A new Apple ad is a marketing case study taking the world by storm. As I write this — four days after the video’s debut — it has already been viewed 19 million times on YouTube.

The visually stunning, cinematic long-form ad reunites Apple with Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Jonze, who directed the brand’s lauded “Welcome Home” in 2018. Like its predecessor, the new work—called “Someday”—leans heavily on inventive choreography, catchy music, and lavish sets. And the new video features popular star Pedro Pascal.

Of course that’s going to be a winning formula. But something more subtle is happening in this video. The theory behind my new book Audacious is that by disrupting the story, where the story is told, and/or the storyteller, you’ve got a chance of catching viral magic. I thought it would be fun to dissect this incredible video and unravel the less-obvious, non-Pedro lessons of why it went viral.

Let’s start by watching the video:

OK, let’s tear this marketing case study apart and find the magic.

Never make an ad

While researching my book, I interviewed the great Michael Krivicka, the king of viral videos. He said:

“The first key to success is, never, ever make an ad. Of course, almost every customer wants to make an ad because they think they need an ad. Perhaps that’s all they know. But the moment you start with that mindset, you’re failing.

“We’ll make something so cool, unique, and entertaining that it’s worth sharing. As soon as it pops up in your social media feed, you want to see it immediately, watch it again, and share it. You start with the viral mindset, not an ad mindset. People rarely share ads.

“If people sense they’re watching an ad—the moment they think you’re selling something—they stop watching it, or they’re going to watch the content through a filter, knowing there’s an agenda. So, if you lead with ‘Nike presents …’ Boom. People stop watching it.”

As the ad begins, we know that Pedro Pascal is sad. And if he is sad, the whole world is sad. And dreary, and frigid, and hopeless. But the beloved internet daddy doesn’t stay blue for long, as the magic of music turns a frigid wasteland into a raucous dance party.

We don’t know for sure who sponsored the ad until the final moments.

Disrupt the medium

How did this marketing case study disrupt the medium (where the story is told)? It was just a YouTube video, right? Nope.

First, this breaks the mold because it’s an ad that’s nearly six minutes long. Next time somebody tells you that people have a short attention span, call B.S. on it. People don’t have a short attention span. Your marketing has a short interesting span. This epic video is worth every second.

Next, it’s literally a music video. Think about it. What ad format will AirPod fans love? A music video. Smart marketers don’t fight for attention—they earn it by respecting their audience enough to create something worth their time.

Apple is “leaning into the signal” because it understands that remarkable marketing doesn’t interrupt what people care about — it becomes what people care about.

Disrupt the story format

This is paradoxical, but sometimes, to be disruptive, your story should be the radically non-disruptive. Research shows that ads following a classic dramatic story arc create a heightened physiological response. Let’s dissect it into five parts:

• Exposition—Pedro has girl problems. He’s depressed.
• Rising action—In a lonely, frigid existence, he recalls a happier musical memory.
• Climax— Pedro is a joyful dancing machine! He goes from forlorn to fabulous.
• Falling action—The dance sequence ends and the “old Pedro” gives an encouraging glance.
• Denouement—Pedro’s problems aren’t over, but a small smile crosses his face as he trudges on.

This is an example of Freytag’s Pyramid, a classical dramatic model developed by German novelist Gustav Freytag. There is something magical about this sequence that taps deeply into the human psyche. Professor Keith Quesenberry and his research team discovered that this classic format and advertising success are so closely connected that they could predict which Super Bowl ads would go viral before they aired.

“Beyond any other technique like sex appeal, animals, humor, or celebrities, telling a full, five-part story made the difference between a great marketing narrative and an unremarkable one,” Keith told me. “And the likability of this story format can be tied to word-of-mouth buzz, purchase intent, recall, and other success factors.”

This insight doesn’t just apply to big-budget ads. Keith discovered that storytelling success holds true for YouTube videos and other social content. On average, four- and five-act videos were shared over 400% more compared to product-based or informational videos.

Beyond Vanilla Valley

There’s something unexpected that makes this video memorable: It’s sad.

Marketing has conditioned us to expect the emotional arc of a children’s birthday party—everything must end with smiles, high-fives, and neat resolutions. But real human connection doesn’t work that way, and neither does this video. This story starts sad and ends … well, a little less sad, but still sad.

Research by Dr. Jonah Berger shows memorable marketing doesn’t just come from “happy.” Something that makes you feel anxiety, sadness, and even fear can trigger a strong emotional connection. This video breaks an emotional norm — an Apple ad that ends with unresolved pain.

The genius here is in the emotional tension. The lingering pain isn’t a mistake; it’s the point. It signals trust in the audience’s emotional maturity and creates space for a deeper, more authentic connection.

Most brands are terrified of negative emotions. The remarkable ones understand that emotional authenticity—even when uncomfortable—is what separates the signal from noise.

Grab ’em fast

More advice from the great Michael Krivicka: “You have to grab the viewer in two seconds. You can have the greatest video in the world, but if you don’t hook them in the first two seconds, it’s over. It’s a sad reality, but that’s all you’ve got. Open with something incredible that people haven’t seen before. Surprise them immediately.”

The opening seconds of this video are profound. Not a word is said, but the pain is thick, and we need to know, “What is happening here?” This is not an ad. It’s high drama.

Disrupt the storyteller

This six-minute video is being sliced and diced into television-sized ads but the true success lies in the fact that fans are sharing the long-form video like crazy. It’s a beloved story. Apple isn’t promoting the product’s functionality, price, or durability. It’s promoting a feeling. Brand marketing at its best.

