My experience with security and encryption goes back more than twenty years. I like to say it all started watching Crimson Tide , I was enthralled with the encrypted messages and confirming if the message was genuine with challenge keys. I tried to use PGP back then — tied into Eudora with a few plugins — with little success. No one wanted to mess with signing and encrypting messages with PGP; it was too much of a pain, frankly. I didn’t think much more about security and encryption until a lot later, not until I was part of a local political party and we often joked about the authorities reading our messages in Yahoo groups. We knew they weren’t really secure. I don’t even think the connections were secured with https back then. Heck back in the early 2000s when you connected to Gmail it didn’t use https either. Not only were emails stored in plaintext (they still are by the way), we sent them that way too. It wasn’t until two things about internet life exploded onto the scene did we think about security in any meaningful way: online shopping and Wi-Fi.

Online shopping and securing purchases

One of the biggest barriers to online shopping in the early days came down to trust. How do I know that my credit card info was safe coming and going to your site? To shop (banking would come later) people wanted a sense of security. Secure certificates were the simple answer. Look for the wee lock in the address bar and you’re good. Your transaction was secured. The irony that back then we’d hand a credit card to a server at a restaurant who would wander away to swipe our card without thinking isn’t lost on me. Still, we started to be okay with shopping, banking, and everything else online and shopping in a store seems dated.

But if online shopping got people thinking about https (I know people didn’t think about https, just security), Wi-Fi opened our eyes to what we were all sending into the ether for people the snatch out of the air. Which brings me to strong encryption and eavesdropping.

WiFi and unencrypted connections

If you’re reading this post, saying “you know that coffee shop WiFi isn’t secure at all” is a blinding flash of the obvious. Still, my post on the 5 reasons why public WiFi isn’t safe might be handy to share with friends. When I got my first WiFi router (and needed a PCMIA card for my laptop), I didn’t put a password on my WiFi. Why? If someone wanted to be in range of my WiFi they had to be in my driveway — I figured I’d notice that. Back then discussions about putting passwords (with WEP no less) on WiFi APs was more about keeping your neighbors off your network and using your internet bandwidth than security.

Then we got a wake up call when a Firefox extension called “FireSheep” made packet sniffing over WiFi child’s play. Yeah, the tools were out there already then, but a freakin Firefox extension made it easy — and made news. Almost overnight we started thinking about WiFi security and VPNs. I emphasize thinking because not much as changed except pretty much everyone secures their WiFi at home and work. Public WiFi is still just as dangerous — maybe even more so — as it was back then. Which brings me back to the point of the article: if you don’t want something to leak out, you have to encrypt it with strong encryption.

Hey, are you listening in on our conversation?

When you’re chatting with a friend over coffee, you know your conversation isn’t private per se , but you sure get antsy if someone appears to be listening to your conversation. It’s not that you’re saying anything secret or private, but it’s rude. It’s none of their business. You’re having a private chat, so buzz off. And what you talk about online should be no different.

No one needs to know who you’re talking to, about what, or why. I’d say 99.9% of the time there’s nothing other folks need to know about. You might be talking about your favorite ways to cook turkey (as I was with a friend today) or catching up with an old friend. No one’s business. I don’t want people eavesdropping on what I say in public or online. I prefer to use strong end-to-end encrypted messaging whenever possible. WhatsApp with daycare, iMessage with family, at work we use SKY ECC.

But what about the conversations that governments or police might be interested in? This is the thorn in the side of every argument about strong encryption with no backdoors. What about terrorists? What about criminals? And believe me I don’t like that terrorists or criminals can use the same technology I use to share financial data with my accountant and no warrant in the world can get those messages for police. However, the cost is too great to allow it to be otherwise.

We know the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” argument is hollow, we know this. The “…you have nothing to hide…” part is too slippery a slope. The number of data leaks, hacks, intrusions we see daily should give everyone pause when they post/write something that goes over the internet. That doesn’t even get into people outside of North America and Europe who often don’t have even a modicum of freedom of speech. Everyone has things they want — and have a right to — to keep private. The only way to achieve that is with end-to-end encrypted messaging. Yeah, and the consequence isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always nice. And it sucks. Locks protect doors to our homes. Locks also protect caches of weapons or drugs or money. We still need locks. We don’t have a master key for all locks. Well except for these locks from Caterpillar, and that’s just dumb.

As unpalatable as some of the consequences are, we still need strong, end-to-end encrypted messaging (without backdoors) for our own privacy, security and peace of mind.

I’ve had to keep an eye on my weight since my first (medically supervised) diet at age 13 (13 year olds aren’t supposed to have high blood pressure). My mom (also a nurse) helped me follow a Weight Watchers inspired diet and it worked. Now flash forward a few decades and I’m losing some weight (again, down almost 15 pounds) and using Weight Watchers. This post isn’t about diets or health, it’s about how Weight Watchers has kept adapting its rules to help people lose weight.

