How to tweak your iPad for shooting pro-grade video

From Wired.com:

The larger screens, the plethora of apps, and the built-in cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity make iPads ideal for seasoned videographers and newbies alike. But ultimately, tapping into the tablet’s true video-shooting potential means using the right combination of tricks, apps, and hardware.

The campaign is dead; long live the movement

Face it. Campaigns are dead.

Placing our hopes in a continuous cycle of ever-changing sales and slogans is foolish.

• Campaigns motivate customers; movements inspire followers.
• Campaigns are fleeting; movements are evergreen.
• Campaigns wither as the ad budget runs out; movements outlive their budgets.

Jim Beam is a movement. Harley-Davidson is a movement. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are movements. So are Coke, and John Deere, and Zippo, and Marvel, and the Coen Brothers, and MINI Cooper.

• Microsoft is a series of campaigns; Apple is a movement.
• Six Flags is a series of campaigns; Disney is a movement.

Ads create campaigns; content builds movements.

Go build a movement. Create content that matters.

Native ads are failing to capture audiences, study suggests

From Re/code:

Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile says that while 71 percent of surfers will stick with a “real” article for more than 15 second, that number drops to 24 percent for native ad stuff.

“What this suggests is that brands are paying for — and publishers are driving traffic to — content that does not capture the attention of its visitors or achieve the goals of its creators."

How to make your copy more efficient to write, edit, read and optimize

How to make your copy to write, edit, read and optimize from Rusty Cawley

The Content Marketing Institute issued its 2014 report on content marketing among business-to-business companies; here's 10 interesting things the report has to say

10 things we learned from the 2014 report on B2B content marketing

View more lists from Rusty Cawley

Learners, shoppers and buyers: Create content for all 3 audiences

Advice from Remington Begg at Hubspot:

Too often, marketers go "straight for the throat." Typically, they only include CTA's (calls-to-action) that are for prospects that are ready to buy now (i.e. “Buy Now,” “Request a Consultation,” or "Call Today"). By modifying your website to have a balance of content, CTAs, and lead generation opportunities for every step of the buying cycle, you will find a huge increase in engagement and conversions on your site. 

Inbound marketers often refer to the steps of the buying cycle as:Top of the Funnel, or TOFU Middle of the Funnel, or MOFU Bottom of the Funnel, or BOFU.
When talking to new clients we like to describe each of these buying cycles as Learners (TOFU), Shoppers (MOFU), and Buyers (BOFU). Call them whatever makes the most sense to you.

• An example of a Learner or (TOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "best midsize family car."

• An example of a Shopper or (MOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "crossover SUV reviews."

• An example of a Buyer or (BOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "Ford Edge for sale."

Think about what content you've created on your website that helps the "Learner" learn about why there is a need for your product or service. Think about what pain points it addresses. Now, think about opportunities to nurture your prospect to the Shopper stage, and then the Buyer stage, and then rinse and repeat for each of your services. Each step of the way there are opportunities to convert leads, with tools from the inbound content toolbox: ebooks, whitepapers, webinars -- you name it.

4 common traits of great content

From B2B Digital Marketing:

Great content is:

• Educational (or entertaining). You come away wiser or with your cares temporarily melted away.

• Empowering. Great content is more than just actionable, it empowers you to do something you couldn’t have done before.

• Emotional. It makes you feel something, not just know something.

• Respectful of your time. It accomplishes the above without dragging on.

Advertising vs. content marketing: What do the numbers say?

From Marketo via PR Daily:

3 reasons why apps fail to work for content marketing -- and why web sites will survive

From Copyblogger:

There’s one thing that people turn to the Internet for en masse that apps are not better for, and that’s freely available content. When it comes to content marketing (as opposed to data like flight schedules), there’s no beating the open web. 

Most of the content we consume is not what we already subscribe to. We discover and search for new content daily, and we expect to be able to experience it without downloading an app. 

Luckily, cutting-edge mobile-responsive websites are faster, more user-friendly, and more powerful than ever. And with HTML5, a webpage can be built to perform any function an app can. 

On the other hand, putting your content in a traditional app means:

• Your content is invisible to search engines.
• Your content is blocked from seamless social sharing.
• You’re asking people to download an app before they’ve experienced your content, which will sharply diminish your audience-building efforts.

That’s a really bad idea.

If you can't create content, curate it

Rohit Bhargava says at the Influential Marketing Blog: 

Content curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing, or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue. 

Here is the best part about content curation, though. It doesn’t require you to be a writer, or a filmmaker, or an on-screen commentator. Curation is inherently behind the scenes. What it does require, though, is expertise. It requires the ability to think and collect. They are different skills sets than creation, but in a business environment – it is far more likely that you will find someone with deep subject matter expertise in a particular industry, topic or issue. They may not necessarily be gifted writers or documentarians, but their expertise is their strength and though creating original content may be an uphill battle – curating highly valuable content available elsewhere can be a much more realistic goal.

3 reasons to ask influencers to create content for your site

Kevin Cain at Convince & Convert says

We have spent the past few years building a substantial content factory that relies heavily on influencers. Our community site, OpenView Labs, features new content from influencers every week about the topics our target audience cares about, such as sales and marketing. The benefits of doing so are threefold:

1. Getting great content for free — We regularly ask influencers to write articles for us, record videos and podcasts, or simply contribute quotes and ideas to our eBooks and reports. It certainly doesn’t get any better (or easier) than posting great content that you’re getting for free.
2. Building our brand — By virtue of the fact that these influencers are choosing to publish content on our site, they are effectively signaling their approval of OpenView. Chances are that if industry influencers think we’re worth checking out, our target audience will too.
3. Expanding our reach — Because we have content from a wide range of influencers, each of whom shares their content with their diverse groups of followers, we get people coming to the site who probably otherwise wouldn’t. We get a steady stream of new visitors to our site every day.