Today, the successful marketer isn’t holding the microphone, shouting about their product. They’re writing a script and handing the mic to their customers. This is the essence of modern brand building: create something so meaningful, so resonant, so worth talking about that your customers eagerly do your marketing for you.

The audacity story

Everyone reading this post has one goal for their business: You want to be seen, heard, and discovered. You want to be the signal against the noise.

And the noise is worse than ever.

To stand out, competent doesn’t cut it. Competent is the new invisible. Competent is what gets replaced. The middle of the road is where roadkill happens.

In a world drowning in meh, disruption isn’t just an option—it’s survival. The AI revolution isn’t coming for the remarkable; it’s coming for the replaceable, and most marketing today is precisely that.

Yes, this Apple video has advantages—a recognizable star, a visionary director, a budget with breathing room. But those aren’t prerequisites for standing out. In fact, as I demonstrate throughout my book, constraints often fuel creativity while abundance breeds complacency.

The barrier isn’t resources. It’s courage—the courage to stand for something, the courage to make something that might not work, and the courage to create marketing that feels nothing like marketing.

The choice is simple: disrupt or be disrupted. Make waves or drown in the noise. What will you choose?

Keep an eye on the marketing stories that break through the noise. Like the Apple video, you’ll see a pattern—the narrative, medium, and storyteller are disrupted. I urge you to climb aboard the Audacity train and take advantage of the hundreds of ideas in my new book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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I have been a prolific content creator. But I have been more than steady. I have been effective.

I’ve created thousands of blog posts and podcast episodes but the problem is, after a few weeks they become buried. My very best content is difficult to find on my site unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.

I realized that my website is a massive warehouse simply over-stuffed with information. And all this great work is not getting into the hands of the people who need it most. What I needed was a sleek content showroom that could actually display content — even older content — in the most helpful way.

So, I built one.

The new home page for my blog is sort of like walking into a furniture store. You don’t need to see the whole warehouse. You just want to browse some rooms that are interesting and relevant to you right now.

The site is now live and I invite you to explore the new {grow} blog content showroom!

It’s like a Netflix experience.

• You can find the most current titles at the top.
• Then you can find some of the most popular blog posts that have trended over the past few years.
• Next, you can see the most popular categories on the blog like social media strategy, content marketing, and personal branding.
• Finally, you can sort through the latest episodes of The Marketing Companion podcast.

The category selections will be changing every week to expose some of my best work from past years.

What do you think?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Discover his $RISE create community.

The post I just built a content showroom appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Facebook Notes is over, completing a Facebook strategic flip-flop. But maybe you didn’t notice?

Here’s the announcement, which has only appeared as a message on the “Notes” tab on Pages:

“…Creating and editing notes will be unavailable after October 31. We know your posts are important, so any published notes will stay published on your timeline. However, any unpublished drafts will be deleted.”

You are probably not losing sleep over this. “Notes” wasn’t a popular publishing platform for most people. But originally, the Notes feature was an important part of Facebook’s long-term strategy as it pressed publishers for original content.

The idea was a mess from the beginning …

The Facebook Content Strategy

About three years ago I attended a meeting hosted by Columbia University. Facebook executives met with major New York City media companies, encouraging them to publish on Facebook. The meeting was extremely tense because the publishers hated Facebook. When Facebook re-purposed their content, it stole subscribers and advertisers. Their very existence was threatened.

But Facebook promised media outlets that publishing through something like Facebook Notes would result in new monetization opportunities and millions of new subscriptions. I didn’t see how that could happen and deep down, the publishers knew they were being scammed, too.

Read Marketing Rebellion, the book that explains the future of social media and marketing. CLICK TO LEARN MORE!

A year later, Facebook pulled the rug out from under publishers, declaring that it would not be a news outlet focused on content after all.

Facebook had learned (and is still learning!) that being a news outlet without accountability for the truth of the news was a slippery slope. Facebook gave up on the perilous content-first strategy and pivoted to an emphasis on Facebook Groups where controversial content attracts far less scrutiny.

Adios to Facebook Notes

I’ve published long-form content through Facebook Notes for the last five years. The reason is simple. The Facebook algorithm strongly discourages using links that direct someone off Facebook and away from their ads. So to get better exposure for my ideas, I published the whole enchilada on Facebook a few days after a post appeared on my own site. I don’t know why more bloggers didn’t follow this strategy.

Now that I don’t have an option to publish my content through Notes, my blog content will seldomly be seen on Facebook. In the big picture, this isn’t a huge loss. Facebook was never a significant channel for my work. It has always been a bit of a mystery why my Facebook friends enjoy my content on Facebook and don’t subscribe to my blog anyway … but that is a story for another day.

However, for some organizations, especially nonprofits who rely on Facebook as a pseudo web page, the loss of Notes will be traumatic. Existing notes cannot be edited, so, as information changes, page managers will have to choose to leave bad info posted, or possibly delete the posts (no indication if that option will be available). Many organizations are losing a communication lifeline to their fans and donors.

Lesson: Don’t build your content homeroom on somebody else’s platform!

I haven’t discerned exactly why Facebook is discontinuing the feature other than it’s simply a little-used remnant of a failed strategy.

Facebook has been around long enough now that we take it for granted but it is still finding its way.

