Content Marketing - The Social Media Professor

Performance Marketing and Google Tag Manager with Jon Rognerud

April 11, 2019 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Jon Rognerud, Chapman University, Niklas Myhr, Performance Marketing — With Jon Rognerud on the Attallah Piazza at Chapman University

Students in my Digital Marketing class got a great opportunity to learn about performance marketing with Google Tag Manager when Jon Rognerud, Founder and CEO of Chaosmap.com came to Chapman University for an engaging guest lecture.

Jon is a fellow Scandinavian who left his homeland of Norway to make it in the US as a musician. While he still plays jazz, Jon Rognerud turned to technology to make a living. He got into software and web development at online giants such as Yahoo! and eventually branched out on his own entrepreneurial journey.

Work on Copywriting before setting up your Digital Marketing

Jon Rognerud founded Chaosmap.com when he discovered that many businesses don't have their digital backends set up appropriately. Worse, he often finds that businesses don't even know what message they have, what market they are serving, and what offer they are going to present. Absent clarity in these areas, no technology solution can save you.

To work on your messaging, Jon Rognerud told my students to go back and read the direct marketing classic Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz to learn some fundamentals of great copywriting.

While Breakthrough Advertising was published the same year as The Beatles came out with its Revolver album (1966), Jon argues that its principles are still highly relevant in today's digital era and can help you set up your online presence in a more effective manner.

Content Marketing to Build Audiences

The main problem Jon sees is that businesses prematurely rush to generate traffic to online sales pages when they instead could be directing traffic to valuable, educational resources to more patiently build trust and nurture their prospects.

ABA = Always Build Audiences!
– Jon Rognerud

In this regard, Jon Rognerud has also been inspired by thought leaders in content marketing and he referenced another former guest speaker in my class, Mr. Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Adviser of the Content Marketing Institute.

The key is to not hard sell to an unwilling audience but rather to provide a good customer experience by offering content people want when they want it in the format they want it.

Jon Rognerud shared some inspirational tips on how to consistently create content and before class, I set him up in a library study room so he could create his daily podcast episode that was simulcast live out on Facebook and YouTube. Subscribe to his podcast here or check out the YouTube version of his Chapman episode below:

Clear Your Digital Chaos with Google Tag Manager

When Jon Rognerud audits the backend of clients' websites, he often encounters a jumbled mess of different code snippets from a large number of applications analyzing various aspects of online performance. This can slow down your website due to the high number of different scripts that needs to run every time someone enters your website.

Each individual tool also offers only a very limited view of overall performance of your online presence. Furthermore, this type of setup is often cumbersome to maintain and risk having scripts that are losing connection when you update your website, etc.

In 2012, Google came out with a solution to this problem in the form of Google Tag Manager and Jon Rognerud finds it surprising that most businesses he encounters are not using it yet. To him, it is simply a no-brainer as Google Tag Manager provides a one-stop shopping solution for measuring and analyzing your digital marketing performance.

Simply put, you can input the identifiers and scripts from a number of different applications into Google Tag Manager and then keep them all up to date inside one interface. Examples of scripts that Jon highlighted that could be unified into Google Tag Manager include Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Email Marketing.

Jon Rognerud on his Chapman Experience

Before leaving the Chapman campus, I thanked Jon Rognerud and asked him to summarize what he had been sharing with my Digital Marketing students. Here is what he had to say:

Jon Rognerud on his Chapman University Experience

The Fire Funnel Process by John Lee Dumas at Youpreneur Summit

November 11, 2017 by Niklas Myhr 8 Comments

The opening keynote speaker at the inaugural Youpreneur Summit John Lee Dumas, founder of the popular Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast, shared his Fire Funnel process for digital entrepreneurs. John started out by suggesting that you start with a “Funnel Up Process” to understand who you are going to serve before you design your sales of your “Funnel Down Funnel”.

The Funnel Up process

The Idea. What is your big idea that you want to build upon.
The Niche. Get that initial momentum is key, not easy, but once you get it, you can get things going. Then you can expand your scope. Rather than being Mr or Mrs Social Media of London, you'd be better off helping female dentists in Soho get one new client via Facebook Ads.
The Avatar. Who is that perfect customer, the listener to your podcast, the reader of your blog. Get to know that person in and out and try to identify their struggles.
The Medium of Choice. Blogging, podcasting, video, etc. Which one should you focus on?
The Content Creation. You need a system to setup to make sure you have a process to create great content on a regular basis.
The Repurpose. Once you have a good platform you can find content that can be used on other platforms as well. John uses Repurpose.io to get his podcast episodes elsewhere.
The Growth. How can you help others discover you.
The Audience Engagement. He gets millions of listens of his podcast each month which is absolutely absurd to him but he doesn't want to forget about doing things that don't scale. Don't be scared of having a one-on-one conversation. Yes, they can be time-consuming but that is where the gold is. You can learn about what works and doesn't and develop relationships.
The Solution. How can you help solve their problem and serve them. If you keep this in mind from the start, you will focus on generating the right leads and nurture them from the start.

