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That Contently Summit Recap You Were Asking For

June 22, 2014 By Yael Grauer 3 Comments

4d6.logoI went to the Contently Summit in NYC last Wednesday, where marketers from various brands, agencies and publishers converged to hear industry leaders discussing brand publishing, metrics, ethics, audience acquisition, storytelling, and more.

Aside from MadLibs, a man on a typewriter writing poems on demand, liquor-infused ice cream, a really fun photo booth, and great conversation with amazing editors and agencies and brands, there were some panels and discussions as well. Here’s a recap:

Truth in Advertising

The first panel, Truth in Advertising, was a frank discussion about transparency and ethics in brand publishing. (I thought this was actually pretty radical to have during a content marketing summit, but Contently has always been a bit of a game changer.) Panelists included Meghan Graham, DEFY Media VP of women’s content, Eric Goeres, Time Inc. Director of Innovation, and Jeff Jarvis, the Director of Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Transparency was the overarching theme. “We all have biases. The more open we are about those things, the better off we’ll be,” Graham pointed out Jarvis, who has an impressive list of disclosures n his website, said it’s important to make sure the reader is never confused about the source of content. Goeres also echoed the sentiment: “Don’t trick ’em, don’t piss ’em off” was his advice.

We discussed Forbes BrandVoice, and whether it is transparent enough to have “what is this?” written on top of the page, with a description when people click on the link. Goeres stated that some would argue that the Forbes brand has taken a major hit, a sentiment with which I agree.

The New York Times’ Orange is the New Black infographic is listed as a paid post, with a small logo and a URL starting with “paid post,” but some argued that this wasn’t transparent enough.

There was also some discussion on making sure that paid content was highly relevant and well-written, with Graham asking if the money from a product you’d normally mock in your editorial section is worth ruining your relationship with your audience.

What I found most interesting in this panel and the discussion is people’s thought processes. It’s easy to view brand publishing and native as a black and white issue, but I appreciate the nuance involved in the discussion. These issues are part of a much larger dialogue, and publishers and journalists alike continue to grapple with them. Resources: Contently’s post on Orange is the New Black

The Numbers Game

Up next was a discussion on numbers with Buzzfeed data scientist Ky Harlin and Moat president Aniq Rahman. Since most metrics and analytic tools are designed for publishers selling ads, this conversation was to discuss metrics to measure to build relationships with customers. Harlin recommended measuring everything, but said that ‘likes’ on their own are a meaningless metric. He does look at viral lift, measuring the propensity for shareability based on the ratio between viral views and seed, or controllable, views. Rahman recommended measuring attention. One metric he  looks at is scroll velocity, to determine whether content is actually read. Resources: 10 Charts That Are Changing the Way We Measure Content

Getting (and Keeping) an Audience

This was a fascinating panel with PureWow Director of Marketing Alexis Anderson, Mediaco Editorial Director Erin Scottberg, and Refinery29’s Senior Director of Marketing Irene Lee. I wrote a recap for the Content Strategist, so thought I’d just link to that! Resources: ‘Growth is Not a Hack’: 7 Strategies for Building a Loyal Audience, and Refinery29’s Intelligence blog

The Storytelling Arms Race

This panel was about content campaigns from start to finish, and including Microsoft storytelling manager Ben Tamblyn and American Express VP of Content Carrie Parker. The two have opposing brand storytelling strategies. Microsoft’s stories tell all about Microsoft, whereas Open Forum is not really about American Express. One interesting takeaway for me was when Carrie Parker mentioned that non-inspirational posts aren’t widely shared, but get traffic via search. Conversely, posts that are widely shared don’t often do well in search. There was also a lot of discussion on great stories (which are not press releases!).Both Tamblyn and Parker predicted that storytelling will include content that’s much more visual, as well as a rise in mobile. Resources: Microsoft to World: Yes, We Can Be Cool and Innovative, Too, and the Net Promoter Score

More Resources:

RebelMouse Contently Summit Recap 5 Things We Learned At the Contently Summit

Filed Under: marketing and PR, writing Tagged With: brand publishing, content marketing, content strategy

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

June 11, 2014 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

Screen Shot 2014-06-11 at 6.45.55 PM

Earlier this year, I noticed that I kept hearing people discuss hobbies they were interested in but decided not to pursue because they felt like they were past their peak. This even though they were activities they were interested in for fun!