Let me explain.

I’ll get right to the points

Weight Watchers works like this. Every day you’re allotted a certain number of points to use each day for food. You get some extra points each week to use for treats and more points for exercise. The idea is if you don’t exceed your points allotment you’ll lose weight over time. I’m given about 30 points a day. The trick is there are a lot of foods that are zero points. Pretty much all fruits and veggies — zero. Chicken breast, turkey breast, fish — zero. A lot of sauces and seasonings — zero. What costs are fattier meats (beef and pork), oils, sugars, and carbs. So rice costs points. Potatoes, points. That cream in my coffee, points (only 1 because it’s light cream).

But it wasn’t always this way. Not long ago a banana cost points (it’s sweet, right), but now it’s zero. Corn, peas, and other starchy, sugary veggies cost before and don’t now. Ditto for chicken, turkey, and fish. Why? Why make a change to how points are calculated (you do get fewer points now too)? It all comes down to psychology, game theory, and habit.

You’re not likely to eat six chicken breasts

The crux of the changes are to encourage healthy, lean eating. Trying to cut out fats, carbs, and sugars while getting people to eat more fresh fruit and veggies. As Weight Watchers explains it, you’re more likely to eat six cookies than six chicken breasts. Instead of people thinking, jeez I could have this banana or chocolate and they are close to the same in points, and choosing chocolate, people are incentivized to choose a banana.

Right now in the kitchen I have bowls of cherry tomatoes, blueberries, and raspberries all washed and ready. When I wander down for more coffee (black coffee is zero points), I’ll probably have some of any of them. Nice little snack.

Sure, if you plow through a big container of blueberries everyday you won’t lose weight as fast as if you didn’t (even if you keep within your points). And, a lot of nights in the first couple weeks of the routine I ate a lot of fruit and veggies as my body adjusted to the changes. I did, however, still keep losing weight. What’s the lesson here then?

Sometimes you have to game the system so people can be more successful.

There are rules, and then there are rules

Just like Morpheus said to Neo, there are rules in the system, some can’t be broken, but others can be bent and manipulated if you know how. In Weight Watchers’ case they saw the forest for the trees. It’s hard to lose weight, and if people are psychologically in a state of denying themselves things, when they break and binge, it’s often pretty epic. So, how do you keep people from binging? You make a smarter system so you don’t feel like you can’t eat anything. You adjust the point system so if you’re feeling hungry, having an apple or berries is a good thing.

The bigger picture is healthy eating and healthy weight loss. If your system discourages some of those habits, then something isn’t quite right.

What we can learn

The Weight Watchers point system is a great example of how you use something like a point system for changing behavior. What if you had 15 email points a day to send emails to your team, but could put updates in Asana for free? What if for every conversation you started on Slack that got a thumbs up, you got another email point? Sure it would be complicated to do, but it would help change behaviors (if adopting Asana or Slack was the long-term goal). And then when you set rules, you have to make sure that you haven’t put up barriers with the system to change behavior. For example responding to an Asana update via email shouldn’t cost an email point, because you’re using Asana and updating people. When we build systems to help people make positive changes, it’s essential that we keep the forest in view at all times. It’s essential to make sure we tweak and tune the system to encourage change and not prevent it.

And that is the whole point of changing for good, isn’t it.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 31, 2018.

There is a lot to starting off your content marketing program that starts off with throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. When you don’t have insight into what your audience would like, sometimes that’s the only option you have. You try a mix of the standard stuff (blog posts, infographics, short-form, long-form, maybe video), and see what people like.

But then it’s time to grow up.

Stop treating content marketing as an exercise in dumb luck. Oh look that piece of content worked! Don’t know why, don’t care, we’ll just do more of that! I’m going to bet the next piece of content in the “more of that” type isn’t going to do well. Roulette is one of the best casino games for the house. It’s about as close to dumb freakin’ luck as you can get. You can’t treat your content — or any — marketing like that, you need to have a freakin’ plan folks.

One success doesn’t make a pattern

Say you publish an infographic on Monday and it starts generating more leads than other content. Okay, interesting. Good. Fine let’s plan a similar infographic for next week, but let’s stick to the rest of our content calendar (Remember that? It’s the secret content marketing weapon you know.) Sure, test to see if infographics are the thing your audience likes, but don’t bet the farm on infographics.

There is a difference between being experimental and being stupid. Experimental is saying, “I think we should try podcasting. We’re going to do a weekly show for three months and see if there is interest and uptake.” Stupid is saying “Podcasting is the new blogging, all we’re doing is podcasting now.”

