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During a conversation with a business owner on the advantages of content marketing, he asked why he’d want to continue paying to educate somebody who decided to go with another provider other than his company.

My quick response during our conversation was to ask whether potential clients his company didn’t win ever come back after being frustrated with their initial choices. He said they did. If the client opportunity was significant in the first place, that’s reason enough to keep using content marketing to maintain contact and educate even those who aren’t doing business with you right now.

11 Reasons to Use Content Marketing to Educate Non-Customers

Unfortunately, the business owner didn’t select us to develop and implement his social media strategy. But demonstrating that we do what we recommend, here’s a more in-depth answer to his question.

Using content marketing to educate non-customers allows your organization to:

1. Help maintain and build targeted awareness.
2. Demonstrate new thinking and capabilities as you develop them.
3. Stay top-of-mind for when the new wears off with the new provider.
4. Keep filling apparent gaps that still exist in the case you made to use your products or services.
5. Maintain contact with only a small incremental investment in effort, time, and cost when you are already engaged in content marketing.
6. Have a reason and a means to contact them in the future for something other than a check-in sales call.
7. Build relationships with additional influencers and decision makers involved in future sales opportunities.
8. Be in the potential consideration set in case they know other organizations / people who may be nearer-term prospects.
9. Add value to the relationship outside business transactions.
10. Raise ongoing issues they may be experiencing currently that you have solved for other customers.
11. Keep the door open to uncovering new opportunities matching your current or new capabilities.

Beyond this blog post, I’ve forwarded the business owner who inspired it a Content Marketing Institute article to address some of his questions and our white paper on social media ROI metrics. In our initial presentation, we also shared our own case study and strategy assessment of where his organization had clear social media opportunities.

How are you staying in touch with prospects or customers who’ve passed you over previously?

Are there other benefits you see to educating non-customers? And how are you doing it successfully?

Will our content marketing and education pay off with this potential client? Only time will tell, but if nothing else, it’s made us smarter on laying out a solid business case for successful business-to-business content marketing, so we’re already ahead of where we were! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Any time we have an all eyes on the news tragedy, there is a question about what brands should do with their social media content:

• Do you act like major networks and news programs and start exclusively sharing updates and (second hand) news about the tragedy?
• Do you act like a cable network and keep up with whatever social media content was already planned, irrespective of the news?
• Do you go completely dark out of respect for the tragedy and its victims?

So, what do you do with social media during a tragedy?

David Armano offers five pieces of advice for brands and how they should conduct themselves. It is great advice oriented toward a brand with a larger collaborative social media effort, although some of it (review your scheduled content and remove anything sensitive) applies across the board.

Another piece of advice from David Armano, summed up as “Do the Right Thing,” is a great sentiment, but there’s no one answer to what the right thing to do is.

One safe answer seems to be sending out your brand’s thoughts to a tragedy’s victims. Thoughts are nice, although not particularly efficacious. Some brands take advantage of their large audiences to help broadcast emergency and relief updates. Some brands are willing to go out on a limb and offer prayers. Since many times all you can do in these situations is pray or pay (i.e., donate), prayers are at the top of the heap to help victims.

Other brands, keep on with what social media content was already planned (or inappropriately chosen amid the tragedy), as others (typically individuals) spend their time calling these brands out for their social media miscues.

Perhaps the safest answer is to go dark in the face of tragedy. The challenge is there are tragedies and victims daily.

So does that mean a brand should NEVER share any social media?

No, it doesn’t.

But when there’s discussion about the importance of being “human” on social media, it’s not some b.s. social media strategy mumbo jumbo. You DO have to be human with your social media content, no matter how big or small your brand is.

And if you’re human with your social media sharing every day, you have a lot better chance of getting it right when a human tragedy is close enough to intersect with your social media content.  – Mike Brown

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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If you’re blogging on a regular basis, it’s likely you have accumulated plenty of blog scraps along the way.

Blog scraps are the stray ideas, sentences, paragraphs, or maybe nearly complete blog drafts that have not turned into published blog posts. It could be they aren’t timely anymore, you’ve struggled to fashion them into full blogs, or you are suffering from creative apathy relative to the original topic. I can’t even begin to tell you how many online pages and notebooks I have filled with partially written copy that is only seen when I revisit them looking for ideas on what to blog about when time is tight and there’s a daily blogging deadline looming.

What to Blog About – 10 Things to Do with Your Blog Scraps

While these scraps may have seemed like good ideas for what to blog about at some point, that has not turned out to be the case. No matter the reasons  your blog scraps haven’t been published though, the question is can you find SOMETHING to do with them?

