My answer is this: post about that one topic but change the perspective, voice and interactions depending on the platform.

Say your organization is pushing for a piece of legislation on Capitol Hill. You could issue a policy statement and repeat that statement across all platforms. A more effective strategy would be to:

• Post the policy statement on the website. This policy statement will likely have a formal tone and reflect the position of the entire organization.
• Write a press release on the policy statement and send it to your media list. This, too, will have a more formal tone.
• Post links to the policy statement on Twitter, but with differing headlines, highlighting different aspects of your policy. You could also post third party stories, facts and figures that support your position; in this instance, you would be curating relevant content to bolster your position.
• Feature interviews with members and customers talking about why they support (or oppose) the proposed legislation on YouTube and your blog. These interviews will feature member perspective in their own voices.
• Have the CEO write a blog post about why the issue is important to the industry and members. The tone of the blog post should be conversational and personal.

If you are promoting a new publication or report, you could:

• Feature the publication in your online store and what’s new section of your website. These descriptions should be compelling but more formal.
• Post an audio excerpt on your YouTube channel and iTunes. The excerpt could be done by the author.
• Post key findings and highlights to Twitter. The most effective tweets are thought-provoking and compelling.
• Feature the publication on Facebook and sponsor a discussion with the author for a 7-day period. A discussion will allow a dialogue about the issue and foster a different kind of member interaction.

Finally, if you are marketing a convention or event, you could:

• Mail a 4-color brochure with full meeting information.
• Mail and e-mail postcards (e-cards) that showcase the different benefits of attending the event. The tone of these pieces should be urgent and compelling.
• Tweet conference news (number of exhibitors, confirmation of keynote speakers, etc.) and third party news that highlight the importance of the issues to be covered at the event
• You could test different calls to action in e-mails and posts. Some calls to action could focus on benefits, some could inspire fear, while others could discuss opportunities.
• Feature YouTube interviews or presentation highlights from the featured speakers.
• Offer a hosted discussion with the speakers for a 7-day period on Facebook.

Our jobs as marketers are so much harder because we are marketing to multiple generations, there is no one platform that allows us to reach all audiences, and people are motivated by different things. Having a layered messaging strategy that utilizes the capabilities of each platform and features different perspectives and voices will help you reach and connect with your audiences better.

How about you? How are you marketing your products and services? And how does your message or approach change with each platform? What’s working?

Matrix Group recently had the pleasure of helping the Outdoor Foundation launch a new website for one of its initiatives — Outdoor Nation (ON)

Here’s what I absolutely love about the ON website: it’s got a ton of attitude.

The design of the site is bold, almost brash. But the attitude really shines through in the copy. The about page starts off with:

Before the recent youth-led revolutions that are now happening around the world—there was Outdoor Nation. Okay, we probably didn’t influence those uprisings but we do share a belief in the power and passion of young people and our ability to start a revolution.

ON says they “host awesome summits” and “when the ancient Greeks invented social networking, this is what they had in mind!”

In the branding area on the home page, there’s a big pitch to GTFO (get the f*** outside) because “there’s no excuse not to get the fun outside.”

How fun to see a website just brimming with enthusiasm and passion! It’s obvious that ON is targeting a specific demographic and not every organization can get away with this type of attitude and language. But I bet more of us could and should inject our marketing campaigns with fresh design and copy that signals a certain lifestyle and brand.

How about you? What attitude does your website project? Can you name other websites that have a lot of attitude?

I was researching an organization last week and visited their website, blog and social media pages.

So did I decide to “follow” the organization on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  Absolutely not. Since I had already subscribed to the blog RSS feed, I didn’t feel compelled to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.  Why add clutter to my social media streams with information I can already get elsewhere?

I know it’s tempting to set-up pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms and populate them with posts from your blog or press room.  We’re all busy and most communications and marketing departments are stretched thin.  But posting the same information across platforms isn’t doing your organization any good. Why?

