Photo courtesy of Sarah Burke

With the introduction of the internet, fact checking is no longer the domain of scholars and journalists. Instead, anyone who can work a search engine, can type in a query and follow the bread crumbs to its source.

Yet, even with the resources for fact-check at our fingertips, content marketers often don’t do spend time doing these checks. Instead, we take most statements at face value – not from its original source, but from the person who quoted it – and popularize it by spreading the information.

Whether we do it because we don’t have time (I’m guilty for cutting corners ever now and again when I feel under pressure to create content), or we just don’t realize the importance of fact checking, the end-result remains the same: Our blogs are littered with inaccuracies and misinformation.

And worse: Our audience are making decisions based off of our posts – decisions that may have been different if we had taken to time to ensure that what we said was true.

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Hey, you! We need to talk about something really important.

I just think – and I don’t mean this in a disrespectable way – but I think we need to learn how to communicate more effectively. It feels like you don’t really listen to me when I’m trying to say something. I tell you about my money problems, and you keep talking about buying that new car that I can’t afford. I tell you about that I’m getting married, and you keep sending me links to dating sites!

Photo courtesy of pedrosimoes7(CC Attribution)

It’s really annoying.

It seems like all you want to do is talk, talk, talk. You just want to shove your point down my throat and hope that I’ll be persuaded to behave how you want me to in the end.  

Well, it’s not working out for me. I need to feel like we’re having a conversation. Like we’re both listening to the other’s side of the story.

Do you follow?

Of course you do.

We’ve all had this conversation in some shape or form with a friend, loved one, partner, family member, co-worker etc. at least once in our lifetimes. It’s a tale as old as time, a grievance that’s plagued us since the dawn of humanity, a loose thread that just doesn’t seem to want to be tied up…

It’s our inability to get this communication thing really working for us.

As marketers, we’d like to think that we’re communicating with our customers, but are we really? And if we are, why haven’t we embraced Conversation Marketing?

You’ve probably seen a lot of posts titled something along the lines of “Inbound vs Outbound Marketing”. When I first started off my career in marketing, it felt like that’s all I read about. And, after about a month of reading, I felt like I really got what the two marketing strategies entailed. 

But you don’t have a month. 

You have right now. 

So here’s a post that will give you the skinny on inbound and outbound marketing. No frills, just facts. 

Did you ever notice how “humor” and “Homer” have the same amount of characters and start and end with the same letters? Coincidence? I think not!

Well, actually it is.

Fun fact: Matt Groening named the character after his own dad.

Still, the two things are hyper-related. Homer is funny, and so is humor! When done correctly, that is.

Photo courtesy of Sapann-Design – Freepik.com

Be it online, in person, or over the phone, there’s one thing that we eventually learn about customer service: 

It’s hard. 

And finding people who are great at it (and possibly even enjoy it!) can be really tough. 

But the reality is that customer service is extremely important to creating a successful business! In fact, 40% of customers have said that they left a company because of bad customer service.

The harsh reality is that many businesses underestimate just how important it really is to have the right team ready to at the phones (or desks, or keyboards!) and therefore they don’t assign enough resources to ensure they deliver the highest quality customer service that they can. 

If you’re concerned that your customer service team isn’t working to the best of its abilities, here’s a few tips that will help to whip them into shape!

Recently, I stumbled across an article by Jay Baer on LinkedIn Pulse entitled “You’re Trying to Be Smart But It’s Clearly Not Working.” Being a huge fan of his work, and intrigued by the tone of his headline, I was curious to read what he had to say. 

The post is short, but to sum it up for you: Baer states that Newsjacking is “ridiculous” because usually what’s happening in pop culture isn’t reality and we have no lessons to learn from fiction. He concludes with: “If you have something to say, just say it.”

For those of you who haven’t stumbled across 2015s buzzword of the year (so far), Newsjacking was coined by David Meerman Scott, and is the process of leveraging trending news to elevate your brand’s message.

But back to Baer: While I disagree that fiction can’t teach us about reality, this isn’t the time and the place to tear into that argument. But Baer’s post did get me thinking seriously about Newsjacking. Particularly, I wanted to know:

• Is there any real argument for or against the Newsjacking? 
• Is it effective, or just a cheap gimmick? 
• And, most importantly, can Newsjacking be utilized for good content marketing?

So let’s get some answers, shall we? 

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Your headline is the first, and often the only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a compelling headline to entice your prospective readers into reading the rest of the content, your accompanying text is pointless – no matter how good it is.

Instead, your content will simply go unloved, unrecognized, undervalued and neglected until one day it will simply float off into a dark abyss where all content without captivating headlines go to die.

Dramatic, I know.

But it’s true.

On average, only 2 out of 10 people will read beyond your headline. That means that your headline literally has the power to make or break your content. The better than average your headline is, the better your chances are of having a larger audience read your content.

Simple, huh?

Photo courtesy of Andy Rennie (original photo)

The pros know exactly how important creating headlines are, so they often follow the 50/50 rule which is when you spend just as much time on your headline (and the first few words/lines of your copy) as you do on creating your entire piece of content.

Given that most content takes hours, if not weeks to produce, you might be thinking that that’s a lot of time to spend on just a few words. Time that could be better spent on polishing up the rest of your content, maybe?

But think again.

As advertising legend David Ogilvy so succinctly puts it: “When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” And where else should you spend your time, but on the one area that requires such a huge investment of money?

Doesn’t seem so ridiculous now, does it?

Photo courtesy of Sarah Burke

I’m sure you’ve heard the “fact” that people process images 60,000 times faster than they do text, right? The quote is supposed to highlight the important role images play in human understanding. 

But on further research, the fact just doesn’t hold up. 

In fact, no one knows where it came from! Although, A Difference does a remarkable job at researching it to as close as humanly possible. 

But that’s not to say images aren’t important. In a study by MIT it was concluded that the brain can process an image in 13 milliseconds! Which is rather remarkable when you consider that, with there being 1,000 milliseconds in a second, that would mean that we can process about 76 images per second.

That’s kind of mind boggling, am I right? Even if the 60,000 times faster than text fact isn’t quite accurate, one thing is for sure: we process images really fast. 

No wonder 65% of people are said to be visual learners.            

Photo courtesy of Dru Bloomfield – At Home in Scottsdale(CC Attribution)