Having a plan, and getting off the roulette wheel, means you work in stages. First you figure out the topics your audience are interested in. There might be a few different ones, but if you know your customers and target demographic you should have a start. Next you work on what types of content you’ll do. Honestly, start with blogging first. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and there is ample evidence that people do like reading interesting stuff. As you confirm the topics that work, then try other formats. Maybe a cool report came out and you think your audience might like it as a blog post with and infographic. Make it easy for people to tweet the infographic and see if people engage with it.

And throughout the process you’re measuring. You’re measuring the indicators for what success looks like. Is it leads? Is it comments? Is it shares? Is it just purely increasing regular traffic to your site? Having a plan with measurable goals is the best way to not get on the content roulette wheel in the first place. There is no guessing.

Serendipity is awesome; that’s why is so rare

When serendipity strikes it’s awesome. A post takes off, leads pour in, people are congratulating you left, right, and center. This is when it’s hardest to stay on plan. You have to resist pivoting your strategy on a single post. You need to dig in and understand everything about that post. Who read it. How was it shared. Have you ever written on that topic before. You dissect that post for all it’s worth to know if you should be looking for a new pattern.

Viral content is a bolt from the blue. Sometimes you’re onto something, sometimes you’re just fried. No way to really know until you look at the data.

Case in point: Me

I’ve been writing a lot of content about, well, content. It’s serving two purposes for me. One as a portfolio of how I think and my writing chops. Two is to generate leads and interest in me as a freelance writer. How’s it working?

I’ve learned that the topics get interest, but not here. This isn’t the old days when single-author blogs could get a lot of traction. I cross-post all of this content on Medium. I’m getting better interactions there, and that’s what I expected would happen.

Is it working? The jury is out.

I haven’t been posting regularly for long. I’ve been on a personal blog hiatus for more than a few years; I lost a lot of traffic in the meantime. Right now I’m testing frequency. Sure, posting everyday is cool, but it’s a lot of work and I have client work to do too. Maybe posting 2–3 times a week is the right number. I’m using Lumen 5 to create videos from my posts and posting those videos with a link back to the original on LinkedIn and Facebook. Videos are fun, and I like the process of distilling a post into a couple minutes. I had tried putting the videos into the original post, but that didn’t increase engagement, so I’m trying to link to the original tactic.

And that’s it. I know my core is writing. Infographics aren’t my thing, so I’m not going there. I’ve podcasted before and I’m not sure I want to start again right now. I have my plan, I know my goals, and I measure the results.

It’s not gambling. It’s content marketing.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 25, 2018.

I’ll put a caveat here at the beginning — I’m a self-taught, gone through the fire, and still learning marketer. I started out as a scientist, then web developer, then blogger, then marketer. I’m not saying this to lessen my thesis, I’m pretty confident in it, but to give you perspective on how I came to this line of thinking.

Right.

I’ve been looking at a lot of marketing jobs lately. I generally stick to tech companies, but hey I dig a good challenge so I’ve put myself out there for a few decidedly non-tech companies. Coming out of an interview last week I realized, that if you really learn your craft, if you become more than just proficient in marketing, you probably can market anything to anyone. I realized that like a lot of key skills marketing is like a carpenters toolbox of tools. Lots in there. A skilled carpenter can use those tools to build a table or a house. He might not be the super awesome best at tables or houses, but if he’s competent enough, they will be good, solid tables and houses.

And that’s how you should approach marketing in the 21st century.

We’ve taken specialization a little too far

I read a lot of job postings looking for people with years of experience in B2B or SaaS or retail or consumer packaged goods. I am not for a New York minute suggesting that people who specialize in those areas are less worthy marketers. When you specialize in one part of marketing, you without a doubt get a head start on your job if you already have experience in that area.

But…

When marketing started out (I’m thinking in the Mad Men era as the starting point, yes I know that isn’t the true starting point — work with me here), a lot of folks were generalists. It was a pretty new thing and everyone was just trying to figure it all out. Don Draper sold makeup, pantyhose, cars, and made me every show want to put on a suit, smoke, and drink Scotch. He was flexible. He took a (self-taught) basis for knowing how people thought and bought and applied it to the product at hand.

And it worked.

Yeah, yeah, fiction, but that fiction was based on reality and when I say Don Draper and Mad Men, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

And this kind of flexibility and mastery is what I think all marketers should strive for. I think building a career solely on SaaS or B2B marketing is about as smart as building a career on selling client-server apps. Things change. Technology moves on. SaaS didn’t exist 10 years ago. I was pitched a lot of client server apps in my time. And I used a bunch too. If you only knew how to market client-server and that mindset, you were hooped.

The basics count

Will I go so far as to say “Marketing is marketing, regardless of vertical”? Nope. There are differences in how you market one thing over another, but there is a lot that overlaps with other verticals. Could I market anything? Anything is pretty big, but, yeah, I can give a lot of things a shot and make some impact.

