1. Content type: Trend pieces
Mistake: Promoting a trend that is too navel-gazing and doesn’t consider true audience need
Trend articles are a great way of getting across your company’s point of view of a changing situation in your market. But be sure to think through the trend that you’re focusing on. Is the trend truly something that is happening across your industry or is it a change that you’re hoping will happen as a result of customers using the product that you’re promoting? For example, is it truly a trend that consumers are buying 3D TVs and regularly consuming 3D content? Or is the “trend” the imagination of the 3D entertainment industry and the reality is that not many consumers are crying out for the technology? Readers appreciate authenticity and will place your brand in higher regard if your thoughts are based on fact.

2. Content type: Case studies
Mistake: Being merely a rah-rah vehicle for your company or product
Granted, you’re not going to develop a case study of a competitor’s user, nor are you going to spotlight a customer that’s using your services in a less than optimal way. But that doesn’t mean you should view your case study as a way to pat yourself on the back without considering whether the case study offers lessons learned or tips that could be useful to other current or potential customers.

If possible, consider selecting a case study in which the customer did experience stumbling blocks when implementing your technology or service—and was able to overcome them. Highlighting the stumbling blocks doesn’t put your company in a bad light; rather it adds some realism to the case study and demonstrates that it’s possible to overcome obstacles. We all know that it’s never smooth sailing when it comes to implementing new technology or using a new product for the first time.

3. Content type: All
Mistake: Being formulaic
What types of movies have made a lasting impression on you? Formulaic Hollywood blockbusters, or indie movies with a plot that has interesting twists and turns? My guess is the latter. Likewise, content types can have more impact if you approach them in different ways.

Consider case studies. Instead of introducing Customer A, its problems, and how your technology or product helped it solve the problems, consider a different approach, such as a fly-on-the-wall report. I’ll never forget the day-in-the-life report I wrote about how vendor nCircle creates its security vulnerability testing software. I was invited to be a fly on the wall on one of its crucial days of the month. The article was an interesting way of describing how nCircle’s products work and their benefits.

Q&As are another example. They’re a frequent go-to content type because you can create them with your in-house subject matter expert via email interviews and you don’t have to worry about writing a free-form article from interview notes. You ask the questions and you publish an edited version of your questions and the interviewee’s answers. It’s straightforward. But sometimes it can be more interesting and useful to your audience if they could ask the questions…or if the interviewee was an expert from a third party, such as an industry analyst firm, an industry association, or a customer? Or perhaps have the third party ask questions of your in-house expert? That would help to create a discussion based on issues that really matter to your audience—not what you think your audience wants to hear.

4.  Content type: Response to sudden industry changes
Mistake: Promoting your company without providing anything useful to your audience
In his blog, Friesen describes this content type as “the meteor”—a sudden change in your industry as opposed to a “trend” that may be slow moving. I interpret that to mean news of a major security breach at a credit card company, for example. If your business is personal security or security software, you’ll want to take the opportunity to respond to the news. A good response would be to provide useful tips on how consumers can protect their personal identity if their personal information was potentially compromised. Don’t merely use the opportunity to sell your product. That would seem disingenuous.

Have you come across any of these mistakes? How have you approached these or other content types? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Content marketing has hit its stride and entered the marketing mainstream. According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) study, 60 percent of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget this year; that’s up 9 percent from 2011.

Before you start creating content in earnest, however, you need a strategy. And before you can create a strategy, you need to get a handle on the content you already have. That means cataloging all of your content—and not just what resides on your website. This list includes:

•    apps
•    articles
•    blog posts
•    case studies
•    newsletters (print and digital)
•    interactive content
•    magazines (print and digital)
•    mobile content
•    podcasts
•    presentations
•    slideshows
•    social media
•    tools (such as an online calculator)
•    videos
•    webinars/webcasts
•    white papers

It’s also a good practice to audit the content you’ve posted on sites such as YouTube, SlideShare, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

At Tendo, we recommend auditing your content at least once a year, preferably every six months. If a lot of the content you’re creating is time-sensitive (as opposed to evergreen), you should consider auditing your content quarterly.

