Content marketing tools and training.
My birthday was on Wednesday (I turned 17 and my dad says I can drive his car to the prom – SCORE!), and I got about fifty billion of those little Facebook notifications of people writing on my wall to say Happy Birthday. Got a ton of tweets saying the same. And now I think I get it. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t any kind of a genius who recognized the need for a comprehensive network of interpersonal connections.
Clearly he was just a guy whose birthday was perpetually forgotten.
One unfailing characteristic of online business is The Latest Bandwagon that’s perpetually rolling down the road toward us.
It’s usually some kind of new, sexy, easy, fast, 1-2-3 fad that will ensure you’re bathing in champagne by 10 o’clock tonight.
As you may well know, a strategic fad fetish can be a very expensive habit, both monetarily and psychologically.
How is it possible that a string of fake pearls, purchased at Bergdorf Goodman for about $25, eventually sold at auction for $211,000?
Well, it certainly helps that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy had worn this particular necklace in almost every historical photograph featuring herself and her husband President John F. Kennedy.
As Lynda Resnick, the woman who later bought the pearls interestingly said, the pearls had become “the icon of the icon.”
But they were still cheap baubles on a string, a handful of glass beads and nothing more.
Were they really worth that much just because Jackie had worn them?
When I was preparing for my panel earlier this month at South by Southwest, I thought a lot about what I wanted the audience to take away.
Of course, there’s always the First Rule of Copyblogger, which I preach to anyone who will listen. But telling people “don’t publish content that sucks” tends to need a little more explanation if it’s going to be helpful.
So what could I give content marketing newbies that would give them the right foundation? And how could I help content marketing veterans who weren’t finding the success they wanted? Was there a “formula” they could use that would start them on the right foot?
Ever wonder why some businesses get press and some don’t? Getting a mainstream media outlet to pay attention to your business seems like an impossible-to-solve mystery.
You might see your competitors spouting a diatribe that you know for a fact is wrong, or that you could explain better.
“Why did they interview that guy instead of me?” you wonder.
Actually, it’s not you. 99 times out of 100, it’s not your qualifications, your knowledge, or your ability.
It’s your approach.
I remember going to a workshop in 2003.
The price of the workshop was $8,000. Plus there was overseas travel involved. And yes, the usual accommodation and food expenses.
In all it was going to cost me almost $12,000 to get to this one workshop.
And I made the decision on the basis of a single bullet.
No, it wasn’t the kind of bullet you see in the image of this post. What kind of bullet am I talking about?