For everything you market there is a buyer (even if no money changes hands, when you’re using a free app, you’re buying something to spend you time on). Every buyer has a reason to buy, some pain to solve or gain to create. All buyers fit into personas. Who they are, what they do, why they do it. The trick to marketing is figuring all those things out and then turning the dials to make the product click with them.

I believe there is also something to an outsider’s perspective to marketing. Look if I went into a job marketing consumer packaged goods, my perspective is only as a buyer, a consumer. That perspective has value. I don’t have to put myself “into the shoes of the buyer”, I’m still the buyer when I’m starting out. That outsider’s perspective is refreshing. It helps clear out bad habits and softball marketing tactics.

And when that outsider view wears off, then the real marketing chops shine through. Because I have my marketing toolbox full of tools. Tools I know how to use as a craftsman and I keep sharp and ready.

Marketer as craftsman. Keep your tools sharp. Keep practicing. Keep trying.

And market like you the skilled person you are.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 23, 2018.

I see a lot of posts and tips on how to make your content go viral. Or how to get thousands of likes. Or shares. Or comments. I have a real problem with these posts. I believe these posts miss the point of marketing. They miss the point of what makes great content. And I think they are how we got into a mess of SEO shysters and gaming social media platforms.

It’s not all sunshine and roses

I’ve had a few posts go viral over the years. This one from a few years ago is one of my favorites — Confessions of the Office IT Guy — and while a lot of people liked it, there were a couple major negative consequences from it. First it completely hosed my stats. The “signal” from it was so strong that it drowned out everything else. I had to work analytics around that post to understand the rest of my content. And second, it didn’t drive a whit of business for the company. Yeah it felt good to write it. Yeah I think a lot of people might have resonated with it. Turns out none of those people were the people I was trying to reach to do business with us.

Have the post go viral was a rush. It was fun. And it set back what I was trying to do building a long-term content strategy. Answering why all the other content I created didn’t perform the same way was distracting. This is the essential problem with viral content: it’s unpredictable. There is no “viral content strategy”. It. Just. Doesn’t. Work.

Yeah, people may not like this

Don’t care.

Creating content needs to speak to your audience and connect with your value proposition. You’re trying to not waste people’s time and make their day better, brighter, more interesting, or a touch smarter. That’s it. That’s the crux of creating great content. Trying to create something to go viral is chasing unicorns. It’s pandering to what is hip and cool at the moment. What’s hip and cool at the moment probably don’t have anything to do with your brand or value. It’s what is interesting. Like people (or better candidates for a Darwin award) jumping out of moving cars to dance next to them. It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. And it’s only a matter of time before there is an accident and someone is killed.

F*ck stats, make art

My friend, and fellow social media pioneer, Dave Olson did some amazing things in social media marketing when we were all still figuring stuff out. After a while, as the hype of likes, shares, comments, and views was all consuming, gave several talks (he gave one to my BCIT class) that was titled (or stuck to the theme): F*ck stats, make art. Crass and blunt, but true. Great art connects people. Great content does the same. Business marketing content can be fun to read. It can be interesting. It can be informative. It can be art.

Here’s the bottom line

If your marketing plan is based on having content go viral, have crap loads of comments, tons of shares, and go viral. You’re already lost. You’re chasing unicorns, making rope from sand, or any other metaphor you want for a fool’s errand. You can’t build strategies on flukes and luck. You build strategies on great stuff that helps people get a job done.

And if it goes viral, awesome. If it doesn’t, you keep plugging away. And I’m going to bet if you don’t care about the stats and make content with your audience and customer in mind, it isn’t going to matter anyway.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 19, 2018.

But mostly video and podcasting.

When I talk with people about their sites and their content plans — content plans aren’t strategies yet, they are ideas to get the ball rolling — folks often say something like “I’d like to start a podcast. Maybe do a video show too.”

To which I always say something like “Uh huh, okay. Good ideas, but let’s work up to that after we’ve gotten the strategy set.”

It’s a tough thing to say. On one hand I don’t want to stomp on someone’s idea or passion. On the other hand, having done podcasts and videos, I know they aren’t just harder to do, they are harder to keep doing? over time. So here’s my Monday Tip for you:

Are you sure you want to do that?

In the same vein as saying you don’t have to blog and planning your content strategy (don’t forget the three essentials), you need to think through each content tactic you’re going to explore. Here’s the thing about doing video and podcasts — they are a lot harder (and more expensive) than virtually any other content out there. No doubt, you can use your iPhone or HD webcam in your laptop to record video or a podcast. And Macs come with GarageBand and iMovie, both of which are more than capable for producing pretty polished pieces. The thing is, unlike blog posts or even infographics, great videos and great podcasts sound great because they have better than average gear making it possible: better cameras, better lights, better mics, better software. But that’s not all. There is one big, big thing that separates great podcasts and videos:

Time

It takes time to create them. Unless you’re recording a live show, you’re going to need several takes. Period. Then when you’re done you have to polish the content. Video and audio have to be edited to look and sound better. This. Takes. Time. There is no getting around it.

