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The Future of Content Marketing Will Not Be Different

What is the future of content marketing?

I’m often asked, what will content marketing look like in the future?

People are surprised with my answer: Just like it does now.

It’s not going to be different, we’re not going to see some major new way of “consuming content” (I really loathe that phrase!), and there’s not going to be some new method of content delivery that we’re going to have to learn.

Because when you look at content at its barest essence, it’s just words, images, and sounds. That’s what it has always been, that’s what it will always be.

It was words, images, and sounds when cave dwellers drew on cave walls and grunted their delight. It was words, images, and sounds when the Ancient Greeks passed down knowledge with stories or told stories with plays. It was words, images, and sounds — well, not so much sound — when the first ever movie of a galloping horse was made or the world’s oldest surviving film, Roundhay Garden Scene, was made.

It was words, images, and sounds when newspapers, radio, and television all had their heyday and when they were replaced by blogs, videos, and podcasts.

Content marketing is no different from any other form of communication in our history. We’ve used words, images, and sounds to communicate the entire time. But the only thing that has changed has been the medium we use — the way the content gets consumed read, watched, or heard.

Content creation tools don’t matter

Eighty years ago, we had newspapers, radio shows, and movie newsreels. Television became popular 70 years ago, launching the Golden Age of Television.

And now, everything you could ever want — including samples of old newspapers, radio shows, newsreels, and TV shows — are all available on your laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

You can read about how those media were made eighty years ago, or you can make and share a 21st-century version of it for other people to read, watch, or hear.

Because it’s still the same old words, images, and sounds.

And it won’t matter one bit how those are made. The secret to doing well at content marketing is to be able to do words, images, and sounds well.

You have to write well. You have to sound good. You have to know how to frame a photo or a video. You have to create things that are interesting. You have to know how to tell a story. You have to know how to capture your audience at the very moment they click your link.

The tools don’t matter.

I’ll say it again: THE TOOLS DON’T MATTER!

Years ago, I used to argue with people who claimed: “there’s no such thing as social media experts because the tools are too new.”

My response then is the same as it is now: I don’t have to be a tools expert, I have to be a communication expert. I have to be good at conveying a message in my chosen medium. The tools can change from week to week, and it won’t affect me one bit because I don’t have to master the tool, I just have to master the craft.

Think of it another way. A carpenter that has spent his entire life swinging a hammer isn’t less effective just because you gave him a pneumatic nailer. A chef doesn’t forget how to cook because you switch out her gas stove to an electric one. And writers aren’t suddenly reduced to creating doggerel just because they switched pens.

So when people think you need specific Mailchimp or Constant Contact experience to be an effective email marketer, that’s wrong.

When people think you need to know how to use Hubspot or WordPress to be an effective blogger, that’s completely wrong.

It’s like saying a photographer is not a good photographer because she uses Nikon and not Canon. Or that a writer is not a good writer because they use Apple Pages and not Microsoft Word.

The tool does not create quality content. WordPress and Hubspot don’t make you write well. Constant Contact doesn’t make you a good email marketer. The latest video camera doesn’t make you a good videographer any more than a great camera makes you a good photographer.

The tools do not make the artist. A good artist can make good art with crappy tools, but a bad artist cannot make good art with good tools.

So it doesn’t matter what happens to the tools: WordPress may go away. Hubspot may fall into the sea. YouTube could be eaten by a pack of hyenas.

None of that will change how content creators make their art.

If WordPress were to go away, bloggers aren’t going to be thrown for a loop or cast out on the scrap heap. We’ll just shrug our shoulders and continue to tell good stories on the new distribution method. And blogging itself won’t go away, it will just be called something else.

Podcasting won’t go away because there will be other ways to deliver episodic information and entertainment via audio distribution.

Videos won’t go away because — well, video’s just never going to go away. In fact, it just surpassed blogging and infographics as the most commonly used form of content marketing. (I’m still a little salty about it, thank you very much.)