Recovering your Notes

Here is a process that people are using to find their previously-published Notes:

• Click the far right top arrow pointing down
• Click Settings and Privacy
• Click Settings
• On Left click Your Facebook Information
• The first item is “Access your Information.” Click View on the right
• Scroll down to where it says Your Information. Under that click where it says Your Activity Across Facebook.
• Once here, scroll down to see the link for Notes and click that.

This brings up your activity log of all your notes. You can then click on each one to view

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post How to recover your Facebook Notes after Zuckerberg’s flip-flop appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I was recently on a super fun broadcast with my friend Joel Hughes of Glass Mountains Design and we discussed the current state of blogging.

This was particularly energizing for me since it has been so very long since I’ve talked about blogging, my content drug of choice! Here are a few observations about the role of blogging in the current business environment.

Is blogging still relevant?

Blogging’s status in the content eco-system has certainly diminished as streaming video, podcasts, and short-form content on Instagram and TikTok have grabbed the spotlight.

But this is more a matter of timing than fundamental changes in consumer needs. Allow me to explain.

The first opportunity to create content in the early days of the web was blogging because it was easy — it’s a written word.

Back then, making video content was still complicated. You needed equipment, editing skills, and software. Then there was the problem of slow internet connections which made uploads almost impossible. With the arrival of smartphones, creating video content became accessible to anyone. This development created an explosion in video that met a severely under-served consumer need.

Today, there’s a dramatic rise in podcasting for the same reason. More accessible technology and better distribution channels are rising up to meet the needs of consumers who enjoy audio content.

When everyone is working on video and podcasts, blogging can seem old-fashioned.

But let me share a little story. A friend of mine sits at the table each morning and checks the sports scores with his son. He reads the highlights while his son watches them on YouTube videos.  He said, “I could not imagine watching videos of the sports news. I need to read the news.”

People learn in different ways. Some people like to read and they always will. I had a woman ask me to transcribe my podcasts because she literally can’t learn by listening. So blogging won’t go away until reading goes away.

In fact, blogging has never been more vibrant. There are a record number of posts being created. And communicating some complicated messages, especially in the tech industry, often requires written communication.

For many companies, there’s still no better way to build some short-term SEO muscle than a strong and useful blog. And a new poll of LinkedIn users showed that written content was far and away the preferred content form on that platform, according to Sue Parker of Dare Group.

And even if you’re broadcasting and streaming, a blog can play a central role in your strategy.

Ian Anderson Gray has built his business on being a video livestreaming expert:

“I think blogging is still one of the most powerful content formats out there. I know live video is my focus these days, but in the end, every piece of content comes back to my blog. Where do my podcasts go? On my blog! Where do my live video goes after they’ve broadcasted? On my blog. I use my live videos as a way to create blog posts as well as engage with my audience. But it’s still my blog that allows me to go in-depth and create high quality, engaging, and powerful content that is evergreen.”

Video and podcasting are growing a lot faster because they’ve been an under-served niche for a long time but blogging remains a reliable content staple.

How do you stand out as a blogger today?

The biggest question in marketing is, how do you stand out amid all this noise?

My view is that you really only have one choice. And that’s to have the courage to add your own voice, your own story, your own personality to your content. You have to include a little piece of yourself in every story you tell.

There’s only one you and you have no competition. No one has your stories, your perspective, your heritage.

Realizing that was a turning point for me.

When I started out as a blogger, I was terrible. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was floundering.

I had come from the corporate world. So I was really buttoned up with my content and very formal and stiff with my writing. And I had this idea that I had to show everybody how smart I was — I had to create this very targeted content for this targeted audience of personas that I made up.

And in those early days, two things happened.

First, nothing happened. Nobody cared about my content, nobody read it, nobody commented, nobody shared it.

The second thing that happened — I became bored from writing this uptight content to personas I made up in my head.

So about nine or 10 months into it, I started to relax. If I felt funny, I let it go and wrote something funny. If I was sad about something, I wrote about that.

And I learned an important lesson. Sometimes you don’t have to have all the right answers. You don’t have to show how smart you are. Just asking the right questions can be the best blog post.

Once I relaxed and started adding my own personality, something profound happened. Instead of finding my ideal audience, my ideal audience found me.

My voice started to be heard and shared, not just in this little area of America where I live, but all around the world. And I found hundreds, and then thousands, of people who said, I believe in this guy. I like the way he thinks and I like the way he writes, and that never would have happened if I just had stayed in this buttoned-up writing style.

Can you make money from a blog?

There are seven ways I know to monetize your blog:

1) Advertising. This will not work for 99 percent of all bloggers because the traffic simply is not great enough. You need millions of views to make a decent income.

2) Affiliate links (for example, links to products on Amazon). Every time somebody clicks and buys, you get a small pay-out. This also will not work for most bloggers because (you guessed it) the traffic has to be huge to make any significant money.

3) Re-purposing blog content. Many bloggers have assembled blog posts to create books, e-books, and other content they can sell in a number of ways.

4) Sponsored posts. Link-hungry SEO promoters are eager to pay people to add links or even entire pieces of content to a blog. Once you do that, you turn your blog into an ad. Many people do it, even a few famous bloggers. I won’t sell links or let others place their content on my blog because I think it crosses a line of trust with the reader.

5) Selling adjacent products. I have no plans to monetize my blog directly, but I’m hoping that people who love the free content will support me by buying adjacent products on my website such as my popular marketing books, or instant coaching services.

6) Pay for posts. Some writers are beginning to make a pretty good living by posting on Medium. Writers are rewarded based on how much the posts are read on the site.

