Research-Write

What marketers can learn from Aol's new content strategy

On November 30, AOL announced its new content generation strategy, "betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to developing content, based on what Web-search and other data tell it is most likely to attract audiences and sponsors," according to Emily Steel in the Wall Street Journal.  This strategy has been successful for Demand Media, a company that pays freelance writers and video producers to produce content on topics determined by its algorithms and partner relationships.

As a data researcher formerly responsible for publishing content on corporate blogs and websites, I've always known that data can be a rich source of content ideas. At Hitwise, I looked for blog post ideas by combing through search term lists and site rankings. At Efficient Frontier, I examined incoming search terms to see what keyword combinations were driving people to the site and blog, and expanded on relevant topics in future content. It's no surprise then, that Tim Armstrong, who came from the data-driven Google, is behind AOL's new effort. According to WSJ, the new system

...uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers.

The predictions, it says, are based on a wide swath of data AOL collects, from the Web searches people make on its site to the sites visited by subscribers to its Internet services.

The system is designed to track breaking news and trends and identify the best times to write about seasonal events, such as Halloween or Monday Night Football.

Based on these recommendations, the company's editorial staff, which totals about 500, will assign articles to a network of free-lancers across the country via a new Web site called Seed.com.

While this can hardly be called journalism, Demand Media's success proves that search-friendly content based on popular topics and written by freelancers generates ad revenue. The new AOL needs a solid strategy for revenue generation, and is betting this will work.

I believe there are three key lessons here for marketers, particularly B2B marketers who depend on content to encourage their prospects to buy an expensive product or service.

1. Know what your audience is looking for. AOL isn't leaving it wholly up to editors to decide what should be written - they are letting the system's algorithms - based on searches and web traffic - help call the shots. Likewise, companies can't always trust executives or product managers to know what prospects will find relevant. There is almost always data that can help determine which topics are relevant to your audience. Your analytics package is a great source of this data: what search terms are people using to get to your site? What search terms do you want them to be using? What content is being viewed the most? Even if you have a 20-page B2B website, this data can help you decide what's working and what needs to be added or pushed off the home page. If you have a bigger site and subscribe to a competitive intelligence service like Experian Hitwise or Compete, check out how users are navigating to your competitor's sites and your industry as a whole. You don't need an algorithm to use data to make more educated decisions about what content to create.
2. Pay attention to the calendar and current events. AOL's system tracks breaking news. So should you - whether it's reading your feeds and newsletters every day, or setting up Google Alerts for your competitors or key industry terms and products. When a topic comes out that's relevant to your company, respond quickly by posting a blog entry or a Twitter update. The calendar is another strategic tool - just as AOL will know when to write about Monday Night Football, you know seasonality of your industry and when your industry conferences take place. Your company might exhibit at financial services or retail conferences that occur every year. Publish content accordingly, and give the leads you get at the conference a reason to go to your website.
3. Hire expert freelancers (or distribute responsibility). Just like Demand Media, AOL plans to use writers who are skilled in covering a specific content areas. They work fast because they already know the topic, and they know the system guidelines. You can have employees throughout your organization blogging on specific topics, and provide them with a basic format to help make writing easier. A look at the Official Google Blog today shows that every single post on the home page has a different author. An employee might write one or two blog posts in his or her whole tenure with the company. Google knows that the best person to write a post is the person who is closest to the topic. It's OK if the marketing team has to do some editing - as long as it doesn't end up sounding like self-serving marketing copy. For deeper content like white papers or research reports, it can often be more efficient to hire outside writers who know your industry and the writing format and just need a download on the product to write an effective paper. They'll turn it around quickly, and it will keep employees that normally build or manage products happy, because they won't have to take time away from their job to write.

While I don't believe data-driven content generation is the saving grace of web content - it lacks qualitative insight that can make a good strategy truly brilliant - data can and should be used to inform content strategy and editorial decisions. If you're armed with deep audience knowledge, prepared for unexpected disruptions in your editorial calendar, and have a rolodex of competent internal or external content creators, you create a rich web site that will engage users and gently encourage them to buy your product or service.

Clichés and Crediblity

I've made a habit of reading white papers and research reports to see how companies write about and position data, and understand how documents can be effectively structured. Writing about data is a tricky business-- what I've learned over the years is that it's best to let the facts lead, and state the conclusions afterward. If a document is written well, the conclusions should be almost self-evident.

Recently I came across a research report in which the findings were drowned in such obtuse language that it detracted from any credibility the report might have had. The fact that much of the data cited as central to the findings of the report were couched in suspicious language such as " the rate was said to be xx%" without any quantitative sourcing did not help the report's credibility, but the cliché-ridden vernacular sent the report over the edge of acceptability in the mind of this data-driven analyst and writer.