Time and again I’d hear people will say things like “if I was going to be good at this, I would know it already.”

I started thinking about the topic and seeing tie-ins everywhere: posts about people learning to pitch even though they don’t have the ligament structure that would’ve developed if they started when they were kids, articles on language acquisition, and so forth. And I started thinking about the whole “women in tech” movement, and how people say it is very difficult for women, minorities, etc. to get involved in computer programming, which I always thought was strange since it’s something you can learn to do in your basement without ever needing to come in contact with an actual person. Also I was reading the Sports Gene and realized even people who do things “right” but are born with the wrong attributes never succeed at the top levels anyway, so it seems silly to follow their model for people who never cared about being world champions.

I decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign to delve into seven fields more in depth and share my findings.

Check it out here:

http://www.beaconreader.com/projects/seven-impossible-things-before-breakfast

Please consider backing this campaign!

Filed Under: physical fitness, writing

Why I’ve Been Blogging Every Day

June 7, 2014 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

For the past few years, I’ve participated in the WordCount Blogathon, where 100+ bloggers sign up to post daily for an entire month. This year, the blogathon is a joint effort between Freelance Success and WordCount, and I’ve signed up once again.

Our fearless leaders have fantastic blogs of their own:

  • WordCount: Freelancing in the digital age (Michelle Rafter) and What Freelance Success Says (Jennie Phipps).

If you just can’t get enough of reading, here is just a small sampling of some of the other participating blogs this year that are specifically focusing on writing. 

  • Dollars and Deadlines by Kelly James-Enger is a great resource year-round for tips on running a thriving freelancing business.
  • Notes from a hired pen by Jen A. Miller is a beautifully written personal blog.
  • The Writer’s [Inner] Journey by Meredith Resnick takes a fascinating look at the process of writing.
  • Jaya Wrote This by Jaya Powell is another look at the business and process of writing.
  • Kathleen Reilly‘s personal blog includes recent posts on meeting Maya Angelou. (I know, right?!)
  • Page Scraps is Holden Page’s personal blog, which has some insight on content, social media and tech.
  • RN to Writer by Elizabeth Hanes looks specifically at healthcare writer.
  • Freelance Writing 4 Beginners by Nicky LaMarco is exactly what it sounds like.
  • Association of Ghostwriters by  Marcia Layton Turner is about ghostwriting, of course.
  • Investment Writing by Susan Weiner has some great information on financial writing.
  • The Content Marketing Writer by Jennifer Goforth Gregory focuses on, you guessed it, content marketing.

Check out the FLX/WordCount Blogathon Facebook page for more information, or peek at the full list of participating blogs.

Filed Under: writing Tagged With: blogathon

Music To Write By

June 4, 2014 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

musicalnoteSooner or later, it’ll happen to you: you’ll have time carved out to write but will be absolutely unable to concentrate. In case taking a break isn’t an option, listening to music might do the trick. Here are some of my favorite tunes and sounds when I really don’t feel like doing anything, but need to convince my brain to work in spite of it all. Feel free to share your own in the comments.

American Primitivism

Songza has all sorts of great playlists, but I always keep coming back to this one. The finger-picking acoustic tunes have a hint of country and a hint of blues. No lyrics, so it’s not completely distracting, but it’s interesting enough to help you focus.

Coffitivity

It’s not really music, but rather an app that mimics the sounds of a local cafe. If you’d like to be able to turn the volume up and down at will, not worry about spilling coffee on your laptop, and have a strong wifi connection that isn’t slow as molasses, you’ll enjoy Coffitivity.