The artists and creators will still have a way to make and distribute their work, even if the tools for that distribution go away, change, or die completely.

Remind me how is this about the future of content marketing again

My point is, when you ask about the future of content marketing, just remember, the core elements of content marketing — words, images, and sounds — are never going to change. We’re still going to read, we’re still going to watch videos and look at pictures, and we’re still going to listen to music and information.

The channels will change, the methods of production will change, and even the popularity of the content formats will change. (Freakin’ video!) But the need for quality content will never change. That’s the one constant you can count on.

So if you’re in the content creation business, just focus on improving your craft. Become the best creator you can. Learn your art so you can be one of the best creators around. Worry less about the technology, because that won’t affect whether you’re good at your job. And when the method changes, you’ll already know what you need to do.

Photo credit: Steve Shook (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)

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Five Grammar Rules You’re Allowed to Break

The English language is filled with all kinds of grammar rules that should never have been grammar rules in the first place. Some were created a few hundred years ago, some were created in the 20th century, but many of them were incorrect and are just parroted out of habit.

In other cases, some of these grammar rules have changed over the years, thanks to common usage. The English language is an ever-changing tapestry of nonsense, and what may have been true once is true no longer. For example, “nice” used to mean “ignorant,” and the word “naughty” used to mean “poor.”

Here are five grammar rules you’re allowed to break, or at least shouldn’t blindly cling to because it’s what you learned in the 7th grade.

Ernest Hemingway sitting at a desk writing on a tablet. This guy knew a few things about writing and breaking grammar rules.

1. You CAN end your sentences with a preposition.

People cling to this rule like it’s carved in stone, but it should never have been a rule in the first place. While there are a few cases where you should not end your sentences with a preposition, there are plenty of cases where you just sound silly trying to meet it.

The rule was basically started by a guy named John Dryden, who, by all accounts, was a not-well-liked fusspot of a writer in the late 17th century. He abhorred the use of prepositions at the end of sentences, so he declared this should be the case.

Robert Lowth thought this was a smashing idea, so he included it in his A Short Introduction to English Grammar, which he published in 1762. It was the first book on English grammar, and its effects are still being felt.

it didn’t help that both men were Latin scholars who wanted English to bend to the same rules as Latin. In the Latin sentence structure, it’s not possible to have a sentence end with a preposition. Ergo, said the pedants, English shouldn’t either.

But it’s wrong. There are times you have to end your sentences in a preposition. For example, let’s say you stepped in something that stinks, and your friend says to you, “In what did you step?”

Wouldn’t you look at her like she lost her mind?

In that instance, it’s perfectly okay to say “what did you step in?” It’s proper English, it’s grammatically correct, and it doesn’t sound completely idiotic.

On the other hand, “where’s it at?” is wrong.

The basic rule is: if you can remove a preposition and the sentence still works, you shouldn’t use the preposition. But if you remove it, and the sentence changes, you should leave the preposition at the end.

Okay: What did you step in?
Not Okay: Where is it at?

2. You CAN start a sentence with And, But, or Or.

This may have been a real grammar rule at one point, but it is no longer. Common usage has rendered it obsolete. It may not be completely acceptable in business writing, but I can foresee that rule breaking down in the next ten years as more business people speak that way.

Besides, it looks pretty cool. And dramatic. And punchy. And intense.

And it turns out the practice has been around since the 10th century. It’s just some arbitrary rule our English teachers liked to enforce without ever knowing why.

3. You don’t have to start with the dependent clause first

A dependent clause is a sentence clause that can’t exist on its own. “Before the trial even ended” is a dependent clause (it’s also called a subordinate clause). And we were told that you needed to start sentences with a dependent clause. (Ooh, look, I just did rule #2!)

