How to Commit to Creating Content

JS Talks Digital – Public Sector Marketing Podcast

JSB Talks Digital is a weekly digital marketing and social media podcast hosted by author, strategist, consultant, speaker and trainer Joanne Sweeney-Burke. Each Friday Joanne shares her digital marketing and social media insights from her work as CEO of Digital Training Institute.

SUBSCRIBE HERE

In this episode, I discuss how to create content consistently and how to commit to delivering on time, every time.

Coming up in the podcast:

• In social media news:
  • Snapchat adds new Snap Map feature to help improve discovery and connection
  • Periscope adds Super Hearts, a new way to monetise live-streams
  • Twitter updates its user interface
  • I interview Jill Holtz, co-founder of mykidstime.com and creator of Digital4Sales.com about how to commit to content.
• In shout-outs: three brilliant content creator case studies;
• Ask JSB – I answer questions from listeners;
• In JSB’s column – Content marketing trends and tips; and
• Find out what social media tool saved my working week.

Listen to this week’s podcast:

Social Media News

Snapchat Adds New ‘Snap Map’ Feature to Help Improve Discovery and Connection

Snapchat’s share price rose after it announced the roll-out of their new maps feature, which shows you where your friends are.

---

Snap Map will let Snapchat's 166 million users share their locations with each other.
Click To Tweet

---

To try it out, updated your app and pinch your fingers on the camera screen to open the map.

Snap product designer Jack Brody told Refinery29 about the update.

He says:

“This map isn’t about where am I, it’s about where are my friends and what are they up to? It’s not about figuring out how to get to your destination, but about discovering where you want to go.”

If you’re not comfortable with friends seeing your location, you can stay off the Snap Map with Ghost Mode.

Snap map, maybe an answer to JSB’s getting lost problem!

****************

Periscope Adds ‘Super Hearts’, a New Way to Monetize Live-Streams

---

Periscope has announced ‘Super Hearts’ a new way for live-streamers to monetize their work.
Click To Tweet

---

This new option will enable viewers to purchase hearts which can then be applied to their favourite streams. You will see the Super Hearts floating up at the right of a broadcast and the new hearts stand out and take precedence over the common Periscope heart icons.

Users will be able to purchase packages of hearts for different amounts – starting from $0.99 and ranging up to $100.

It seems broadcasters can also make money of Super Hearts. TechCrunch explains:

“Once broadcasters have $175 worth of stars (around 185,000 stars) accrued, they can apply to join Periscope’s Super Broadcaster program. If admitted, they can cash out their star balance for real money via ACH transfer at the end of each month.”

************

Twitter updates it user interface

Twitter has made a raft of changes to its user interface.

The changes are reflected across multiple platforms, including on desktop at Twitter.com, its mobile application for iOS, Android, TweetDeck and Twitter Lite.

Writing on their blog they say:

“With lots of feedback and ideas from you, we’re refreshing our product too and making it feel lighter, faster, and easier to use.”

The new updates include:

Profile, additional accounts, settings, and privacy – all in one place! A new side navigation menu and fewer tabs at the bottom of our app = less clutter and easier browsing. You told us you loved this change on Android last year and we’re excited to now bring it to iOS.

Links to articles and websites now open in Safari’s viewer in the Twitter app so you can easily access accounts on websites you’re already signed into.

Refined typography to make it more consistent, along with bolder headlines to make it easier to focus on what’s happening. Also, rounded profile photos make it clearer to see what’s being said and who’s saying it.

More intuitive icons make it easier to engage with Tweets – especially if you’re coming to Twitter for the first time. For example, people thought the reply icon, an arrow, meant delete or go back to a previous page. We switched to a speech bubble, a symbol most know and love. We also made the icons lighter for more seamless interaction.

Tweets now update instantly with reply, Retweet, and like counts so you can see conversations as they’re happening – live.

They’ve listed all the changes in detail on their blog!

Interview | Jill Holtz

In today’s show I’m joined by a super digital friend! Jill Holtz is co-founder of MyKidsTime.com, an award-winning website for parents that has grown a large and engaged community of over 600,000 fans on Facebook.

She also created Digital4Sales.com which gives resources and online training courses for businesses who want to target and market to parents.

Jill is a consultant and speaker who loves sharing her passion for content and social media to help businesses drive results.

Tune in to the podcast to hear Jill’s answers to my questions below.

1. Creating quality content is time consuming and time is money in our business. But how has content marketing helped your businesses?
2. What’s your favourite content type and why?
3. What’s your approach to creating content, do you have a process?
4. How do you commit to creating content consistently?
5. Is there a time when a piece of content just didn’t fly, and how did you realise it, and what did you learn?
6. You have two businesses, so do you see a difference in the type of content that gets engagement from both communities?
7. What metrics do you measure to assess the success or otherwise of a piece of content?
8. What tools are in your content marketing toolbox? (Name 1-3 tools)
9. What are your content aspirations – what big content projects would you like to deliver on for your businesses?
10. Finally, where can we find you online?

Ask JSB

Ask JSB brings the voices of my listeners onto the show. So you now have an opportunity to ask me a question, have it aired on the podcast and I will respond.

If you want to hear your voice on JSB Talks Digital simply log on to www.digitaltraining.ie/askjsb and you might find yourself and your question on air!

This week’s question is from Robert Herdman’s:

How can I leverage social media to promote my podcast?

Tune in to the podcast to hear my response.

Shout-Outs: My Favourite Content Creators

In this part of the show I give shout-outs to brands, organizations or individuals whose work online is remarkable and worth talking about.