7) Indirect sales.  This is the primary strategy behind my blog. I want to create great content that will build authority and make people want to hire me as a consultant, come to their office to teach a class, or give a speech to their association. My blog is the centerpiece of my marketing strategy.

By the way, there are many good reasons to keep blogging besides making money!

What’s the key to creating great content consistently?

I get this question a lot.

I don’t believe I have missed a week of blogging since 2009. I’m not necessarily more gifted than anybody else, but I might be more disciplined.

There are four disciplines that lead to consistent creativity.

Number one, you have to assess your day and your environment in terms of stories. You need to look at the world through this constant filter and ask, “Could this be a relevant story for my blog?” What is making you curious?

Second, you have to have the discipline to write those ideas down right away. Just a headline … it doesn’t have to be anything more than that. Write it on your smartphone, write it in a journal, write it as a note on your site before you lose it.

Third, schedule time to create. If creating content is important to you — and it should be — you need to prioritize this and schedule it just like you would schedule a meeting, going to the gym, or having a date.

I block out time for writing every week. On Sunday morning I get up early — maybe 6 a.m. — put on a pot of coffee. No distractions The house is quiet, and I get my blog ready for the week. And the beauty is, I’ve got these ideas to choose from because I made notes all week. There are always ideas to choose from.

How often should you blog?

I’ve often said that the answer to every question in marketing is, “It depends!”

To make a dent in the world through content, you need to be consistent. My recommendation for most bloggers is to shoot for a goal of publishing once a week.

If you have a particularly compelling opportunity to win SEO, you might increase the frequency (go deeper on this topic here.)

If I go to a site and see a blog post frequency of less than once a month, it seems like they can’t be too serious about creating meaningful content.

But of course … it depends.

Quality or quantity?

Both.

Focus on evergreen content?

Evergreen content refers to content that isn’t dated — it will still be fresh and meaningful a year or two from now.

This is a very timely question because of the pandemic crisis.

When the pandemic hit, I had a lot of content already produced and ready to go. But I realized it was irrelevant.

So I immediately did a pivot and created content that was very specific to the moment. How do you sell in a pandemic? How do you handle uncertainty? What is the role of marketing now?

I know that years from now this content might be a curiosity but not very relevant.

To me, it doesn’t matter. The most important consideration is to serve your customers and help them right now.

I can’t worry about the future, I can’t worry about SEO. Those things will come back eventually. I think the most important consideration when it comes to content is relevance.

Isn’t the world too crowded for another blog?

Yes.

Just kidding.

Whether you’re starting a blog now or you started 10 years ago, the rules of engagement are the same.

You have always had to find that angle, some way to add unique value. You have to stick with it. You need to listen to your audience and adjust. And most importantly, you have to evolve with the times.

I’m seeing many amazing and wonderful new bloggers in the world. There are always exciting new people coming on board and I’m inspired by their creativity and energy!

There are many people out there trying to become Insta-famous. But I think bloggers might have the greatest long-term impact on society as they emerge as trusted thought leaders, not just people with a large TikTok audience.

What’s the biggest challenge for bloggers today?

There are many great reasons to blog. It helps me clarify my thinking, lets me explore new ideas … it’s even good for my health (I go zen when I blog!).

But if you’re looking to build an audience and create value for your business, the content has to move. The economic value of content that’s not seen and shared is zero.

It’s easy to push “publish.” It’s really hard to earn an audience with so much competition out there today.

And yet … there is still huge opportunity out there. Research shows that just 1 percent of people on the web are creators. If you’re blogging, you’re already in an elite class!

When I wrote my book KNOWN, I interviewed 97 people who became known in their field. All of them created content over many years to achieve their successes.

In my interview, the last question I asked was, “What advice would you give to somebody trying to become known today?” Almost every person said the same thing: “Don’t give up.”

Too many quit too soon, they said. You need to be patient, resilient, consistent.

I agree. I didn’t start realizing business benefits from my blog until about year three. You just have to keep plugging, doing a little better week by week and year by year.

That was the state of blogging when I started, and that’s the current state of blogging today.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post A frank assessment of the current state of blogging appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

By Kiki Schirr, {grow} Contributing Columnist

To marketers, Reddit is a bit like a genie’s lamp. It’s a powerful tool and can drive huge waves of readers to a website. On the other hand, if your intentions in using Reddit aren’t pure, punishment can rain upon you in the form of user censure.

Whether you love Reddit or fear it, no marketer can ignore it.

From 2018, the Alexa.com ranking of Internet traffic has dropped the site from third in the United States to sixth. However, in this time adoption of Reddit’s mobile app has grown like wildfire. Reddit’s blog boasted 30% YoY growth in 2019 — bringing them to 430 million monthly active users. For reference, that’s about 100 million more visitors per month than Twitter.

If you’ve used Reddit before, you probably have seen their slang term: tl;dr. Tl;dr is an acronym for “too long; didn’t read,” that originated when users (known as the original poster or OP) started proceeding long explanations with a 1 sentence summary. Tl;drs helped Redditors decide if a post was worth the effort to read.

But, in the 15 years of Reddit’s tenure, technical innovation was bound to occur—and sure enough, intrepid Reddit users are creating summary bots to make tl;dr automatic.

The most ubiquitous bot, the one that runs through every link post by default, is called AutoTDLR. It runs on the SMMRY algorithm. SMMRY is a 7-step program to summarize and prioritize important sentences within text in order to shorten the overall piece.