“Before the trial even ended, the real killer had been arrested and the defendant was set free.” not “The real killer had been arrested and the defendant was set free, before the trial even ended.” Even though you might want the important information at the front of the sentence, our teachers told us to put the dependent clause first.

You don’t have to do that anymore. For one thing, it sounds clunky. For another, there are times where the dependent clause will get in the way. Third, there are times a dependent clause needs to be set apart in a different way.

“The real killer was arrested — before the trial even ended — and the defendant was freed.”

It doesn’t always fit at the end, but it doesn’t always have to go first either.

Your better bet? Eliminate the dependent clause completely, or make it a standalone sentence. Which brings me to my next point.

4. You CAN use incomplete sentences.

This was a very minor point of contention while I was writing Branding Yourself (affiliate link). One of my editors would tell me not to use incomplete sentences.

Like this.

“But it’s a style choice,” I would say. “Not a grammar issue.”

And while you don’t want to make that a regular habit, stylistically, it doesn’t hurt to do it once in a while. It’s another common usage issue, where enough people have begun doing this that the grammar sticklers have to bow to majority rules and allow the change in the accepted use. (They don’t have to like it, and they’ll talk about it at dinner parties, but they’ll generally leave you alone about it.)

They also add some punch and drama to your writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Pepper them occasionally throughout your writing and see what it does for you.

5. A sentence does not always contain a subject, a verb, and an object. A paragraph does not always contain 3 – 5 sentences.

Journalists violate this rule all the time.

Because it’s a dumb rule. And untrue.

For one thing, people read differently than they did 30 years ago. We’re so impatient that we don’t want to read a lot of text. We need white space to break up the monotony of the Tolstoy-esque blocks of text we find in some books, tech manuals, and magazines. If you’ve ever looked at a page with a lot of tiny text and no breaks at all, you know what I’m talking about.

Newspaper publishers learned a long time ago that people won’t read long paragraphs and über-long sentences. So they encouraged writers to use short punchy words, short sentences, and short paragraphs.

Even one-sentence paragraphs.

My daughter has been told her paragraphs all need to be 3 – 5 sentences long, and I keep telling her it’s not only unnecessary, but it leads to bad writing. If you try to fill up every paragraph with 3 – 5 sentences, you start writing filler just to get there.

But if you keep some extra white space in your writing — by using short paragraphs — people are more likely to continue reading long beyond when they thought they would quit.

How about you? What grammar rules do you gladly (or unwittingly) violate? Are there rules you wish you could break? Leave a comment and let me know.

This post has been refreshed and updated from its original June 2011 publication.

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Eight Writer Archetypes: Which One Are You?

As writers and content marketers, most of us fit more than one writer archetype.

Not the kind of writer. I don’t mean classifying writers by fiction or nonfiction, business or technical, poet or PR flak, or even a specific genre. Rather, I’m referring to your tribe of fellow writers who do the same style of work you do, even if it’s for a different company, publication, or industry.

Carl Jung originally used the term archetype to refer to a collective pattern of thought present in every individual — self, shadow, animus, anima, and persona.

We have seen other archetypes in different books, plays, and movies throughout the centuries. Here are a few examples.

  • Hero: Luke Skywalker, Rey Skywalker, Diana Prince (Wonder Woman), Harry Potter.
  • Wise old man: Often the mentor in the Hero’s Journey. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dumbledore, Patches O’Houlihan.
  • Great mother: Cinderella’s fairy godmother, Queen Hippolyta, Minerva McGonagall.
  • Trickster: Deadpool, Loki, Bugs Bunny, Zaphod Beeblebrox.
  • Child: Peter Pan, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, Forrest Gump.
  • Devil: Voldemort, Darth Vader, Cinderella’s stepmother

And on and on. Basically, if you recognize these archetypes, then you know what an archetype is.

Writers can be collected into different archetypes as well. Different collective patterns of thought help us define who we are. We may not know it or put words to the ideas and motivations, but these collective patterns are what drive our work. You could almost say they’re the ultimate purpose that we’re feeling.