Audience and goals
When taking an inventory of your content, think about the target audience for the content and what stage of the buying cycle it addresses. Ideally, you want a mix of content that targets all your audiences at each stage of the buying cycle. Focus your content creation efforts on the gaps your clean-up exercise uncovers.

Consider, too, whether the content type is the most appropriate and effective for the topic. For example, a customer success story currently executed in HTML or as a PDF on your website may be more effective and reach a broader audience as a video on YouTube.

Finally, review all content for how well it addresses your business goals. You may have a plethora of case studies for acquiring new customers but a dearth of content aimed at retaining your customers. Keep the distribution channel in mind, too. Different channels are more effective outlets depending on the goal. If one of your company goals is brand awareness, then sharing your content on Twitter makes sense. But if you want to improve your company’s thought leadership in the industry, a webinar or SlideShare presentation would be a more appropriate distribution channel.

Creating a variety of engaging content—and enough of it—is a challenge for most businesses. Knowing what content you currently have will help you decide what you want to keep, revise, or repurpose, or get rid of altogether. From there, you can focus your efforts on creating content to fill the gaps.

When was the last time you cataloged your company’s content?

1)    Bank of America announces debit card fees
At a time when consumer anger about bank bail-outs and the economy was on the rise, a number of banks, including Bank of America, announced new debit card fees for its customers. The response was outrage, online petitions, and action—thousands of customers left the big banks in favor of credit unions and smaller community banks. On November 1, Bank of America, which bore the brunt of the negative press, abandoned the proposed fee (JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, and other banks already had). However, as one PR specialist told the NY Times, had the bank road-tested this idea before announcing it, the bad publicity could’ve been avoided entirely.

2)    Netflix raises fees and announces Qwikster spin-off
My colleague Bill Golden wrote about this gaffe, which has been compared to the New Coke debacle of the mid-1980s. Netflix increased its prices and then announced that the company was going to split into two parts: streaming video to remain with Netflix, and DVDs-by-mail to morph into a new company called Qwikster (no one consulted us about the spelling). Customers and Wall Street responded negatively: Netflix’s stock dropped by nearly 50 percent and the company lost more than 600,000 customers. In October, just weeks after the announcement, Netflix nixed Qwikster.

3)   Facebook hires a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google
Unhappy about the Circles feature of Google+ and its use of “private” Facebook data, Facebook hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to plant negative stories about its rival—a PR blunder in the most literal sense. A reporter figured it out quickly and Facebook ended up looking petty and hypocritical for trying to slam Google on privacy when Facebook itself is the company that frequently angers users for playing fast and loose with their data.

4)    Kenneth Cole: Inappropriate tweet, Take 1
For some the Arab Spring was about the fight for democracy. For Kenneth Cole, it was a way to sell more shoes and accessories. During the demonstrations in Tahir Square, the company took advantage of the popular “#Cairo” hashtag and tweeted this: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo-KC.” The financial implications may have been minimal, but the social media universe was unhappy with the designer, who quickly tweeted an apology. A fake Kenneth Cole Twitter account didn’t let the company off the hook—pranksters started sending out inappropriate mock tweets (example: “Our new slingback pumps would make Anne Frank come out of hiding! #KennethColeTweets.”)

5)    The Red Cross: Inappropriate tweet, Take  2
Non-profits are not immune to controversy, though in this case, the Red Cross turned lemons into lemonade. When an employee mistakenly sent a personal tweet out to the Red Cross Twitter account, it was embarrassing. The tweet read, “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch Beer…when we drink we do it right #GettingSlizzerd.” The social media team at the Red Cross took the tweet down in about an hour and decided to combat the incident with a humorous tweet of its own: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

The best part of the story is that Dogfish, the subject of the tweet, quickly sent out its own message asking its beer fans to donate to the Red Cross. In just a few hours, an embarrassing situation turned into a fundraising opportunity.

Herewith, our 2011 collection of the tech, marketing, and business buzz that bears repeating, as well as the jargon we’ll be deleting from our daily lexicon.