• By posting headlines that meet the least common denominator across platforms (probably Twitter, with its 140 character limit), you miss out on functionality offered by the other platforms.  For example, Facebook lets you post longer updates, upload photos and videos, include links, host discussions, etc.
• You don’t give your target audiences a reason to follow or fan you across platforms.  Just imagine this.  If you post complementary but different content across platforms, your clients, prospects and supporters might just follow you on multiple platforms, giving your company an incredible voice with those individuals.
• If you’re posting headlines from your news room, you’re not offering people the authentic, personal voice we’ve come to expect on the social media pages.

Here’s what we do at Matrix Group:

• Our website showcases our products, services, clients, portfolio, news and webinars.
• This blog, which is authored by me, Joanna, the CEO, features my thoughts and commentary on social media, marketing, communications, strategy, customer service, trends and gadgets.  This blog DOES feature website launches at the bottom of each page.
• Our Twitter page showcases our work and clients, but the majority of the tweets are about industry news, trends, how-to articles, and case studies.  Twitter will tell you who we are and what we’re reading.  We’re pretty chatty on Twitter; we post updates multiple times a day.
• Our Facebook page also showcases our work and clients, but we also post photos and updates about happenings in the company, including trainings, parties, fun events, etc.  Facebook will tell you a lot about who we are as a company and our culture.  For example, our staff pumpkin carving contest was featured on our Facebook page.  We’re less chatty on Facebook, just updating a few times a week.
• Our Flickr page is home to our photo library of company events, while our Facebook page has the “best of” photos.
• Our YouTube channel is a work in progress and will soon feature short interviews with senior staff about their areas of expertise, including branding, the user experience, software development and security.

As you can see, our various pages are all designed to showcase our expertise, clients and work but the user experience on each platform has been carefully crafted to take advantage of that platform’s capabilities.  And while the website is clearly a marketing channel for the company, we’re not very sales-y on our social media pages, focusing instead on posting useful and interesting links.

How about you?  How are you creating an integrated use experience across your company’s social media pages?  What’s working for you?

• How Long Should Your Posts Be? We suggest that each post be no more than 4-6 paragraphs.  If your posts are too long, your followers may decide to read them at a later time and not come back.  But you want enough length to be able to cover a topic with enough substance.

• Create Visual Interest. Although followers follow blogs for their content, we believe that your posts will have more impact if they have photos, videos, event basic html formatting.  If nothing else, use formatting to make your content skimmable.

• Align Posts With Your Keyword/SEO Strategy. While I’m a firm believer that you can’t force keywords into headlines, do try to make your titles and opening paragraphs keyword rich.

• Create Compelling Introductions. Think about it.  You make a decision about whether or not to open an e-mail or click on an article in your RSS reader based on the title and opening paragraph.  So make your blog post introductions compelling to encourage clicks.

• Do Allow Comments. We understand that many organizations are reluctant to allow comments on their blogs for fear of obnoxious or irrelevant comments.  On the other hand, social media and blogging are all about user-generated content and user engagement.  Comments are a great way to solicit feedback, find out what critics are saying and respond to them, and let your community advocate for you.  In addition, most blogs (like this one) usually don’t inspire negative reactions, so why not just allow comments directly?  You can always delete offensive or spam-y posts.

• Your Blog Needs a Marketing Plan. It’s simply not true that if you build a blog, they will come.  Not anymore at least, what with the huge volume of sites and blogs online these days.  Be sure to create a promotional strategy for your blog that includes: promotions in traditional outlets, featuring on your Web site and social media pages, commenting on other blogs, and encouraging your members/customers/house e-mail list to follow and subscribe.

• Review Your Usage Reports Regularly. As with anything worth doing, if you don’t measure your progress, how will you know if blogging is worth doing?  Be sure to check your Google Analytics or other usage report package regularly.  And don’t forget your RSS statistics; how many people are signed-up for your RSS feed or e-mail updates?

How about you?  What are your favorite blogging tips? What has worked for you?  And why do you blog?

• What Are Your Goals? The most important thing is to align your blog’s goals with your organization’s goals. Are you trying to engage your target audiences?  Influence?  Foster specific actions?  Your goals should be measurable so that, at the end of the day, you know if your blog is a success.

• Who Should Blog? Shaun and I believe that anyone can blog, but for most organizations, you need people who have a 20,000 foot view of the industry or issues, enjoys writing (or is paired with someone who enjoys writing and is a good writer to boot), and is committed to pumping out content on a regular basis.

