Every company wants to have viral content and some may be willing to do whatever it takes. The question posed is whether or not “whatever it takes” is a good notion to have. Many viral video ads out there are hilarious and have converted into incredible sales for companies, but many question the ethics of some of these ads.
Let’s use the example of the Pepsi “Test Drive” ads and discuss if “whatever it takes” should be left to the professionals.
Pepsi Max: Test Drive
We have all seen this video at some point and it is pretty funny. Jeff Gordon dresses up as someone who is interested in buying a car and “kidnaps” the salesman, taking him on a wild ride. We all laughed at it and loved when Jeff Gordon revealed who he was, but some felt sorry for the poor salesman. Some even wondered what else could have happened to the salesman or other unsafe ways he might have reacted. These concerns led to one blogger saying the video was faked. He said the salesman was an actor and “in on it.” He also stated that Jeff Gordon didn’t really do the driving.
The Response
In response to this blogger, Ray Wert (a friend of the blogger) decided to get the ultimate revenge. He had his friend kidnapped by Jeff Gordon and they filmed “Test Drive 2” for Pepsi, proving that this wasn’t a hoax. It was, again, funny and especially entertaining watching revenge being enacted on someone. In this case, the blogger thought he was in the taxi of an ex-convict who decides to run from the police when they pull him over. They ended by driving the taxi to a garage filled with Pepsi logos and told the blogger he had been, well, had.
Should This Be Left to the Professionals?
In short, yes. Pepsi and other companies that have staged these types of pranks have strategies in place. They don’t make the kidnapping public and they do it in a confined area. Just look at how many people it took to pull off the “Test Drive 2” prank. When other companies go about kidnapping, it can cause a negative stir and hurt business. In April 2014, a group decided to film an educational video on child kidnapping and the response of witnesses, according to the Dailydot.com. This left parents enraged when they found out this “prank” had been pulled and it didn’t bode well for the group that performed it. In Australia, five men were arrested for a YouTube kidnapping prank because of an observer calling authorities. It took five months of investigation time to learn what exactly happened before the men were charged with creating a “false belief.” This shows that it takes more than a handful of people to adequately and safely pull off a prank like this; only then do many consider it funny.
Take a Lesson from Spock
Be logical about doing pranks as a form of advertisement. Leave the hilarious ads to the professionals and stay away from causing extreme negative side effects for your company. Just play it safe and find new ways to launch viral content and bring in customers and readers without possibly breaking laws and angering a lot of people.
Here’s a riddle for you: what’s short, concise, compelling and newsworthy and can boost the online visibility and profitability of your business by spreading the word about your most recent accomplishments?
You know the answer to this one: it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a press release that travels fast to satisfy the universal hunger for premium content that is tormenting both bloggers and journalists every single step of the way. Press releases are extremely valuable content pieces designed to support your online marketing strategies and help you make a name for yourself.
How to Write Press Releases Like a Pro
Writing press releases is not art and it’s not science. It’s a combination of both elements. In order to create and distribute truly effective press releases, you have to understand how the mind of your targeted audience functions. Empathy is an important piece of the puzzle enabling you to perfect your press release writing skills and resonate with your public and also with your tastemakers, who amplify your message and make sure it reaches an even broader audience. Most people rely on a trial-and-error process to assess the quality and the effectiveness of their web writing. But you are not most people. You can do better than this.
According to Raven tips on press release writing, in order to convince journalists to take your masterpiece into consideration and include it in their article, you have to think like a journalist. It actually makes sense. Can you image how difficult it must be to identify truly amazing newsworthy facts when you are bombarded with tons of written junk and mambo jumbo on a daily basis, when you’re really craving for stellar content and accurate, trustworthy sources of inspiration? In order to perfect your press release writing, you must start by identifying and avoiding these 3 extremely common and annoying mistakes that could turn you into an average Joe instead of helping you enjoy the fair share of fortune and fame that great content creators are entitled to.
Press Release Writing Pitfalls That You Should Avoid at All Costs
a) Overkill Just Killed Your Press Release. Oops. Make sure you don’t start your quotes with the overrated, extremely irritating fragment indicating that you are really excited to let your clients know that you have succeeded in something. Of course you’re excited! You have all the reasons in the world to be thrilled: you’ve launched a new product, expanded your company or have recently invested time, money and energy in a new partnership. Nobody says that it’s illegal to show a bit of enthusiasm, but don’t overdo it. Keep the fact, but ditch the hyperbole. Downplay the “we” factor in your presentation; after all, your products should be into the spotlight, not your merits, your moneymaking efforts or your excitement.
b) Fabricated Facts Never Tricked Anyone into Buying Your Story. Don’t invent facts and don’t include statements that you cannot back with solid evidence.
c) Giving Up Is Not an Option: Write Killer Press Releases or Die Trying. Most importantly, don’t lose your hope. Keep your press release writing simple and straight to the point. Emphasize the novelty that is relevant and newsworthy and accentuate its impact on your targeted audience.