I’ve been thinking about writer archetypes and came up with my own classifications. Based on my own extensive research — I did three different Google searches — I can’t find anything else like it. (Which is odd because writers love to talk about this kind of thing.)

The Eight Writer Archetypes

So here are the eight Writer Archetypes I’ve come up with. Which one are you?

  • Informer: These are the journalists and the news writers. They tell us the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the world. If you read it in a newspaper or watched it on the news, you’re hearing from an Informer. Sportswriters and entertainment reporters are also Informers.
  • Analyst: What does the news mean? What can we infer from the latest political polls? What will the U.S. pandemic relief package do to the economic recovery? The political pundits, the economists, the financial gurus are all Analysts. The Informer gave you the latest Dow report, but it’s the Analyst who goes on CNBC and tells you why it’s good or bad. A news story will tell the latest job numbers, but the economist tells you whether that means the economy is up or down. Sports columnists are often Analysts.
  • Educator: Writers who convey knowledge to help others learn. It’s more than just being an Informer because their readers presumably already know how something works. Whether it’s a textbook, a technical manual, or even just a series of blog posts that teach you about trading cryptocurrency, the writer who writes to intentionally teach is an Educator. Many bloggers and business book authors live in this space, choosing to build their personal brand and expertise by teaching instead of selling directly.
  • Chronicler: The Chronicler is the observer of the human condition. You find a lot of newspaper columnists here. They’re not quite news-tellers (Informers), but they don’t fit anywhere else. Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel is one, as was Studs Terkel and his 45-year radio program. Historians are usually found among the Chronicler ranks, as are a few novelists and many creative nonfiction writers.
  • Advocate: The rabble-rouser with a pen. They observe the human condition, but they speak for those who have no voice to effect change. The Advocate brings awareness to a cause to get people to care about it and be informed. The Bilerico Project is an Advocate for the LGBT community, Our Human Family advocates for racial equality. (Disclosure: I write a monthly column for OHF and serve on their board.) You can even learn to be an activist writer at Bowling Green State University.
  • Persuader: One step beyond the Advocate, the Persuader works to get people to take action on something, but not necessarily a social cause. Political speechwriters are Persuaders, people in ministry are Persuaders, as is anyone who wants their reader to change their mind about a belief, opinion, or value. Public relations people work here, but marketers do not. That’s because a marketer is actually a. . .
  • Merchant: The Merchant is a Persuader who gets people to spend money. You could call this a subset of Persuader, but this is the only writing archetype where the primary focus is to get people to spend money. The other writers may hope to get money for what they do, but it’s not their function. Advertisers, grant writers, content marketers, and sales copywriters are Merchants.
  • Entertainer: Writers of fiction, poetry, stage plays, screenplays. Anything you would read, watch, or hear for entertainment or escapism lives here. You read a novel, watch a play or a TV show, or listen to a radio play written by the Entertainer. Many Entertainers can easily put one foot in the other archetypes — the Chronicler novelist, the Educator radio theater playwright, the Advocate stage playwright, but if they can only wear one hat, it’s the Entertainer’s.

As I imagined and developed these archetypes, I envisioned them on a wheel. Each writer archetype is a modified version of the one that came before it, and it sometimes dips into the next archetype. The Analyst builds on the work of the Informer, while the Educator teaches you to understand what the Analyst meant. The Chronicler educates people about life in another place, and the Advocate wants you to know how important that place is. And so on.

The 8 writer archetypes. Each one is a progression of the one that comes before it.

The Writer Archetypes are NOT a Process. And You’re Not Limited to Just One.

But, this is not a natural process of writing. You don’t start out as an Informer and move around the clock as time goes by, progressing from one role to the next. You can make the jump from archetype to archetype within a career, a year, or a single day.

