Digital Marketing Content Inspiration

We received a response on our last post that plagiarism is often a result of writer’s block.   That can certainly be the case especially for longer running marketing campaigns.  We are fortunate at eMarketing Innovation in that digital marketing strategy and technology evolves quickly, so even old topics become new after a period of time.  But even with that advantage we are not immune from feeling like we are repeating ourselves or struggling to create compelling content.

So what should a trainer, consultant, or professional coach do if the deadline for their content calendar is looming and they are grasping for ideas?  Here are a few tactics on how you can generate legitimate content, even when you’re not inspired to do so:

Reuse a Topic but with a Different Media

Did you have an article or report that was well received and has been gathering dust for at least six months?  Update the content a bit and shoot a video that visually or verbally illustrates some of the points you made in the written version. This allows you to highlight things like tonality and body language that might be lost in the written format.

It can work in reverse too.  Maybe a series of videos can be compiled into a whitepaper or checklist.

Just be sure that you are offering something new from the original content.  Otherwise, you run the risk of getting into a cycle of regurgitating what you’ve already released.

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is the process of using a breaking news story to make your own commentary or inject your ideas to generate audience engagement. Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches have to educate themselves to stay at the forefront of their field.  Leverage that learning process to inspire new content.  You can do this by making direct commentary on new studies or illustrating a point with current events.

As an example, a client has done a series of articles about negotiating tactic using recent political maneuvering as an example of victories and missteps.

Leverage Frustration

Everyone runs into frustrations with their work.  That energy is often diffused by venting to others, exercising it off, or letting it simmer into a multitude of unhealthy behaviors. Redirect your frustration into inspiration.  Some of the most passionate and insightful content comes from a trainer, consultant, or professional coach that sees a missed opportunity or can’t get best practices to stick.

Write or record what it is that’s frustrating to you and then mold that into an article, video, report, or whitepaper that illustrates how others can avoid or overcome that frustration.

It’s important to do editing on these pieces and helpful to get a third party to review it.  You don’t want to release a rant or something that comes off as threatening. It’s also important not to identify, let alone attack, an individual.  If your content refers to a person, change or omit the name to maintain anonymity.

Inspiration is often the hardest part of content creation.  If you are struggling to come up with compelling content, let the stimuli in the world around you, either past content, current events, or professional frustrations, inspire you to make something unique and valuable.

Is Your Digital Marketing Content ‘Spin’ Plagiarism?

Content is critical to a successful digital marketing campaign.  It’s also challenging and time consuming to generate the type of quality content that will attract your target market and inspire them to engage with you.  Unfortunately, many marketers look for shortcuts for generating content which leads to disjointed messaging that struggles to establish credibility with target markets.

There are only two authentic ways of generating content:

  • Creating original and accurate content that engages your target market.
  • Compiling credible information for your audience and making meaningful commentary on that content (while crediting the content’s creator).

There is varied media for delivering content from video, to blogging, to published articles, to graphic representations; but every type of media boils down to one of these two content strategies for generating content.

Unfortunately, there are two common inauthentic ways to generate content, plagiarism and regurgitation.

Regurgitation is often repeating oneself or others without expanding on or digging deeper into the topic.  Rethinking how you create your content will often shift repetition into clearly communicating your valuable knowledge into compelling content marketing.

Plagiarism is a tougher habit to break. Marketers often view their own plagiarism in a lens of self-delusion, referring to it as their ‘spin’ rather than a copy.  In fact, I rarely find an instance where plagiarism is executed with malicious intent, but rather it’s rooted in fear that the marketer is incapable of making compelling content.

To cleanse plagiarism, the first step is identifying if you are guilty of it.  Most plagiarism in digital marketing is either assembled or restructured.

Assembled plagiarism is seeking out content and then assembling it into something new.  For example, a blogger might select a topic they want to cover and then do a web search for that topic.  They then copy sections of others’ articles and assemble those into their own post.  They then ‘complete’ their content by making bridges between the disjointed copy to make it somewhat more cohesive. If you find that the majority of a piece of content you create is taken from another source and you’re attempting to glue it together, it’s likely that you’re guilty of plagiarism.

Restructured plagiarism is taking something that already exists and modifying copyrighted material or specific elements to make it ‘their own’.  There are even tools that originated in academia making their way into digital marketing like Spinbot, Essay Rewriter, Free Article Spinner, and Auto Rewriter.  These tools restructure sentences and liberally apply the thesaurus to written content. If you are lifting and shifting content, especially if you are doing it in an automated way, you have fallen into a process of plagiarism.

Do any of these content creation processes sound similar to how you develop content?  Hopefully not, but if so, awareness is the first step to eliminating the problem.  But is it really a problem?  After all there are many in depth articles about exactly how much of an article, image, layout, intellectual property, etc. needs changed to avoid copyright infringement.  If your content doesn’t risk a law suit, should it concern you?

Ethics aside, plagiarism will erode credibility in digital marketing.  Most notably because it:

  • Makes for disjointed communications that struggle to find a stable voice to your target market.
  • Results in poorly constructed messages that lack the appropriate level of professionalism (try running your article through one of the rewrite tools above to see an example of how mangled the text can get and how the initial meaning can be completely misconstrued).
  • Often takes the same amount of time as creating your own content. Piecing together disparate information or restructuring something in a different but understandable way is often not a fast process.
  • Ensures you won’t provide original insight because by definition you are simply repackaging what others have already communicated. This ensured you won’t be a market leader but rather flying under the radar hoping your target audience doesn’t discover the authentic voice and insights that you are pulling from.

Plagiarism is often falsely conveyed as inspiration. There’s a difference between inspiration and theft.  Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches should be actively learning about their field of specialty.  Sometimes the information that we encounter can be incorporated into our digital marketing but needs to be done in an authentic way by making new insights into the topic and crediting the original content creator when referencing their insights. When done appropriately, it builds credibility as a market leader, rather than assembling or restructuring what others have created.

 

Image courtesy of Kippelboy | commons.wikimedia.org

Anticipate the New Year Rebound

How do your December metrics look?  If you are like most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches, you experience a holiday slump in the last couple weeks of December.  This slump typically runs across all channels and is directly related to a significant decline in activity as prospects and clients take time off for the holidays. While it’s not advisable to give up on December, it’s important to recognize that dip when you analyze performance at the beginning of the new year.

Reviewing analytics on a monthly basis is a common practice because it’s easy to maintain consistency and ensures regular analysis on a sufficient data set.  Unfortunately, carelessly using the comparison to the previous month to identify trends can become a tendency that leads to false analysis.

A new year often means new digital marketing initiatives that are inaccurately compared to a holiday slump rather than a true benchmark. It’s tempting to see a rebound in January and February and commend ourselves on the genius of our new ideas.  But rather than jumping to conclusions that our revised initiatives or updated plan is responsible, maintain due diligence.  More than any other time of year, it’s important to compare January and February results to the previous year or to the fall before the holidays (if campaigns have changed significantly from the previous year).

Changing nothing at all in January and February often leads to improved month to month performance simply through a new year rebound after the holiday slump.  Take the time to do a multi-faceted review of past performance to make sure your new initiatives are responsible for the improvement rather than simply getting back to speed after decreased holiday activity.