• What Should You Blog About? This is the $64,000 question!  Ultimately, you need a mission statement for your blog that guides your content strategy.  We grouped blog posts into the categories.  In practice, most blogs employ a variety of blog post types to keep readers engaged.
  • Hot items/News – These posts tend to cover what’s new in the industry, breaking news, etc.
  • Strategy/Commentary – These posts try to provide a perspective on specific issues and usually aim to persuade readers to take a certain point of view.
  • Trends - These posts report on market trends, trending topics, research and statistics.
  • How-To Guides – These posts are often a combination of text and video and aim to provide users with a practical guide to doing something specific.

• How Often Should You Blog? Shaun and I agreed that you should blog at least once a week; twice a week is gravy.  Blogging once a month, in our opinion, is not often enough to connect with your followers regularly.  On the other hand,  blogging too often (one blog we referenced had a single blogger who posted a dozen times a day) can exhaust your readers.  There are exceptions, of course.  Tech blogs, product review blogs, and magazine blogs often have posts throughout the day, but these blogs often function more like news blogs than thought platforms for organizations or leaders.

Okay, so this is Part One.  In Part Two of Blogging Best Practices, I’ll discuss how to write content that encourages participation, what we think about allowing comments on blogs, and how to promote your blog.

In the meantime, I’d love to know about your blogging success stories.  What has worked for you?  Do you agree or disagree with the best practices that Shaun and I outlined above?

A recent article in Ad Age Daily tries to explain why we should expect to pay more for online subscriptions on the iPad.  According to Ad Age, we should expect to pay $4.99 for an issue of TIME, Popular Science, Maxim, Popular Photography, Sound and Vision, Transworld Skateboarding and Islands because publishers are suffering, there are fewer tablet PC owners, and magazines are still burdened by their huge editorial costs.

But here’s the rub: I purchased an issue of TIME for $4.99 and discovered that the content was the same as my print issue!  C’mon, TIME.  I pay about $0.50 for a print issue, but you want me to pay $4.99 for the same thing!  If you’re going to charge me a whole lot more, I expect a different experience and additional content I can’t get elsewhere.

This reminds me of publishers that put up PDF versions of their print publications and post them to the Web site.  It’s easy to do and gets the job done.  Problem is, the Web is a different medium from print.  Have you ever tried to read a PDF of a print magazine?  Try going from page 2 to page 36 on a Web browser.  Try reading a two-column page that scrolls up and down past two screens on a monitor.    And now companies are putting out software that will take print files and convert them to iPad apps!  Once again, ignoring the usability and user experience capabilities of the device and merely re-purposing content.  How does this create value?

If publishers hope to create valuable new content on the Web and hope that we readers will be willing to pay a premium for it, they need to give us great content and a user experience that matches the capabilities of the device. On the iPad, give me additional content, HD videos, podcasts, interactive apps that take advantage of the iPad touch technology, and on and on.

So, am I really going to ever pay $4.99 for an issue of a magazine in the future?  Realistically?  Probably not.  But I would be willing to pay for another subscription to the same magazine if I got additional value, and not just the prepackaged stuff we’re getting now.

How about you?  What’s your take on publishers putting out content across platforms and devices?

More and more of my clients are making the decision to eliminate their print magazines and newsletters.

All of this makes sense to me.  I get most of my information via e-mail these days, and I’m subscribed to dozens of newsletters via e-mail and RSS.  And in an effort to minimize the “piles” at home, I have canceled all but a few paper subscriptions.

But I got to thinking:  Am I ready to ditch ALL of my paper subscriptions? Am I ready to cancel my print subscriptions to my favorite magazines, namely TIME, Smithsonian and Stanford magazines?

Here’s my concern about all digital publications:  it’s easy to ignore an e-mail newsletter as just another e-mail in the hundreds I get every day.  Consider this:  when my copy of TIME magazine arrives on Saturday, it ends up in my “to read” pile. This pile gets shuffled around from dining room table to coffee table to bedroom side table.  Each issue sticks around until I read or skim it, then toss.  But here’s what happens with some of my e-mail subscriptions:  if I have the time, I read them on the spot.  If I don’t have the time, I may leave them in my inbox or move them to a “read” folder for later reading.  Trouble is, with the flood of e-mail that I get, I rarely get to my e-mail read pile. And sometimes, in an attempt to gain back control of my inbox, I delete a huge group of e-mail newsletters and start over.