There are plenty of journalists (Informer) who became novelists (Entertainer), or Educators who take the plunge into the marketing world (Merchant), especially as content marketing becomes more educational in nature. And, of course, there are plenty of people who stay in the same archetype their entire lives.

And in some cases, you may even be working under two or even three archetypes at the same time: For example, someone in content marketing could be an Analyst-Merchant. People who write (and teach) about social justice issues are Educator-Advocates. And I’m sure there are more than a few Entertainer-Chroniclers out there.

I’m still fleshing out this idea and trying to develop it further. If you have any thoughts, ideas, or recommendations, let me hear about them. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

(This post was originally written on March 14, 2013, and it has been edited, revised, and updated.)

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Do I Have Your Attention?

Jon Barney is an up-and-coming writer in the Orlando, Florida area (originally from Lafayette, LA, and has a lot of big ideas about a lot of things. Jon says he has an amazing wife and two kids, and he “loves the hotel restaurant industry and corny jokes,” which makes him a man after my own heart. Jon is also in Toastmasters, and he wrote an interesting speech about getting and keeping people’s attention.

According to a 2015 Microsoft study, I will only have your attention until about. . .now. Eight measly, little seconds. Then I will have to work real hard to keep you from thinking about the errands you have to run later. Don’t feel bad for your short attention span. We are in good company, our friend the goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds.

What is attention anyway, and why do we have to pay for it? Is it something we can control and direct or is it like the dog who sees a SQUIRREL!? Since attention is not food, why are people starved for it? I’m here to tell you today that attention is your most valuable resource and you need to control it, and protect it.

Attention is the notice of something we deem interesting or important. Have you ever sat down on the couch and got comfortable? You are about to watch Days of Our Lives or a football game; and your kids start screaming and yelling, fighting with each other? What happened? They were fine a minute ago. Your kids saw that they didn’t have your attention and they knew the fastest way to get it back.

We all need attention, we all want to feel important to someone.

When you receive attention from someone, you will receive the actions that flow from that attention, which could lead to feelings of love. That is why we hear stories of housewives, starved for attention, thrust into the arms of another man, Raul. No attention. No importance. No love.

It is why men walk around with puffed out chests, peacocking and showboating. It is why women take care in their appearance. We all act and dress in a way that draws. . . attention.

Attention isn’t only about importance and love. It is the very first step in any form of communication. For example: You’re watching the game. You’re leaned forward, hands clasped, staring at the TV. It’s the last 2 minutes and the score is tied. Then you hear, (wom wom wom wom, Charlie Brown teacher voice) and you say ok just to get it to stop. Then once the game is over, you sit down for dinner with your spouse and get, the look. “Did you take out the trash?” “NO” “Well, I asked you to do it 30 minutes ago!!” “What? I don’t remember that.” “You were watching the game and you said ok when I asked you.” We’ve all been there, once or a thousand times. Don’t deliver important messages unless you have their attention first. We need attention to feel importance and to communicate. But how do we get it?

There are many ways to get attention, some positive and some negative. We must first know how attention works. Your body, every part of it, eyes, nose, mouth, ears and skin is gathering information, receiving signals. Then sending them to your brain for processing into two categories: important and unimportant. To illustrate my point, let’s go for a walk in the woods. We are walking and we see a tree. “Ehhh, not important, keep going.” Then as we get closer to that tree we look down and see a massive, coiled rattlesnake, ready to strike. “OMG, I’M GONNA DIE. IMPORTANT!!” Our basic sorting system is for survival and reproduction, those two processes guide most of our attention.

How could we use the eyes to garner attention? Use the color red. Red is a bold color that commands our attention. If you want to get a lot of attention today, head down to the dealership, trade your car in and drive off in Red Corvette. Put the top down and drive slowly. Instant attention.

How could we use the ears to get attention? Have you ever boarded your flight, sat down, book out, ready to relax and then…you hear a baby start crying? “Really?” You can’t focus on anything else. Our human brains are hardwired to divert our attention to the crying infant. We have to stop it from crying. Diaper change, bottle, attention, whatever it takes. What a survival mechanism!

