Internet content is becoming “numb.” The worldwide web has increased from one page to 4.57 billion indexed pages since going public in 1991. Blog posts, digital magazine articles, web copy and social posts account for much of that growth, yet most of it seems…vacuous and pointless, to put it nicely. The readers feel numb and indifferent. Great content has always been the exception rather than the norm, but the internet magnifies norms. Unlike a print editor or publisher, the web turns nothing down. The cheapness of publishing often cheapens what’s published.

After writing for my 200^th company a few weeks ago, I started to analyze the sources of numb content because I want to fight it. I call one source the “Suspension Bridge Effect.” It helps to explain why words like “engagement,” “connection”, “innovative,” and “personal” have lost their meaning. Like one little hole in an air mattress, their ambiguity deflates whole pieces of writing and entire marketing campaigns. To dismiss them as “buzzwords” and move on is to gloss over how we choose and use words.

My goal here is to illustrate what the Suspension Bridge Effect is and show how content marketers can overcome it. This is a piece about how we can re-imbue words with power – and hopefully create content that is alive rather than numb.

Simulating the SBE

Imagine a vast, thundering river. Your audience is on the left bank and you are on the right bank. Whatever your intention – to sell, inspire, educate or entertain – you have to bring audience members across the river such that they share your perspective. Content is an invitation to a new perspective.

Marketing words and writing are the “suspension bridges” that allow individuals to cross the river. When a company grows dramatically, the public gets exposed to their marketing language. It appears in news media, social media, conventions and conversations. Other entrepreneurs and marketers start to borrow that suspension bridge.

Why? One, the language is already associated with a successful company, so it seems powerful. Two, companies want the public to know they’re in the same space as this champ. The competitor talks about “engagement,” so we need to tell everyone that we do “engagement” too. Three, originality feels dangerous. Often, companies that try too hard to brand new terms and language get ignored because nobody knows what they’re talking about.

So, tons of companies use the same suspension bridge, but for each company, that word means something different. “Engagement” in a CRM company versus a mobile game company versus an HR consulting firm versus an event planning company versus [fill in the blank] means something different. The more marketers appropriate a buzzword, the less the public understands what the word means. Consequently, the Left Bank becomes reluctant to cross the bridge. Why would people share your perspective if they can’t distinguish it from 200 other perspectives?
This is the Suspension Bridge Effect. It destroys the power of words by spreading their meaning too far and thin. The Left Bank no longer understands what’s on the Right Bank. The Right Bank loses the ability to empathize with the Left Bank – a marketer’s insistence on using words no one can understand is good evidence of this.

When a company dares to create a new suspension bridge, and succeeds, companies flock to it. The process repeats.

Two Types of SBEs

Now that you have a visual of the SBE, let’s talk about how to recognize and cure two common cases.

The Suspension Bridge Adjective. This is when a buzzy adjective is used as filler. The best example is the indiscriminate use of words like “innovative”, “disruptive”, “pioneering” and “leading edge”. Another common case is when marketers toss words like “real-time”, “personalized” or “customer-centric” before words like “solution”, “platform” and “service.”

Think about the last time you saw the word “innovative” in a press release, piece of web copy or a self-promotional blog post. Did it change your perspective about the company or its technology? Did you suddenly realize, “Wow, they do make ground-breaking stuff!”? Or, more likely, did the word numb you – did you even notice it?

Consider these two lines:

• A: Acme Company, the leading-edge maker of highly innovative and real-time mobile widgets,…
• B: Emca Company, a provider of mobile widgets,…

Who do you trust more? Why is Acme so much more self-aggrandizing than Emca? Did those three bolded Suspension Bridge Adjectives tell me anything useful? Hell no.

The cure is to remove the empty adjectives. In the press release or web copy, you describe the purpose and function of the technology to illustrate that it’s innovative. In content marketing, you create a suspension bridge that no one else can copy – it consists of good stories, not an abused buzzword. To be clear, when I say “story,” I am talking about real events that have a beginning, middle, climax, end, characters, etc. You know, real stories.

The Suspension Bridge Noun. The SB Noun is usually delivered within a value proposition. Here are some common examples:

• We power deeper connection and engagement with your audience.
• Increase sales efficiency and productivity
• Widget C powers marketing personalization automation
• We ensure customer success across all touch points
• Engage your audience with data-driven marketing insights [Combo: noun and adjective SBE together]

These lines come from my head. If your company does use one of these generic taglines, consider it worrisome that a random writer came up with it under these circumstances.

These are trickier to deal with than SB Adjectives because you have to replace rather than delete them. Step one is to define the nouns you currently use. I call it the “What does that mean?” game. I play it daily.