Here are ten things to do with your blog scraps:

1. Expand a blog scrap into a full blog post in a different direction than you originally intended to write it.
2. Simplify the blog scrap to one central idea, making it more viable as a blog post.
3. Compile a bunch of related scraps into a themed blog post.
4. Compile a bunch of unrelated scraps into a potpourri blog post.
5. Add your scrap to a related blog post you’ve already written to freshen it up.
6. Find someone else’s blog where your blog scrap works as a comment.
7. Make your blog scrap into a short Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn group post.
8. Keep the scraps for use as fresh content in a white paper, eBook, or book.
9. Take another shot at writing the original blog post for which the scrap was intended.
10. Throw the blog scrap away (or delete it online) to free yourself of feeling guilty about trying to do something with it.

What do you do with your blog scraps?

When an idea you have for what to blog about doesn’t turn into a fully fledged blog post initially, what do you do with it? Are there other ways you’ve found to take advantage of your preliminary work to get value from your initial writing, video, or audio efforts? Please share what works for you! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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At a recent blogging for business training workshop I conducted, the audience members had many great social media questions during the session and in the post-session evaluation. These four social media questions from the blogging for business training workshop are applicable across organizations on the front end of blogging.

What do you do when your boss does not understand social media?

If your boss does not understand social media, you need to have a strategic business conversation, not a social media conversation. Before you have the conversation, do your homework and have a firm understanding of what drives success in your organization. When you understand what translates to success for your organization, structure and prepare a strategic conversation addressing business fundamentals and priorities. With that strategic foundation in place, consider how social media contributes strategically toward overall goals. Do not start with talking about Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or even blogging. Start with revenue, leads, customer service, processes, or any other real issues that drive the business. Then put social media in that context.

Are a website and a business blog separate places online?

This was an intriguing question, because in the context of the blogging for business training workshop, I was talking about an organization’s website and business blog separately. I did this because websites and blogs are different in tone, intent, and messaging. Digitally, however, they are tied together, if not one and the same. You do not want your blog and website to be in two separate digital locations. If they are, you lose real advantages of the web traffic a blog helps attract on a daily basis.

How do you not give away your competitive secrets to your competitors when blogging for business?

I have heard people talk about sharing the “whats” and “whys” of your business, but not the “hows” to protect your proprietary techniques from spilling into your business blog. You can also write in generalities vs. specifics (i.e., we rarely name specific clients). It is also great to write about something other than your organization that is of more interest to your audience. Quite honestly, I do not think about this much since with the strategic planning and marketing work we do, how we do it makes all the difference in efficiently producing the strong imaginative thinking and implementable strategies we devise. You cannot read about it and go do it.

When blogging for business, how do you balance messages so you aren’t overly sales-oriented?

My answer on this question was when it comes to organizing your business blog content, think about a TV show. A ½ hour TV show has approximately twenty-three minutes of content, and seven minutes of commercials (as opposed to an infomercial with is 100 percent commercials). Within a business blog, you’re trying to create entertainment and a reason for people to show up at your website. With that in mind, having at least a 2-to-1 non-commercial to commercial ratio is a starting point. By simply being yourself, you’re “advertising” your value. As a result, blatant selling should be a very small part of the time and messages in your business blog.  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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It’s Friday, and this post was written on Thursday night. You know what that means? Hang on for a Larry King post . . . You can learn something from someone you don’t respect, but it’s much harder to respect someone you can’t learn from . . . It’s been a long time since first grade, but I saw the little red headed girl from grade school at our local Starbucks. Her smile has not changed one bit . . . I’m a lot better at stress-induced eating than stress-induced creativity . . . I love the world of multiple screens except I keep muting and increasing the volume on the wrong screen . . . Why is it I can watch Pawn Stars & not go to a pawn store, but 2 minutes of Diners, Drive-ins & Dives, and I’m ready to start eating?

Social Media Hype and Cool from Way Back

Fear, forgetting, and fecklessness can all get in the way of making progress . . . Maybe one little change will be all you need to fix a problem. But sometimes, as they say in NASCAR, you have to take a big swing at it. It just depends . . . Someone having the right words in their Twitter name doesn’t mean someone knows ANYTHING about those right words . . . At some point, you can either talk about your area of expertise for 3 1/2 days straight…or you can’t.

Attention social media rock stars: If you’re going to describe your blog using hyperbole, make it grammatically correct . . . Some people were talking about how my grandma used to go places with a camera and tape recorder. She was a content creator before content creation was cool . . . It’s amusing when someone “whiny tweets” you about nonsense, then goes back & deletes all those tweets (and by “amusing,” I mean “pathetic”) . . . You can tell I’m more than mildly amused (or befuddled) by the cool kid hype out in the Wild Social Media West.