How could we use the nose to attract attention? You could wear a delicious, floral smelling perfume or musky cologne. Or you could fart in an elevator. Both are powerful ways to command attention. Now, I’m not saying to buy a corvette, cry like a baby or pass gas to get attention, but it will work. Which lead us to a more important question, what can you do when you have attention?

This is where things get cloudy. When you have someone’s full attention you are free to influence them any way you please. Sell them on a new product. Manipulate them into a situation. Seduce them from their lover. It is for these reasons, you should control and protect your own attention.

Have you ever heard the phrase “pay attention”? What that means is that for your ability to focus on something, you pay for it by ignoring everything else. It is like a zoomed in picture of a flower, you can see all the detail and its beauty. But everything else is fuzzy and out of focus.

This “Zoom Lens” feature of our brains is a great tool when you are in the pursuit of your dreams. Or realizing a new healthier version of yourself. Maybe you want to reignite a love that had gone cold. On the other hand is can lock us into an 8-hour Netflix binge. It is the reason why we drive staring down at our phones instead of the road. And why we work so much we never see our family.

I know that this speech was just a little longer than eight seconds. I see the goldfish is still paying attention so it couldn’t have been that bad. I hope that you found it interesting and important. We covered a lot, we learned how to love. How to communicate. How to gain attention without embarrassing yourself or buying a new car. But the most important takeaway from this speech is simple: Take control of your attention, or something else will.

Photo credit: Scott Webb (Unsplash.com, Creative Commons 0>

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Six Crisis Communication Lessons to Running Your Business During an Emergency

Ten years ago, when I was in crisis communication for the Indiana State Department of Health, part of my job was to create an emergency contingency plan if we were ever in the field without power or an Internet connection.

Our job was to communicate with the public during an emergency, and we couldn’t let little things like power outages stop us. Our plan involved battery backups, cell phones, a Verizon MiFi, car AC converters, and even hand delivering CDs of videos and releases to local newspapers and TV stations.

I was reminded of all this when I had to send my Mac to the shop to have the logic board replaced, and they said they’re keeping it for 3 – 5 days.

I’ve run my business out of a backpack for the last seven years, and this marks the first time I’ve tried to function without my handy laptop. In just a few agonizing days, I’ve been reminded of those emergency preparedness lessons, and I’ve learned some new ones as well. Here are six ways to function during an emergency or equipment loss.

1. Make sure you already know how to use your gear.

I’m going to be working off my iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard for about five days, writing everything on Google Drive and using Google Chrome to update my client blogs. I had an old MacBook, but it bit the dust last month, which means I’m using the ultimate in dumb terminals.

Luckily I’ve used this kind of setup before, so I didn’t waste a few hours trying to figure out how to get everything to work. I fired up Google Drive, connected the keyboard, and I was off and running. But I was able to do it because I’ve already practiced this setup before.

Identify your backup gear, and try to spend a day using it. Find the holes in your knowledge and equipment, and fill them both quickly.

2. Store things in the cloud.

I have two external hard drives, but I also recently started backing up my important documents to my iCloud account, as well as Dropbox. So even if I don’t have access to everything on my hard drives, my important files are easily accessible.

Basically, I’m writing everything on Google Drive, including this article, since that’s how I share my client documents anyway. And while I normally keep my works-in-progress on my laptop, I uploaded everything to Drive before I headed to the Apple Store, just in case I got some bad news. I could also download my current articles from my iCloud and open them with Pages on my iPad.

And if my computer was completely destroyed, I can still restore everything from one of my hard drive backups.

3. Use cross-device apps and services.

I also use other cloud-based services for my business. My bookkeeping is on Freshbooks (they have an app, as well as their website), Todoist is my to-do list (which runs on all my devices, plus online), and I keep track of important information on Evernote (cross-device, cross-platform, as well as web-based). And my email portal is Gmail, which I can access from anywhere. (I could even go to the local library and answer emails if things were especially bad.)