Let’s say we make text message technology for marketers (random choice), and let’s do this game with the first bullet: “we power deeper connection and engagement with your audience”. “Connection” means that marketers can send text messages to people. Maybe “engagement” refers to the feedback marketers get from those text messages. We keep track of who opened the text message, where, how quickly, etc. so we learn which messages attract readers. So in simple language, “We let you send mass text messages to your audience. We show you how people react to those messages.” You might spice this up a bit…but if you revert to SB Adjectives and Nouns, no one knows what you’re talking about.

From plain, understandable English, we can create stories about how “connection” and “engagement” actually work. For example, what if a medical mission in Nepal used our tech to reach people in rural communities where cell phones are common but other digital tech is not? It could be a darn good content marketing piece about how the tech was used to reach patients, treat common ailments and save lives.

We started by using the same Suspension Bridges as everyone else – connection and engagement. We broke them down into definitions that make sense. Then, we found a story that illustrates why this technology is important. It happens to be a story that no one else can write or use – therefore, it’s unique and could be powerful, if the content is done well.

Don’t Hate Buzzwords – Just Understand Their Limitations

The Suspension Bridge Effect illustrates that buzzwords are problematic because they can’t change people’s perspectives. When we read an ambiguous buzzword – especially in a blog post or article that was supposed to inspire, inform and entertain us – we instead go numb. With enough exposure to the Suspension Bridge Effect, we grow numb to most content. That is bad for the entire marketing world.

Some writing still overflows with meaning and courage. We tell people about this content, not just for the sake the dopamine it produces, but because we believe people will be better for reading it. This content tells great stories that can’t be found anywhere else. It overcomes the Suspension Bridge Effect.

Although I used B2B examples to make my point, consumer examples abound, and I hope to discuss them in the future. My goal is not to disparage buzzwords and discourage their use altogether. Buzzwords are useful. Consider “software-as-a-service” or SaaS. Using that one abbreviation, I can communicate a lot about a company and its business model. I just can’t distinguish that company from other software companies. Or, consider my recent blog post about “user-generated content,” a.k.a. “UGC.” With a marketing audience, that word allows me to talk about a whole category of content without awkwardly redefining it in every sentence.

When we communicate with the Left Bank of the river, let’s choose words that haven’t come to mean everything and therefore nothing. Let’s have the courage to create and define new words when English fails capture what we see. Let’s break the mystery around marketing language by returning to the basics. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How still rule.

My favorite antonym for “numbness” is “liveliness.” If we build suspension bridges from stories instead of buzzwords, I think we can make the internet a far livelier place.

The post Have Words Like “Engagement” Become Meaningless? The Suspension Bridge Effect and How to Overcome It appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

How Cotopaxi won at content marketing

It’s February 21, and I am jumping into a pool of snowmelt beneath a red rock waterfall, just outside Las Vegas. I am fully clothed, and my left hand is clutching an inflatable sleeping pad. After the plunge into the hypothermic tub, I heft myself onto the sleeping pad and paddle to shore. Three tasks completed, 18 points, all caught by my teammates on a smartphone and uploaded to Facebook. This is Questival: a 24-hour adventure race and act of content marketing genius that offers five invaluable UGC lessons.

A business textbook might one day say that Cotopaxi, the outdoor clothing and gear brand behind Questival, succeeded by combining mobile technology, gamification and user-generated content (UGC) in one campaign. Having now completed Questival, I have a much better explanation: Questival brought out comedy, courage and humanity in hundreds of people. Questival deepened friendships by creating a journey we’d never take otherwise – a journey that also happened to reflect the values of Cotopaxi.

Instead of trying to create a ‘relationship’ between individuals and the brand, Cotopaxi strengthened relationships among friends and strangers wrapped up in the hilarity of Questival. Instead of pleading for user-generated content, Cotopaxi made UGC the inevitable byproduct of our joy and competitiveness.

Backdrop: The Why and How of Questival

Questival began as the launch party for Cotopaxi, a public benefit corporation with $3 million in venture capital and one of few outdoor brands that only sells direct to consumers. Its “Gear For Good” model promises that each purchase contributes to a humanitarian cause in the local community that produced the item. The brand and its values are truly Millennial bacon.

In April 2014, Cotopaxi and its agency Causebrands launched Questival in Salt Lake City, Utah. 1,500 competitors traveled all over Utah completing challenges, and word quickly spread. Within 24 hours, Questival yielded 30,000 social media posts that reached one million followers, and the event was profitable in its own right. So, Cotopaxi did it again, and Questival is now on track to hit over 25 cities. I learned about it from my two Las Vegas teammates who participated in the first Questival and raved about it (i.e. word-of-mouth, brand ambassadors…people being human).