5 Ways to Bring and Keep Your Press Releases in the Public Eye While Boosting Their Effectiveness
Press release writing is not as difficult as you may be inclined to think. As a matter of fact, there are at least 5 foolproof methods to bring your press releases into the attention of a broader audience and maximize their influence fast and with minimal effort.
1. Create Better Stories. Don’t write press releases just to generate inbound links. It won’t work. Google is already one step ahead of you on this one. By cataloging links in press releases as unnatural, it basically forces content creators to use the rel nofollow attribute. So instead of treating your press releases like plain SEO tools, give them a little bit of credit. They are food for thought consumed on a daily basis by millions of journalists worldwide who are constantly looking for genuine, attention-grabbing stories. Think first, optimize second. Make sure your story sounds too good to be true when it actually is. Self-indulgent sales pitches are so yesterday. They no longer prove their utility, so unless you want to bore a journalist to death, don’t invest your time and money in them. Create stellar stories that can be quoted, which are based on 100% verifiable facts.
2. Keep It Simple. Always write in the 3rd person, present facts from the readers’ perspective and keep it short and simple. A good press release shouldn’t count more than 500 words to prove a point. You are not writing a novel and you don’t get paid by the word, so don’t hesitate to be brief. Get to the point fast and don’t use tons of adjectives to highlight your authority or your amazing capabilities, experience and accomplishments.
3. Rely on First-Class Distribution Strategies. If content is a powerful king, then proper distribution is its influent queen. Make sure you email your press releases to your targeted audience. According to a Copyblogger post on how to use the modern press release, a human touch is what makes the difference between great press releases that are being shared and quoted and mediocre ones that sink into oblivion since the very beginning. Pick up the phone and make sure your targeted bloggers and journalists actually managed to read your story. Distribute your press releases via a good wire service, but don’t forget to explore marketing opportunities brought to you by social media platforms. Sharing your press releases on social networking websites can only work to your advantage, allowing you to raise the online visibility of your brand.
4. Optimize with Maximum Care. Optimize your press releases, but always remember that Google is breathing down your neck. You wouldn’t want to rely on shady optimization tactics that could turn out to be counterproductive. Use relevant keywords in your headlines and body copy, but don’t overdo it. Keyword stuffing is one of the capital sins listed in the SEO Decalogue.
5. Opt for an Ideal Format. How you writeweb content is almost as important as what you write. This rule applies also when it comes to crafting result-oriented press releases. The standard format comprises a few key elements that you should not omit, including headline, dateline, introductory paragraph, body, boilerplate, source and media contact information. According to iReach, subheads are optional, but they can help you put your ideas in order and organize your material more effectively.
Now you know it. Great format, optimized, stellar content, a good story with a twist, world class distribution strategy and a refined, studied simplicity represent the main factors that could raise the visibility and the effectiveness of your content pieces and help you improve your press release writing skills in no time.
Were you in the loop on the webinar that happened this Wednesday? Over 34,000 people signed up and listened in, breaking the world record for 10,899 participants, set by Hubspot just a few years ago in 2011.
The Best Social Media Webinar of All Time
We were there, and the event was worth the hype. No less than three of today’s top social media platforms had a senior director or marketing head present during the webinar, with Hubspot hosting: Russ Laraway, Twitter’s Senior SMB Director; Jed Clevenger, Facebook’s Global Head of SMB Channel Marketing; and Scott Engelman, Head of Online Marketing at LinkedIN.The host was @Dan Zarrella, Hubspot’s own Social Media Scientist. Check out the event page on Hubspot.
Since the webinar was not recorded, we took direct notes while listening in. Here are our favorite tidbits from the experts who spoke. Enjoy! Twitter Company Page tips shared from @Russ Laraway: “Your first impression on Twitter counts. Use your bio to be descriptive and reflective of your business. Give people a compelling reason to follow your account. Include URL to an important landing page, your store hours, and anything that makes it easy to find you. Feature your logo and visual elements to describe your company. @Bonobos is an excellent example that does all of this for their Twitter profile.Be relevant on mobile. Twitter was born on mobile; 75% of users are mobile; think of your Twitter profile as your mobile website.” Business Facebook Page tips by @Jed Clevenger: “We have over 1 million active advertisers. Setting up your Facebook page is huge for your business. Three things to get started:
Fill out complete and accurate information about your business: type, location, hours, URL, contact information. This establishes your business on Facebook, makes it indexed to search.
