This post first appeared in a slightly different form on Junta42. It is reprinted with permission.
I had an amazing conversation last week with an agency that was trying to convince their client to invest in a content marketing program. Just to give you the quick take, the client’s goal was to reach certain consumer segments in the southeastern states. They had a marketing budget of $2.5 million.
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July 10, 2009
Recently we’ve discussed several ways nonprofits can improve their Web communications to increase online donations. Specifically, they should feature individuals’ stories and make sure to put clear explanations of their missions, goals, objectives, and works prominently on their home pages. We’ve also examined one strong example, Mercy Corps.
Frankly, though, Mercy Corps’ Website is so slick as to be almost intimidating, not to the user but to the publications manager hoping to emulate them. So we thought we’d show you another exemplary organization: the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, recognized by Charity Navigator as one of the 10 most consistently well-managed charities in the country.
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Peter Korchnak wrote about a presentation given by Roger Burks, senior writer with the 30-year-old charity Mercy Corps. The gist of it was that good storytelling can motivate action on the part of readers—for Mercy Corps, that usually means getting them to write a check.
The Editorial Advantage has published several posts on the role that the Internet can play in fund-raising. Most charities leave money on the table, according to Website usability expert Jakob Nielsen, because they fail to tell prospective donors what the organization is about and how it uses its money.
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This post originally appeared on the author’s Sustainable Marketing Blog. Abridged and reprinted with permission.
Roger Burks, writer for the development organization Mercy Corps gives a “Better Online Storytelling” presentation whose conclusions apply to nonprofits and businesses alike. His thesis: If the main purpose of your marketing is to compel people to take action, stories are the way to do it.
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This article originally appeared on the author’s blog, www.writingontheweb.com, and is abridged and reprinted with permission.
I know a lot of people trying to figure out how to supplement their incomes with an Internet business. Some of them ask me how to go about it. While that’s a huge endeavor involving many pieces, the key is writing on the Web using content marketing.
What you publish on Web pages works to attract a targeted audience of people who are interested in finding solutions to their problems.
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We reported recently on ways for organizations to attract and engage visitors to their sites, based on studies managed by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
There’s more. First, Pew’s studies document the speed with which the Internet is going mobile. In 2000, fewer than half of American adults owned a cell phone, and fewer than half used the Internet. Nobody had wireless connections. (Users made dial-up connections and stored data on their own computers. Remember?)
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Lee Rainie, a pioneer in Internet research, talked to a select group of Washington, D.C. Web managers recently about what the Pew Internet and American Life Project has learned over the past decade.
Naturally, everyone wanted to know how to snag and hold visitors to their sites-and he told them.But first, he reminded them what a very big place the Web is. Internet users expend as much effort filtering out information they don’t want as finding what they do. One-half use a customizable information filter, like a Google News alert.
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The future of publishing is taking shape on the Web, and it is a mega mall.
The Nieman Marcus of the high end sites is Danilo Black, which designs and produces digital magazines. A co-venture of eminent designers Eduardo Danilo Ruiz of Monterrey, Mexico, and Roger Black of New York, Danilo Black has introduced “dynamic media” for a handful of publications. The showcase is FLYP (pronounced “flip”), which dazzles readers with video, photography, and good writing in an array of subject areas. FLYP has been called the LOOK magazine of the Internet.
FLYP is reportedly put out by fewer than 20 people. They probably could afford to hire more, but according to Danilo Black, the magic in dynamic media is to conceptualize the story concurrently in words and pictures. Not that many people have those skills, although the best print designers have advocated the approach for years. If only more publishers had listened to them, we might see a future for print media.
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Credit for pioneering content marketing generally goes to Deere & Company, which launched its magazine The Furrow in 1896. Over 100 years later, The Furrow is still one of the very best in the field, with a circulation of over 1.5 million worldwide, six editors, and nine regional editions in the United States (three in Canada).
The Furrow’s history offers several important lessons to the modern marketer. First, The Furrow works as a marketing tool in large part because its articles don’t push John Deere products. They offer straight news on trends in agriculture, developments in crop science, and innovations in weed control. Check out, for example, “Cover Crop Craze”(PDF), which surveys what farmers are planting to retain nutrients in their soils after harvest; “Living with less water” (PDF), which explores how they’re adjusting to dwindling water supplies; or “Space-Aged War on Weeds” (PDF), which details how robots, lasers, and computerized maps may come to replace herbicides in the near future.
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Everyone loves a good story. So is it any wonder that the most effective online advertising is the story that includes brand information? It leaves most other types of online advertising in the dust, particularly pop-up ads.
This finding is reported by a company with a vested interest, ARAnet, which develops and distributes articles about clients’ products. But assuming the Opinion Research Corporation did an honest job for ARAnet-and there’s no reason to think otherwise-the results are instructive: Read the rest of this entry »
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