Focus@will

If you like white noise in theory but can’t find any that doesn’t want to make you break things, Focus@will just might do the trick. The free version plays 60 minutes of sounds at a time, and paying for a subscription unlocks all sorts of other features.

Other People’s Soundtracks

Sometimes when I’m writing a profile on a specific person, I listen to the type of music they like to try to get in their head a little bit. Of course, this only works if it’s not music you absolutely despise. I usually look for them on Spotify or just find soundtracks of the type of music they say they like.

Your Favorite Tunes

I know, I know, it’s so obvious that it’s barely worth mentioning, but you probably have some tunes laying around that just might work. I find myself listening to classical guitar and ukulele quite a bit (Jason Vieaux, Jake Shimabukuro, Adrian Holovaty, etc.) when editing, and more raucous music (Jayke Orvis and the Broken Band, for example) for idea generation. What do you listen to when you write?

Filed Under: writing Tagged With: music, writing

Should you run duplicate posts on other sites?

June 3, 2014 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

Quill_(PSF)So you’ve got a blog for your personal or business site, but keep seeing posts from your competitors on LinkedIn, Medium, the Huffington Post and so forth. Maybe you’re wondering whether you should follow suit. Brands and writers alike often ask me for my opinion on this, and while I don’t have any hard and fast rules, I can think of five factors that may help guide your decision.

What are your goals?

You may not meet these goals overnight, but should at least see progress towards them. Clearly defining what you hope to accomplish ahead of time can help you realize whether running duplicate posts is getting you towards that goal or not. Whether you’re trying to publicize a book tour, hoping to improve brand recognition, or directing readers towards downloading a white paper, your entire strategy should be based on a specific set of metrics that you’ll regularly analyze to see if you’re on track. Knowing what your goals are can also help you bounce the idea off of others to see what kind of results they got using the same strategy.

Are duplicate posts allowed?

There are a few sites, like Svbtle, that expect you to keep posts entirely on their network. Whether they enforce this is another question. In any case, if you are giving away content for free as opposed to simply reprinting content from your own blog somewhere else, meeting your goals becomes even more important.

Will your content hit more eyeballs? And which ones?

Despite Huffington Post’s overall popularity, most people who post on the site will get very limited views and even fewer sustained traffic. LinkedIn posts may get eyeballs from people who are viewing your profile, which can be beneficial if you are writing about your industry, but aren’t exactly an audience-building strategy. Other blogs rely on curators and a little bit of luck. For example, Medium posts can sometimes get picked up by collections, and some Svbtle posts are pushed out further. You can theoretically build up followers on these sites comprised of people who may not be reading your personal blog, but this isn’t guaranteed.

Where are you directing people?

Are you planning on sending people to your blog site, or to the same duplicate post on someone else’s platform? If you’re doing the latter, you may want to reconsider unless, of course, you’re absolutely positive that the site has more cachet than your own, or you’re running an experiment. What you want to be doing is drawing people on Medium et. al. back to your personal blog and mailing list, rather than sacrificing your own content marketing in order to help build someone else’s network.

How much extra work is it for you?

I recently put up a blog post (yesterday’s, actually) on LinkedIn as an experiment. It took me about five minutes to upload the graphic, cut and paste the text and hit publish. If I was publishing the exact same content on four other sites, or if the CMS was really challenging, it may no longer be worth it depending on the outcome.

The SEO question

It’s possible that duplicate content on multiple sites might have a negative impact on your integrated marketing efforts, so if a big percentage of your business comes from search, you’ll want to watch that very closely.

The X Factor

Are you posting content on a platform you love, or are you just throwing spaghetti on a wall to see what sticks? Do you truly enjoy the process, or is keeping up with multiple sites too much of a hassle? Your overall experience is always a good gauge.

Filed Under: marketing and PR, writing

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