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How To Stop Burying Your Content Signal In So Much Noise [Rose-Colored Glasses]

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How To Stop Burying Your Content Signal In So Much Noise [Rose-Colored Glasses]

The world is very noisy right now.

Sure, a lot’s going on politically, epidemiologically, and societally. But that’s not exactly (or not only) what I mean.

In 2022, organizations put even more importance on creating digital content and content-driven experiences. Consider the recent conversation I had with a new media company in the gaming space. They want to figure out how to ramp up their article production (using an artificial intelligence solution) from 25 to more than 500 per week, or 30,000 posts every year.

You read those numbers correctly: 30,000 posts per year.

No wonder creating a content marketing strategy feels like shouting into a hurricane these days.

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Creating a #ContentMarketing strategy feels like shouting into a hurricane. But that’s nothing new, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

But here’s the thing. It’s always been this way.

Just after the invention of the printing press, the Dutch humanist Erasmus complained, “To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarm of new books? … [T]he very multitude of them is hurting scholarship, because it creates a glut, and even in good things satiety is most harmful.”

Can you imagine what Erasmus would say about all the talking heads in media today?

Still, that doesn’t make figuring out your content marketing strategy any easier – especially if you face expectations like those another client shared with me. His boss rationalizes their content production frequency with this logic:

“We’ll never compete if we dive a mile deep into topics. Our competitors are publishing every day. They’re the ones getting the attention.”

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My gaming contact and my client’s boss share the same philosophy: More content equates to more audiences, which equates to more value.

As Luke Skywalker once said, “Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong.”

Why more content doesn’t always mean more value

See, despite the advancements of AI, content creation hasn’t been democratized (yet). It’s as hard to create high-quality, differentiated content today as in Erasmus’s era.

Despite #AI advancements, it’s as hard to create quality, differentiated #Content today as it ever was, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Instead, the printing press and newer digital technology democratized only the publishing and distribution of content. In 2022, with the help of technology, people produce and distribute more content faster than at any other time in history.

Artificial intelligence will continue to ease the challenge of content production and distribution. It may even intrude into the content creation stage. Imagine a day when AI can produce an article like this one – and tens of thousands of alternative versions designed to increase its performance across diverse audiences at different times.

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But all this content is both signal and noise. My noise drowns out someone else’s signal, and your signal quiets someone else’s noise.

It’s not surprising that content marketers rarely create truly unique content. Your thought leadership probably echoes broader trends that originated elsewhere. Your research likely uncovers evolving trends that others have already identified.

Content marketers probably won’t create the next great piece of literature or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism (at least not as part of their day jobs).

This is by design. As a marketer, you’re in the business of popularity. You try to show up among the most common signals without becoming noise. You want to provide signals familiar enough to tap into audience affinities to associate your brand with the views popular among your desired audience.

Put simply: Most marketers can’t afford to be the lone voice for a particular topic or stance because they’re mostly measured by how many people engage with the message.

Your mission as content creators isn’t to avoid creating noise or focus only on creating signals. No. Your mission is to make the most “right people” (i.e., those in your desired audience) care. This is the art of creating signals among noise.

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Your mission in #ContentMarketing is to make the people in your desired audience care about your #content, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Aim for different, not better

So, how can you separate signal and noise, differentiate your content, and make the right people care? Entertainment media companies provide a helpful model.

Look to these three media company-tested ideas:

1. Create ‘conscious’ content experiences

A “conscious” content experience involves creators who knowingly and purposely evolve the narrative as the needs of its audience change while sticking with the core story or values.

Media companies excel at this – telling the same story over and over again within changing pop-culture contexts or through the lens of different audiences. Look at all the ways they’ve told the story of Spiderman through different eras. The simple comic books of the 1960s and the multiverse movie adaptations featuring the teenage wallcrawler tell the same core story of an awkward teenager learning the great responsibility that comes with great power. Each retelling updates the story to resonate with current audiences.

You can take a similar approach with your blog, resource center, or other publication. You don’t have to lock yourself into a fixed editorial box that focuses only on thought leadership research or how-to articles. Great publications can change their editorial focus as their audience needs or context changes over time.

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Software company SAP did this during the pandemic. During the early part of 2020, the content team shifted the editorial strategy for their Future of Customer Engagement and Experience site to feature helpful information regarding the Covid outbreak. This shift in focus helped them grow their traffic and, most importantly, build a more loyal audience.

2. Focus on different, not better

Media companies understand where they want to create differentiation with content and where they won’t. They also understand they don’t have to be the best in a category – they simply have to offer an alternative. Consider the hit television show The Office. In recreating the show for the US, the producers neither tried to copy nor improve upon the UK hit show. They made something different.

Many content marketers focus on producing better research, more provocative versions of thought leadership, or bigger influencers to tell the same story as their competitors. But one of my clients, a consulting firm in the financial services space, tried something different instead.

Rather than focusing on developing deeper thought leadership or more timely advice to its financial advisor audiences, they developed a book club. The company created a community and online content resource to help financial advisors discover the best new books to read. It wasn’t better than their competition. It was different.

3. Remember that quality wins in the long run

Some argue that if you produce enough content, some of it is bound to rank high, go viral, or succeed in another way. Mathematically, this argument is probably correct.

But I find that most content teams that focus on spending more time on fewer pieces do better than those that focus on pumping out as much content as possible.

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Some media companies simply spew out content as a commodity, hoping it might be a surprise hit. Others recognize that hits are exceedingly rare. Putting care and feeding into each production lets them play the same game in a different way.

Financial Services company Capital Group offers a great example. As a global organization focused on just about every topical economic issue imaginable, the content team could compete with news organizations and report on every new interest rate hike, international banking change, or a new trend in the stock market. But they don’t. Instead, they focus on producing deep, thoughtful pieces weeks or months after a particular news item has broken. Why? They imbue every piece of content with deep research and analysis so that their audience learns to pay attention to and appreciate every piece of content they produce. This philosophy built a vast and loyal following among financial advisors.

Be the right signal to the right audience

The lesson for my client and the gaming company is the same. It may make mathematical sense to use technology to pump as much commodity content as possible. But that won’t solve the signal-versus-noise challenge.

Hiding their best signals in so much of their own noise makes it harder – not easier – to attract the audience that will care about their content. A glut of even good content distracts people from extraordinary content.

Create content because you have something to offer your desired audience. To those who care, you’re the signal. To those who don’t, you’re the noise.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

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Get Robert’s take on content marketing industry news in about three minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
 
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute




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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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