To survive, content needs context

This chap was talking about context and content in 2009. Catch up, yo.

Content is one part of a two part problem for marketers. The other is context. Context is about relevance, accuracy and timeliness. It’s about communicating the right content to the right people at the right time. Web 2.0 means marketers need to engage with customers and build enduring relationships with them.

“Web 2.0.” Cutesy.

Benefits are dead, long live the features

For those of you that don’t use your language skills to manipulate delicate minds, features and benefits is a technique used to describe products. Features describe its attributes and benefits demonstrate how it will change the life of the soon-to-be customer.

For years we’ve been told to sell the benefits, not the features. Don’t sell the mattress, sell the good night’s sleep. People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.

But digital marketing has changed the rules and given the consumer an opportunity to click away as soon as they smell bullshit. As a result we need to write subtler benefits or, just sell the features.

Choose usability before SEO

Before you get all SEO’d out of your eyeballs think about how new visitors will experience your site. Fixing usability problems also helps SEO:

Keep links out of body copy
Readers can only fully process a sentence once they’ve reached the end. Smacking a link in the middle puts a roadblock in the way of clarity and entices them to click away from your site.

Why content is the new copy

Notice how content has become the byword for stuff on a website? There’s a simple explanation; it’s the same shit sliced differently.
For years digital media types have been creating new words to resell old ideas to existing clients:

Moving forward = vague description of actually doing work.
Low hanging fruit = the least amount of work completed for the same money.
Social Media Evangelists = out of work journalists.

Web copy performs best underage and unadorned

According to the Yahoo Style Guide, effective web copy should score 60 or higher on the Flesch Reading Ease Test and be targeted at those with a reading age between 11 and 14.

Reading and actual age is different. Writers targeting 11 to 14 year old readers might like to disable their cookies and move to Santa Rosa Island.

The 10 minute a day social media workout

Crap social media efforts fall into two categories: Ritalin Crash and The Corpse. Ritalin Crash fills the world with sporadic bursts of activity and The Corpse sets up a million profiles before leaving them as lifeless tokens to a long lost enthusiasm.

Avoid this with a daily routine:

Write your blog. Ok, it’ll take more than 10 minutes to write a whole post but adding to the idea pile or banking time will get the job done. Also, it doesn’t have to be brilliant, think of it as a monolog rather than Shakespeare’s second coming.

Comment on blogs. Look up blogs in your field through Blogcatalog or Technorati and comment. Participating in conversations will, in turn, build readers for your blog.

Rolling down the coast

Thanks for stopping by.

As you read this I’m abusing my gluteus maximus and dodging logging trucks while cycling south on the US highway 101.  I’ll be back behind a computer, working and admiring my cycling tan in July. Check out my Twitter if you fancy sharing tips on how to make a meal out of roadkill: twitter.com/anna_cook