COMING AT YOU WEEK OF 8.31.21
Useful news from this week
ONE
If you use Instagram Story swipe-up links, be prepared for a shift. As of yesterday Instagram is rolling out the use of a link sticker instead of the swipe-up to a link in stories. This update won’t change who qualifies to use links (which are verified accounts and those who meet the Instagram follower threshold).
TWO
The Mountain Dew – Flamin’ Hot Cheeto collab is getting some serious hype. Yes, it’s hot cheeto soda. Just thought you ought to know (HP reference anyone?).
THREE
Snapchat is upgrading a feature called Scan and placing it more prominently within the app. The scan feature identifies objects in your photo, like a breed of dog or a style of clothing. This means that Snapchat is entering the visual search engine game along with Google Lenses and Pinterest’s visual search.
Key for us marketers: part of Scan includes a shopping feature that lets users upload clothing and search similar items for sale.
FOUR
TikTok made some updates for shopping as well. They said, “Shopify merchants with a TikTok For Business account will soon be able to add a shopping tab to their TikTok profiles and sync their product catalogues to create a mini-storefront that links directly to their online store for checkout.”
Interview with Sonja Jacob
4 steps to make a content strategy that produces converting content
What’s that? You don’t want to risk looking like a fool without a content strategy? But you wanna hear advice from an expert about how to get started building one? Well sweet, we’ve got you covered. Sonja Jacob has over 13 years of experience writing 🔥 content for B2B companies. Right now she’s a part of the Facebook Incorporation as the head of global content strategy for their WhatsApp API and she hosts the marketing podcast, First Person.
Here’s her advice about getting started on a content strategy.
NUMERO UNO: Map out your organization’s marketing and sales funnel.
Sonja told us over and over again how important it is to know how someone goes from not knowing about your company to buying your offering (the funnel). Where do the most people get stuck? What’s working well? And of course, what role is content playing? She recommends you talk to a few product managers and members of your sales team to help you really understand this.
NUMERO DOS: Define what ‘content’ means for your team.
Sonja said, “I think what’s really critical no matter where you’re at in your career, but particularly in the beginning, is just figuring out ‘What does content mean?’ And, ‘What does it do at your specific company?’”
We think it’d be a good idea to look closely at the funnel when you’re defining content for your team. It might also help to define by negation, as in define content by “showing what it is not.” That might look like: “sales decks, press releases, and internal email announcements are not marketing content.”
Sonja’s main point to this technique is, “If you’re doing basically everything, when it comes to content, it’s really, really tough to move the needle in any of those areas.”
NUMERO TRES: Audit your company’s funnel and decide content priorities.
Story time. Sonja once worked for a startup who hired her to create enablement and top-of-funnel content. They said they needed to let people know what they were doing and why they were doing it. She thought, “Sure. Okay. That seems reasonable.”
But as she started to dig into the quantity of leads, and the rate at which they were converting, she realized that there was just this glut of leads. There were all these folks who were hand raisers and met the criteria for having a salesperson reach out to them, but nobody was converting after that.
Clearly, they needed additional details to make a sale happen. So instead of going with the original plan for top-of-funnel content, she started creating things like product guides, one sheeters, and content with details related to the nuts and bolts of how the product functioned.
The moral of the story: auditing the funnel will show you the type of content to prioritize in order to give the biggest lift to your company.
NUMERO CUATRO: Don’t forget to distribute.
Ok, real quick before you run off to start strategizing. Don’t forget distribution! Sonja’s take is: “I would much rather create, you know, three pieces of well-distributed content than 30 pieces of content that really no one knows.” So if you plan for good distribution, then you can dial down the amount of content you need to create. Which, to us, seems like a spot-on idea.
Alright, take that content by the horns this week!
A weird image to remind you of some solid wisdom