The Funnel Down Process

Once you have gone through the Funnel Up process, you better know how you can help your audience and then you can design your Funnel Down Process to serve them.

Your lead generation. Now you know who to target.
Your Call to Action. Have a specific thing you want them to do.
Your Audience's Email Exchange.
Your Solution Delivery.
Your Audience Consumes.
Your Next CTA.
Live Training. Here John Lee Dumas emphasized the power of live webinars which is where he has made millions.
Live Q&A. Perhaps there is just one remaining obstacle remaining for someone to buy and if you make yourself available live, you can have it resolved right then and there.
Offer. Provide an offer that is supremely valuable for your audience.
Monetize.

The Fire Funnel by EO Fire

Finally, John Lee Dumas shared how he built an empire around daily podcasts with interviews of entrepreneurs. Check out Entrepreneurs on Fire or EO Fire and enjoy the show! John's final perspective he shared that sums up much of his perspective was a quote by Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

Content Constipation Unleashed

March 1, 2017 by Niklas Myhr 2 Comments

Are you publishing content every day? Are you posting something of value online every day? My estimate is that most would answer no to both of these questions. Still, I would submit that more of us are capable of publishing more regularly than we are today without necessarily sacrificing “quality” however that is defined.

When I studied Quality Engineering and Management at Linköping University in Sweden, Professor Bo Bergman instilled in us that quality is achieved when the product or service being produced is doing what it was designed to do. That is, high quality is not necessarily the same thing as something very significant or groundbreaking, it could at times merely be that a small widget came out the way it was supposed to.

Ultimately, the quality is in the eye of the consumer of whatever is being produced and if it fulfills a need for them, the job can be considered well done. In the case of content being produced for social media and websites, I think that there is room for both content nuggets and significant pieces of work. For example, some content could be in written form such as a short post on Facebook, and sometimes, it could be a longer blog post or thoughtful piece of text on Medium or LinkedIn. A video could be a 30-second thought that you share with your followers from your smartphone and at other times, you could publish a longer and more highly produced video.

Today, March 1, a prominent Swedish blogger Fredrik Wass is starting a challenge for the sixth consecutive year called #blogg100 to see if people can commit to and deliver on the objective of publishing some form of content daily for 100 consecutive days. One of the objectives is to stir up some life in dormant blogs and topics could be anything. The content does not have to be limited to blog posts but can be video or some other form of social media update as long as they are using the #blogg100 tag. Blog in Swedish is using two g's for blogg in case you wonder… Anyway, are you up for the challenge (sign up form in Swedish in case you would like to confuse Fredrik with an international submission)? This is my first entry, 99 to go 🙂

The Unsexy Entrepreneur Bares it all

November 28, 2016 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

“Lauren, why aren't you on Twitter? You are missing the boat, it's amazing!” That is the question my friend Mitch Jackson asked his daughter's in-home ACT & SAT tutor Lauren Gaggioli. Lauren took action, became obsessed with digital entrepreneurship after finding the podcasts of the likes of Pat Flynn talking about developing passive income and Michael Hyatt on how to build your online platform.

She drove 7,000 miles a year and worked every day between 3 and 10 pm and never saw her husband. Even if she loved tutoring students and saw great results such as with Mitch's daughter A.J. she decided that this had to stop and she decided to move her business online. First, she developed a course teaching students how to prepare for the ACT & SAT tests. However, she had not primed the pump and found only crickets after launching her online course. If you build it, customers will not necessarily come was the hard lesson.

Then Lauren realized she had to build an audience and trust first and hence her first podcast, The College Admissions Checklist was born. This podcast served as a dual affinity builder by attracting both parents and college counsellors which helped her grow her clientele. Parents, usually moms, wanting to help their kids listened and wanted more of Lauren's help and then she could refer them to her online training. College counselors she developed relationships with by interviewing them on the podcast and in return they often refer business to Lauren as they learn that she knows her stuff.