Writing? Oh sure it takes time, but I can write an write and publish a blog post in a couple hours and the quality of my keyboard and laptop have nothing? to do with the finished product. You can’t tell if I typed this post out on my iPhone or iPad or MacBook. Doesn’t matter. The words are the same. You sure and hell can tell if I recorded a podcast or video just using the built in mic and camera though.

Fine, fine podcasts and videos take more time, I get it. I still want to do a podcast (or video blog).

Right, now are you ready to keep? doing it? That’s the kicker. That’s what people don’t count on. I sure didn’t. I’ve started probably a half dozen podcasts. My Walkabout Podcast from 2005–2006 (maybe 2007) was fun, but eventually I had a backlog of episodes to publish and was running out of good ideas.

So I stopped.

I haven’t done a video blog, maybe a one off video here and there, because I’m terrible on camera. I can’t sit still, my eyes wander (what is he looking at?!?), and I fidget. But I’ve done hours of screencasted tutorials for my Using WordPress book and a related video series on building websites with WordPress. And, man I was happy when I finished. They were exhausting.

And this is the thing. There are only a few people I know who’ve kept their podcasts or video blogs going for more than a couple years. It’s tiring, it’s expensive, and it’s demanding work. If you want to do it, more power to you. Heck I’ll even be a guest (voice) on your show. I’ll even give you tips and help you work video and podcasts into your content strategy. But I’m still going to ask:

Are you sure?

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 10, 2018.

If you had asked me ten, even five, years ago if your company should have a blog, I would have answered with an emphatic: Yes! But it’s 2018 and times have changed. Blogging and social media marketing has morphed and coalesced into content marketing and content marketing is more than just blogging. So the question isn’t to blog or not to blog, but rather —

What kind of content should I create that my customers will enjoy?

If I don’t have to blog for content marketing, what else works?

I’m going to take that question apart first. Blogging didn’t work for everyone. You say, “Heresy!”, I say. “Truth.” Blogging worked (and works) tremendously well for thousands of businesses. Blogs have brought have unknown companies and apps to the attention of new customers and investors. There are innumerable success stories out there, but there are also companies who gave it a good go and blogging just didn’t pan out. This is fine. We intuitively know you can’t apply every marketing tactic to every business. Blogging and social media are no different. On the other hand, building a strong content marketing strategy will? work for almost all businesses (still with the almost). To get there you need to expand what you think of when you think “content marketing”. Content marketing isn’t just words. It’s videos, it’s infographics, it’s webinars, it’s whitepapers, it’s ebooks, it’s even uploading slide decks. All of those are potential types of content you can try.

Blogging didn’t work for everyone. You say, “Heresy!”, I say. “Truth.”

The real question is: Are you ready and able to create content your customers/audience are interested in? Read that again. Not content you want to make. Not content that everyone says is cool. Content your customers/audience want to read (and will benefit your business).

A few types of content you might not have thought of yet

Looking for ideas (or validation) that what you’d like to do is still “content” for content marketing? Here are some ideas that I believe are content for content marketing (including blogs):

• Words
• Blog posts
• Press releases (yes, press releases are an important part of any content marketing strategy)
• Whitepapers
• Ebooks
• Posts on LinkedIn or Medium
• Posts on forums and groups
• Email marketing
• Sales material (one pagers, fact sheets)
• Videos
• How to/screencast
• Informational
• Video blogs (vlogs)
• Recordings of talks and presentations
• Images
• Infographics
• Shared slide decks
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Online classes
• Downloadable templates (could be words or pictures or whatever)

That’s a lot. There are far more content types than just blogs. I left most of social media out, because I group social media under promotion and acceleration tools, not as much content. You can make a great case to include all forms of social media here. Or you could say all of these are social media. I’m taking a middle approach. Looking at this list, how do you pick? Where do you start?

How about asking your customers?

Ask your customers what they’d like to consume

And test a few things out. Will a lot of people default to blogs? Sure and that is a good place to start your content journey, but keep asking, keep listening, keep experimenting with content types, until you find the mix that works. It will not happen overnight.? Finding your niche takes time and patience and a few outright failures. You’ll get there.

Content marketing takes time, even for content marketers. When I’m building something for a new company (or even myself), I don’t get a boost just because I’ve done it before. It’s easier to get started, sure, but I still have to start from scratch. Every audience is different, so every content marketing mix is different. And remember…

You don’t have to have a blog to do content marketing or be successful.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 6, 2018.

