  

An added benefit to this approach is that marketers are given a natural way to show full-screen ads and/or call-to-action widgets. So, for instance, in between your full-screen articles, you can sneak in a white paper download CTA (call to action) or a newsletter sign-up request without interrupting the experience.

Creating content: It's always about your audience and never about you

From the Daily SEO Blog: 

If you're planning to succeed in your content marketing efforts, there is one big thing that you have to understand right from the start: it's not about you. It's never about you. It's not about your company. It's not about your product. It's not about your service. It's not about how great your company/product is. It's not about the amazing charity work your president does. It's not about how fun it is to work at your company. It's NEVER about you. And the minute you try to make it about you, that's when you lose their trust, and that's when you lose another potential customer 

Repeat after me: It's ALWAYS about them, never about you. This is content marketing. It's not sales, and it's not advertising. If you want to do sales and advertising, that's perfectly fine, but just don't do it in your content marketing. Write for the reader, always.

My two cents: Yes, it is always about the reader. Content should always focus on what the audience will want and will need to know. But if you don't think content is about sales, don't ever tell your clients. I guarantee clients believe creating content is about sales -- or they wound't pay you to generate content.

If you can't deal with that, but want to stay in the game, here's a suggestion: Think of what you do as the first stage of diffusing an innovation. It just happens that the innovation is your client's product and the diffusion process leads to sales.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Wordpress ... Do you REALLY have to be on EVERY platform?

Joe Pulizzi at Content Marketing Institute sez:

In many cases, it’s smart to weave your story onto multiple platforms. It’s entirely possible to have a killer webinar series, amazing blog, outstanding video program, and cutting-edge digital magazine all at the same time. 

You may decide to focus and work to dominate one platform. How about a killer podcast series? What about an amazing print newsletter? Maybe a blog is just the platform for you. 

Yes, you construct your strategy before choosing your channels, but don’t feel obligated to be active on every channel that your customer uses. The international travel magazine, Monocle, has just a print magazine. No iPad version. No Facebook page. It works for the magazine and its readers. 

Sometimes simple and focused is better.

Brand journalists: David Pogue shows us how to construct a great Top 10 list

In this video, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue demonstrates for brand journalists how to create a useful and interesting Top 10 list:



The only difference is that a brand journalist would design a Top 10 list where each point relates back (directly or indirectly) to the client's product or service.

(Perhaps it goes without saying, but "Top 10 list" is a general term. Shoot for a minimum of three things on your list and make 10 your maximum. Anything in between will work fine.)

How to write a feature story in six steps

Writing coach Ann Wylie offers an ideal structure for the brand journalist who is learning to compose the feature story:

1. Lead: Illustrate your point. Show, don’t tell. Make the lead concrete, creative and provocative. Think anecdote, human interest and juicy details.
2. Nut graph: Explain your point. Now you can tell. Here’s where you summarize your story into a nutshell, or deliver the key point.
3. Background section: Fill in the blanks. Do you have a term that needs explaining? Does your story require an understanding of context or history? Include that background information here.
4. Body: Develop the story. Avoid the “muddle in the middle” by arranging the body of your story into discrete sections, organized thematically, sequentially or hierarchically.
5. Wrap-up: Restate your point. In the nut graph, you tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em. In the body, you tell ‘em. Here’s where you tell ’em what you told ’em.
6. Kicker: Illustrate your point. Leave a lasting impression with a provocative kicker. Bonus points for circling back to the lead.

When I was a newspaper reporter, we called this structure the Wall Street Journal feature. Almost every WSJ front page feature is structured this way.

The nut graph can be tricky. I suggest you write it first, then build the rest of the story around it. If you lose your way, go back to the nut graph and remind yourself what the story is actually about. Stay on course. Less is more.

Stop complaining and start creating content that search engines like

George Freitag blogs at portent.com:

Lots of SEOs complain about Wikipedia always being in the number 1 spot, but few can argue that it isn’t the most relevant result for most searches. 

I realize not everyone can be Wikipedia, but as long as people are linking to you because you’re useful, you will be in good shape. 

How do you do this?

• Create resource pages about your industry.

• Create some data oriented blog posts.

• Make an instructional page about how to use your product or a related product.

This is how links were always intended to be used and that’s why they were ever a ranking factor in the first place. These pages are naturally good content and links to these pages will tend to be good links.