The Two Pillars of Great Content

I recently published a post on Facebook Notes and Medium decrying the dangerous confusion of Marketing and Sales. Do read it if you want the back story. One of my friends brought up a valid objection to what I had written--that I had "conveniently" not given an example of what I thought great content was, and had instead left it in pretty general terms.

It was a fair comment, and it cut me mostly because I actually have a very simple set of criteria for great content. In fact, I only have two pillars I adhere to--one extrinsic, and one intrinsic. So, here are the two bars any content I create must clear in order to actually make it to the page.

1. Extrinsic. To me, any piece of content I start to write has to meet one of three criteria. Any content I consider even starting must fit one of these three buckets:

• Content that challenges
• Content that entertains
• Content that comes from genuine expertise

For the latter, I mean recognized expertise in the thing you are writing about, and not recognized expertise in the content marketing of the thing you are writing about. But anything I publish must meet at least one of those three.

Still, that is not enough. I can write something that entertains, or challenges, or calls upon my actual expertise, but I will not hit publish unless it also vaults this bar...

2. Intrinsic. This is the umbrella over everything, and it is a very simple question, It is the question that will keep you from publishing the one millionth post on "how to make a content calendar" or the "20 ways to write 15 lists of 10" and the "one weird thing" posts that we are lousy with. It's a profound, and honest question. That question is:

Am I proud of this?

That question, and its implications, are why I don't write a ton here at Brandsavant. And if you are honest, that question should send more posts under your bed, as Stephen King counsels, and fewer to your blog or corporate website.

I am proud of this post, by the way.

My Content Marketing World Agenda

I really look forward to attending Content Marketing World each year. Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Cathy McPhillips and the whole CMI crew really do Cleveland proud (in fact, this will probably be the second best thing to hit Cleveland this year, once LeBron's block of Andre Iguodala hits the ground.) One of the most valuable aspects of the event for me is the chance to use it as a "mental sorbet" and do a reset on my own thinking. Since, most of the time, I have my head fully buried in research, the chance to do nothing but think about our own marketing and improve my skills is a welcome break.

I'll also be speaking this year on "The Forgotten Discipline of Content Marketing" (or, what to do when you have written all the 'helpful' content), which I hope will be a fresh look at the multiple ways to generate and uncover demand. In addition, I'm doing a 3/4 day workshop on Friday the 9th, with a deeper look at the themes covered in my talk.

But my appearances and the keynotes aside, I'm going to be attending as many sessions as I can. With that in mind, here's what I am looking forward to (and if you are a friend who is speaking there and I haven't mentioned your session, it's merely because I have my own gaps in knowledge!)

September 6

I won't be there, but it's workshop day--and there are so many good ones to choose from. I won't name names here, but if you want an intensive experience in pretty much any subject, CMI has done a great job of assembling the folks who actually do the work.

September 7

• 10:30 - My session (kinda hafta)
• 11:35: What Great Content Looks Like, with Doug Kessler. If you don't know Doug, your catalog of humans is less delightful than mine. Very torn between that and the session from Andrew Davis, who is dynamite, and works on his game like few I've seen.
• 12:35 Using Marketing Automation to Get the Most out of your Content, with Ellen Gomes. Something I really need to redouble my efforts on, especially as our election work takes a serious bite out of the time I would otherwise devote to marketing.
• 2:15 The Worst Advice Marketing Ever Gave to Content, with Rand Fishkin. I have to see any talk with that title, and also make sure I am not currently giving any of that advice myself.
• 3:20 Insights that Incite, with Tim Reisterer. If I were two people (which one would win?) I would also go see Robert Rose's Content Marketing is Broken: Here's How To Fix It.

September 8

10:00 Though there is a great session on Personas from Adele Revella, I am up to my elbows in personas for my day job. So I'll see you at That's Irrational! with Tim Ash, because we don't make rational decisions when we buy.

11:05 SO many solid choices here, from the witty and sharp Tim Washer, to Jay Baer, with whom we collaborated on his recent book, Hug Your Haters. But I am going to fill in some gaps of my own, and attend Ian Cleary's Tools and Technology session, since I really only brush up on the latest tools a couple of times a year, and I know Ian thinks about it for me so I don't have to.

12:05 More good choices, but if you don't go see my brilliant wife Tamsen Webster's magnificent talk, "How To Sell From The Stage Without Selling From The Stage," we can't be friends. Once you see what she teaches, you cannot unsee.

1:45 My one and only choice here, given my time and tenure as one of the leading analysts in the space, is the Business Podcast Q&A with Mitch Joel and Jay Baer.