Use a content calendar to amp up your content marketing strategy

I have been writing a good bit about, well, writing and creating content. I’ve talked about tools to write with, not to be afraid of writing crap when you write everyday, how to use mind maps for outlines, and creating a B2B content marketing strategy. In many of those posts I’ve talked about using a content calendar for planning and strategizing your content, but I haven’t talked about how you go about creating one.

Well, here is that post: Planning Content with a Content Calendar.

While I admit I’ve resisted using content calendars in the past — the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants blogger nature coming through — now I find them invaluable for keeping things on track and seeing the big picture. The first thing I do when I’m starting a new content strategy is lay out a basic content calendar — even before I have ideas. Your content calendar is essential to getting things done efficiently. Content calendars are more than when you’re publishing what. A good content calendar maps out how and when it gets done too.

Let’s get started.

Get Your Ideas Down

No ideas, no content. In both my posts about building a writing habit and my 3 Essential Parts of a B2B Content Strategy, I talk about the process of getting ideas for posts. Once you know your value proposition and personas you’re writing for (see the B2B Content Strategy post for more info), brainstorm out ideas. I like the sticky note on a wall or whiteboard method. You can move, group, and combine sticky notes easier than writing, erasing, and rewriting on a whiteboard alone. If you prefer a digital approach, you can also mind map your ideas too. This is especially helpful since no one has to transcribe sticky notes into a computer to then go into a content calendar. I think Scapple is perfect for this because it is so freeform that it’s just like sticky notes on a wall.

It’s important not to limit your ideas at this point. Want to podcast? Jot it down. Videos and webinars? Noted. Infographics, ebooks, whitepapers? Awesome. You might need to work up to starting the next great podcast, but plan for it now. These are pieces of content to strive? for, so don’t rule anything out.

Group Your Ideas into Themes and Types

With reams of ideas on the wall, or in Scapple, it’s time to start grouping them together. I’d start with content types (posts, infographics, ebooks, whitepapers) and within the groups start organizing by now, soon, and later. If you have a post series that needs an infographic as the final part and the whole kit and caboodle will be turned into an ebook, connect these ideas together. Looking at your mass of ideas you should see what is going to be easy to create (the now stuff), what’s great and just needs to wait its turn in the queue (soon), and content that will take planning (later).

This is the start of your content calendar. You have ideas, you have types of content, you have themes, and you’ve even got a sense of priority. Now to get the content engine running.

Map Out a Basic Workflow

Before you let people race out of the room and start creating content willy-nilly, you need to plan a process to get it done. No, you can’t just write, publish, and repeat — you need a little structure. Whether I’m solo or with a team I follow the same workflow:

• Write/create
• Add graphics
• Review/edit
• Polish
• Publish
• Promote

What you need to plan in your workflow is how long it takes to complete each step. If I’m doing this alone, a post like this one is written in an hour or so. Finding, creating, and editing graphics takes me about 15–30 minutes. Editing and polishing another 30 minutes. Publishing is an instant, and with CoSchedule, promoting on social media is pretty automatic.

That’s about 2–3 hours to write and publish a post when I’m solo. When I’m with a team, my writing part might stay the same, but I have to account for someone else reviewing the post. I might have another person doing graphics, and even if I publish myself, I still spend 15 minutes doing a final polish. This puts your start to finish for a basic post in terms of days not hours. The more complicated the content, the longer it takes. I know it seems backwards to plan your workflow before putting content on a calendar, but believe me it will make the next step go more smoothly.

Start Putting Content into Your Calendar

You have content ideas, start putting dates to them. Will you have theme days? How will you space out posts in a series? Are there holidays or events you need to plan for (Halloween, April Fools) or around (holidays and vacations)? I would plan out at least 6 weeks at a time. Some people suggest doing things a quarter in advance, and that is great for things like webinars that need lead time for planning and promotion, but if this is your first content calendar, start with 6 weeks. That’s plenty of time to work with. If things are going well after 4 weeks, plan the next 6 weeks.

Don’t get to stressed or hung up about dates and timing right now — we’re going to mess it all up next.

Now Work Back and Adjust Your Calendar

Remember that workflow you just did? This is why you work that out before? you put content on the calendar. If you want a post published on Thursday, and it takes three days to finish the post, and it’s Wednesday — you’re going to have to move that post out a few days. With content in place you can see how your team’s workload is looking. You can see if you’re loading too many things onto the graphics team if they have to create an infographic, layout an ebook, and keep up with creating graphics for three posts on the go in a single week.

Yes, this means some juggling and moving and scaling down content plans. This is the stark face of reality staring back at you. There is only so much you can do at a time. I used to have time to write 5 or 6 posts a day. Now I can get one done a day and that’s it. That’s the limit. I might be able to push it occasionally to 2–3 posts, but I plan for one post a day. Matching up your “when I want to have this done” with “when I can actually have it done” is tough, but it has to be done. There are no shortcuts — great content takes time. Remember the adage, you can have something good, fast, or cheap, but have to pick two.