She found it curious how the big companies in the test prep space had not gotten a handle on good content marketing to build trust and the podcasts they had tried, they had abandoned. This way, Lauren could fill a void in the marketplace and it was more important to get it going rather than making it perfect.

After podcasting for a while, she began networking more and more with other podcasters and famous Walt Disney World Radio show how Lou Mongello has become sort of a mentor for Lauren. Eventually, she was invited to the prestigious Social Media Marketing World to speak on a podcasting panel chaired by Lou Mongello and I personally had the pleasure of attending live when Lauren ruled the show flanked by Chris Ducker and Pat Flynn.

By moving her training to an online course, she freed up her brainspace to focus on digital entrepreneurship. Now she actually has found a new outlet for her thoughts in this arena as she has launched “The Unsexy Side Podcast” where she shares the behind the scenes perspectives of what entrepreneurial life is really like and it is not always a walk the park. This authenticity is key to the organic and successful growth of the brand of Lauren Gaggioli and I can now attest she is a great public speaker too as my social media marketing class at Chapman University stayed engaged for the full hour and were inspired by her genuine enthusiasm and I am too excited to stay connected and follow her next moves on and offline!

Social Content Marketing Talk and Master Class in Gothenburg

January 26, 2016 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Niklas Myhr, Social Content Marketing keynote, KNTNT — Niklas Myhr keynote on Social Content Marketing at KNTNT

Enjoyed quite the whirlwind day yesterday when I paid a visit to Gothenburg on Sweden’s “left coast” and had a busy program together with my good friends and hospitable local hosts Pia and Thomas of KNTNT. Under the heading Social Content Marketing, I spoke to a full house of 180 attendees for a breakfast talk and then taught a full-day Content Marketing Master Class to a high-caliber group of marketing communications managers, consultants, and executives.

Digital Success Principles with Frida Boisen

I was also very pleased that we were able to bring in two intriguing guest appearances. Leading Swedish social media expert Frida Boisen shared perspectives on how content can catch fire on social media and she particularly stressed the importance of bringing in the emotional element of communication for people to care. This and more can be found in her best-selling book Digital Succé, check it out 🙂

Content Marketing Success with Mark W Schaefer

Mark Schaefer, Content Marketing Master Class, KNTNT, Gothenburg, Niklas Myhr — Mark Schaefer guest in Content Marketing Master Class

In the afternoon Swedish time, international content marketing thought leader Mark W. Schaefer joined us for a virtual session from Knoxville, Tennessee, during which he shared the thesis he presents in his groundbreaking book The Content Code. He stressed the importance of nurturing your so-called Alpha Audience, the relatively few followers you have who are regularly sharing your content. In fact, Mark Schaefer suggests that may be doomed if you do not start worrying more about taking good care of these ambassadors as their trust and ambassadorship may be the most valuable asset you have as competition for attention will only get worse. He cited an estimate that by year 2020, the amount of content will go up another five times from today's already crowded web.

Social Media Marketing vs. Content Marketing

KNTNT Radio podcast, Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, Niklas Myhr — KNTNT Radio podcast interview by Thomas Barregren and Pia Tegborg

It is not surprising that it is challenging to discuss the interrelationship between social media marketing and content marketing as both terms are relatively undefined and are also undergoing changes in terms of how they are understood over time. That being said, social media marketing encompasses communications across a wide variety of social networks and stresses the interactive nature of communications amongst a group of people whereas content marketing takes as its point of departure a piece of content that should fulfill a number of criteria such as adding value and driving profitable customer action, albeit indirectly. This is the definition of content marketing that I used in my presentation:

“Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

– Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute

Content Marketers becoming Professors

One aspect of content marketing that many struggle with is the extent to which they can talk about their own products and solutions in their content. While I am not going so far as saying that you are not allowed to mention your own product in your content marketing, the most effective content marketers seem to stay away from it to the largest extent possible. As a marketing professor, I have noted how content marketers are communicating and behaving more and more as professors these days as they are adding value to prospective and existing customers by teaching them ways to solve their problems irrespective of specific product purchases. It is best illustrated by the quote by Jon Ferrara of Nimble when he said:

If you teach people to fish, they’ll figure out you sell fishing poles.

– Jon Ferrara

During the day, I covered four areas in which social media marketing and content marketing are interdependent and discussed how each can benefit from the other:

Social Content Marketing

Listening on Social Media for Content Marketing Ideas. What are the questions they ask on social media? On what platforms do they search for information? What are their frustrations?
Connecting to an audience suitable to your business using relevant content. By offering content that is particularly valuable to your target market, you can both attract the right type of audience to connect with you and identify themselves such as giving you their email address at the same time as you may even repel the wrong type of audience that sees little interest in the content that you offer.
With recent Chapman University grad Filip Westlander, his girlfriend Josefine Berglund, and my cousin Per Ericson

Engaging. How can you get your followers to not only consume but also share your content on their social media platforms?
Creating. How can you motivate your followers to contribute their content for you to use on your platforms?

