On Words and Business

Setting goals for your content goes hand in hand with creating the editorial calendar and marketing plan.

It can be a bit of a challenge to set goals for a program as a whole. Things like Google page rank or number of blog posts are easy to measure. But how useful is that data? Meaningful measurement is often the bugbear of a content marketing program. How do you measure influence or number of new or retained customers as a result of your efforts?

Goals for individual pieces of content are a bit more quantifiable–such as a certain number of downloads for a white paper, registrations for a webinar, comments on a blog post.

However you measure your program, it is important to have goals to keep you moving forward. As Henry Ford said, “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”

Who owns your company’s vision–the view of your future?

A vision statement is not the same as a mission statement. It is a view of your business 5 to 10 years out, what your company looks like once you’ve accomplished the mission.

Vision statements are dreams. They are inspirational and motivational. They imagine big things.

Writing one takes everyone in the company from top to bottom. Because everyone needs to own the vision and dream the dream.

What is your vision?

At least once per week, and usually more than that, I receive an email offering me a free magazine subscription from a service that provides free business magazines to professionals.

The thing that amazes me is how far off these offers are. Other than being free subscriptions, which as a magazine lover is something I am most definitely a target market for, there isn’t much about these offers to suggest they know anything about me. To be fair: they do give me the choice to opt-out and I haven’t done that (what am I holding out for, I’m not sure, other than the fascination factor as each new offer arrives).

In this day and age of target marketing to the level that ads on web pages are for things you’ve purchased and stores you shop in, what do you think about a company that in the last 20 days has marketed the following magazines to the same person?

• Spin Magazine
• Super Street
• Tennis
• Electronic House
• PC World
• Practical Horseman

1. Keep up with the Joneses. Figure out what your competitors are focusing on and see what light that shines on the market.
2. Keep up with your customers and prospects. Look deep to find out what they’re struggling with and consider how that affects the whole market.
3. Keep up with the news. Think about how events and activities, even those outside the business press, may impact your customers or your customers’ customers.
4. Read analyst reports from as many different agencies as possible These people get paid to figure out the markets for you.
5. Ask why and how at every turn, with customers, prospects, analysts, industry experts, conference goers, on your social media sites, etc. Figure out what they see as the biggest challenges and ways to overcome them.

Once you find a challenge, go forth and create content to solve it, mitigate it, or make it disappear.

When the subject is your company, do you see what your customers see? Do you understand their perspective?

For most B2B companies, your website is the face you present to the world. You can adjust the look and feel, content, and navigation to make sure customers and prospects see what you want them to see.

But what about the company as a whole–the culture, business model, product or service offerings, employees, etc. How do you get an outsider’s perspective on that? Think about that as you plan your next marketing effort. A thorough understanding of how your company is perceived from the outside is what enables you to create the best content for your website, marketing, and thought leadership initiatives.

How do you get outside the box for a fresh perspective?

On January 16 Alley424 Communications celebrated five successful years in business.

Here are some developmental milestones reached, like a normal 5-year-old:

• Self-care skills–can dress up and feed business as needed
• Able to play in small groups with other business owners
• Can speak in sentences longer than five words
• Is able to recognize authority
• Follows through when given directions
• Can cut and paste
• Has occasional night terror
• Requires approximately 1,800 calories per day
• Asks innumerable questions: what? why? where? when?
• Answers telephone appropriately
• Like entertaining other people and making them laugh