However, the major DDOS attack last week reminded us how vulnerable we are if our access to the Internet goes down. This is why I don’t operate completely in the cloud, and still store things on my laptop. It’s why a cloud-only setup is not ideal. Even if we were cutoff from the rest of the world, anyone who still keeps documents on their laptop can still function. So don’t put all your electronic eggs in one basket. Strike a balance.

4. Keep everything powered up.

One lesson Hurricane Matthew reminded us of is to keep your devices and your batteries powered up at all times. Since my Bluetooth keyboard is cordless, that means I need to have batteries on hand. Since I’m working at home most of the time, I’m fine. But on those days that I’m working in a coffee shop, it’s smart to keep a couple batteries in my bag, just in case.

I also have to keep an eye on my iPad, which is running wifi and a Bluetooth. It slowly loses power over time, even when it’s plugged in, so I try to take a break every couple hours to let it recharge faster.

5. Use a password vault.

Security is also important, which starts with secure, hard-to-remember passwords. The problem with having everything on the cloud means trying to remember every password you ever created. Or worse, you can easily remember the one password you use on all your accounts. (Don’t do that. It’s extremely unsecure).

I use a password vault that syncs my various passwords between my laptop, tablet, phone, and the cloud. I never have to remember my passwords, I can either retrieve them from the vault by hand, or have them fill in directly. So I only remember the master password to get in, and my vault handles the rest.

This means I can even use a backup computer, and still access my various web services without using the Forgot Your Password retrieval function. I recommend a password vault like LastPass or 1Password, which both work on different devices and platforms. Even if you have a Windows laptop and an iPad, they’ll still sync up your passwords.

6. Practice, practice, practice.

When I was in crisis communication, we were always training and preparing for terrorist attacks, as well as natural public health emergencies, like avian flu. But rather than wait for years for one of those things to happen, we decided our best practice was to work on any small emergencies, like an e. Coli or salmonella outbreak.

My staff and I would put together a press release, gather the necessary information, and share it with the appropriate media outlets. We worked to get it out within an hour of our first notification, because we knew that would be our benchmark if we ever had a real emergency. While an emergency never arose, we were even prepared when we participated in full-scale exercises that involved the entire state, and would have been ready for the real thing.

Similarly, I try to spend a few hours every frew months working solely in the cloud or working on this iPad-and-keyboard setup to make sure I can make it all run efficiently when the time arises. I’ve still managed to meet all deadlines and respond to my emails, without any problems.

While this setup isn’t ideal for someone who focuses strongly on high-scale production work, and needs access to a lot of local information — photos, videos, and past work — it’s at least a great way for me to stay productive and give my clients what they need. It’s put a few of my wish-list projects on hold, but I’m still managing the important work.

By keeping backups of everything, and being very familiar with the way my backup equipment and services work, I was able to come home from the Apple store, switch everything on, and get back to work without missing a beat.

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Screw the Long-Term Strategy! Smart Content Marketing is Agile

There’s an old story about an architect who was hired to design an entire campus of buildings surrounding a large empty quad. When the buildings were done, the administrators asked the architect to lay out a series of sidewalks between buildings.

He decided to wait instead. As he waited, people walked between the buildings, finding their own way, eventually wearing the most efficient paths into the grass. Then the architect had the sidewalks installed on the paths the people had made, saying they were more efficient and useful than anything he could have created himself.

How many times have companies created a long-term strategy for content marketing or social media marketing, only to scrap the entire plan after two weeks because of a crisis or major event.

I’ve talked with companies that will schedule everything — blog posts, Facebook updates, and even individual tweets. I’ve seen spreadsheets of scheduled tweets, three per day, five days a week, which took days and weeks to create, all thrown away because of a change in a law, regulations, or even a CEO or CMO.