So, have you wondered about the relationship between social media marketing and content marketing? I am curious to learn about your thoughts and experiences so please let me know in the comments below!

Frida Boisen guest in Content Marketing Master Class, KNTNT, Niklas Myhr — Frida Boisen's guest lecture during my Content Marketing Master Class

The Myhr Family, Piteå, Sweden, KNTNT, Niklas Myhr — The Myhr Family back in the Piteå days (me with blue pants)

With KNTNT team Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, Fabian Sörqvist — Thanks to the KNTNT team of Thomas Barregren, Pia Tegborg, and Fabian Sörqvist

Video Content Marketing with Bryan Elliott

April 13, 2015 by Niklas Myhr 2 Comments

Had the pleasure of having Bryan Elliott of BehindtheBrandTV back as a guest speaker in my Internet/Social Media Marketing class at Chapman University. Bryan has previously shared his story with my classes of how he built up a community around actions sports with partners, advertisers, and marketers evolving into the LinkedOC network for which I am proud to serve as an Advisory Board Member. This time, Bryan Elliott focused on video marketing as a form of content marketing and he thought that everyone should have their own YouTube channel and he pointed out that some people are really killing it on YouTube.

Publishing videos on YouTube is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and when people start viewing and sharing your videos, that will serve as social proof going forward. But has the train already left the station? No, Bryan Elliott still sees great opportunities with video marketing and finds it surprising that not more people are on board yet in spite of YouTube having been around for a decade. He thinks people are held back because they don't think they have the equipment needed, know what to say, or they feel uncomfortable seeing or hearing themselves on a video.

“If you didn't already start publishing videos on YouTube, today is the best time to get started! In a sea of blogs, etc, if a video doesn't exist for a particular search, you can bubble straight to the top of that category as Google wants to promote YouTube videos for searches.” – Bryan Elliott

The fact that many people and brands are not yet producing videos, makes the opportunity even greater for those who make the most of it. YouTube videos could even be referred to as a guerilla tactic. In terms of being found, every word spoken on that video gets indexed and transcribed by the Google robots.

Bryan Elliott jumped on the video marketing train himself and decided to produce high-caliber interviews with successful entrepreneurs and have featured celebrities such as Seth Godin, Marc Cuban, Tim Ferriss, Lewis Howes, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk on his show BehindtheBrand.tv. See below for one such interview with Seth Godin:

His content is something that he uses for content marketing purposes and syndicates it with major publications such as Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, etc, not asking for much more than exposure himself. This way, he is getting millions of views of his content each month but the true value for him is that by providing value to the many, he will also get fruits falling over the fence in his lap in the form of opportunities for his video production company. Every day, he is getting between 20 and 50 pitches for working with him. While most proposals are not very worthwhile to pursue, he also gets about five great opportunities for collaborative projects each day such as when Jessica Biel's PR people called him rather than the other way around.

The most valuable advice Bryan Elliott has received was from Seth Godin who told him that the thing that is lacking most is initiative. The thing with initiative is that noone is giving it to you. You have to take it yourself. People are waiting to be picked but Prince Charming is not coming. You can hold your breath and wait your whole life. Therefore, Bryan really pushed my students to really start developing their online platforms and include video in such initiatives to stand out as they will try getting a job.

Said and done, would be honored if you'd be amongst my first subscribers over at Myhr.tv 🙂

LIVE on #Periscope: At #ChapmanU talking video marketing https://t.co/npPnEeKEiw

— Bryan Elliott (@BryanElliott) April 13, 2015

6 Steps to a Content Marketing Strategy with Joe Pulizzi

March 26, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Today at Social Media Marketing World 2015 where I am spending Spring Break with 25 of my Chapman University students as volunteers, Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute launched his brand new keynote presentation on content marketing here are some highlights. First, he stressed that he was continually amazed over the fact that the majority of companies are still not having a content marketing strategy in place. Amazing to him as it is both effective and not that difficult to do. So, if you want to get started, he suggested the following six-step process:

