3 Types of Behavior Change for Marketers

Three Type of Behavior Change: Part of the Content Strategy Basics series.  Behavior change is usually an important component of content marketing strategy. There are many types of behavior change, but you can distill these down to three that matter to brand marketers. Behavior Change #1: Try my product. You’re not using my product, so I… Continue reading 3 Types of Behavior Change for Marketers

SEO & SEM: The Dynamic Duo of Website Traffic | Content Strategy Basics

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are essential techniques for driving users to your website properties. These core tactics are similar, but not the same. SEM and SEO are often confused, particularly since these acronyms only differ by one letter. Of course, if they were the same thing, we wouldn’t name them… Continue reading SEO & SEM: The Dynamic Duo of Website Traffic | Content Strategy Basics

HIGHLIGHTED: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard. (But with some practice, you can do it.) If you’re a content marketer, you probably spend a lot of time at the keyboard. You may not think of your emails, tweets, and creative briefs as “writing with a capital W,” but it is writing nonetheless. You may as… Continue reading HIGHLIGHTED: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

How Tigers Influenced Your Visual Processing

Grid with boxes #2.

What do you see when you look at the picture below? It’s not really a formal quiz, so I’ll just give you a hint. If you started off by thinking “it’s a grid” then you were correct. You were also correct, if you noted that the grid was comprised of 54 individual blue squares or… Continue reading How Tigers Influenced Your Visual Processing

KPIs & User Journey Metrics for Marketers: Part 3

Expanded Content Marketing Analytics Framework

In the first post of this series on content analytics, I talked about the old way of measuring your marketing content with key performance indicators (KPIs) and why you can’t rely on old measurement models for new media channels. In the second post, I offered an analytics framework for measuring content KPIs along a user-journey continuum.… Continue reading KPIs & User Journey Metrics for Marketers: Part 3

A Tale of Two Decks (Slideshare Experiment)

  This is an experiment on Slideshare. This is…A Tale of Two Decks. Let’s start at the beginning. Recently, I shared the stage with Michelle Killebrew at the Intelligent Content Conference 2015 in San Francisco. If you didn’t attend the event, you missed our somewhat unorthodox presentation where we told “a story about storytelling.” Note: All videos… Continue reading A Tale of Two Decks (Slideshare Experiment)

Conflict Is Story: What It Means for Marketing Storytellers

Conflict is story. Graphic by Joe Kalinowski based on a photo by Gianluca Ramalho Misiti.

Without conflict, there is no story. It is conflict that defines the story. Whenever a writer is sharing a story idea with me, I’m listening for the conflict. Specifically, what is preventing the main character from reaching a specific, desired goal. And whenever a marketer references the brand “storytelling,” I’m listening for the same things.… Continue reading Conflict Is Story: What It Means for Marketing Storytellers