Why Your Content Must Spring Legs and Walk Around the

What Business Are You In?
The world is a noisy place. Our job as Internet marketers is to win the battle for customer hearts and minds. Great products are the table stakes of this new Internet marketing game. The ante is knowing how to use content as a knife to cut through the chaos and clutter of contemporary marketing.

Storytelling is a very important tactic. Storytelling isn’t hidden anymore. The secret is out. Everyone is hearing about the importance of telling great stories. Many talk the storytelling and viral content talk, but few walk the walk. My friend Jan L. Gordon, Curatti, talks and walks new marketing in magical ways. Jan’s approach is to share, explain, cajole and coax knowledge from key ideas such as content curation. Her tools are words and images, images and words.

Below, I’ve copied a recent important example from Jan’s Curation, Social Business and Beyond Scoop.it. I will weigh in tomorrow. If you don’t already follow Jan, you should:

Jan L Gordon on Scoop.it

@Janlgordon on Twitter

Jan Gordon on Linkedin.

Quoted from Jan’s Scoop:

This piece [by Chris Sietsema] is from Convince&Convert. I selected it because it addresses a challenge that those of us who create or curate content face on a daily basis – how do we make our content socialable?
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
We know how difficult it can be to find balance between intrigue and usefulness. We understand that it is much easier to talk about or simply develop a tool than it is to create a talkable tool.
Meanwhile, there is a realization that we need to develop a hybrid content marketing solution – one that is social and has substance.
Socialable content has to invite discussion, create a call to action, while informing people.
Here are some highlights:
Give your content youtility:
**Answer common questions. Does your website have a FAQ section?
**Why not translate that into useful, shareable content?
**Ask your consumer base what they need. What better way to find out what appeals to your customers than simply asking them.
Make Your Content Talkable:
**Make your content human. Sometimes utilities can fall flat if we don’t offer a way to show how they can and have impacted others
**Provide testimonials and attach real stories to your utilities so your audience can identify with their purpose.
**Add bits of entertainment, humor, fun. Is your content just boring?
**Give it elements that people would actually want to share and talk about. Simply add the ability to share. Creating something useful is more than half the battle. Often times, we just forget to let our audience spread the word.
**Allow and encourage your customers to share.
**By combining the effects of content that is worthy of chatter and extremely useful, we can create a harmonious content marketing program.
**Above all, try to avoid creating drab content that lacks both utility and appeal.
Reviewed by Jan Gordon covering “Curation, Social Business and Beyond”