In this weeks’ show I’m giving a nod to three of my favourite content creators – a podcaster, a vlogger and a blogger!

****************

Amy Porterfield – Podcaster

When I’m not listening to my own podcast, I’m usually listening to Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy podcast.

Featuring insights from A-List online marketing experts as well as mini marketing masterclasses and step-by-step guides, each episode is designed to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for starting, scaling and automating your online business.

Amy says her specialty is “getting into the online trenches with you”. So if you want to dig deep on a topic, be sure to subscribe to Amy’s podcast on iTunes or you can subscribe for email updates when a show goes live.

She currently has over 160 episodes on her website at: http://www.amyporterfield.com

*************

Roberto Blake – YouTuber

Roberto Blake is a creative entrepreneur helping individuals and businesses develop engaging brands and content and a former guest on this podcast, on episode 31.

He has developed an amazing YouTube channel and has built a community around his content of almost 250,000 subscribers.

Roberto is very passionate about creating consistent content. In fact he says that you are not really a YouTuber until you vlog once a week! I am currently vlogging once a month, so my challenge is to increase that to weekly! I’ve got my new Canon M3 so no more excuses!

I highly recommend you subscribe to Roberto’s channel at: youtube.com/user/robertoblake2

**********

Neil Patel – Blogger

Neil Patel is a New York Times best-selling author. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies.

Now you don’t get those accolades unless you produce quality content consistently!

Neil was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

So you must subscribe to his blog at neilpatel.com/blog

JSB’s Column | Content Marketing Trends and Tips

In today’s column, I share my top content marketing tips and 2017 content marketing trends.

So if you want to be a master content marketer just like JSB, then keep listening!

[bcct tweet=”Content marketing is one of the key elements of digital marketing”]

It is my most trusted tactic for generating qualified leads for my business, and is a fail-safe approach in my opinion.

Let me give you a valuable piece of advice around developing your content calendar and committing to consistency!

Think about content in two ways:

• Branded content, promoting your product or service;
• Customer content, focusing on the needs of your audience.

I would also advise to prioritise quality content over the quantity of content you publish. You need to think about how the content you produce, impacts the overall experience a person has with your company or organization.

---

Prioritise quality content over the quantity of content you publish.
Click To Tweet

---

2017 Content Marketing Statistics and Trends

Point Visible have put together a really useful infographic charting the 2017 content marketing statistics and trends. Here’s my top takeaways from that report.

• Long form blog posts generate 9x more leads than short-form blog posts.
• The average reader only spends 37 seconds reading a blog post.
• 40% of marketers say blogging is their #1 most important content strategy.
• 68% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after consuming content from it.
• 70% of people would rather learn about a company through an article rather than an advert.
• Four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.
• Over 90% of marketers said they used visual content in more than 50% of the articles they published.
• Did you know the top two outsourced content marketing activities are writing and design?
• 29% of marketers systematically reuse and repurpose content.
• 75% of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing.
• Six is the average number of channels B2B marketers use to distribute content.
• 69% of companies report their video marketing budget is increasing.

And here are some important trends to watch out for:

• At least 309 million people or 16% of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users are blocking ads on the mobile web, and this will increase.
• Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content.
• In 2017 more marketers will launch targeted e-newsletters as the key method to grow audiences.

So what are the typical word count for blog posts? According to the WritePractice.com blog, your word count should depend on what outcome you want from your blog posts – is it social shares, website traffic, comments or search engine visbility? I’ve got the breakdown on the blog associated with this podcast so jump over to digitaltraining.ie to find out more!

75-300 words. Super-short posts are best for generating discussion. They rarely get many shares on social media, and they’re horrible for SEO, but if you want a lot of comments, write short posts!

300-600 words. The standard blogging length, recommended by many “expert” bloggers. Good middle-ground for social shares and comments. Too short to gain much authority or search engine-love.

750 words. This is the standard length for professional journalism, especially newspapers. I find that it’s pretty good for getting links from other bloggers and shares on social media.

1000-1500 words. You’ll ge1t fewer comments at this length but a lot more shares on social media, especially if you’ve followed the advice above and written a post that actually solves someone’s problem. That being said, I’ve written posts this long and gotten 100+ comments, so it really depends on the topic and your audience.

2,450 words. The highest ranking articles on Google are most often 2,450 words. If you want to rank well on search engines (and thus get thousands of new readers per month), this is the best length to write. However, make sure you write about a topic that people are actually searching for. It would be a shame two write a book-length blog post on a topic no one ever searches for!

To paraphrase up: longer is usually better for social shares and SEO whereas shorter is usually better for getting more comments.

Find out How to Master Content Marketing in 10 Steps in my blog post on the topic.

Content Marketing Statistics Infographic is provided by Point Visible

Social Media Tool of the Week: Trendspottr

Do you want your content to be ahead of the curve? Trendspottr lets you tap into emerging trends on social media, giving you early signals about hot topics, popular hashtags, and rising influencers.

It also gives you positive and negative sentiment measurements for each trend it identifies, right down to specific emotions such as fear or excitement.

With Trendspottr, you can get in at the start of trends instead of jumping on bandwagons that have already passed.

To trial it log onto http://trendspottr.com

As a side note, Curata have created a super infographic of the ultimate content marketing tool list.

I love feedback

I’d love to know what you think about this episode. So please get in touch by commenting below or tweet me @tweetsbyJSB or send me a snap to jsbsnaps.

Listen: JSB Talks Digital | Episode #54

I would like to thank Eoghan Murphy aka The Galway Gamer for producing my podcast series and to Flirt FM on the campus of NUI, Galway where I am based for the use of their studio.