With your calendar taking shape you can start producing content. It might feel tedious to go through all this hassle, but I promise it’s worth it. A content calendar gives your content strategy structure and helps you develop more content ideas as you see gaps and are inspired by what you have planned.

Content Calendar Examples

Here are examples of my current CoSchedule-powered content calendar, a content calendar board in Asana, and a simple Excel content calendar that you can download for free at the end of the post.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is the gold standard for content calendar tools. I use it to map out my ideas and plan all the social shares for my posts.

CoSchedule is expanding from its niche of just planning blog posts and social shares to automating your entire marketing team (and taking on Asana). CoSchedule has added tasks, teams, and other features that help with your workflow and planning other content campaigns as well. Here’s a look at the task detail for this post:

Pretty robust. Now let’s look at Asana as an alternative (which you can use for free up to 15 people, CoSchedule has no free option).

Asana

The go to for project planning, you can use Asana as a content planner too. If you pay for Asana, you can use their own Editorial Calendar template, but here is a board (you can also do this as a task list) showing how you can plan content and each stage:

In Asana I put the workflow in the task for each piece of content as subtasks:

If both CoSchedule and Asana seem intense for you, Excel works just fine.

Excel

Simple and gets the job done. You can’t see things in a calendar view, but all the information is there. You can download your own copy of this spreadsheet below.

That’s it!

This is has been your crash course in content calendar creation. Remember the process is simple:

• Get ideas
• Organize ideas
• Plan your workflow
• Put on the calendar
• Adjust based on workflows

Get that done, all that’s left is the creating. What’s keeping you? Start getting those ideas down and planning your content today.

Download Your Free Content Calendar Template

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 5, 2018.

If you don’t have these things, you don’t have a strategy, you’re just spraying and praying content.

Building a content strategy is an essential part of marketing today. Too often I’ve seen marketers go off half-cocked with their content marketing strategies. Too often I see marketers missing these three essential pieces of their strategy. And without these three parts your content strategy is no better than guessing.

The three essential parts of your content strategy are:

• your value proposition
• your personas (who you are writing for)
• a content calendar (when are you going to publish what and why)

Yes, it’s fun and cool to create content

I get it. I’ve been there. It’s exciting to have a new product/client/company to create content for. You have all these ideas. What new, creative tricks you’re going to try. The things you read in all the must-read marketing blogs. You’re you going to write amazing stuff. You’re going to go viral. You know it’s going to be awesome.

Stop. Cool it. You have some work to do first.

When marketing folks start thinking about creating a content strategy, people immediately start talking about how long blog posts should be, should we do video, how about a podcast, how many infographics should we create, and so on. All these are great. Any of them could be part of your content mix. But they are all way ahead of the game. None of these are a strategy. All of these are tactics. These are what you use to bring your strategy to life. These aren’t your strategy. A strategy is finding the best path to reach your goal. Tactics are how to put the strategy into practice — you can read more in my other blog post on this topic. Creating a strategy means you need a plan. You see your goal — it’s a distant mountain ahead of you — now which path will you take? You need to know three things to pick that path: what you’re marketing, who you’re marketing to, and when/how are you going to tell tell them.

What is your value proposition?

I use Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas for hammering out what your business does and what value it brings to customers. For the sake of efficiency I’m going to assume you have your business model set — even if you didn’t use the BMC to map it out — but now it’s time to refine your Value Propositions.

Your value proposition is what your product or service does to solve pains or create gains for your customers. One of Amazon’s value propositions is online shopping. It solves pains of going to lots of stores to comparison shop and gains by saving money and time. This is a simplistic view of Amazon, but you get the idea. I delve deeper into working with value propositions in this post from Marketing & Growth Hacking — Use a Value Prop Canvas to Refine Your Marketing Strategy — but for this post the important thing is introducing the concept.

Your value proposition is what your product or service does to solve pains or create gains for your customers.

Your value proposition defines what you are selling and why. If you’re selling snowmobiles in the Sahara, you might have a tough go of things. But if you’re selling a solar-powered mini-fridge, you’re in business. You can’t create a B2B content strategy until you know exactly what people are buying and why. CoSchedule focuses their content strategy on the value proposition of helping marketers save time and launch more effective marketing campaigns — and their book 10X Marketing Formula builds on this value proposition.

While most people think they know their value proposition, in most cases no one has taken the time to formalize and refine the value prop into something that can be summarized in a short sentence. Until you can articulate your value prop in a short sentence, you don’t have a value prop.

Step one: Get your value prop so solid in your head that you know why your customers will be happy to throw money at you. Write to that.

Who are your key personas you’re selling to?