2:50 Ludicrously great options here, from Ann Handley to Lee Odden to Scott Stratten and more. I beg their forgiveness as I level up with Brian Carter's Facebook Advertising session.

September 9

I'll be giving an Advanced Demand Generation workshop all day, tying in my expertise in qualitative and quantitative research to map consumer behavior to content. Also snacks.

There you have it--that's MY schedule. I hope you have YOURS. If you haven't registered yet, register here and use the code SPEAKERGUEST for $100 off, which will get you a martini at the Burj Al Arab's Skyview Bar--highly recommended.

Podcasting: Money and Metrics [VIDEO]

Recently I had the pleasure of being on a panel at the TALKERS convention on the business of podcasting--a great panel that also featured executives from Panoply, Hubbard Broadcasting, and iHeartMedia. Norm Pattiz, the founder of PodcastOne, was the moderator. Lots of great, practical stuff here in the panel for people in the business of podcasting.

Also, I had a particularly good hair game going that day, so I'm glad there is a record of that, too. Those moments are fleeting.

The Boiler Room Rule For Content Marketing

NOTE: The video above contains some strong language. If you are offended by that, or in some other Not Safe For F-Bombs Environment, don't press play!

It took a few years, but it finally happened. I read the worst content marketing article in the history of content marketing. 

I'm not going to post it here, or shame anyone. This blog will never be about that. I will tell you that the subject of the article was something like "why it's important to write well in content marketing." This has almost ended content marketing for me. Almost.

I mean, who would ever argue the reverse?

But I understand why this article was written. I do. It was written because the mill demands grist. It was written because it would activate a tribe on the Interwebs that would share it with a "Hell, YEAH!" But the article was the rhetorical equivalent of "Why Water Is Important To Your Lake."

This article, and zillions like it, are part of the unfortunate reality that quantity works. So does quality, by the way--it's a false choice. But if you don't have quality, you can roll with quantity. Some, like my friends Jay Baer and Mark Schaefer, pull off the seemingly miraculous trick of providing both. But for the rest of us, we need to be comfortable with the fact that we have to expend our resources wisely: do we create a lot of content, or do we create a little great content?

Here's a way to think about this that might change your thinking, the next time you are about to hit "publish" on "Seven Ways To YOU WON'T BELIEVE THE THIRD WEIRD THING" or its analog for your business. Have you ever gotten a cold call? I get craptons of them. They don't work--at least on me. But people still do it, because it's a numbers game. Sales-driven organizations install vast phone rooms--called "boiler rooms"--where people dial for dollars every day, quickly moving past the 999 "Nos" to get to that single "Yes." The chance of any single call producing revenue is very slim. The chance of 1,000 calls producing revenue, however, is high. So boiler rooms operate, and will continue to.

Boiler rooms have a comforting math about them. Want to increase your sales? Increase your calls. Simple. But for every win a company puts on the board, it pisses off hundreds of "leads" who will never disassociate that "boiler room" image from that company again. Grab me at a conference some time and I'll recite my litany of shame for you--the companies that could deliver me nachos every day and I still wouldn't take their call.

That "boiler room" image is a little unseemly, right? Makes you feel a little queasy just thinking about it?

Companies that put out scads of scattershot listicles are the boiler room of marketing. Blogging for leads, not relationships. Will they get leads? Sure, as far as they define them. Some will convert. But many more won't.

And here is what I think these content "boiler rooms" don't consider fully: the non-response bias of the people this content doesn't convert. Because when I see a site or company pumping out this kind of content, the damage isn't that I simply don't become a lead. The damage is what I think about your company, its ethos, and its ability to solve my business problems, to be frank. It gives me the impression that this is not a company I want to be partners with. And for every lead "boiler room" content creates or converts, how many more walk away from those interactions feeling just as queasy about that brand as that clip above made you feel about stockbrokers?

Ultimately what I am getting at, as I often do, is the limits of clickstream data for things like this. Boiler Room content is very easy to quantify if you look at leads per post. But damage per post? Google Analytics won't tell you that.

A Diagnosis For The Radio Industry

Last week, my company (Edison Research) published some topline results of The Commuter Code, a groundbreaking study we conducted of in-car audio consumption amongst commuters. “Groundbreaking” is an adjective that gets thrown around a lot, but in this case, we were truly uncovering facts that had never been surfaced, using a methodology that has never been attempted.

We learned a lot in the course of this study about the audio consumption habits of commuters. We learned, for example, that AM/FM radio is still the “king” of the car—and not by a little. We also learned that the penetration of digital audio consumption in vehicles far outstrips the number of “connected dashboards” extant. There is a demand for in-car digital audio, and people are finding any number of ways—from Bluetooth connections to cassette adaptors—to meet that demand.