Have great cover pictures and cover photo. Customers want to see that you’re legitimate.
Use our free Facebook tools: contact importer, where you can upload all your contacts, and friend invites, where you can invite all your friends.
Test new types of content and spend time in your Page Insights to get information on your posts, audience, and traffic. SweetHaus used no advertising dollars to grow their account to over 3,000 likes: promoting to existing customers and finding new customers.” LinkedIN Company Page tips from @Scott Engelman: “Write a company page that is informative and engaging. Use keywords that are relevant to your business to get your company in search results. Think of what image to use—an eye-catching image that invites visitors to learn more. Once it’s set up, invite your company network to follow. Engage with your followers by posting updates.”
Of course, we loved this question:
So much of marketing in social media is copywriting. Should my Twitter campaign copy be different from other copy? Russ, Twitter guru, answered: “The short answer is no, but it’s safe to acknowledge that Twitter offers constraints – 140 characters. Generally speaking, consider email marketing. I bet everybody here does this. With email marketing, you’re creating and constantly refining a list of interested parties; create content; send it out regularly, with minor adjustments, you can use this for your Twitter audience. Your followers are your lists. Work on shorter-form for Twitter. Most of you will create bigger content pieces like blogs, newsletters, e-books, think of these as base documents that you can carve into bite size pieces and use Twitter to drive those bits. For example, take a newsletter. Instead of tweeting the link with “check out the newsletter,” tweet a tip about the newsletter, a series of tips all day, and link to it or that excerpt in it. You can get a lot of mileage out of what you’re already producing this way, just modify it to make it work on Twitter.” How do you get engagement with your tweets?A great question, and it got a great answer from Russ Laraway: “Forgive me for being obvious, but you can get more engagement with your tweets by giving your audience what they want. Really think about the 80/20 rule. 80% of your content should NOT be focused on what you are selling. Non-direct selling, direct offering of value that is informative and helpful. What can your followers benefit from? Best practices, industry trends, are examples of great kind of content. Tweets that include rich media are more than likely to be shared. If you upload an image that tweet will do twice as well. 20% of your content SHOULD be focused on what you are selling.” I can’t seem to grow, how do I get a relevant following?Russ answered: “It is true that it is really important to build a great follower base on Twitter. Remember, followers are optional. The users on Twitter regularly refine who they follow. There is no friction to stop following an account. So, users are very careful about the accounts they follow. Your followers will be interested to hear from you with regularity. Use the profile tips from earlier for a compelling profile, and jump in on industry conversations with hashtags—like the smart marketers hash-tagging #WLW14! For example, if your target audience is educators, reach out to Alexander Russo and build a relationship with them. If you just tweet out valuable content in order to get a retweet, you’ll get more relevant followers over time.” How do I target content for Facebook industry audience? Jed says: “A lot of the same principles from Russ for Twitter can be applied here for Facebook. We encourage you to start testing your way into great content. We have tools similar to A/B testing. From your page, any post you publish can be available to the public, but not all the public. Target your post by location, country, state, city, language, gender, relationship status, educational status, age—there is a ton of targeting option. Speak with an authentic voice to reach core audiences.” How do I use hashtags successfully?Russ said: “Hashtags are best used for tweets driven for engagements. Leave them out of tweets driving direct responses. Don’t squat on a hashtag by just using it. Offer some value when you use it. Anyone can create their own hashtag: just make sure it’s easy to understand, and you’ll get good results. If it’s not widely used, think about trying to build momentum around it. We’ve created the #WLW14 hashtag and incorporated it into other avenues: email, marketing, etc. Build a community around your hashtag.” And Dan at Hubspot added: “Social media is awesome because advertisers can do really smart advertising!” Using sponsored updates on LinkedIN, LinkedIN expert Scott says: “Sponsored updates are a great way to extend your reach and get the best content in front of a target audience. We recommend starting with an organic company post, that has the highest engagement, and use sponsored updates to extend the reach of that post. Use industry location, job function, company size to target these sponsored updates. This allows you to get in front of your audience in an organic way. The power behind this targeting is the accuracy of the data: you can target your exact audience. Finally, sponsored updates allow you to get into desktop, tablet and mobile audiences.” On Facebook app success, Jed says: “Facebook has four pillars for Facebook ad strategies. 1) Ad formats – 20% of all user time in ads are spent on Facebook, in the newsfeed. Create newsfeed ads. 2) Targeting – You’re targeting people, not cookies. You can target them in a safe way. Our targeting includes demographic (age, interests, etc.); custom audiences (from email lists, app users, etc.); just-launched website custom audiences (target people on Facebook who were on your website); look-like audience creation (find other people on Facebook with similar characteristics). 3) Conversion tracking – drop a conversion pixel on your website to track everything. 4) Measurement – use your page insights and manager. An example: Little Passports grew their customer base 300% and cut back on costs by 60% using Facebook advertising. They saw a huge uplift in sales and is their life in sales. Some of the biggest takeaways were about images, which are vital in your tweets, Facebook shares, and LinkedIN posts:
Russ says: “Use images in tweets. You’ll get double the engagement. Get deeper: create images around hashtag vortexes, and make it aligned with what is popular with your audience. You can even pair this with an offer and then track it with Twitter’s tracking capabilities. Chegg is a great example. Using this resulted in 13,000 post engagement purchases, a 23% engagement conversion rate.”