By calling SMMRY’s API, AutoTLDR feeds the content of every link posted to Reddit through SMMRY to see if it deserves to be shortened. When the algorithm can shorten the article or post by 70%, the bot posts the result to the comments section of the OP’s link.

Should content strategists fear the uprising of summary bots?

First, just to clear all that jargon up: when someone shares your content on Reddit now, it is automatically summarized. Whether you like it or not, without any human action, the bones of your text will be posted to their page.

While this might seem bad to a marketer because it decreases traffic to a site by providing its content without a page view, this is actually a wonderful innovation for Reddit.

Redditors had always suspected that a large percentage of users were reading comments or otherwise interacting with articles without reading them. But in 2017, Reddit was shocked and dismayed when Notre Dame extrapolated that 73% of posts on Reddit have been upvoted or downvoted by users who never opened the content.

AutoTDLR bot improves Reddit by lowering the amount of users who never read beyond the headline of an article. So while you might miss the page visit, if your post is run through summary bots, the message might very well reach a larger audience than if it hadn’t.

How should content strategists respond to summary bots?

The first step to being responsive to AutoTDLR is to run your content through summary bots before publishing, every time. You can copy-paste the text into SMMRY.com and see how it would be summarized as 6 sentences, 7, 8, or more. I’d guess 6 would be the median number of sentences AutoTDLR generates on Reddit, so keep that in mind.

The first thing I noticed when I started running my past {grow} posts through SMMRY was that my obsessive habit of using 3 examples to support my statements was hurting me. The last of SMMRY’s five stated goals is to “remove excessive examples,” and it seems that I was repeatedly offending the algorithm with my writing style.

But experienced copywriters will adjust quickly. SMMRY prioritizes sentences by the number and variety of topic-related keywords prior to the ending punctuation. Marketers who are already used to writing with discreet keyword usage won’t have trouble taking the algorithm in stride.

Writing for Robots 101

If a particular important point hasn’t made the 6 chosen sentences of AutoTDLR’s summary, you can probably force it in with good editing.

First reread the piece to determine which single sentence is the most vital. Then reduce unnecessary words within that sentence. Transitions and stop words will hurt your sentence’s importance. Finally, try to make sure that there are a variety of keywords within that sentence.

Here’s a cheat code, though. You can sneak additional ideas into SMMRY’s concept of a single sentence by using punctuation other than a period. For example:

Why would you use punctuation other than a period? Gaming SMMRY’s algorithm! Because SMMRY has only been programmed to recognize the period as the end of a thought, this entire paragraph would be counted as only one sentence.

There are a few other best practices. Don’t have any information only represented within images or hyperlinks. Pictures are never included and links are not a priority. Also be aware of your use of lists as they can trigger SMMRY’s shears, too.

What are the greater implications of AI in content strategy?

AutoTDLR’s function is currently limited to Reddit. Therefore it is only a minor consideration for most marketers today. After all, Reddit’s 400 million monthly active users are only a fraction of Facebook’s 1.5 billion MAU. Unless your target audience uses Reddit, like tech users or fitness buffs do, you might have other sites prioritized.

However, you don’t need to be Michio Kaku or Ray Kurzweil to see the writing on the wall. Marketing AI in general and in particular auto summarization will become more common over time.

How will your marketing strategy respond?

You could provide a quick summary paragraph at the beginning of longer posts yourself. This executive summary would help establish the salient points in when readers were only skimming. One added benefit is that summaries will increase the frequency of your most important keywords.

Another strategy would be to use the inverted pyramid structure of newspaper journalists. First load the most important content at the top. Then be sure to sprinkle keywords throughout the rest of the piece.

To fight the robots, you must talk to humans

However, the most important thing to do when facing any rapid innovation is to talk with your customers directly.

You might already be surprised how your readers are engaging with your content. Some readers might only quickly skim through on mobile, others might autogenerate compilations of articles into e-reader files to ingest and annotate during commutes.

Summary bots and marketing AI are still fluid technologies. You will need to keep a thumb on your reader’s pulse to stay on top of trends.

Approach people that you see liking, commenting on, or sharing your articles, and before asking any personal questions be sure to thank them for their support. If they respond positively, that’s when it would be appropriate to ask if they would mind explaining how they are most likely to consume your content. Be sure to thank them again after they share their insight.

Kiki Schirr is a freelance marketer who enjoys absorbing new trends within the tech scene. Her favorite subreddit is r/ICanDrawThat, but she thinks new Redditors should also check out r/ShowerThoughts and r/AnimalsBeingDerps. She is most easily reached via Twitter.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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Many years ago, I had an opportunity to hang out with The Black Keys and I learned the most important lesson of my life about monetizing a personal brand.

First of all, if you’re not familiar with The Black Keys, go check out this band. They are such a fun, raw and bluesy rock act … and one of my favorites!

But back to the story.

When I got to meet The Black Keys, they were not playing stadiums and arenas like they are now. They were playing clubs that might hold 1,000 people. But they were definitely moving up. They seemed to have a tremendous amount of momentum and had just recorded a huge album with the famous producer Danger Mouse.

I asked Patrick Carney, the drummer for the group, what their pivot point had been. What was the one event or moment that seemed to boost their trajectory to the big time? This was a vital question for me as I was in the process of building my own personal brand. I was no rock band, and I’ve never had an intent to play arenas, but I was trying to be “known” in the digital marketing business.

His answer surprised me.

Slow and steady

“There was no singular event,” he said. “We just keep making steady progress. Each album does a little better than the last one. You just keep moving forward, building your audience one show at a time.”