Two ways your content can directly support your client's sales

John Hall blogs at Forbes:

Companies don’t often think about how valuable content is in lead generation or sales unless they have a strong background in online marketing. Let’s keep it simple:

1) Use content to nurture leads. There’s nothing better to further a relationship with a potential lead than to actually give her value. If your content is valuable, then it will help her out while simultaneously drawing positive attention to your company.

2) Use content for sales conversions. If you’re working on a sale, you should know what’s holding people back. Send them an article you’ve published that supports why they would want to move forward. For example, if somebody was worried about budgeting for content marketing, I would send him a link to this article and show him how thought leadership pieces can help other marketing channels, saving him money overall.

My take: A lot of folks talk about brand journalism as if it is above generating sales. If you believe that, get over it. Brand journalism has a small window in which to establish itself as a discipline for the long term. That window will slam shut at the next recession. That's when CEOs will carefully assess what is working (that is, what is making or saving money) and what is not. If brand journalism fails to help generate leads and convert sales, it will pass into oblivion.

Is your content team creating marketing tools -- or selling tools?

Brendan Cournover at the Content Marketing Institute says: 

If you ask me, a great strategy does both. Think about all the ways salespeople rely on content to sell:

• Via prospecting emails

• During live meetings and sales calls (hello PowerPoint!)

• As part of post-meeting follow-ups

• With updates for existing customers to encourage renewals

So where is the majority of this content coming from? Ideally, it’s the marketing team. One problem is that too many people still equate content marketing with being strictly “non-promotional.” It’s true that thought leadership content like this is great for attracting new audiences — but really? That’s all you’re going to use content for?

Now on Kindle: My new book for brand journalists and other content marketers, "Newscraft'

My new book is now available on Kindle.

It's called, "Newscraft: How to produce brand-journalism content that attracts customers and sells more products." You can sample the book on Amazon. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow it for free for the next 90 days. If you own an iPad or a iPhone, you can read it via a Kindle app.

I've occasionally blogged about newscraft over the last few months. This is my first attempt to pull together my thinking on it.

In a nutshell: Newscraft is a hybrid that blends traditional journalism methods, tested copywriting techniques and proven SEO strategies to create a 600-800 word story that attracts highly targeted readers (online or offline), converts readers into prospects, and helps your client to move products out the door.

Newscraft is an approach I've developed over the last two years and one that I use in my daily practice with my clients. It works as well for B2B and B2C.  It is also extremely flexible. You can use it to create web copy, flyers, brochures, video scripts, live demonstrations and more.

Check it out. It's just $2.99 (cheap).

If you read it, please send me your feedback.

The 4 rules of quality content

Cheryl Conner blogs at  Forbes:

1. Quality content is interesting and compelling (thus the reasons companies are hiring so many journalistic writers these days). Interesting writing is something journalists, by and large, know how to do.
2. Quality content contains information that people actually want to know. It inspires them. It provides value-add. It is content they are looking for, as opposed to being material marketers pummel them with. It provides them with meaningful evidence to consider as they make business and consumer decisions.
3. Equally important, quality content is material that is clear and readable. It is well written. Most of the time, that also means it’s concise.
4. Most important of all – Quality content is authentic. It is not phony, contrived, disguised or even sneaky (perhaps deftly communicated, but never hidden or sneaky) about the motives it holds.

She also offers 10 commandments for brand journalism.

Why Gary Vaynerchuk is right to 'triple down' on creating content

Gary Vaynerchuk recently announced plans to "triple down" on his already copious production of online content. Critics are chirping that Gary is encouraging online clutter. But Mitch Joel offers another view in the Harvard Business Review:

Those who follow Gary Vaynerchuk respect him. They like him. They seem to want more. By creating more, he is not only appeasing his most heavy users, but he is also giving them (and even those who don't follow him) additional opportunities to find out more, share his thinking and help him spread his own gospel. Tripling down on mediocre content helps nobody. Tripling down on relevancy, being contextual and adding value will always help a brand to expand its audience. Is this hard to scale? Absolutely. Will every brand get this right? Absolutely not. Vaynerchuk and other successful content creators know the pulse of their audience. Through the years, the smartest content marketers have understood not only the pulse of their network, but how to distribute their content in a way that fits the audience. While some may rightfully see it as clutter, my guess is that Vaynerchuk (and other successful content creators) will be analyzing the results and tweaking until they uncover a formula more effective than their old one - a million times better than those with no vision, no formula and lots of worry about the clutter that they're creating.

Who benefits most from content marketing? Those who practice it

From David Murray @TMGmedia

Content marketing transforms communication from a defensive exercise in risk management to an aggressive attempt to express the company’s best. In this environment, every communication professional in the organization goes from cost-center to profit-center—metaphorically, from ground maintenance crew to fighter pilot, from place-kicker to quarterback, from proofreader to star columnist. 

As organizations begin to value talented writers—and videographers and photographers and graphic designers—it’s obviously good for talented communicators, who benefit from more pay and more freedom to take chances to convey authentic messages via compelling storytelling to connect with real human beings.How 

Which, as opposed to creating stiff and sterile corporate stuff, is what communicators like to do.

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.

'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.

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.