Here’s how it works: Questival invites teams of two to six people to complete over 300 outdoor, community service and quirky tasks within 24 hours. The task list is emailed to competitors 48 hours before the race. Every single task is also listed in the Questival mobile app. When you’re completing a task, you click it in the app, take a photo or video as required, add a caption and post the proof to your team page and social media sites to earn points. The top teams – determined by a combination of points and qualitative judging – earn free Cotopaxi gear, and this year’s city winners are invited to compete in the Questival World Championships, a seven-day adventure from Belize to Panama.

In Las Vegas last month, I jumped into snowmelt fully clothed in order to earn points. Floating on an air mattress and paddling a vessel were also worth points. People leg wrestled while eating corn dogs, recited limericks about llamas, worked in soup kitchens, cleaned up parks, climbed mountains and kissed strangers to earn points, too. Questival succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of this jaded reinvigorated writer, and the experience offers some UGC lessons that all marketers can put to immediate use.

5 invaluable UGC lessons

1. Connect People with People

If you’re a marketer, someone has probably told you that social media and content marketing are all about creating relationships with your audience. This is true, and maybe it has worked for you, but how many people want to chat with a brand? People are much more interested in building relationships with people, and your brand can facilitate that. Cotopaxi values, logos and staff were part of Questival, but ultimately we laughed, hiked and cooked s’mores with teammates. It still worked; I am going to buy some Cotopaxi gear.

2. Make Your Product Essential

When you sign up for Questival, your registration includes an 18 liter Cotopaxi Luzon backpack that is perfect for carrying water, snacks, props, wallets and other race necessities. Every step of the race, we were either wearing our backpacks or had them near. Consequently, bystanders saw hundreds of Millennials wearing these branded packs – and having the time of their lives. The packs of course showed up in most of our photos and videos, and they will show up in many more.

3. Involve Bystanders and Strangers

My team and I were dependent on the good will of people because the tasks required us to work with strangers. When you ask a stranger to feed you a deep fried Twinkie or slow dance to “Lady in Red,” you have to explain why you’re asking. If 20 people with matching backpacks rain dance in front of the same rain show at Las Vegas’s Miracle Mile Shops, every bystander gets curious. Conversations can’t help but begin with an enthusiastic spiel about Questival. In marketing speak, the process of producing UGC lead to word-of-mouth before we even uploaded the content.

4. Create Your Campaign for Somebody, Not Anybody

Questival tasks spanned eight categories: Adventure, Camping, Community & Cultural, Hikes, Quirky, Service, Social Media and Survival. In other words, there was something for everyone who would buy Cotopaxi gear. Yes, it attracted an outdoorsy crowd, and that’s what it should do. Cotopaxi judged correctly that celebrity trivia and word puzzles would be a bad fit.

5. Make Social Media Functional, Not Vain

I’m a lightweight social media user, but in 24 hours, I posted more content than I’d normally post in a whole year. Because social media was required for completing tasks, I didn’t feel uncomfortable using it. It wasn’t about me; it was about documenting tasks and moving our team along in the race. I produced a trove of UGC and felt darn good about it.

Questival’s strategy and execution were outstanding, but, of course, there is room for improvement. Many teams were unable to upload videos on a cellular connection. Smartphone battery life was an ongoing struggle. Teams could theoretically cheat (e.g. take a picture of a tent and claim they camped), but if it ever becomes problematic, Cotopaxi can add software to their app that authenticates the time and location of every photo. Ironically, you couldn’t immediately buy Cotopaxi gear at the after-party – you could order it via iPad and wait for it to reach your home. These issues were minor.

On a personal level, Questival was an empowering experience. It pushed me to interact with complete strangers in ways normally I wouldn’t. As a PR/marketing writer, I experienced firsthand why UGC is such a powerful content marketing tool. The act of creating content was the reward – not the “Likes” and comments on Facebook.

Marketers, if you want UGC, focus on creating moments that illuminate our humanity and the joy of living. Send people on adventures, online or offline, that they would never take without your inspiration.

The post 5 UGC Lessons From Corndog Wrestling and Llama Limericks appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

As a Bears fan, watching the Super Bowl was a fairly emotionless experience – at least until the ads air. While my uncle taught me to root for ‘injuries’ when the Bears aren’t playing, this year, I felt it would be more honorable to root for great ads. At $4.5 million a pop for one 30 second slot, advertisers have a very small window to light a firework and “make ‘em go, Aah, aah, aah”, to quote the halftime entertainment. This year, advertisers didn’t disappoint and neither did their strategies as more brands delivered integrated marketing campaigns rather than just an ad.

