RonAmok!

Had someone told me at the beginning of the month that I’d be flying to Minneapolis to co-present an all-day session at the Confab Conference, I would have laughed. But that’s exactly what happened when Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) called to see if I could pinch-hit for her Content Rules co-author, C.C. Chapman, who wouldn’t be able to co-present with her due to emergency surgery.

And so, last Wednesday I found myself standing next to Ann before sixty content creators, who were all there to participate in: “Content Rules: How to Create Content People Really Care About.” I was very excited to speak to this group for one simple reason: they already know the value of content. Unlike traditional marketers who see content creation as a threat to their jobs, or old school PR folks who see it as a threat to their cushy monthly retainers, the corporate storytellers in front of us represented the new guard of this digital communications era.

At the beginning of the session, Ann asked everyone to jot down three things that they each wanted to learn. We collected 117 questions from 48 participants.

The figure to the left represents the seven categories that we divided them into. Almost sixty percent (60%) of the questions fell into two categories: Finding and Telling Stories and Executive Education. The largest vote-getter wasn’t much of a surprise considering the name of the presentation and the audience. The second one, however, was. No matter how much we in the social media fishbowl pontificate about how far we’ve gotten with “social media,” we still have a long way to go. The fact that “managing up” is the second-largest concern for those tasked with creating corporate content proves that we haven’t yet made a dent in the problem.

For example, here are some of the Executive Education questions:

• How to get an organization to see content as an opportunity (exciting!) rather than a burden?
• How to get execs to respect content development as a skill (and non-execs too)?
• How to develop organizational discipline around writing i.e. get everyone onboard with starting with the story.
• Focus execs so they/we can prioritize which story to tell

I love the last one. You know that things have changed when the creatives are trying to get the executives to focus!

Thirty percent (30%) of the questions revolved around Content Strategy and Best Practices — again, not surprising considering we were at a Content Strategy conference. However, the next two categories, which accounted for twenty-five percent (25%) of the questions, identified a need to connect stories to business and to find ways to balance voice and the corporate brand.

Some of those questions included:

• How do you use those stories to help make sales goals?
• How to tell a brand’s stories without being too salesy–but still achieve business objective.
• How do you balance the goal of making the voice of your content informal/accessible with the goal of making the “voice” professional quality?
• How do you keep your brand story consistent and powerful across multiple content creators? Over time?
• We want to do more video content but our brand manager wants it to look “perfect.” What’s your take on this?Does video need to look super duper professional?
• Practical ways to convert brand messages into engaging, compelling content.

These are the questions that companies contemplating new media self-publishing must ask. They form the conversation-starters for serious discussions around water coolers, in break rooms, meeting rooms, cubicles, and on all rows mahogany.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll draw blog posts from some of these questions/categories. Are there any that you want me to prioritize?

The most recent version of the CMO Survey shows how companies still view social media as an axillary function instead of something valuable enough to integrate into their overall communications plans.

When asked to describe how effectively social media is integrated with their firm’s overall and marketing strategies, 421 CMOs gave it a resounding meh (3.4 on a scale of 1-to-7). More specifically, 25% described their activities as not effective at all–the lowest ranking on the chart–compared with only 6% who described their program integration as very effective.

It’s clear that CMOs still don’t understand the ramifications of the massive communications revolution happening around them. Instead of building integrated strategies on top of powerful new content delivery systems, they’ve opted for a Frankenstein approach to marketing–bolting disparate social media appendages awkwardly onto their traditional processes.

What’s even more disheartening is how excited various social media experts are about CMO bullishness, as respondents plan to grow social media spending from 5.6% of their overall corporate budgets today, to 9.9% next year, and a whopping 18.1% in five years! But where do they plan to spend this money?

• Marketing research and intelligence
• Marketing consulting services
• Developing knowledge about how to do marketing
• Integrating what we know about marketing
• Marketing Training

We have such a long way to go. Until companies can integrate social mediums into their overall communications strategies, they’ll continue to live through a horror movie best described as Frankenstein meets Groundhog Day.

The entire CMO Survey can be downloaded here.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In their book, Content Rules, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman recommend 11 rules for creating great content. I particularly like Rule #2: Insight Inspires Originality.

Insight. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Wouldn’t it be great to have a crystal ball that guides us to make all of the right decisions? Well, when it comes to the development of online content, we actually do. Let’s take a look at two insight generators: Facebook Insights and YouTube Insights.

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights offers a broad view of a company’s Facebook fans (audience), ranging from traditional demographics such as “age,” “location,” and “page views,” to unique Facebook measurements such as “active users,” “likes,” and “unlikes.” If you have admin privileges to a Facebook page, give it a try. Download your entire historical data into a spreadsheet and take a look. Such insight is gold when determining the type of content that satisfies audiences.

Like most analytics packages, Facebook Insights collects its information at the content-level, such as a wall post, a video, or a picture. At the content-level, we learn how many people liked a particular wall post or clicked on an individual photo or a video. But what about data at the sub-content level? Is there a way to find out what piece of the content that people liked best?

YouTube Insights

Youtube has determined a way to subdivide the data that it collects on individual videos. Therefore, in addition to gathering aggregate data at the content-level such as “discovery,” “demographics, “total views,” “comments,” and “responses,” its YouTube Hotspots feature offers insight into what viewers are interested in at various times throughout an individual video. Here’s YouTube’s description of its Hotspots feature:

Youtube Hotspots: The ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again. Audience attention is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience.

I’ve chosen an iconic example that many people (well at least those over 40) can relate with to demonstrate the power of Hotspots.  The example, courtesy of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library (client), is a video of President Reagan speaking before the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1988. To put the clip into context, this is the convention that nominated then Vice President George Bush as the Republican nominee to run against Massachusetts governor and Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

Below is the Hotspots data for this 46 minute video.

The user interface for Hotspots is an interactive graph/video combo. The graph shows viewer-interest over time. If you want to see what part of the video corresponds to a particular measurement on the graph, simply drag the triangle pointer at the bottom of the graph and the video will advance to that spot…much like a video scrubber.

Now let’s look at the data. From left-to-right, we can see the ebb and flow of the viewership’s attention:

• it starts low then builds during the first third of the video
• then it plateaus in the middle
• before it spikes at about the three-quarter point
• and then finally wanes.

Understanding the content of the actual video puts the data into context.

The first third of the video consists predominantly of introductory formalities, such as the President thanking the hosts, the chair, the delegates, etc… Attention then starts building as he hits his speech points, peaking at the 3/4th mark, and then declining as he wraps up.

So, what exactly is happening at that peak? Why does audience interest spike at that time and then diminish as quickly as it rose?

Wouldn’t it be useful for you to learn what part of your content resonates with your audience? How valuable would it be for you to know exactly what your audience is “vibing” on? Wouldn’t such information give you great insight into the type of new content that your company should focus on?

The peak in audience attention comes from one of Ronald Reagan’s most memorable lines. To set it up, here is a transcript of what leads up to and culminates int the exact peak:

“George, I’m in your corner. I’m ready to volunteer a little advice now and then and offer a pointer or two on strategy–if asked. I’ll help keep the facts straight or just stand back and cheer. But George, just one personal request: go out there and win one for the Gipper.”

What is your company using to gather insights into its content?

Photo Credit: C.C.Chapman

YouTube HotSpots Data Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library