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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
It's 3pm: Do You Know Where Your Readers Are?Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Am I sorry? Far from it. Ten years after, I’ve happily discovered that being a custom content provider to a reputable, respectable brand makes the best training ground for serving the needs of any readers by producing value-added content. I’ve gained the benefit of understanding some of the great similarities and differences between traditional b2b and custom b2b content—especially during the past five years of focusing on both targeted, customer-retention emails and SEO-focused editorial. True to my craft, most of it isn’t about fact and figures, but rather the more subjective aspects of our work as content providers. But enough about me–how do your publications walk this walk? As you feel the pressures of implementing social media, webinars and SEO initiatives, are you still taking the time and attention necessary to develop deep and lasting friendships with your readers, while providing them with unique editorial value and a clear understand of your title as a brand? Consider these questions, through which my team and I filter every piece of client content we create: 1. It’s 3pm: do you know where your readers are? Consider your reader (aka customer), and the daily demands he or she faces. (And if you’re dumbfounded by this suggestion, think about why that is.) Are you overstaying your welcome in their busy lives, for the sake of appearing current? The perceived ease of social media—the post-it-and-forget-it mentality–is a common trap. It may seem easier and yes, even cooler to send 10 tweets per business day–after all, isn’t that easier to read? Perhaps, but are you compromising your larger value proposition in the process? Take away: A client deals with a great deal of compliance issues in its industry—thorny, delicate topics, laced with legal caveats and conditions. To best serve its customers, we produce 600-to-1,000 word articles on such topics. These are heralded with tweets, but only that comprehensive article delivers ultimate value. 2. Are you snubbing someone at the party? There’s nothing more frustrating for me, as the owner of a small firm, than being invited to read content that ends up ignoring that we exist. Approach all content—print or digital—with the assumption of a diverse audience–even if your audits are saying otherwise. More than ever, this is an imperative in print, as you may be working to gain the loyalty of a younger, more novice readership. Provide multiple access points, based on knowledge levels–not just from page-to-page or section-to-section, but even within an article or column. Take away: At one magazine, we “modularized” articles—an easily digestible main bar was complemented by sidebars dialed to varying levels of reader knowledge and sophistication— to provide something of lasting value for everyone. Social media is particularly effective in this regard; once you solicit some base demographics from your readership, you can calibrate your Tweets to their knowledge level to a degree that is much more challenging to accomplish in print. This excerpt is from a premium article in min's b2b. Ron Bel Bruno is President of Content Mosaic Inc., a New York-based custom content firm. He is a member of the Custom Content Council. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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