There are plenty of reasons to have a long-term strategy, but plenty more reasons to avoid the strategy and be more agile. Here are five ways you can be more agile with your content marketing.

1. Create a topic checklist.

For some clients, we’ll blog about particular topics each month, but the actual titles of the blog post are wide open. We’re more concerned about the general theme of the month, but we don’t script each individual post. For example, a men’s clothing line might have a topic checklist like this:

November

  • 2 posts on dressing warm for winter
  • 2 posts on hats
  • 2 posts on scarves
  • 2 posts on winter suits

The blog posts themselves could be about how to wear a suit in the bitter cold, which kind of hat to wear to the office, the proper way to tie a scarf, and what materials are warmest in the winter.

This method lets the content marketing manager decide what to write about, taking input from product managers, as well as PR and marketing staff. It’s also flexible enough to change if problems or news stories arise. For example, if hats became suddenly more popular, they could drop a couple posts on suits and scarves, and write more about hats.

2. Watch your analytics

Google has stopped telling us what keywords bring people to our blogs, but you can still get a good idea by looking at the pages that get the most traffic. If you spot a pattern, you’ll understand what people are turning to you for. This means you should put more energy into those topics.

Keep an eye on your Google rank as well. Use a service like WebCEO to find your true Google rank for certain keywords and topics. Write about the areas you want to shore up, as well as write more about the things you want to improve.

3. Answer customer service and tech support questions

People who ask questions are usually a smaller subset of people who have a particular problem. That is, if 10 people ask a question, there may be anywhere from 100 – 250 people with the same problem. Write blog posts and create videos to answer those questions. As people search for the answers to their questions, they’ll find your content and visit your site.

Search your email for questions that start with “how do I. . .” Talk to your customer service department to find out what people are calling about. Rewrite and publish FAQs and tech support knowledge forums into blog posts. Use screencasts and videos to show people how to complete a particular process or fix a problem.

4. Monitor the industry news

As David Meerman Scott says, newsjacking is about injecting your ideas into a breaking news story. It’s about becoming the “second sentence” in a news article.

As soon as you hear about breaking news in your industry, write a response story that includes your take and your ideas on how it affects your customers and your industry. It should be the second sentence in your blog post or press release. At the very least, your customers will appreciate you alerting them to the issue. At best, journalists will see you as one of the authorities on it, and call you for a response.

Be a voracious reader of little-known and industry insider sites. Create RSS feeds of your industry’s thought leader blogs and news sites. Set up Twitter lists of those people and monitor them constantly.

Most importantly, be prepared to jump on those news stories immediately. Take a crisis communication approach: Be first, be right, be credible. That means writing blog posts as soon as things happen, or even assigning someone to be a dedicated content marketer whose primary responsibility is to write content. (This may mean giving them a “get out of meetings free” pass.)

5. Think like a beginner, or ask your beginning customers

You work in a particular field day in, day out. You’ve talked about your work so much, you’re sure everyone knows the most basic information about what you do. It turns out, most people know nothing about your industry, your company, or your specialty. They come to your website because they have those basic questions and they need answers.

Ask your salespeople to explain their sales pitch, and look to your FAQ. Come up with lists posts like “Five Things to Consider About _____,” “Five Things to Avoid When Buying _____,” or “Five Reasons You Need _____” to answer those beginning questions.

Many of my clients are surprised to see these beginning posts are some of their most-visited posts. They figured “everyone” knew all about the subject, but it turned out no one did. I’ve helped clients scrap entire content marketing strategies because they had to take it back to the beginning.

Rather than spending a lot of time and effort creating a content calendar, leave yourself open to serendipity and happenstance. An agile content marketing approach lets you change directions and go with the flow when responding to events as they arise. It lets you provide more value to your customers and clients than a fully-developed and strictly-followed content calendar will ever do.

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