If you look at the band’s career this certainly played out. The next time I saw the Black Keys, they were playing in front of 3,000 people at an amphitheater in Columbus and a few years later they were filling arenas like Madison Square Garden. Today they are one of the biggest rock acts in the world.

So what does this mean to you and me?

The myth of viral

As I look at the people who are making in the digital/social media space, there is not one person who was “an overnight success.” Social media pioneer Chris Brogan once famously said that it took him three years to get his first 100 blog readers. A few years later, he was the leading speaker in the business.

There is too much attention placed on the hope of “going viral.” I have had several articles go viral, achieving thousands of shares, likes, and comments. Here is how it helped my business: zip.

Here is a chart depicting the number of subscribers to my blog since 2013 (and I actually began blogging in 2009):

Slow and steady. Each year is a little better than the next. Just like The Black Keys.

The trendline for my podcast downloads looks the same way.

Whether you’re a band or a blogger, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to experience a “big boom” that puts you on a path of fame and fortune. You just establish your voice, create that content, and keep grinding it out, year after year.

By the way, my most “viral” article (Content Shock) was published in early January 2014. Look at the graph to see the impact it had on my subscribers — nothing! There is no substitute for determined, steady progress.

Eventually, if you work hard and stick with it, you can gain enough critical mass to monetize an audience.

I didn’t have a paying sponsor for my Marketing Companion podcast until year three. I didn’t make noticeable money on my books until my fifth publication, The Content Code, in year six of my “second career.” I struggled for three years before I was getting speaking gigs that paid meaningful money.

There is no quick shortcut to building a personal brand.

An audience that matters

Monetizing a personal brand depends on just one thing.

Are you ready for this?

You have to build a sizable audience that cares about you. An audience that matters. That just can’t happen overnight.

I do a lot of one-on-one coaching in this space and this issue is by far the biggest misconception people have about building a personal brand.

People who hire me often need money NOW and they want to know how to make money through their blogging or podcasting in a matter of weeks or months.

Can’t happen.

It takes years. In fact, you need to adopt a three-year mindset to achieve meaningful success with your personal brand.

In my popular book KNOWN: The handbook for building and unleashing your personal brand in the digital age, I include a lot of research that backs up this idea of slow and steady. I plot out a four-step process to build your personal brand, but on average, it took about two and a half years for the successful people I profiled in the book to create a personal brand that “tips.”

In my interviews for KNOWN, I asked people successful in a wide range of industries what made them different. The words I heard were “tenacity,” “persistence,” and “resilience.”

Monetizing a personal brand

I don’t want to dissuade you or depress you, but I needed to provide a realistic view of your path to personal branding success.

Here are the facts about personal branding today:

• In many cases, the personal brand IS the corporate brand.
• A personal brand is transferrable between careers and can offer sustainable competitive advantage.
• A meaningful personal brand can be a hedge against economic downturns.
• Standing out as a personality may be the only thing that saves you in a world of automation.
• Monetizing a personal brand can lead to deep fulfillment and a rewarding career.

So this is important! But you have to take that first step, and above all, you have to be patient about building that audience who loves you.

Make sense?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com. Photo of Black Keys courtesy Flickr Creative Commons

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By Mark Schaefer

“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best promoted content that wins.

Andy Crestodina is one of the people I admire most in this marketing space. He is brilliant, articulate, and kind. His Content Chemistry book is a masterpiece.

But like even the best of friends, we disagree from time to time, and he encouraged me to disagree with him today, which I will do with gusto.

Let’s start with the rest of the quote from Andy:

“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best promoted content that wins.

“The New York Times doesn’t have a list of the best books. They have a list of the ‘best selling’ books. That list is about sales, not quality.

“Sadly, you’ll never find the best article on any topic. You’ll only find the articles that were well promoted. The articles that got traction in search, social or word-of-mouth. You’ll never read the best books or hear the best songs. You’ll find only those that were both good and well promoted.

“It’s the marketers job to promote the best work. To share, link to, send and talk about the good things. It’s the only chance we have to bring the best to the most.” 

Andy implies that there’s no value in content alone. It has to do something … move through your customers and potential customers for it to work. On this we entirely agree. In fact I believe in this so much, I wrote an entire book on strategies to get content to move through an audience called The Content Code (which includes a chapter on promotion).

But the part of Andy’s quote that makes me stumble is “The list is about sales, not quality.”

There are some situations where quantity is more important than quality, but 95 percent of the time, creating content and promoting it is not enough. The content has to be spectacular. Here’s why:

You can’t trick your customers

Andy’s quote suggests that simply promoting content might be enough to make it successful.

You might be able to promote your content in a way that it compels somebody to click on a link. But spending money to boost a post cannot compel anybody to read it or share it. For people to actually consume the content and share it — your only goal — you have to produce something that’s share-worthy. If the content isn’t good enough to share, you’re wasting your promotional dollars.

Relevant, consistent, superior

In my college classes, I’ve taught that shareable content must be “RITE:” Relevant, Interesting, Timely, and Entertaining.

Over the years, I’ve amended that somewhat to emphasize Relevant, Consistent and Superior.

• Relevant — Stay tuned to the needs of your audience and serve them with generosity.
• Consistent — Ideally, you want to become a habit for your audience. Consistency conditions an audience to look forward to your content and of course this has SEO benefits, too.
• Superior — In a recent post, I explained why content in any niche must always be superior because the switching costs are so low. The attention span of your audience is precious and limited. You need to fight hard to earn the attention through constant improvement. You don’t have to be “Game of Thrones,” but you have to be the “Game of Thrones” in your category — something that is insanely great compared to your competitors.