If you look at the pregame, game day and postgame strategies this year, it’s clear that the Super Bowl is just the climax in wider, integrated marketing campaigns. Exposure and brand awareness are guaranteed when you reach over 150 million viewers, so many brands are going a step further, aiming to spark anticipation, conversation and follow up actions. If it’s any indication, 50 percent of brands included a hashtag in their commercial and 44.6 percent gave a URL, According to Marketing Land. Both were levers to immerse people in social media conversations and content marketing.

How are brands approaching the integrated marketing model?

Pregame 

This year, many brands either released teasers or their full Super Bowl ads before the big game. Budweiser, Dove, Victoria’s Secret and GoDaddy were among this crowd. It is a simple and effective way to get people talking.

People who see a Super Bowl ad before the game are going to behave like people who see a movie premiere at Sundance Film Festival. Feeling like members of an exclusive group, they want to ‘break the news’ and be the first to make a public judgment on the experience. Once the ad runs during the Super Bowl, everyone has seen it – you’re reduced to a member of the pack. Being the early adopter to share it on social networks generates a payback in social currency.

Some brands did a good job of weaving the ad teaser into other content. Budweiser, for instance, posted pictures and videos of horse and puppy on social media, and as a “Lost Dog Reward”, they ran a sweepstakes to win Super Bowl tickets. They made social media followers feel invested in the narrative long before the game.

Game Time

In terms of content, Super Bowl ads don’t change drastically year to year. Advertisers are pulling the same emotional strings with humor, inspiration, a dramatic story or several hooks at once. However, a few brands stood above the pack for using their 30 second slot to promote a social cause.

Case in point: P&G’s Always scored the most social buzz of any brand, according to TechCrunch, by using its 30 seconds to transform #LikeAGirl from an insult into a statement of pride. Mind you, #LikeAGirl dates back to at least June 2014 when Always appears to have first used it. They managed to give this relatively under-the-radar campaign serious rocket fuel on Twitter, and the brand is featuring its favorite fan tweets on a microsite.

When a brand’s goal is to spark real conversation – not just shares and re-tweets – blending cause marketing with a content strategy makes a ton of sense. It gives people a moral motivation to participate in the campaign, and it builds true respect for the brand. I would take the most respected commercial over the funniest commercial any day (still, major props to Fiat for giving us all a good laugh).

Postgame

Post Super Bowl is where a lot of brands seemed to fumble the ball. They built up anticipation, they ran great ads and generated social engagement during the game…and then it ended abruptly. A few brands stand out because they created detailed websites or microsites to carry on the conversation.

Nationwide, despite running the most depressing Super Bowl ad in recent history and upsetting many viewers, had an impressive content marketing site waiting to carry on the message about preventable childhood accidents. MakeSafeHappen.com is full of safety tips categorized by age, location and risk category for the concerned parent. They had the right postgame strategy – unfortunately, the conversation centered on the appropriateness of their ad instead of its message.

Reebok, which ran an ad during the Super Bowl pregame TV coverage, had a big postgame ready too. Their commercial, featuring Crossfitters and obstacle racers doing their thing, makes the case that we flip tires and take on freakish challenges to be “be more human.” The accompanying website – Be More Human Experience – has a trove of good content on the relationship between brain health and fitness.

The Next Super Bowl 

Super Bowl XIX – which will, fingers crossed, feature the Chicago Bears – will closely resemble what we saw this year. Brands will pre-release ads and pump up the conversation and anticipation on social media. During the game, ads will aim to drive action by integrating multimillion-dollar commercials with well-planned campaigns. Postgame, I think we will see more brands trying to convert Super Bowl ad momentum into a content marketing opportunity with dedicated websites or microsites. Purpose and cause marketing will become even more popular.

In a world of content overload and short attention spans, integrated campaigns help make the message stick. Thinking back across the five Super Bowls prior to 2015, how many ads can you really remember and describe? The brand exposure is fleeting, and Super Bowl ads are wildly expensive. Combining Super Bowl ads with integrated marketing strategies will continue to make that 30-second spot more and more worthwhile for big budget advertisers.

The post Huddle Up! Super Bowl Ads Prove Integrated Marketing is the Best Play appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

It’s Monday morning in the year 2025, and everything in your inbox is strangely…relevant. The maker of your oven sent over another list of recipes that you would actually make. Your gym emailed a report of your weekly workouts – it turns out that your strength is 20 percent higher over the previous month, but your upper back and chest muscles are out of balance. The email offers links to back exercises you can use to correct this.