Jed says: “Use bigger and better images. Use pictures that relate to your posts and companies. Use newsfeed advertising.”
Scott says: “Remember, audiences are professional on LinkedIN. Keep this mindset in mind. GE uses creativity in their images that still stay professional.”
And Dan says: “Followers on platforms are different people. Always be experimenting. Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”
Short answer: yes. Too much content can actually scare potential clients and readers away. If they have to wade through a pool of different content to get to the meat of your website, they will run away very fast. “When is content considered too much?” you ask.
Let’s discuss this and how to avoid publishing or creating overwhelming amounts, and as a bonus give you some ideas on how to use your content to tease readers into wanting more. So, get your thinking caps on and get ready to learn about The Day of Too Much Content.
How Do I Know I Have Too Much Content?
If you start noticing that you are losing readers and visitors it is a very good indication that your content might be overwhelming. We know that you have spent countless hours preparing your content and we know that is pretty awesome, too. Just because the content is great and has had a lot of preparation does not mean that your customers will like it, though. Less really is more when it comes to content writing.
Business2Community suggests self-examination when you start realizing your website is losing readers. We are going to unpack what this means in the following section.
1. It’s a Tough Crowd, Charlie Brown. Just ask any comedian – audiences are hard to please. When you are writing your content, you need to know your audience and what they expect from you. If you aren’t talking their “language” you are going to lose them quickly. If your audience is in the tech world, you shouldn’t write things that aren’t related to that field. If your audience doesn’t know much about tech, don’t write about tech. Simple as that. Too much of the wrong content will hurt your company.
2. Are You Living up to Your Expectations? You have expectations for your company; everyone does, but are you living up to them? If you aren’t, it is time to re-evaluate your content strategy and re-evaluate what you expect from it. You may think you’ll go viral if you post a ton of photos a day on your social media site but instead you realize that your page likes are going down. This means you need to stop sharing so much and start sharing small, impactful photos or updates. Don’t spam people’s newsfeeds.
3. Where is Your Audience Going? Are you sending them to your front page or to a specific landing page? If you’re sending them to your homepage, you should know that they will feel very overwhelmed. Most front pages are packed with information, photos, links, ads, etc. and that gets very confusing and overwhelming. Tweak your landing pages to bring in customers to a specific place. You can use a landing page to give a brief description of your company, encourage people to sign up for updates, and give links to your social media sites. A landing page is crucial to a successful website and company.
Tease Audiences into Wanting More
If you want to bring in more people, you have to tease them, not overwhelm them. Here are a few ways you can do this and start gaining back your readership.
1. Giveaways. People love getting free stuff and giveaways are a perfect opportunity to build relationships with clients. You can use giveaways to keep your existing clients but you can also use them to bring in more readers and promote your company more. Giving people the ability to get extra entries is one of the ways to do this. Tell people they get one entry simply by commenting but can get X amount more (chose how many entries you’d like to give) by sharing on social media sites and blogging about it. People will do whatever they can if there is a potential to win, so take advantage of that!
2. Spoilers. If you have a big announcement coming up, think about spending a few days/weeks prior by vague tweeting and updating. This will start garnering interest because curiosity is a major part of human consciousness. Occasionally let something “slip” to make people chortle at your “mistake” as they attempt to solve what the big news is. You can even implement giveaways into this and give a prize away if someone guesses the big news (just don’t tell them until you have announced your news!).