Simply creating and promoting content without tending to these three considerations would be a waste of your time and money.

Your customers are your marketers

Technically, Andy is correct  — You could probably buy your way on to The New York Times bestseller list. Certainly weird, but true.

However, with a book or any other form of content, your long-term success increasingly depends on authentic and organic advocacy from your readers, listeners, and viewers. What happens to an author when the book sucks? Negative reviews. Will they share it? No. Will they buy your next one? No.

To win in marketing today, we must adopt an entirely new mindset. Two-thirds of our marketing is NOT our marketing. It’s coming from our audience who are talking about us, referring us, and leaving reviews:

This data comes from seminal research conducted by McKinsey analyzing more than 125,000 customer journeys across 30 industries. Here’s the uneasy truth about this new reality. See that big slice of the pie chart? You can’t buy your way in. You can’t promote your way in, you can’t SEO your way in, you can’t tweet your way in.

You have to be invited.

And once you’re invited, something magical happens. Your company’s traditional marketing efforts can stop because your customers become your marketers. They carry your story forward.

How does that happen? How do we get invited?

Isn’t that the single most important topic we could be asking today? Shouldn’t every marketer on earth be obsessed with that goal?

I believe it is … which is why that is the topic of my forthcoming book, Marketing Rebellion, which will be available in February.

Oh my goodness. I am such a tease.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

Book links are affiliate links.

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What’s the best content for your business?

That’s one of the most common questions I’m asked by students, entrepreneurs, and business owners. And, it’s an important question! Creating content with consistency takes time and resources, so this is a weighty decision.

Of course, I can’t tell you the best kind of content for your business without studying your unique situation, but if I did look at your business, these are the five questions I would ask to help you find your answer:

1. Is content marketing the best strategy in the first place?

The first decision point is to determine if you should be creating content at all. Is this the wisest way to spend your marketing dollars?

For example, I consulted for a company that made home products like step ladders. Should they be creating a community based on content? Probably not. A better use of marketing dollars might be an end-of-aisle display at a store like Lowes or Home Depot. Don’t create random acts of content just because this seems like the thing to do.

There is a role for content marketing in most businesses but don’t prioritize resources without a thoughtful assessment first. Place your marketing bet where you will get the biggest return.

2. Where is there room to maneuver?

This is the single most important question to ask before starting any sort of content production. You need to determine:

1. What is the competitive situation? Is there an un-contested content niche you can occupy? Here’s a blog post I wrote that provides a simple technique for doing a content density assessment. If you read one other post on content marketing, make it this one because if you don’t understand this concept, you’ll waste a lot of time and money creating content that will never work.
2. Once you find that niche, what are your opportunities to maneuver? Many people become overwhelmed by all the content options out there, but in fact, your strategy is usually pre-determined for you! Here’s a post about the importance of marketing maneuverability. And if your niche is depressingly crowded, you still have options.

Finally, here is a very important article on 12 possible content marketing strategies once you determine a viable niche. In content marketing, you can’t just copy what everybody else is doing. You have to occupy a distinct space on the web.

3. Where are your customers? What are their needs?

This is such an obvious question but often overlooked. Where do your customers prefer to receive their content?

If you’ve done a competitive assessment and found a few options, the next step is to survey your customers and ask them what they prefer. Or better yet, get out there and talk to them.

Another option is to filter your options by looking at your customer’s greatest needs. If you want to do a deep dive, refer to this comprehensive post called the content marketing hierarchy of needs.

4. What is your source of rich content?

If you have limited resources, you might be overwhelmed by the dizzying array of social media options. Should you be on Facebook? Twitter? Should you blog or create a podcast?

Social media is the distribution system for content. Let’s simplify the decision because actually, you have very limited choices. Pick one source of what I call “rich content” to fuel your social media presence:

• Writing (like a blog)
• Audio (like a podcast)
• Video (like you post on YouTube)
• Visual (for Instagram or Pinterest)

If you have limited resources, you need to choose ONE of these, master it, and stick with it. Social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube are distribution channels, not necessarily content sources. The rich content you produce powers your social media presence. I wrote an entire blog post on the importance of rich content that will help you sort through this decision for your business.

5. What brings you joy?

If you’re an entrepreneur or own a small business, chances are you’ll be creating a lot of content yourself, so you better have some fun while doing it!

If you’re bored while developing your content, it’s going to show through in your final product. If you love to write, then write. If you want to try creating videos or a podcast, then do that.

Creating content needs to bring you joy. The bottom line: The other factors in this post don’t really matter if you’re not having fun, so make that a priority.

Best content for your business — and lift-off!

I need to end with one final — but crucial — piece of advice.

You must remember that the economic value of whatever content you produce is zero unless it is seen and shared. Yes, you need to create exceptional content. Yes, you need to build your audience. But if your content isn’t being shared through your audience and beyond, you are literally getting nowhere with your content marketing.

This is an essential concept being overlooked by most marketers today. Social sharing represents organic advocacy. People trust content shared by friends, and it impacts buying behavior. In terms of metrics for your business, social sharing is second only to conversions in importance.

So, you absolutely, positively need to focus on this imperative of content ignition and build a competency in getting your content to move.

I’m not here to be “salesy” but I did spend two years studying this crucial idea and determining every way to get your content to move. I put all of this essential wisdom into a book called The Content Code. Sincerely, if you’re responsible for content marketing, please read this eye-opening book if you want to drive business benefits from your content. It is ten thousand dollars of consulting advice for less than $20! Don’t create content without a plan to make it move!