Anacronym (noun)
Definition: A tech acronym too old to remain relevant.
Why we love it: A phrase that blends “anachronism” and “acronym” pleases both our inner wordsmith and our inner geek.

Bacn (noun)
Definition: Spam that you signed up to read.
Why we love it: Because we’ve been dumb enough to opt in far more often than we care to admit. Plus, we love the smell of bacn frying.

Gamification (noun)
Definition: The application of game-design concepts to non-game applications.
Why we love it: Not only is gamification a white-hot way of engaging end users in a more playful—and often more meaningful—way, it’s a great way to rethink the ways in which you communicate with your core audience.

Googleheimer’s (noun)
Definition: A condition that makes your mind draw a blank between the time you think of something to Google then finally get to your computer.
Why we love it: Hey, who hasn’t been there? In fact, even though it was “Urban Word of the Day” just this past spring, we’d forgotten all about the term since it originally surfaced in 2006.

Presenteeism (noun)
Definition: Coming to work when sick—usually motivated by lack of sick days, company culture or fear of job loss.
Why we love it: It’s such a cheery-sounding word for an unhealthy trend!

Quiet car (noun)
Definition: A subway or train car where cell phone conversations are banned.
Why we love it: It reminds us of our peacefully misspent youth, hanging out with other quiet bookworms at the public library.

Shoulder tap (noun)
Definition: A query or informal request made in passing and—per theofficelife.com—a good reason to avoid the boss in the elevator (think Steve Jobs, who it’s rumored would promote or fire someone based on such meetings).
Why we love it: Who hasn’t stammered out a nonsensical reply (or drawn a complete blank) when the top brass casually inquired, “So, what are you working on?”

Workweek creep (noun)
Definition: Work-related tasks that bleed into one’s non-work hours.
Why we love it: No, we’re not crazy about the concept—but the phrase is succinct and accurate. Plus, sadly, more of us can relate to it than ever.

Words and phrases we vow to retire in 2012

• Actionable: We still hate this one, and it’s more rampant than ever.
• End-to-end solution: You can’t solve a business problem if you fix only the middle.
• Moving forward: It’s a silly substitute for “from now on” or “in the future.” And unless you have a time machine, you cannot move elsewhere.
• Reach out to: Unless you’re reviving a ‘70s AT&T ad campaign, please “contact” or “connect with” the other party.
• Wall Street vs. Main Street: We’ve moved on to the “1 vs. 99 percent.” And even that nomenclature is wearing thin.
• World-class: As most things fit into some sort of classification in the order of the world, this is the most meaningless modifier we know. Why isn’t anything “terrific” or “super-duper” anymore?

Some recent signs of overkill: Mashable answered the question, “Are we too obsessed with Facebook?” by producing an obsessive graphic of random trivia about Zuckerberg’s mildly successful project. Key takeaway: Mashable is too obsessed with Facebook. Search Engine Journal did something similar with social media in general (click the small images to go to the respective posts, with the full, sprawling graphics). This is the new infographic—the 20-minute scroll through a vertical infodump—and it’s much more tiring than the focused article it’s meant to replace.

It’s time to rein in the infographic. Not that it should again be relegated to line graphs illustrating text-heavy stock reports—the Internet has opened up too many possibilities. But what if it was better-organized than a frat party and more coherent than a flash mob? When you make one, make it count. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

It tells a story. Using clip art and numbers to create a collage of essentially disjointed data doesn’t help your reader. The graphic should tell a story or answer a question (the reason we’re reading all this data). You should be able to describe it in a sentence, and the sentence can’t be, “There’s a lot of information about X.”

It’s not an article in disguise. Look at this graphic (I’m picking on Mashable again, but they can take it). It’s little chunks of text arranged in a stack, and you have to read each of them until you hit the bottom. Once known as an article. Chopping your white paper, brochure, or blog post into colorful boxes of text delivers “info,” but just adding some icons is cheating on the “graphic” part of the equation.