Hate Not, Want Not

Why do they call them “task forces” and expect people to volunteer? “Fun forces” would make more sense, even if it is a lie . . . Three people I hate? Whoever designed airport bathroom stalls to swing in, people you’ve met before who won’t say their name next time you meet them, and salespeople who talked to you once on the phone three months ago who expect you to recognize them by their voice and first name . . . Ever notice how people say they want interaction at conferences, but they really just want to be talked to – and gifted with a copy of your slides . . . What if Pavlov had a cat? How would that have worked out for him?

Who Said That?

It’s fascinating to meet someone new who’s already formed a perception of you that’s so counter to what you think of yourself . . . Right now, I appear to have about 4 mini-offices located around the house . . . You can’t tell how warm the social media water is by standing on the side of the pool & pissing into it . . . One of my high school teachers gave us Hollywood Squares tests. Each person had to answer one question out loud in class. If you were wrong but bluffed well, you still got points . . . I continually forget how many lines I’ve lifted from “Broadway Danny Rose,” i.e. “It’s late, we’ll get right out of here,” “I’m willing to bet that your full of good ideas, but what you lack is confidence, ” and “You can’t ride two horses with one behind.”

There’s a reason for most everything I do, but it may have nothing to do with the reason you think . . . Official spokespeople say official things. Passionate observers provide the real sense for a story and what’s happening . . . People at TEDxWyandotte kept telling me to, “Break a leg.” Two days after the Kevin Ware deal, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear . . . I read about someone described as being a bold social media presence. The first thing out of her mouth was she watched TED videos all the time for inspiration. Obviously the standards for bold were cut by 95%, and I missed the announcement . . . It’s not just me that thinks what I think, but that doesn’t make it any better or easier to deal with.  - Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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The inaugural TEDxWyandotte is in the books, and my talk leading off the second half of the evening covered “Diverse Ideas in a Porous Community.” Thanks to all my Kansas City-based friends who came out to see the event, which concluded with an incredible spoken word performance by Sheri Hall. Quite honestly, after seeing Sheri in rehearsal, all the speakers suggested putting her last since none of us wanted to follow her!

Six Ideas for a First Time TED Talks Style Presentation

At some point, the TEDxWyandotte videos should be available online. We’ll highlight them here when they are posted. While waiting for the videos to go online, here are six suggestions for preparing a TEDx Talk based on my initial experiences for TEDxWyandotte.

1. Don’t overdose on videos of TED Talks

Some people watch TED Talks frequently (even daily) for inspiration. I don’t, for a variety of reasons, chief of which is they often frustrate me more than they inspire me. While my initial inclination was to play catch up and watch a bunch of TED Talks, the only complete talked I watched was Sir Ken Robinson’s humongously viewed talk on creativity and education. My main objective was to look for structure and flow ideas since his video has obviously resonated with so many people. I suggest perusing the list of most viewed TED Talks, finding one that best matches your style or topic, and concentrate on it for presentation style and delivery ideas to consider.

2. Come up with a snappy title for your TEDx Talk

This is an area where I fell flat. Based on the timing for the event’s kick-off meeting and the initial press release about the event, I had to come up with a topic and title over a weekend. Mission accomplished, but it would have been far better to have a snappy title such as one from a TED Talk Barrett Sydnor pointed me toward: “When Ideas Have Sex.” That’s a TED Talk title for you!

3. Do something different to make it a YOU Talk

TED Talks have evolved into a format that takes the audience almost completely out of the talk. It has become overly focused on the speaker, in my opinion. That’s counter to my presentation style, and I didn’t want to deliver something that was forced and unnatural. I obviously followed the time limits and tried to emphasize stories as the format suggests. Instead of being one-way delivery, however, I structured the TEDxWyandotte talk similar to the “live blog” presentations I’ve started doing. In a live blog presentation, the audience is presented a list of topics and can choose how they’d like to see the talk progress. It’s the closest I’ve discovered to giving the audience hyperlinks (akin to a blog) to go deeper or skip content as they choose.

4. Dig for stories and ideas you haven’t shared before

Telling new stories was the best suggestion I read while developing the presentation. I incorporated a story from childhood no one outside my family has ever heard and included a variety of stories and examples from blog posts outside my typical presentation repertoire. Still other stories were reworked to fit the overall event theme (“Core Impact”) more directly. The result was that even the few pieces of familiar content in the talk received a very different treatment for TEDxWyandotte.