Sweet Spot. How can you find the right balance between what you are good at and what the market needs. You can niche down really small like a guy who has a big following for his radio show on backyard poultry! What was encouraging to me as a social media professor is that he really emphasized the need for you to also have a passion for teaching. You need to demonstrate your expertise to your community.
Content Tilt. While finding your sweet spot in step 1 is necessary, it is not sufficient as you still need to provide a story with a twist to motivate people to follow you and not someone else's content on the same topic. For example, nobody would care if you release one of ten million SEO ebooks unless you provide some compelling reason for reading yours. One way of doing that is to connect your story to something that is new or current and in this regard, he finds that Google Trends is a very underutilized tool. In the end, you should define your content marketing strategy with the following three elements: (1) core target audience; (2) what will be delivered; and, (3) the outcome for the audience.
Niklas Myhr, Joe Pulizzi, Larry Benet, and Wes Schaeffer before Joe's talk

Building the Base. Once you have defined your content marketing strategy, you essentially should embark on the age-old process of publishing. Here, Joe Pulizzi really stressed the need to be focused at first. Specifically, he suggested that you start with only one content type on one main platform on which you consitently deliver high quality.
Harvesting the audience. The key here is to not only provide valuable content but also to harvest the audience by getting them to subscribe to your email list. You should focus on number of new subscribers as a key metric and he was critical of Starbuck's major investment in building communities on Facebook, etc, as these communities are outside of your direct control. To build your base, he also shared how Content Marketing Institute systematically built their following by identifying and leveraging relationships with influencers in their field and how they gradually got them to begin sharing the content of Content Marketing Institute.
Diversification. Again, Joe Pulizzi doesn't believe that you should start out on too many platforms and media types at once but once you have acheived some traction, he believes that you should consider complementary avenues to add value to your audience whether it would be through more online platforms, books, or in-person events, etc. Joe Pulizzi predicted that we will see a lot of mergers and acquisitions as some are good at building an audience while others are better at monetizing content. For example, HubSpot just bought Agency Post.
Monetization. Patience is needed and Joe Pulizzi has seen that some of the most successful content marketers don't even try to monetize in any way until they have built a really strong and loyal following which could take a couple of years to achieve. However, once you have a community developed, then you will likely find multiple ways in which you can serve your customer base with products and services you didn't even anticipate upfront but have discovered along the way as you got to know your community better.

In conclusion, Joe Pulizzi suggests you create a content marketing plan and focus everything on building a loyal audience. Also, you really have to find out where you have a special story to tell in order to break through the clutter of numerous offerings available from others. So, good luck with your content marketing strategies!

Please see below for the full slide set of Joe Pulizzi's presentation.

6 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy – #SMMW15 from Joe Pulizzi

Disclosure: Some of the links on this website are so-called “affiliate links” but please note that I only recommend products or services that I either use to satisfaction personally or am confident will add value to my readers based on endorsements by people I trust.

The Content Marketing Make-or-Buy Decision

March 5, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

This week's student question from Alex Garrett:

I really enjoyed your lecture today and had one question in particular. It seems to me that when a company chooses to build a content marketing strategy, they're now entering a market in which they might not know much about; such as writing, blogging, social media, etc. Are there companies that specialize in selling content to these businesses whose resources are already spread thin?

My answer:

Hi Alex! Regarding your question, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it may not be a new “market” per se that they are entering, rather they would be serving their very own market with useful information, insights, resources, etc, but in a new way, focusing on the problems and needs of their customers rather than directly offering them your product or service to resolve those problems.

Furthermore, the delivery or distribution of content marketing often involves new media that the company perhaps could be unaccustomed to and perhaps it is not the right thing for every company to become experts in managing say a YouTube channel. For this part, there definitely is a plethora of firms serving companies to help them package and distribute various bits and pieces of content pieces that is deemed relevant to the overall content marketing strategy.

Some firms also outsource the origination of relevant ideas for content marketing and this is the area in which a company risks losing its authenticity. The content could become too bland and boilerplate if it is literally created or written by someone without in-depth experience and insights about the lives of the target market. You need insights into the needs of the customers that you are aiming to serve.

A combination of the two can be the ideal when a company takes an active part of the content creation and ideation process in close collaboration with an outside partner. Once the content is created, the media part involving distribution through various channels can be outsourced more readily.

Then again, when consumers respond to different content pieces with quieries, they would expect knowledgeable answers in conversations that follow that may again require the involvement of the company behind the content marketing efforts, not its external partner unless the latter has been properly initiated and trained.

Overall, I foresee a still growing opportunity in helping companies with various functions related to content marketing and I am looking forward to seeing the emergence of your very own content marketing agency one day!