You know who your customers are, right? What their jobs are, what they do day-to-day, their challenges, what success looks like, and who they report to? What do your customers like to read at work? What tools do they use to do their job now? How are those tools failing them? If you don’t you should. If you do, read on.

Right, now imagine you’re sitting in front of that person. Give that person a a name, a title — a personality a persona. Marketing personas make customers real for everyone on the team. Mike, Bill, Sue, Joan, directors, execs, managers, sole contributors — when you are creating content you have your customer in your head and create content especially for that person. When I’m writing a blog post — yes this one too — I’m writing with a person in my head. This post is written for marketers who have been tasked with creating or fixing their content strategy and are feeling stuck. I imagine I’m talking with you in front of me. Maybe we’re having coffee. Maybe it’s a lunch and learn. I’m writing to connect with you and give you some places to get started on your content strategy.

Use the Customer Segment portion of the Value Proposition Canvas to start building your persona. Try to understand as much about your customer as you can — not just how it relates to your product. The more you understand about your customer, the better you can tailor your content to them.

Step two: Create a persona with personality — a name, a title, a job, a life. This is who you’re writing for.

What and when are you going to publish?

You have what you’re selling and who your customer is — Mary the marketing manager who needs a content strategy and content to go with it — it’s time to work on what you’re creating for Mary. What information does Mary need? What tools or templates could Mary use to do her job better? What do you know that would make Mary’s (work) life better? This is where the “what to write” comes from. This is how you start brainstorming ideas. Think big. Go beyond a single one-off post. Post series, infographics, whitepapers, templates, ebooks — get all the ideas out and written down. Now organize the ideas into groups like fast to create, long-term projects, nice to do later, “let’s start on this now?”, these ideas will be the start of your content calendar. Don’t worry about having too many ideas right now. Or if the ideas are too hard to produce. Just have ideas so you can start on part two of this step: putting your ideas into a logical order that flows and tells a series of stories.

Step 3, Part 1: Get lots of ideas for the content you want to create. You can’t have too many ideas right now.

Got your ideas? Cool. Now map it all out on a calendar. You can use a spreadsheet, you can use Asana’s built-in Editorial calendar template, or you can up your game and use CoSchedule. The tool doesn’t matter, what matters is you look at all your content and plan how to create it. Ask tough questions. How long will that take to write? Do we need graphics? Will we need time to do more research? Suddenly saying “let’s publish an infographic” week runs headlong into reality. Good content takes time. Great content takes more time. Posts need to be written, and edited, maybe approved, before they can be published. Publishing an ebook? That’s going to take a while. Your content calendar forces you to plan when something will be published and? how long it takes to create it. A calendar does one more thing for you too: it helps you lay out your narrative.

Step 3, Part 2: Organize all your ideas on a calendar to see how they fit together and know how long it will take to create them.

Seeing all your content on a big calendar (even if you’re putting it on a white board for now) lets map out how the separate pieces of content come together as a complete whole. You develop theme weeks. You see how a few posts could be become a series. You realize there’s a holiday in the month you can use for inspiration. You can’t see any of this unless you see it all together on a calendar?. Here’s my content calendar for the last week and this week:

What you see are posts about creating content, writing, or content strategy (and a lack of topics for Thursday and Friday). This isn’t by accident. Starting with my ebook I published June 25th (download here for free), I’ve focused my energy on creating content to help the people I can help most. I’m following my own advice creating my own content strategy. I know what my value proposition is, I have a good idea who I’m writing for, and I’m putting it together into a calendar so I can see the big picture.

How is this a strategy?

If you need to create a multipage document, that takes a week or two to write and research, that no one is going to read again (if at all), just to check a box on someone’s “this is how marketing is done” list — I hate to break it to you, but you’re wasting your time. In those two weeks, how many posts could you have written? How many posts on social media supporting your content could be out there? You could have spent one day creating a first draft of your value props and personas; another day brainstorming topics and putting them on a calendar; and the remaining time creating content to see if it will work. It’s time spent seeing if your strategies will work. It’s time spent doing not thinking about doing.

My goal is more clients. I think creating great content will attract the right people who might think I could help them create their own content and strategies. I’ve created a calendar so I can see how I want to organize my posts and how to promote them on social media. If in a month, I don’t have as many clients as I’d like or the content isn’t working, I’ll change tactics. What I’m ?not doing is spinning my wheels creating make work for myself.

Think I could help your team with its content strategy? Need some content created for your website? Let’s get in touch.

I believe that your content strategy should be anchored by your value prop, your personas, and a schedule that builds a narrative. The rest? Window dressing. A functional content strategy needs to be structured enough not to be spraying and praying, but flexible enough to adapt to new things you learn about your audience. If you get that straight, the rest will work out.

Originally published at www.trishussey.com on July 3, 2018.