5. Decide whether you are targeting the live audience or the video audience for your TEDx Talk

Knowing the maximum live audience in Kansas City, KS (KCK) would be 400 people made creative decisions trickier. The decision point became whether to target the live audience or the (larger – I hope) video audience who would later see the TEDxWyandotte talk. While the in-person audience prompted the “live blog” approach (especially since letting the “community” drive the content was consistent with the topic/theme) and a few Kansas City, KS references, other creative decisions were made with the video audience in mind. There were fewer KCK mentions and visuals than originally planned and I minimized the references to previous speakers more than I’d ever do (since the video audience would have no context for those remarks). These decisions were not something I anticipated beforehand.

6. Be a good boy or girl on time and the level of commercialism

Among the apparently many requirements and recommendations that go along with TEDx, the most obvious one is completing your talk within the time limit – eighteen minutes for the longest talks. Another is to not make it a commercial talk. If you’re going to sign up for a TED Talk then you need to follow the rules on these. Plan and develop your presentation so you’re removing enough content that time won’t even remotely be an issue for you or the organizers to fret.

If you have the opportunity to do a TEDx talk, do it!

Even with trying to preserve the TEDxWyandotte talk as a MIKE talk in style and approach, developing this presentation was not how I would typically approach any other presentation. The result was that it felt “off” to me right up until the event day. Even still, if you have the opportunity to present at a TEDx event, don’t hesitate to say, “Yes.” The experience was a great way to stretch myself and feel a good type of creative tension! – Mike Brown

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Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Here are three recent branding strategy situations I’ve come upon. Have you experienced any of these three branding situations? If so, how did you react? Or if not, what’s your reaction to them here?

FedEx Office and an Ingredient Branding Strategy

As a Kinko’s customer since grad school and watching FedEx grow its brand portfolio from the a competitor’s vantage point, it was understandable, but sad, when FedEx rolled over the beloved Kinko’s brand, turning it into FedEx Office after its acquisition. FedEx was notorious for a strong master brand strategy (i.e., all its transportation and logistics offerings were FedEx something or other), and the Kinko’s brand fell to its tightly implemented approach. WhileFedEx CHANGED the brand name, its master brand strategy wasn’t successful in getting customers to QUIT SAYING Kinko’s or some hybrid version of the old and new names.

Just this past week, I noticed FedEx Office has addressed the naming issue in the classic Intel way, going the ingredient branding strategy route. An ingredient branding strategy highlights a brand that lives inside another one even though it might not be visible to customers. In this instance, FedEx Office is once again acknowledging the Kinko’s brand as an ingredient of the overall brand experience by recognizing it is “Kinko’s Copying Inside.” It may be a late move (it’s not completely clear when the change first took place or if it’s happened uniformly), but it shows the importance of the willingness to change a brand strategy that’s not working as expected.

Southwest Airlines and Off Brand Advertising

I’m an unabashed Southwest Airlines fan and have written (and tweeted) about the brand several times on Brainzooming, including profiling the Southwest Airlines social media strategy. During the NCAA tournament this weekend, I saw the new Southwest Airlines brand advertising campaign.

In short, I guess you would describe it as an identity campaign trying to help us see how Southwest Airlines understands us or knows what its passengers are going through in their lives. You can watch the ad here and see what you make of it.

I tweeted immediately after seeing the new Southwest Airlines brand advertising campaign that it is off brand. The advertising isn’t fun, personal, or representative of any reasons I choose to fly Southwest Airlines. Perhaps as the brand has had to walk away from its peanut-loving, low-cost airline position it’s still looking for something else.

Interestingly, this was the first time Southwest Airlines has EVER responded to one of my tweets, as shown here.

@brainzooming Sorry it disappoints, Mike!  I’ll still spin plates and juggle fire for you, if you so desire! ^BT

— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) March 23, 2013

My reply was it wasn’t really an issue of whether I was disappointed in the ad.

The point is this new Southwest Airlines brand advertising could have come from any other airline. When you look back at previous Southwest Airlines advertising, I cannot remember even once when that was the case. And that, my friends, is not the sign of a brand moving forward.

Making a Big Promise with Your Brand

Finally, how willing is your brand to feature a big brand promise right on your building (You’re Gonna Love This Place!) or in your name (Stellar Books)?

I’m not saying don’t put a big brand promise front and center to continually remind your customers you’re reaching for their highest expectations. But if you’re going to do it, you had better be ready to deliver on your big brand promise no matter what!

How Is Your Branding Strategy Doing?

If you’re new to the idea of branding or struggling to strengthen your brand, contact The Brainzooming Group. We can help you identify and take advantage of your best branding opportunities in new ways! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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