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Series of Unfortunate Content Events
Always learn from your mistakes. Even better — always learn from someone else’s. And who better to learn from then fellow content marketer, Copyblogger FM’s own Sonia Simone? She’s sharing five biggies she’s made in the past (some more than once). Plus, how to avoid them in the future — at all costs!
Her words of wisdom start around 02:35.
- (02:45) #1: Pouring endless time into a huge project that has no market. Don’t create your software, online course, online business, etc. without checking to see if there’s a paying market.
- (04:45) Do a trial run first. If it’s not well-received, at least you didn’t get that hard “no” later down the road.
- (06:45) #2: Constant pivoting without any forward movement. If you’re constantly refining and re-refining your idea, but never actually launch the idea, you’ll never know which direction it will take you!
- (07:35) Instead, cultivate a project focus — what can I launch in the next 30 days for a meaningful experience. Think of it as an experiment and gather data (i.e the audience’s response).
- (08:42) #3: Failing to set boundaries for the people you are working for
- (09:04) “The Nightmare Client” ::dun dun dunnn::
- (11:35) #4: The Hail Mary Purchase. Or, spending a huge amount of $$ you don’t have because you think it will fix your skills or your content.
- (12:33) Think: is this the right time in your business to make an investment?
- (15:08) Be realistic. Is this education going to help where you are right now, and not where you wish you were?
- (16:15) #5: If you just regurgitate everything you’ve learned, you’re not teaching effectively. This is what Sonia refers to as, “Content puke.” Has quite a nice ring to it, huh?
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Growing the Sumo Blog to 200,000 Visits a Month
What’s really the goal of any blog? Views. It’s always views. If you want conversions, you need views to get that. If you’re interested in a ton of shares, you need a ton of views to get that. It doesn’t really matter what your end goal is, it probably starts with views.
That’s why it’s helpful to take a look at what the pros are doing to get visits on their blogs. Today, we’re taking a hard look at Sumo’s strategy that got them 200k blog visitors in one month. Their strategies will help you level-up your own marketing.
- Accountability. Like we mentioned in a previous TDC, setting goals is essential to marketing success. Sumo sets goals and has weekly meetings (both 1:1 and team meetings) to make sure that they’re hitting those goals.
- Use a Proactive Metrics Dashboard to track your content promotion tactics. And be sure to track everything. If something fails, track it anyway.
- Mix up your blog post types. Don’t just write articles that will get you organic search traffic. Figure out what kind of content will resonate with your audience on social media. It’s likely a different type of content than what searchers are looking for. Once you’ve got that figured out, switch between publishing an SEO article and an article that will get that sweet social media attention.
- Get good at delegating. Give your team members specific tasks, and let them do their thing. But, don’t forget to keep them accountable.
- Paid social ads are going to supercharge your views, but don’t waste money on these ads. Dial in your audience targeting to get a super high relevance score and a super low CPC.
The author wraps this post up by giving some tips to help build your email, Messenger, and retargeting lists. Plenty of good ideas there, too.
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Stay Wild
“In this world, there’s room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful — but we have lost the way.”
That might be a quote from the 1940s by Charlie Chaplin, but it seems even more relevant today, as mass-produced goods flood the world and smartphones slowly dumb us down.
That’s the idea Jackson Hole is running with in their new ad campaign, “Stay Wild.” They want people to step away from technology, get away from the daily stress, and unplug (and spend money) at Jackson Hole.
Chaplin’s moving speech — taken from the movie, The Great Dictator — rings out through the whole 90-second ad. You can watch and read the speech here. It works so perfectly in tandem with Jackson Hole’s stunning imagery that, by golly, we nearly shed a tear.
Every now and then a brand comes along and absolutely nails that emotional connection all marketers are after. Jackson Hole certainly figured it out in this campaign. We’ve watched it about 349 times already and just booked a trip to Jackson Hole this winter. Dang advertising, got us again.
“We all make mistakes — but it sucks a lot less to learn from someone else’s.”
Sonia Simone