3. Ask for Input. Your clients and readers are the best resources to utilize to find out if you post too much content. Send out questionnaires and make a web poll for them to access. You could create an anonymous tip box where people can freely tell you what needs to change. Take their suggestions and start implementing them into your content creation and you will see tremendous growth in visits to your website. Creating client participation is very important to all businesses.
Make Changes and Succeed
Creating enough content that isn’t overwhelming will save your business and will bring in more clients. Stay away from making common mistakes with your content and begin to be more personal with your readers. This isn’t the time to feel bad that your site isn’t drawing in readers; it is time to take action and make changes!
If you are in the SEO business or in case you are thinking about it, there is one major rule you will have to keep in mind: the search engines don’t care about companies; they only rank content. It doesn’t matter how great your company is if you can’t offer the readers high quality content.
The main purpose of search engines (including Google) is to offer their users the best experience possible. When a user searches the answer to a question, the more details the answer has, the more useful it is for the user. As a result relevant and high quality content will have a better ranking in the search results.
All this determines your goal in content creation: publishing marketable, useful and relevant information. This will boost your ratings and it will ensure that your SEO strategy will have long-term effects.
So here is why content is the key element of SEO:
1. People Are Interested in What You Have to Say
According to Brafton.com 52% of people made purchase decisions based on what they read on blogs and 57% of the marketers gained new customers because of their content. 42% of people look for articles and blogs about the products that they wish to purchase and 60% of the marketers claim that content helps them make better decisions. 61% of the customers say that they are likely to purchase the products of a company that offers custom content. All this should show you how important your content really is.
Now that you know your content makes all the difference, what could you do to improve it for higher SEO ranks and more traffic?
2. Give the Consumers What They Need
First of all, you have to know what your target audience is. Secondly, you need to know what they want and what information is relevant to them. If you don’t, you will waste time and energy offering solutions to problems that don’t exist. Once you know what the target audience wants, make sure that the content you offer is really helpful.
Think of the most common questions and offer answers. This way you will become the source of knowledge to the readers. While the other people will be too busy with self-marketing, you will give people exactly what they need which is the best self-marketing strategy ever.
3. Just Give Yourself
Regardless of the kind of content you are thinking about, you can be sure that there are hundreds of people who thought of it before you woke up this morning. This is why you will have to find ways to make your content stand out; find ways to present your content in a way that has never been used before.
If your content is similar to the others’, you will just need to add value to it. There are many different ways to make your content stand out, such as adding videos, infographics, images, or anything else that would make it unique.
4. Boredom Is the Death of SEO
You may be working in a field that is boring or dry, but you can be sure that they are always ways to add a fun and creative spin to it, even if you are in the field of toilet seats.
One of the most important aspects that you will have to be thinking about is branding, according to Seth Godin. Based on information from brafton.com, half of the users are more likely to visit a page if it appears several times among the search engine results. For this you will need a diversified content strategy. It means that you should have blogs, webpages, images, videos, whitepapers, social snippets, infographics, and anything else you could think of.
All this will result in people being engaged with your brand. You will be able to fill the content gaps and you will maximize the benefits of all your content.
5. Content Reduced to Keywords
When you’re searching for something with the help of search engines, you have to type in keywords. These are the same keywords that the users type in to find your content. Since you know what your target group wants, you should have a pretty good idea of what keywords they might use to reach the desired content. All these keywords must be a part of your pages. This way in the moment the user hits enter, your content will be first on the list of results.
6. Can Keywords Reduce Your Ranking?
In order to have high ranks on the search engine results, there is need for your content to contain keywords. So, why wouldn’t you include all the keywords that you can think about? The truth is this is a very bad strategy. Keyword stuffing isn’t the solution to your problem. If you have too many keywords, the content will lose its purpose and it won’t be useful to the readers. This is why there is a keyword density accepted by common sense. If your web content keyword density is higher, it will hurt your ranking. On the other hand, if you don’t have keywords, it will become very difficult to attract traffic to your content.
7. Is Your Content Engaging?
If you have high quality content, you will be able to engage the readers and this is something that the search engines also measure. The more time readers spend on your site, the better the rankings will be. If you don’t have high quality content, the readers will simply bounce back to the search results and, again, this will hurt your ranking.
8. Be “Socially” Involved
You can see social media everywhere you look. If you get shares, likes, tweets, or any other kind of social feedback, it means that you have high quality content and this is something that the search engines will appreciate as well.
All in all, no matter what kind of feedback you’re striving for, it all comes back to your content and whether or not your readers like it. Regardless of what you’re writing about, always consider what the readers want; the search engines want the same thing as your readers: high quality, informational, engaging content.