This is the potential of content marketing in a world where billions of devices are assigned IP addresses and interconnected in an “Internet of Things” (IoT). Unlike Bluetooth or other wireless technologies that connect machine-to-machine (M2M), IoT devices connect via the internet, making distance irrelevant. It’s the difference between turning on your car with a button on your keychain (M2M) and turning on your car from a web browser (IoT).

While the interconnection of more than 25 billion devices has raised security and privacy concerns that need to be addressed, the Internet of Things is collecting an enormous volume of data that content marketers can use to improve their craft. In the examples I give above – with an oven and gym – the hypothetical content marketers are using data from IoT experiences to provide more personalized content. They can identify who uses devices, when they are used, how the tech is used, where it takes place and what problems are encountered. And after evaluating how the data changes over time, Internet of Things marketers can make a powerful case for why people should use their technology.

So data that arises from Internet of Things will provide content marketers insight into how people use these “things.” (click to tweet) In turn, this will lead to very personalized content opportunities for the brands selling IoT.

IoT data will help marketers deliver better content in three main areas:

1. 1. Recommendations

Internet of Things, combined with a little data science, will turn devices into powerful recommendation engines. Like Amazon and Netflix, which recommend products and entertainment based on user behavior, Internet of Things introduces the ability to measure use behavior in traditionally offline environments. Content marketers can then deliver personalized suggestions based on this behavior.

Let’s take the Internet of Things oven example. The frontrunner in this category, the Dacor Discovery IQ, allows users to search the web for a recipe, insert the dish and then let the oven automatically cook it. If owners use this feature regularly, they would build up a history of recipe choices that smart data scientists could analyze for patterns. If they could answer the question, “What would this person like to cook next?,” marketers could create and curate a huge selection of recipes to meet a variety of individual preferences. Depending which recipes they program into the oven or not, marketers would be able to improve their suggestions each time.

$4,399 is a steep price tag for a single oven, but if owners are able to confidently discover and cook recipes they would have never attempted before – thanks to the assistance of content marketers – the experience may justify the price.

2. 2. Insight

In many cases, IoT will be able to go beyond preference-based recommendations and provide information on how your usage is changing. Content marketers can then take this data to create very useful, personalized content that keeps people committed to the device or activity. An Internet of Things gym is an ideal example.

Here’s the premise – your NFC phone can link up with any piece of equipment in the gym and identify you. All the equipment is linked to the internet. So if you use the bench press, you swipe your phone and do your set. Sensors on the bench press detect your precise action (e.g. close-grip bench press) how much weight you’re lifting, your cadence, number of reps, rest period, etc. It delivers all this information to your fitness training account via the web. After your workout, there is precise record of what you did.

The content marketers can then analyze this data for problems or patterns. If, as I described above, your core muscle groups are out of balance, personalized marketing content can point that out and share videos of exercises that will help correct the problem. If you’re doing the exact same exercises over and over again without progress, marketers can recommend alternatives or propose a fresh new training regimen. Between companies like Precor and Atlas Wearables, we’re getting close to these possibilities.

3. 3. Value

An Internet of Things oven, an interconnected gym and dozens of other Internet of Things scenarios will be able to provide proof of value and achievement. While recommendations and insights focus on existing customers, this value content would focus on potential customers.

We already see this with Nest, the Google-owned maker of connected thermostats and smoke alarms. They analyzed a year of data from Nest Thermostats to determine how typical usage patterns produce energy savings ranging from 14% to 26%. Based on an actual study of home data, they also found that “Nest Thermostats saved Southern California customers an average of 11.3% of AC-related energy usage.” This makes it easy for a homeowner to assess the value of a Nest Thermostat.

Likewise, the IoT oven could show that owners cook an average of XX different dishes per year, which would be a draw for someone who struggles with cooking and lacks the time to find recipes. Or, the Internet of Things gym might be able to show that its customers lose an average of X pounds per year, increase their strength by Y percent and improve their cardio by Z. Blended and analyzed together, personal datasets can be used to make a powerful value proposition.

Plan ahead for Internet of Things content marketing

In Internet of Things content marketing, I believe we have to envision content as part of the product itself. Everyone in the IoT space is producing impressive, flashy technology, but much of it will not prove useful. Without guidance and ideas, people won’t necessarily see the value of having all the inanimate objects in their life connected to the internet.

It is up to content marketers to create the perception that the Internet of Things offers value and new possibilities for users. The data they collect from devices will no doubt help in this process. By providing content tailored to the needs of individual users and questions of potential buyers, content marketers can make a device seem essential and immensely helpful. People want marketing content to be more relevant to their lives, and Internet of Things will help us achieve that – hopefully long before 2025.

The post Success of the “Internet of Things” Depends on Content appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.