Here are the facts, as we know them. Most people listen to AM/FM radio in the car. That’s indisputable from any number of our studies, from Infinite Dial to Share of Ear to The Commuter Code. That’s a fact that isn’t going to change quickly, because we don’t buy new cars every year. Terrestrial radio has a distinct hardware advantage here. And lots of people really like AM/FM radio in the car.

Here’s another indisputable fact: Our study showed that people who commute alone in a car for 20 minutes or more switch around far more when listening to AM/FM radio (22x per commute) than people who listen to digital audio (including satellite)/streaming/podcasting etc (9x per commute.)

Now, there are many reasons WHY AM/FM listeners switch more. For one—it’s easier. Our cars have 4-5 buttons on the dash that make it incredibly easy to switch from station to station in seconds. And if you are listening to Internet radio in your car, you might well imagine that it is more difficult to switch stations while you are driving, given that your digital options involve manipulating your phone in traffic.

Still, it doesn’t change the facts of the case. AM/FM listeners switch a lot more than streaming/digital listeners. They often switch during commercials. No matter the reason, it is what it is.

But regardless of that fact, there have been some voices who have challenged our findings. You can read some of their dissent here. It’s worth thinking through what they are challenging—our central finding that AM/FM listeners switch more than digital listeners, and that commercials are often the reason they switch.  The figure of 22 switches per commute for AM/FM listeners has also been challenged by some—but consider your own behavior for a moment. Often several stations are in stopsets (playing commercials) at the same time. If you take a quick scan through your presents during that time, that’s 4-5 switches right there in a matter of seconds.  And the study was conducted amongst commuters who drove alone and had commutes of at least 20 minutes each way. 

So is an average of 22 so hard to believe? And is it really so controversial to show that many people switch when a commercial comes on? The data also shows that many people don’t switch. Commercials are still being heard.

I’ve been trying to understand the passion behind these dissents. Challenging the status quo is always difficult. But that status quo is only a few years old, as it turns out. To better understand this puzzle, it’s worth a brief digression into the recent history of the modern radio measurement system.

For the past several years, major market radio stations have been measured with a passive measurement system called PPM (personal people meter.)  This device “listens” to audio that has been encoded at the station level and records what stations people listened to, and when. Now, the PPM is recording every second, but Nielsen (the entity that controls the PPM ratings service) reports its findings in fifteen-minute blocks called “quarter-hours,” the universal standard for broadcast audio measurement.

One thing I learned early on in business school: you get what you measure. In the case of the PPM methodology, if a station is listened to for five minutes in a given quarter-hour, the station is given credit for the entire quarter hour. (And yes, it does happen that two stations get credit for the same quarter-hour. In fact, it is possible--but not likely--that three could. I didn't say it made sense.)

Applying my business school aphorism to this, it’s clear that PPM rewards stations that can engineer a great five-minute block of programming, and radio stations continually optimize to win the game that they have been handed. So, over time, spot loads have increased steadily, but because stations are still “winning” those five great minutes, the other ten get obscured. It’s not radio’s fault—again, they are optimizing for the rules of the game they have been given. 

Imagine for a moment that radio ratings were reported and stations were assigned credit on a second-by second basis. Imagine that stations had to report to advertisers, with that data, exactly how many people heard each second of their spot. How do you think station behavior would change? Constraints are a wonderful thing, as first elucidated by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt back in the 1980’s in his book, The Goal. Focusing on a constraint is the fastest path to continuous improvement. And I suspect the radio station of tomorrow, operating under the constraints of real-time listening measures, will figure out pretty quickly just how many spots they can play in a row, what spots perform better than others, how to promote and sell that spot load, and ultimately just how taut they can pull the thread of a listener’s attention before that thread snaps.

How great would that sound?

Let’s return to the present, however. In the present, we have put out a study that shows people who commute punch around the dial and often do so to avoid commercials. This shouldn’t be so controversial, but apparently it is. Some of this punching around is due to individual tendencies, to be sure, but radio should ask itself how the industry might also be contributing to these behaviors, and what we can learn from them.

In a sense, the radio industry is like a patient who has just received some troubling test results. The patient has a number of choices: they can ignore the results. They can take the results seriously and make some lifestyle changes. Or they can find another doctor who will just tell them what they want to hear.

For 22 years, I’m proud to say, Edison (my company) has not been the kind of doctor that tells its patients what they want to hear. We tell them what they need to hear, and what they can do about it.

Radio: we’ve got your test results back. You have a spot load problem. In your heart of hearts, you already know this to be true.