Here are some the phrases that were included in the report: "glomming to," "jump on the bandwagon," "faint of heart," "to be fair," "elephant in the room," "one side of the profitability coin,"  and my pet peeve, "the Googles and Yahoos of the world." There is only one Google, one Yahoo, and one Apple, another company often referred to in plural as "of the world." This is the type of language you expect from a slick sales professional. If his product is good enough, you might buy it, but if it's not, you roll your mind's eye and nod along until he's finished speaking. It's not what you would expect to read in an analyst firm's report.

Yes, business writing can be boring to read. Efforts should be made to make it interesting, but what makes for interesting reading is when the audience's interests have been carefully considered, and the relevant data has been highlighted with appropriate language. Analogies included in this report like "inbred family," "advertising buffets," "child prodigy," and "cottage industry,"along with sensationalist verbs like "spawned," and "tantalizing" seem more appropriate for a best-selling business novel with visual cliché cover art.

Not suprisingly, this report was picked apart by online commenters as lacking in data credibility. If the language had not been so inappropriate, the report's methodology shortcomings might have been more difficult to detect.

Writing as a Puzzle

As a child, I loved puzzles - those 500 or 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles with images of landscapes, castles or animals. I loved the process of building the border from the pieces with flat edges, then sorting the interior pieces by color. I was methodical about inspecting every piece as I picked it up to imagine where it might go, and trying out likely pieces in each spot until I found one that fit. When I began writing for business, I realized that the process of writing, especially when it involves research data, resembles a puzzle.

The border of the puzzle is the format of the document you are writing - is it a white paper, research report, press release, or article? This will guide the length and outline. There are a number of pieces, or facts - research findings, data from other studies, facts about your industry, facts about your company's product. Each of these components must be brought together so that the document flows, compelling the reader to move forward.

Unlike a real puzzle, which is built to match the image on a box, you should have a vision of what you want the document to convey - it can be the state of an industry, an argument to adopt a new technology, or one of many other purposes. Each fact has its place in the flow of the document, and does not need to be repeated. Extraneous facts can be eliminated.

Once the facts are gathered and placed in a logical order, then the sentences and paragraphs become puzzles-within-the-puzzle. Each sentence is made up of words, and sometimes numbers, that must be arranged in a grammatically correct and readable fashion. Each paragraph is composed of sentences, which flow from one to another around a central idea that makes up the paragraph.

Other elements that make up the puzzle are images such as charts, graphs, diagrams, or photos. These should be included when it's necessary to illustrate emphasize a point that cannot be conveyed by text. Call out boxes are also useful to emphasize a specific point, or convey a point that is related but not quite integral to the topic.

What makes writing a document more satisfying than doing a puzzle is that you don't know what you're going to end up with when you start out. The format and your vision are your only guides, and the words, facts, and images fall together as you write, until the document is whole.

I'd like know if you've had a similar experience in writing documents - or does another approach work for you?

Let Your Communications Tell a Story

Have you ever read a marketing document - collateral piece, website copy, or report - that you weren't sure what to make of? You might have thought, "What is this company trying to sell?" or "That's kind of interesting but I don't get the point" or perhaps "This might be useful for my company, but it's not quite clear."

There's a tendency in marketing communications to throw in everything, including the kitchen sink. Writing gets bloated. The point gets lost. Yes, there are many reasons that people should by your product. And yes, there are many reasons that they will buy your product, which include highly subjective factors, like relationships. But in your communications, you should start at the beginning. What do most want your prospects to know?

State your purpose in one single clause sentence.

For four years, I wrote press releases and blog posts nearly every week. Every headline had to sound so interesting that a reporter would read open the email or a blog reader would click on the link. Boiling down interesting facts that tell a story into a headline was tough. But newspaper reporters do this every day. So do consumer advertising copywriters. B2B marketers have bigger challenge, because they have complex solutions and services to offer. But reading your website or your marketing collateral doesn't have put a prospect to sleep. Ultimately it will be a human who makes the decision to buy your product. So your communication should be directed at humans. What do humans love? Stories.

Let your supporting facts tell a story.

Every company has a story to tell. A story about why they were founded, a story about how they helped a customer, a story about how the product evolved. If you list all the reasons your customers like you, rearrange that list into a logical progression, and add in some clever transitions, your copy will write itself. It's the classic progression of "we did this," "and then such and such happened, so we did this," "but then they asked for this, so we created this," and so on. Stories are being created every day in your company. I can help you tell them. Contact me and I'll help you connect with the humans that come to your website.