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

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By Mark Schaefer

For the past few years I’ve been a contributor to The Harvard Business Review. I submit my very best article once a quarter or so, an editor reviews it, she suggests some minor modifications, and then it would be published.

Last week, I received a note from my editor that stabbed me in the heart:

Mark, this is an excellent article. A few years ago it certainly would be published. But today, I get so many more submissions that this one doesn’t make the cut. I’m afraid I can’t run this post because the competition is simply much greater now.

Some of this increased competition is coming from big company executives who compose articles crafted by a support team of writers and PR agencies. They realize that producing content is a great way to increase awareness for their agendas and brands. Perhaps they’ve read my book The Content Code, which articulates this very strategy.

I was incredibly disappointed my article didn’t make the cut. It was the most-researched post I had ever delivered to the publication and it took many hours of work.

I’m not giving up, at least for now. But to continue to compete in this crowded content channel, I’ll have to spend even more time to develop even better articles. Or maybe I’ll have to pay for a support team to help me with the research and writing if I want to keep up. In any event, the cost of producing this content is going to go up, up, up.

Maybe I’ll be able to compete, maybe not. If the personal and financial cost of producing articles for the HBR continues to rise and I keep getting rejected, I’ll have to drop out of the competition eventually. It won’t be a sustainable strategy for a little guy like me and the people with deep pockets will prevail.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Content Shock is certainly here to stay.

Content Shock in large and small ways

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since I wrote the original article on this theme, projecting that for some businesses, content marketing would not be a long-term sustainable strategy … for the very reasons we can observe in this little case study.

In any human, natural, or economic system, when there’s too much supply and fixed demand, something has to give. In this case, the supply is content, the demand is consumption. When it gets to the point where it costs too much to compete, you’ve got to find something else to do.

Certainly this is no longer a theory. It’s happening everywhere before our eyes.

In 2011, if you did a great job with your content, audience, and engagement, the average brand could expect 26 percent organic reach on content posted on Facebook. Today that number is below 1 percent. Why? There’s simply too much stuff. Facebook explains that an average person could be exposed to more than 1,500 stories a day on the platform. That’s far too much content so they cut, cut, cut until it is a manageable news stream. Content Shock.

In terms of company content, Facebook is largely pay-to-play today (although there are many exceptions). The cost to compete is naturally going up due to the high amount of content on the channel.

Many reputable voices in our field have weighed in and said “yes, content shock is here” including BuzzSumo, Buffer, TopRank, Rand Fishkin of Moz, Christopher S. Penn of Shift Communications and many more.

Track Maven has reported on this extensively. In a recent post they noted that the output of content per brand increased 35% per channel in one year, but content engagement decreased by 17% in the same timeframe. Engagement dropped across all major social networks, and plummeted most on Pinterest.  They concluded that “For marketing teams, combating this will require more resources and more creativity.”

Analyst and entrepreneur Steve Rayson commented: “Whilst in earlier years it was possible that if you produced good content it would get found and shared, almost by virtue of its quality, this is no longer the case. There is now so much content that even producing great content is not enough. The bar is way higher. Popular sites with great content are also being affected by Content Shock.”

Allaying the fears of shock

In one of my college classes recently I talked about the classic view of content and “inbound” marketing. Theoretically, the most amazing, helpful, and useful content attracts high-potential customer leads that can be funneled into a nurturing program. Then in the last two hours of the class I talk about what’s really happening in the marketing world and how many current trends are killing this traditional inbound model.

One student literally had a panicked look on his face. “Oh great,” he said, “we want to create content and now you tell us it may not work as well any more. What do we do?”

Certainly this nothing to panic about. All of this is quite predictable. Social media marketing, mobile, content … it all works really well. And when something works really well, money is going to be poured into those channels until they burst.

Today, money is being plowed into content marketing at record levels even when companies know it isn’t working because they’re afraid not to.

These cycles of supply and demand are the way the world has always worked. And when it starts to work against you, it’s time to adjust. That’s business, folks.

The other thing to know is that Content Shock is not happening evenly everywhere. There are still lots of open holes out there. I’m currently working with a client in the healthcare field. Their competitors are asleep — hardly any digital presence at all. I think there’s a huge opportunity to create content strategically and aggressively. Essentially, the goal is to create Content Shock for your competitors. Content Shock IS the content marketing strategy.

There is no controversy

Many people referred to my original article as controversial. I didn’t see it that way then, and I don’t see it that way now.

My thinking on this topic was rational, based on simple economics — supply and demand. Economic models aren’t controversial. They’re math. They just are. Economics only becomes controversial when it runs against the prevailing wisdom that more content is the answer, that the best content will always rise to the top, that the key to business profitability is the arc of your story. I suppose that if you buy into those fantasies … well .. then yes, the common sense of Content Shock is controversial.

There is no controversy and there is no problem, quite frankly. Business evolves. The content marketing ideas that worked three years ago may not work now. That should be no surprise to any one, given the rapid rate of change in our business.

The challenge in all of this is to think critically and be aware of the changes in your business. Don’t keep doing something because that’s what you did last year. Consider new strategies focused not just on content but on content ignition — the economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero. Consider the dramatic changes in content forms, distribution, and evolving roles of the social media platforms.

Content marketing is not just about creating a great blog post or video. It is a war for attention. Keep fighting.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

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