The design serves the data. In the quick, easy, and unremarkable infographics, the illustrations seem an afterthought. At the other end of the spectrum, check out this interactive New York Times graphic on the distribution of Olympic medals.  (Screen shot below, but really, go look at the interactivity.)  It’s busy and multilayered, but there’s nothing there that isn’t part of the information delivery—which has been rethought and rendered in a visual way, rather than merely putting clip art next to a number. It’s a (no doubt costly) thing of beauty. Another fine, less elaborate example: This graphical representation of the most prescribed psychiatric drugs in the United States.

It’s well-organized. A lot of the “all the data, ever!” infographics are deliberate jumbles of information and font sizes. Readers should know what they’re looking at, and why. A good infographic delivers an intuitive understanding almost instantly, even before you can delve down and figure it out. For example, look at Lokesh Dhakar’s brilliant diagram of the varying formulas for common coffee drinks (again, click to go to the original post). It’s not 4,000 pixels deep and full of random statistics about how many pounds of coffee come from Bolivia and the average age of caramel macchiato drinkers in Manhattan. It’s simple, it’s useful, and the images facilitate understanding in a way that scrolling through a text list of recipes would not.

Or else it’s just fun. If you’re going to throw up a bunch of random information about a topic, make sure you’re not trying to say anything theoretically important, like profiling an industry or business trend.  Space.com marked the 45^th anniversary of Star Trek with a timeline marking off highlights and trivia related to the venerable franchise. It doesn’t adhere to every rule of a good infographic, but all it’s trying to do is entertain. And less informative, but dead funny, is the ubiquitous social media Venn diagram.

The takeaway? Don’t be afraid to use infographics—they’re a great tool in our increasingly visual, increasingly attention-deficient culture. But don’t be afraid to think outside the cartoon-filled stat box, either.

The correlation between influence and number of friends, followers, and fans is not perfectly linear, making it that much more difficult to measure. There is, however, a company that’s willing to make an estimated guess on behalf of your business. Klout (and similar companies like PeerIndex) work to pin down your nebulous online impact with a simple number. (Mine’s 36; Lady Gaga’s is 91.)

How they do it

To arrive at that number, Klout does more than just tally up your friends. It measures your online impact by looking at three things: how many people you influence (what it calls your true reach), how much you influence them based on how often others act on your content (your amplification), and how influential those friends and followers are (your network).

Then it ranks you on a basic one-to-Justin Bieber scale (ah, to be young and unstoppably influential again), where the Biebs represents 100—the virtually unattainable perfect score. (He’s the only one thus far to reach Klout perfection; additional props for getting there despite the exponential climb he had to make.)

Know your score

Klout defines influence as the ability to drive action, which is important for businesses that seek not only to reach customers, but also to engage them so they’ll pass it on. Influence is what happens when you sway friends to attend an event, read an article, engage in conversation, or make a purchase.

Your business may claim thousands of friends and followers, but are they actively engaging with your company’s online presence? Other companies may have far fewer friends yet a higher score simply because they create content that their core followers respond to more so than those with lots of friends but limited engagement.

Something else to consider: Consumers still overwhelmingly trust peer and word-of-mouth recommendations over simply viewing advertisements. Knowing where you stand on consumer influence can help you understand where you need to improve and who you should be targeting. For example, are you posting consistent, relevant content? Are followers responding? Have you pinpointed those who evangelize on your behalf? Can you find ways to encourage or benefit from potential evangelists? Letting your true fans do the talking is the ideal social media outcome for businesses—not only is it free, but it’s generally more credible.

Aggregating your online impact helps you gauge your brand influence on social sites. Imagine if you could harness your top influencers to help spread the good word. That’s part of what Klout helps you understand—who you influence who can in turn influence others—creating a word-of-mouth-style conversation rather than an ordinary ad campaign. Audi is doing it, as well as others like Disney and Virgin America.

The flip side

There are the naysayers who claim social scoring is just an online popularity contest. Some have their doubts that word of mouth can be both scalable and measurable. Klout doesn’t. And though I think it’s a pretty tricky thing to measure, I’m glad someone’s gotten the ball rolling.

How does your business measure its impact and influence on social media sites?