Ugh, so much for the future of publishing.  What is the balance that content organizations should try to achieve between print and digital?  And if digital is your only future, how do you ensure delivery and readership? I have some thoughts:

• As with everything, it’s important to consider the audiences for your e-mail alerts and publications.  Who are they?  What are they looking to you to provide?  How do they want to consume the content?
• Is it even an option to mail a publication out to customers, if they so request?  If not, then you better be able to rely on compelling headlines, great writing, a great opt-in list, and good design to get readers to read your e-mails on the spot. (Hmmm… come to think of it, printed pieces need the same things to be successful.)
• Be sure to embed open and clickthrough tracking in your e-mail campaigns. While you’ll never know if people are reading your printed pieces, you can and should benchmark online usage over time using tracking codes.
• Test, test, test. Figure out the best day for sending e-mails to your audience, which topics generate the most interest, and which headlines result in the most traffic.

One final thought.  I think that the iPad (and similar devices) could revolutionize how we consume content.  While I won’t skim an entire issue of TIME on my laptop, I will read or skim an entire issue on my iPad.  Why?  It turns out that the iPad lets me browse online content the same way I read my printed magazines: on the couch or in bed.  And if I get used to this, I will likely cancel my print subscriptions and opt instead for the digital versions of my favorite magazines.  Which I think would be a win for publishers because they will still get subscription revenue AND they can track my reading habits.

How about you?  Have you ditched your print subscriptions? How do you manage the flood of e-mail newsletters coming your way?

Matrix Group work includes the following:

• Designed a blog that reflected Accession Point’s identity, as well as captured Stelfox’s personality
• Incorporated a content management system (CMS) to allow Stelfox to update her content on a frequent basis
• Assisted on content development, ensuring posts were effective and worked well on the Web
• Added a “share” function, allowing visitors to share Stelfox’s blog posts through social networking/bookmarking sites

Visit the Accession Point Blog

One camp says that clients need to have all of their content prepped and ready to go before design on a Web site even begins.  The other camp says this view is not realistic, content is always behind, and clients often need the design to inspire them to update their content.

So which view is right?  I actually think that both sides are right.  But I think the question is misdirected.  The real question is: how do we make content more important, earlier in the Web site design and development process?

Here’s something every Web design and development firm knows:  Content is often the responsibility of the client, it’s often delayed, and it’s the most common reason for delayed launches. A List Apart has a whole section on their site devoted to content strategy.  I love Bronwyn Jones’ article on how good design is not possible without good writing.  And I think Erin Kissane is on to something when she discusses content templates (not design templates) as a way to help subject matter experts put their knowledge down on paper.

Here is what I have learned about content, the importance of content to design, and coaxing good content out of clients:

• It is NOT realistic to expect that all content will be ready and done before design begins. It’s never going to happen, period, end of story.
• Putting lorem ipsum text on designs may be easy, but it doesn’t give the client a feel for how their content will fit into the design.  It’s better to use real content, no matter how dry, in the design comps. Just as some homebuyers can see beyond the blank walls and rooms, others need a home to be staged before they consider buying it.
• Even if the client doesn’t have budget for a copywriter or editor, include a few hours of copywriting in your design budget so that the text used on the designs is punchy and has clear calls to action.  Good copy will inspire clients when they work on the content themselves and will encourage them to bring in assistance.  (And outside help almost always moves the process along.)
• Designers must design all content elements that will be used throughout the site and include them in the designs.  This inspires clients to make their content interesting because they’ll aspire to the designs we present.
• We must include content discussions and reviews during the entire user experience (UX) process (content inventory, navigation development, wireframes, design).  Just as we get together to review designs, we must look at pages of content and get internal staff and client feedback.

How about you?  What content strategies have worked for your organization?  How do you get good content out of your subject matter experts?  And how do you blend your content development and design processes?